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“Shit, Mia. Are you standing there in that god awful wedding dress I’m sure your mother picked out and telling me you are not in love with that prick, but you’re going to go through with this farce?”
“Wha… What are we going to do?”
“What do you mean we? How the hell did you let this happen?”
“I don’t know. Everybody kept pushing him at me and telling me what a great catch he was and how we’d make the perfect couple. So, I just went along with everything, and it kind of snowballed.”
“‘Kind of snowballed?’ There are hundreds of people down there.”
“I know,” Mia said on the verge of panicking. “So, what are we going to do?”
Claire ran over to the window and looked down. Turning to Mia, she said, “First thing we do is get you out of that monstrosity. Please tell me you have real clothes.” Mia nodded. “Good. We need you to get redressed.”
“This gown is a pain in the arse to get in and out of. What are we doing?”
Claire glanced around smiling as she saw a pair of scissors. “We’re going to pull a Thelma and Louise on them—only skipping the part where we kill Brad Pitt and then drive my car off a cliff.”
Between the two of them, using their hands and scissors, they had Mia out of the dress in no time. Once she was in leggings, a sweater and a pair of sneakers, they eased out the bride’s room window, made their way down the fire escape and hopped into Claire’s car.
Claire fired the engine, put it in gear, and floored it.
“Mia! Mia!” called Reginald who had only just arrived for the ceremony.
“Stop the car,” said Mia, shocking Claire who did as her friend asked. Mia jumped out of the car, twisting her engagement ring off her finger and shoving it into Reginald’s hand. “Marry Lizzie. You two love each other. We’d have made each other miserable. Have a great life!”
Mia had run back to the car with her family in hot pursuit. The second she was in, Claire gunned the engine and tore out of the parking lot, spewing dirt and gravel everywhere.
“I guess you really saved my arse that time,” agreed Mia.
Claire reached over and took her hands. “And we’ve been saving each other’s ever since.”
“Remember how we were lamenting about not being able to get the necklace?” Claire nodded. “It seems the plane they were taking had to turn back because of engine trouble. The insurance companies want it back at the museum. That case and everything around it was designed to keep it safe.”
“Do you think we can get a second shot at it?”
“Didn’t you tell me the third time’s the charm? Besides, I’ll call in a favor from Lizzie. She’s some kind of tech guru these days. She always said she owed me. Did you know they named their first daughter Mia Claire? The necklace should be there for at least two weeks.”
“That means we have until then to figure outifthey jammed our communications and shut us down andhow.”
“I’m going to get Lizzie to help me look at some of the code I discovered that isn’t mine. Maybe she can figure out how it got there and how to make it inert. I don’t want them to know we discovered it; I just want to render it useless. I’m also going to have her look at some of my hardware. It’s top of the line, but you never know.”
For the rest of the day, they plotted and schemed, coming up with and discarding several plans until they weeded them out to a primary plan and a backup. Claire was certain she could come up with a reason to spend some time in the museum. Pennington was a pompous ass, but he could be a useful tool. While she was there, she’d see what other weaknesses or security systems they might have put into place.
“I should be able to spend some time in there.”
“I’m almost done programming those new glasses. If you can wear those and at least get one good visual, the hidden camera will record everything, and we can spend some time comparing what we get to what’s on the blueprints.”
“So much for shop talk. It’s time for chocolate chip mint ice cream with Bailey’s.”
Mia grinned. It was her absolute favorite.
With their preliminary plans set for taking another stab at snatching the Grenadine Necklace, Claire saw Mia out to her car, waving to her in the twilight before checking a final time on her horses. Something about the sound of horses munching hay seemed to put things right with the world.
Claire stripped out of her clothes and took a quick shower before crawling between the sheets without putting anything on. Sleeping naked always gave her a feeling of control and freedom from societal norms she enjoyed. It was only when Mia, who was notoriously early, was coming that she bothered with anything at all.
There was something far more exhausting about planning a heist than riding and caring for her horses. As she tried to get comfortable and settle down in bed, she realized it wasn’t Poppi, her horses, or even those for whom she risked so much, it was the dark-haired man with the fathomless eyes and hard-muscled body who occupied her thoughts.
She’d chided him for his rumpled, rented tuxedo and his calloused hands, but the thought of those same strong, roughhewn hands running over her naked body while he whispered all the delightfully dirty things he was going to do to her was something she could well imagine and longed to experience. It was easy to imagine his thumbs strumming and plucking at her nipples while he cupped her breasts in his hands.
