Kay Hooper - It Takes A Thief

Contents

Dane Prescott was charming, gallant, a man of mystery and shadows whose smile could make a woman forget her name! Jennifer Chantry was terrified when he caught her with a pilfered diamond bracelet, stunned when he kissed her breathless, and delighted when he helped her escape with her prize! But when her dashing hero turned out to be a professional gambler, she had to resist him. Her father had lost Belle Retour, their beautiful old home, in a poker game-how could she risk loving another man who might cost her everything? Until now she'd never been tempted to stray from say byways...but the promises in Dane's eyes filled her with wild yearning for passion and danger. Dane knew the odds were against Jenny loving him, but he'd dare hell to risk heaven in his lady's arms. He'd never bet everything before, but the stakes were so high. Could he make her believe that a man of honor would never gamble with her heart?

He was a rotund little man, an unashamed paunch straining the seams of his tailored vest. Shiny wing-tipped shoes were on his small feet. He had a great leonine head with a cherub's face, small brightly twinkling eyes, and pouty lips. He was very much a caricature of a strutting bantam rooster pleased with his own importance; few of the people he casually encountered would see more than a vain little man.

There were those who knew better. A small number, certainly. They had learned their lesson, and knew that the man who called himself Hagen was as harmless as a battleship, as innocent as a shark in bloody waters, as foolish and inconsequential as an atomic bomb. They knew, in fact, that he possessed a Machiavellian mind of frightening ruthlessness, an absolute vision justice, and an inability to give up even when the cause seemed lost.

And he was a rotten loser.

On this clear summer afternoon he was harshly reprimanding one of his newest men. "You were unforgivably clumsy. You set off an alarm that roused the entire building. Your orders were to verify that Josh Long had not returned to his apartment and that was all! You were not told to attempt entry of the apartment."

Brady Seton had been a marine; he had grown up in one of the roughest sections of Chicago; and no one had ever called him a timid man. But now, standing stiffly before his boss's desk, he felt decidedly shaky. He had loused up badly, and he knew it; his first, relatively simple, assignment as an operative in the agency Hagen ran looked as though it would be his last.

"Excuses?" Hagen inquired sharply.

Seton knew what excuses were worth. "No, sir."

"Then draw your pay."

Seton left.

In general, Hagen was rarely hard on the people under his control. Manipulative, yes, but not unfair. However, he was in a bad mood, and had been for some time now. His plans were in disarray, he had just been passed over for the position of director of the FBI, and his small agency had suffered a number of losses in manpower over the past two years. In fact, he had lost his two best agents, and those people he had occasionally borrowed from other agencies had suddenly become unavailable to him.

And, worst of all, Hagen's greatest plan seemed to be in ruins about his ears. His idea brilliant, he had thought had been to fake a kidnapping of Josh Long, an exceedingly wealthy and powerful man, for the express purpose of sending Long's impressive security force, his very talented wife, one of Hagen's former agents, and his friends after the man Hagen had intended to implicate in the kidnapping an international terrorist known simply as Adrian.

Adrian, once leader of the terrorist group called the Final Legion, was the single criminal Hagen had gone after but not succeeded in capturing. The failure was a raw wound to his vanity.

His plan would have worked, Hagen knew. Raven Long had been one of Hagen's best agents, and the people surrounding her and her husband were a highly talented group perfectly capable of tracking down Adrian and capturing him. It would have worked. But Hagen had been forced to be extremely careful, because all those people had strongly developed survival instincts. And he had been forced to employ agents who were not the best.

Josh Long, born and bred in a world where his great wealth and power made him a constant target, had very good instincts indeed. Somehow, he had realized another attempt was about to be made. He and the key men on his team had vanished weeks ago, leaving no trail, and leaving Hagen hamstrung.

And things had gone from bad to worse. Seton, a new agent, had botched his job, and Hagen had to assume the idiot had left fingerprints. Raven would waste no time in having those checked out. And she could. Long Enterprises had the best nonofficial information network Hagen had ever seen. She would get Seton's name within hours. Hagen's only comfort was that Seton's name had not been linked in any way with his own.

Small comfort.

He was left waiting for something to happen, and Hagen hated waiting. He was also uneasily aware that, for the first time in his checkered career, he might well have underestimated his prey. He had not hesitated to make use of the talents of Josh Long and members of his group in the past. Of course not a single member of that inner circle had ever been his target. And, though he had often misled one or the other of them, they had clearly understood his motives.

This time, he doubted they would.

Hagen had always been the dog; never the fox. He had never even considered the feelings of that hunted creature.

Now, he did.

Jennifer Chantry wandered casually down the hallway, smiling at the occasional person she encountered without seeing anything but a jumble of facial features. She had spotted at least half a dozen plainclothes security men, and her heart was pounding frantically beneath her calm facade. How on earth was she going to get herself out of this mess? The bracelet was cutting into her palm as her fingers held it tightly. She should have gone to the cloakroom instantly and put it into her small clutch purse, but that would be the first place one would search.

She saw one of the security men at the end of the hall, and felt hunted. It was a strange, unsettling feeling. There was a set of double doors to her left, and she opened one of them and slipped into the room, hoping desperately that the action didn't reflect her wild desire to run.

The room was a study, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a big mahogany desk, a few chairs, and reading lamps. To Jennifer, the room was achingly familiar. It made her throat hurt, and she blinked back sudden tears.

A lamp burned softly at the desk, Jennifer noted before realizing that the room was also occupied by a total stranger. Quickly, she murmured a vague apology and turned toward the door, but then went still.

The door handle was turning slowly, stealthily, and her heart lodged in her throat. Someone had seen her. And Garrett Kelly would just love to call the police, and they'd put handcuffs on her, and

She heard no footsteps, but the big man who had been standing behind the desk crossed the room quickly and, reaching her, unhesitatingly pulled her into his arms.

"Sorry about this," he whispered cheerfully, just before his lips captured hers.

Too astonished to struggle in the first instant, Jennifer was only dimly aware of the door opening, and then softly closing again. She felt the fine material of his cream-colored tuxedo beneath her fingers, felt powerful arms and a hard chest, and long legs pressed to her own. And she felt an instant, helpless response uncurl in the pit of her belly, spreading throughout her body in heated ripples.

"On the other hand," he murmured when he at last raised his head, "I'm not sorry at all. Hello."