The Fiancée Caper. Maureen Child

hair seemed to dance around her face in a tangle of fiery curls. “I’m not letting you out of my sight until I have that necklace in my hands.”

      “You come to me for help but you don’t trust me?” He snorted derisively.

      “You expect me to trust you when I had to blackmail you into helping me?” She smiled, and took another sip of her tea as if she had all the time in the world to enjoy herself. “Used to be a cop, remember?”

      He wasn’t likely to forget, Gianni thought as irritation clawed at the base of his throat.

      “Look,” he said, trying to be reasonable and failing, “I have to attend a family gathering on Tesoro Island in a few days. I can’t go after Jean Luc until after that.”

      Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Fine. I’ll go with you.”

      He sucked in a gulp of air and tried to force the bubble of anger rising inside back down into the pit of his stomach. It was one thing for her to extort his cooperation in a ridiculous theft recovery. It was another entirely for her to expect him to introduce her to his family as a lovely blackmailer.

      “This is the baptism of my sister’s child. I can’t bring a stranger along with me.”

      Not a flicker of emotion crossed her face. “You’ll have to find a way.”

      His gaze shifted from her to the wall of windows at her back and the dark view of the city beyond the glass. In the distance, he saw the lights on the Millennium Wheel—better known as the London Eye. Any other night, he might have been distracted by the sight. Tonight, though, there were too many thoughts. Too many mental images flashing through his brain.

      He couldn’t avoid going to Tesoro. Not only would his sister, Teresa, never forgive him for missing her infant son’s christening, but there was also going to be a big jewelry show on the island that week and Interpol wanted him there. Gianni smirked to himself at the irony of Interpol wanting a thief there to keep an eye out for other thieves—when Marie O’Hara wanted the same thing.

      Taking another sip of the tea he no longer wanted, he silently toasted himself. Suddenly so very popular.

      Accepting the inevitable, which was a trait that had kept him alive and out of jail too many times to count, Gianni looked at her. “As you wish. You’ll come to Tesoro with me and when we leave, we’ll fly to Monaco to retrieve your bloody necklace.”

      “Sounds good to me.” She stood up, slipped the long, cross-body strap of her purse over her head and settled it into place. “When do we leave?”

      Gianni stood up, too, scowling at having all choice snatched from him. He wasn’t used to being outmaneuvered, but damned if he hadn’t been this time. “We leave in three days.”

      “Three days?” She chewed at her bottom lip and he knew what she was thinking. How could she keep an eye on him from her hotel, wherever that was, and prevent him from ditching her?

      He’d thought the same and there really was only one solution to this entire situation. “You’ll stay here.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “We’ll need the three days to practice,” he told her, stepping away from the table and giving his chair one last frown.

      “To practice what?”

      His gaze flashed to hers. Finally, there was doubt, questions in her eyes. Somehow, that made him feel a bit better about all of this. “Why, to practice being a couple.”

      “A couple of what?”

      Her voice hitched higher and Gianni enjoyed her outrage.

      “My family will never accept my bringing a stranger along to my new nephew’s christening—” He paused for effect and watching her reaction was entirely worth it when he added, “So for the next week or so, you’re going to be my loving fiancée.”