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Finally, Sedarno laughed. “After you, darlin’.” Jess climbed into her cart, and the two men climbed into theirs. Adam watched as both sailed off down the first fairway.
He needed a drink.
Chapter Eight
Jess wasn’t surprised, exactly, that Adam was waiting in her suite when she returned from the golf course. She was surprised at the three beer bottles on the table in front of him and the fourth in his hand. At the cold squint of his eyes. The tight jaw.
He was pissed that she’d called an audible. Well, too bad. He needed to understand that she could pull her weight in this partnership. Besides, she could play a round of golf in her sleep.
She waited for him to say something. When he just sat there glaring, a knot formed in her stomach. She didn’t want him to be upset with her. As hard as it was to admit to herself, she’d been hoping he might be a little impressed with her initiative and execution. If not, she’d at least been looking forward to talking through the day with him.
It had been a bit nerve-racking at first, but after the first tee shot the rest of the afternoon was fine. She bought drinks and joked around with Knoll and Sedarno, but she also gave the men a lot of space. She didn’t forget who she was dealing with; she stayed out of their way.
When they realized she wasn’t going to be a chatterbox or slow them down, the men had actually been pretty friendly. Knoll was clearly a slobbering meathead, but Sedarno was quick-witted. Her short game had been a mess, which seemed to endear her to him. He had given her quite a bit of good putting advice.
Warily, she sat down on the sofa next to Adam and pulled off her visor. “Did you listen to them in the cart? Did they say anything that we can use?”
“Yep.”
When he simply continued to glare, she felt a spark of her own temper ignite. “What did they say? I deserve to know.”
“You little idiot,” he seethed. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
The spark of temper grew into a blaze of anger. “Yes. I helped us. They did all their ‘serious’ talking in the cart. So now we have more information. Frankly, I’m surprised you aren’t thanking me.”
He slammed the beer bottle in his hand on the coffee table, making all of the other ones shake. She couldn’t stop the flinch. Wow, he was livid. For the first time, she felt uneasy. Had she screwed up their plan? She couldn’t see how, but why else would he be so furious?
“Let’s play this out, Blondie. Let’s say you win in our little situation here. You manage to take Knoll down, catch him red-handed with the 25 million dollars in diamonds. The diamonds will go wherever the Feds take them, and Sedarno is left empty-handed. You think he’s not going to be interested enough in Knoll’s arrest to look into it? What if you’re mentioned in the news story about the arrest? Or what if he simply does a little Google-ing on Ignatius like I did and sees your picture in the Trib? You’re a chameleon, but you spent the whole damn day with him, Jess, and there’s no way he won’t recognize the woman in the photo as the woman who popped out of nowhere in Vegas when he was meeting with Knoll and fucking outdrove him.”
Before she could react, he just kept going. “You don’t think he’s going to put two and two together? Because Knoll might not be as bright as he once was, but Sedarno’s as sharp as they come. As sharp as the ice pick he used to kill a cheating ex-mistress.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a shake. “You think the mob boss is going to be forgiving? When he’s been denied 25 million dollars?”
Another shake. “Jesus fucking Christ, Jess. You better hope I steal those diamonds before there’s any further connection between you and Knoll.”
His hands gripped her shoulders tightly, and his blue eyes were practically glowing with fury. Then his gaze dropped to her lips for a long moment, and the air between them grew warm and thick. She inhaled a shaky breath, uncertain in that instant if he was going to shake her again or kiss her.
To her half relief/half disappointment, he did neither. He stood and went to the window, watched the sun setting on the Strip. “I don’t know what I was thinking, to get you involved like this.”
Jess forced herself to look away from the long line of his rigid body, to focus on his words. So...no. She hadn’t really thought as far ahead as that. She hadn’t thought about the connections. Maybe she had acted like an idiot. Shit.
She’d have to worry about that later. For now, she was still trying to process his anger. She hadn’t put their goal in jeopardy. In fact, if the information on the recording was good, she’d put him one step closer to the diamonds. She may have put herself in future danger, but why did that make him so upset?
Her voice was incredulous when she spoke. “Are you mad because...you’re worried about me?”
He didn’t answer for a long moment. When he did, his voice sounded more tired than angry. “Trust me, I’m as surprised as you are.”
She didn’t know what to say next, so she said nothing. She’d worked at Ignatius for most of her adult life and when she was accused and fired, not one of the co-workers she considered friends defended her. Except for Andrew, the rest of her family chose to believe the scandal instead of her protestations of innocence. They had pushed her away without one real conversation.
But here was this man—a professional criminal, of all things—and he believed in her innocence because he was smart enough to look at the facts and willing to listen. He was angry now, not because she’d somehow messed up his diamond-stealing plan but because she had put herself in jeopardy.
Jess felt abruptly disoriented. She could almost see her ideas of how the world worked and her preconceived notions of people...they were moving and shifting in her peripheral vision.
She didn’t know how to react when he left the window and stalked silently across the room to kneel in front of her, so she froze. She absolutely didn’t know what to do when he stared into her eyes, his own blazing with a startling mix of lust and leftover anger, so she closed hers.
When she opened them again, he was gone.
* * *
