The Sapphire Heist (A Jewel Novel Book 2) Read online

  But first, the Novocain of a kiss.

  The second the door to her room shut, she pounced on him, kissing hard to silence all conversation, to use the same drug on him that he’d used on her last night. Closeness. Connection. Red-hot contact. It had worked wonders at turning her into a quivering one-track woman, hell-bent only on pleasure. Maybe it could do the same to Jake so he’d easily let her investigate . . . his pockets.

  As she consumed his lips, her brain whirred fast and crazy with a Rubik’s Cube of possibilities.

  He’d stolen the diamond while she was sleeping.

  He hadn’t stolen it at all.

  Both Isla and Jake were lying about the jewels.

  Jake was hiding the diamonds he’d taken from Isla’s office.

  In his shoe. In his wallet. In the pocket of his underwear.

  Wait. Did underwear have pockets anymore? Did they ever have pockets?

  What if maybe he wasn’t hiding them at all?

  There were too many outcomes, and she hardly knew how to navigate this topsy-turvy maze. As she slid her tongue between Jake’s soft, delicious lips, her mind settled, and her body took the driver’s seat. Kissing him intoxicated her, too. It had from the very first night. His kisses were preludes. A hint of what might come. An appetizer inviting her to the table of all the pleasure this man could give. She hummed with desire as she explored his mouth. Her skin sizzled and her belly flipped. Then it flopped again as he groaned from her kissing. A sexy, masculine rumble because of her, and how she took the reins and led this carnal moment.

  He liked it, and dammit, so did she.

  It both pissed her off and ignited her. In mere seconds of their lips sealing, she was wildly aroused when she wanted to feel nothing for him. Nothing but anger. Only, she felt so much more than nothing, especially because the Rubik’s Cube of options was lining up squares in his favor as he looped his hands through her hair, then broke the kiss momentarily to whisper, “I have no idea why you’re acting so strange today, but when you kiss me like that, I kind of stop caring.” His voice was both husky and true. “I like it too much.”

  Her heart slammed to the ground, then bounced back up. She gave herself a pep talk.

  Do it.

  Checking would be for the best. She had to know, and there was one way to find out. Finish what she’d started outside the gallery and conduct her investigation.

  “I like it, too,” she said in a sexy purr, then dropped her lips to his neck, kissing a trail up his skin, savoring the clean scent of him, how he gripped her hair harder as she kissed, then nipped on his earlobe.

  He groaned.

  She flicked her tongue against the shell of his ear.

  He grabbed her harder, crushing her body against his, his erection pressing into her.

  Fuck, she wanted him.

  The angel popped up on her shoulder. Trust him.

  The devil appeared. Frisk him.

  Before she could hesitate, she spoke in a rush. “Jake, can I blindfold you and kiss you all over?”

  His green eyes twinkled. “Hell yeah.”

  She darted to her suitcase, hunted for a bikini wrap that when folded over would double nicely as a blindfold, and then turned around to find he’d already shed his shorts and T-shirt. Her skin heated up at the sight of his broad, toned body, his firm muscles and tanned skin.

  “Bed. Now,” she said, and he stretched out.

  She climbed over him and tied the wrap over his eyes, then raked her eyes over him from head to toe. Sparks shot through her as she took him in on the bed, clad only in boxer briefs. He looked hot like that, his strong chest and sturdy arms on display and the rigid lines between his abs self-evident. Not to mention the fact that the white boxers left little to the imagination about his desire for her.

  “Give me thirty seconds to put on some music and slip into something more comfortable,” she said, then grabbed her phone and called up a Jane Black song. Once the music started, she quietly picked up his shorts from the floor, snagged his wallet, and opened it, flipping through it quickly. Diamonds were small. If he had found diamonds in Isla’s office, he could have hidden them in his wallet and claimed he’d uncovered none.

  But the leather fold contained only credit cards and greenbacks.

  Next, she dipped her hand into the back pocket of his shorts, checking there, too, as the clock ticked. Her heart beat furiously, pounding in her ears, as he lay calmly on the bed. Happily waiting for her as she raced through his clothes.

  “Tick tock, Steph. You should be about naked now or wearing the red lacy thong I’m picturing you in,” he said in a playful tone, parking his hands behind his head.

  So trusting. So happy to be here.

  Her shoulders tensed. “Almost there,” she said from her spot kneeling on the floor as she reached into the front pocket and wrapped her hands around a . . . jar of honey?

  She took it out, and then burst into a wide smile. He had a jar of the honey she loved. That was too cute. Too adorable. And she was too confused.

  Something just didn’t add up.

  Something made no sense at all.

  All the evidence pointed to Jake Harlowe telling the truth about today’s visit to the gallery—that he’d come up empty-handed.

  If he had, that meant he wasn’t hiding any of Isla’s diamonds from Steph.

  She also knew he hadn’t pilfered Isla’s stone last night. He had an alibi—Steph herself.

  That also meant someone else took her stone.

  That was bad.

  She dragged a hand through her hair, then shrugged. Fuck it. Time to come clean with the hot, sexy man in her bed. But as she dropped one knee to the bed and crawled over to him, she sat up straight.

  A loud rapping echoed in the room.

  Someone was knocking on the door.

  Several times. Over and over.

  “This is the hotel manager.”

  Shit.

  In seconds, Jake had untied his blindfold.

  “I’d better answer that,” she said, and Jake scrambled to pull on his shorts while she headed to the door.

  She opened it to find a tall, red-haired man with a mustache. He was dressed in gray slacks, a white shirt, a tie, and a suit jacket. A brass name tag on the jacket revealed his name: ALFREDO.

  He bowed his head slightly. “Hello, Ms. Anderson,” he said in a friendly but apologetic voice. “So sorry to disturb you this afternoon, but I wanted to check and make sure you had received the paperwork for your meeting.”

  She knit her eyebrows together. A small kernel of worry took hold inside her. “I’m sorry, but what meeting are you referring to?”

  “The meeting you had this morning, I believe?”

  Jake walked over to the door, joined her in the entryway, and draped an arm across her waist. The gesture felt strangely comforting, and she both wanted it and was sure she didn’t deserve it. Not after doubting him the way she had.

  “I didn’t have a meeting today,” she said to the hotel manager, tilting her head to the side. “And I didn’t receive any paperwork.”

  “Oh dear,” the manager said, scratching his chin.

  “Which means I have no clue what you’re talking about. Care to enlighten me?”

  The manager pressed his hands together, steepling his fingers as if in prayer. “Yesterday evening, around six o’clock p.m., a man came to the front desk and said you had a meeting with him today. He informed us he needed to drop off some paperwork in advance. He asked if he could bring it to your room, but of course we said no.”

  The hair on her neck stood on end.

  Jake flinched. “Good. No one needs to be in her room,” he said, his tone thoroughly protective.

  “Absolutely. We do not give out our guests’ information. That’s why my clerk took the envelope and brought it to your room himself. He marked in the delivery log that he left it here yesterday evening, around six fifteen. He left it on the desk in the room, and I came by to make sure you had receiv
ed it.” He paused and gestured to the desk, bereft of envelopes. “But it seems you don’t have it.”

  Steph gulped and shook her head, nerves swimming wildly through her now. “No. I don’t have it. But maybe I missed it,” she said. She scanned the desk and the bureau, but there were no envelopes or papers. She returned her gaze to the manager. “There’s nothing here.”

  The carrot-topped man nodded and sighed. “Let me check with the clerk to double confirm it was delivered.”

  “Wait,” Steph said. “Who was the man dropping off the papers? What was his name?”

  “Mr. Smith, I believe,” the manager said, then swiveled around and marched down the hallway. Steph watched him go, her heart beating out a staccato rhythm of fear and worry. Could the clerk have stolen her diamond when he delivered the papers to her room? But if he had, why would the paperwork have disappeared, too? Someone, it seemed, had tried to trick the hotel into giving up her room number by faking a meeting with her and using a fake name.

  Because Mr. Smith was as phony a name as there ever was.

  Who the hell was Mr. Smith?

  She shut the door and turned to Jake, her world spinning like a mad teacup ride in an amusement park.

  She swayed, and the floor felt wobbly. “I think someone pretended he had a meeting with me, followed the clerk as he delivered the paperwork for the fake meeting, then broke into my room later in the night,” she said in a tiny whisper.

  His jaw dropped, and his eyes widened. “Why? When?” He pointed in the direction of the hotel manager. “Because of what the manager just said?”

  “Yes,” she said, and her voice croaked.

  He tilted his head, looked at her like he was studying her. “So this ‘Mr. Smith’ claimed a meeting as a ruse to get in your room?” he asked, sketching air quotes around the name.

  Her stomach plummeted with nerves. “Look around. There are no papers in here, and I have no clue what’s going on. But someone must have broken in—”

  “Wait. Is that why you were patting me down earlier?” He crossed his arms. “You dragged me from the gallery, and you treated me like you didn’t trust me. Did you think I took something from your room?”

  “I was worried it was you,” she spat out, the words tumbling free before she could even think twice about what she was saying. Before she could even analyze the risk in admitting that she didn’t trust a damn soul right now. She squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, a tear slipped down her face. She wiped her hand across her cheek. “I freaked out, because I trusted you. I let you into my room and my body, and this morning after I showered, the diamond was gone. Completely gone.”

  He stumbled backward, his arm shot out, and he grabbed the wall. “Are you serious?” he whispered. “From your safe?”

  She nodded. “I thought it was you. Because I found it missing right after you left. Jake, what else would I think?”

  He shot her a look like she was crazy. “Anything. Anything but that.”

  “But you know how to break into safes. You broke into mine before.”

  He held out his hands wide and shook his head. Anger seemed to roll off him like smoke. “I would never steal from you.”

  “But you figured out the combo before. In seconds.”

  “And you changed it, right?”

  She nodded. “Yes, but I thought maybe you figured it out again.”

  He huffed and inhaled deeply, then dragged a hand roughly through his hair. He paced to the window, then back again. “Please tell me you didn’t change it back to A-R-I-E-L.”

  “No, it was—”

  He cut her off. “I don’t want to know what it is.” He sighed in frustration, then fixed her with a stare. “Why are you telling me this now if you thought I stole the diamond?”

  Time to ’fess up. To tell all. “Because Isla told me this afternoon that the diamond in her necklace was stolen last night, too. And with this Mr. Smith dropping off fake papers and with you not having any diamonds in your wallet—”

  He blinked. “Diamonds in my wallet?”

  “I blindfolded you,” she said, lowering her eyes, guilt stitched into her voice. As she breathed the words aloud, she realized how silly they sounded. She’d tricked the man she slept with to learn if he’d tricked her. “To see if you hid diamonds from Isla’s gallery in your wallet,” she admitted, letting her confession free in one quick breath.

  His eyes widened. He shook his head several times, as if he could barely conceive of her deception. “You went through my wallet? While I was blindfolded and waiting for you to get undressed? Even though I told you there were no diamonds in her gallery?”

  “Well, you did give me your wallet a few days ago to hold on to as collateral,” she said, pointing out that little detail. As if that were her free pass to riffle through it.

  “I know. But Steph.” His voice rose. “What the hell? I trusted you.”

  Trust. It was practically a four-letter word. It was what she longed for. It was what she’d tried to believe in. But if she didn’t entirely trust her own stepfather, how could she trust anyone else, especially a man gunning for him?

  “And I trusted you,” she said, placing her palms together, imploring him. “I did. I swear I did. I woke up this morning having had the most amazing time with you last night and feeling like we were on the same page. Then my diamond went missing. All I could think was you took it. What else was I supposed to think?”

  “You weren’t supposed to think. You were supposed to talk. To me. About it. Because I didn’t do it,” he said softly, his green eyes locking onto hers.

  “I believe that now.”

  “Then let’s figure out who might have done it. Tell me what happened.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  She took his hand and led him to the safe. She opened it and gestured inside, recounting every detail of her morning.

  “. . . And then I noticed a sliver of light by the door. When I pulled on the door after the shower, the safe was completely empty and the diamond was gone. I don’t even care about the diamond for me. I wasn’t going to keep it. That diamond was my one small bit of insurance that I could still have something for my mom as a way to pay her back for how she helped me. But if it’s part of the stolen stash, I’d obviously return it to Andrew and the fund.”

  Jake pointed to his chest, annoyance still thick in his veins. “But you thought I took it?”

  She shrugged, a guilty look in her pretty blue eyes. “You already showed me you knew how to take it,” she said in a small but certain voice. “You were in my room all night. You were in my room alone when I talked to the room service guy.”

  Her voice quivered, and he could tell she felt so damn guilty. Still, he was ticked that she’d made this assumption. “I’m not that guy,” he said firmly.

  “I know that now,” she said, wringing her hands, a tear sliding down her cheek. “But I didn’t know what to think then.”

  That errant tear did him in. It revealed her fears, and he longed to erase them. To carry them himself. He wrapped his arms around her and tugged her close. He was pissed that she thought he’d taken her diamond, but he also completely understood her reaction. To get out of the shower and find something precious stolen when you’d slept with a man who cracked safes was like opening the door and inviting in the perpetrator.

  He knew the truth, though. He hadn’t taken the gem.

  Someone else had, though, and that fact changed everything. Doubt or no doubt, trust or lack thereof, all that mattered to Jake was her safety.

  “You can’t stay here any longer,” he said in a firm voice as they stood by the foot of the bed. “It’s not safe. Someone else is after the diamonds, too.”

  She lowered her voice and whispered, “Do you think they sneaked in before we were here last night or while we were sleeping?”

  “I think they were here when we were on the boat. Not while I was here. I would have heard it.”

  “Oh really? Do you have supersonic h
earing?” she asked, parking her hands on her hips. The air-conditioning whirred in the room as he shot her a stare.

  “No, Miss Sarcastic. But I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed someone slipping into the room and opening a safe even if I was deep in the Land of Nod. Besides, if it were me taking something, I’d do it when no one was around.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “See?”

  “See what? You still think I did it? Because I have an opinion on how it was pulled off?”

  She sliced a hand through the air. “Forget I said that. I just want to move on. Because . . . Jake,” she said softly, her voice wobbly, etched with frustration. “This is not what I wanted when I came to the Caymans. I just wanted to do my tour, and help my mom, and talk to Eli. And now someone is breaking into my room to steal diamonds, and maybe it’s the same person who took Isla’s, too.”

  “No way are these just two coincidental burglaries of the same watermarked stones on the same night. This is a case of someone in hot pursuit of all the diamonds, too. Who the hell is this Mr. Smith? That’s what I want to know,” he said, then a memory of a car blasted front and center in his mind. He stopped in his tracks. “Shit. The green Honda.” He resumed his pace around the room, quickly explaining the car he’d seen earlier in the week that he thought was following Eli. He’d seen it again today when conducting recon at the church window. “Tall guy. Gray hair. Know anyone who fits that description?”

  She arched an eyebrow. “That’s kind of broad. I mean, if we’re looking for a tall guy with gray hair, we might as well be looking for anyone. Can we narrow that down at all?”

  “I don’t have gray hair,” he said with a mischievous glint. “But the way we narrow it down is to figure out who else knows that Eli has a stash of diamonds.” He paused. “Penny knew.”

  “It wasn’t Penny. She’s a little—”

  “Flighty?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So who knows Eli has one thousand diamonds? Well, minus two,” he said, stopping to meet her eyes. “You know he has them now? We’re not going back to that whole what-if-he-didn’t-take-the-diamonds line, are we?”