Too Wicked to Keep Read Online Free PDF Page A

opened her mouth to object, but then decided to quit while she was ahead. The hard part of this operation, apparently, was not getting Daniel on board—but keeping him from running roughshod over her.
    She had to stay focused. Eyes on the prize.
    And hands off the merchandise.
    She finally spotted her limo. With a nod to the driver, she slid into the backseat, adjusting her skirt as the cardipped slightly while Daniel climbed in beside her. Despite the roominess of the interior, he sat as close to her as he could.
    The driver slammed the door.
    â€œThere’s space in this car for eight people,” she said. “Feel free to spread out.”
    He made that clicking sound with his tongue. “Thanks, but I’m fine here.”
    She’d had no illusions that he’d make this easy, but she was up to the challenge. She had to be.
    She gave the driver instructions to take them straight to the airport, and then didn’t object when Daniel closed the glass partition.
    â€œShould we stop anywhere to retrieve your things?” she asked.
    â€œYou can buy me whatever I need.”
    â€œWhat you need most can’t be bought,” she quipped.
    He chuckled. “Clever. So you’ve developed a sharp tongue since last we met?”
    â€œI’ve developed a lot of things. I was a child when last we met.”
    He turned so that his body, so close, faced hers. “You were a lot of things, Abigail Alexandra Albertini, but a child you were not.”
    She didn’t remember ever telling him her alliterative middle name, but his casual use of it reminded her how much more he knew about her than she did about him.
    To find Daniel Burnett, she’d had to employ several private investigators. Each one had provided tidbits of his past, disjointed and disconnected, until she’d pieced them together into an incomplete picture of his life.
    His mother had turned him over to family services when he was five years old. She’d died of a drug overdose about a year later. He’d been shuttled from fosterhome to foster home until he was ten, when he’d landed with the Burnett family, who’d adopted him. His juvenile record included multiple counts for petty theft and trespassing, but by the time he turned eighteen, his name disappeared from arrest records. He’d been interviewed about a few cases in his early twenties and the name Daniel Burnett had dominated watch lists for museums, collectors and auction houses worldwide since, but he had never been prosecuted, not even after a security guard was seriously injured at the site of his last job.
    When she combined what she’d learned from her private investigators with what she knew from their affair, the idea that he’d nearly killed someone struck her as unlikely. Even after he’d betrayed her trust in the worst possible way, Daniel was a lover, not a fighter. She couldn’t believe he’d try to kill someone.
    â€œWhat happened in California?” she asked.
    â€œI grew up in California,” he answered. “Many things happened there.”
    â€œI mean your arrest.”
    â€œRethinking your decision to tap me for the honor of retrieving your stolen property?” he asked, his eyes glittering with his tease—one likely meant to divert her line of questioning.
    â€œNo,” she said. “It’s just that part of your appeal as a thief is that up until a couple of months ago, you’d never seen the inside of a jail cell for more than a few hours. And you definitely never hurt anyone.”
    â€œYou’ve checked up on me?”
    â€œOf course,” she replied.
    â€œSmart girl,” he admitted. “You probably won’t believe this, but I was set up for that mess in California.”
    â€œBy whom?”
    He leaned back into the seat and eyed her again, this time warily. Had he not expected her to take him at his word?
    â€œMight have been you, now that I think about