Read To Love a Thief for Free Online

you were doing. You can’t expect me to believe you were simply in the wrong room. You were looking for something. Tell me what it was.”
    She moved away from him as if his touch burned her. Maybe it did. The feel of her skin beneath his palm was enough to heat him in the most inappropriate places.
    “Please, my lord. I was mistaken. Just let me go.” Then she dashed for the exit.
    Daniel went after her, but she’d already opened the door and was stepping into the corridor. He stopped short lest he tackle her over the threshold, but then she spun on her heel and charged right back into him, sending him stumbling backward. She gained her balance, turned, and shut the door firmly.
    Daniel lurched forward and, without thinking, pinned her against the door. He laid his palms on either side of her shoulders against the wood. “What the devil is going on?”
    “Keep your voice down,” she hissed. “Someone is in the corridor.”
    That’s why she’d come right back into the office. He didn’t move away from her. Instead, he enjoyed the heat of her body, the flush of her exertion, the shallow pant of her breath. She kept her eyes averted, but Daniel would get her to look at him soon enough.
    “Unless you want me to open this door and let all and sundry see us together, you’ll tell me what the hell you were doing in Lord Aldridge’s office.”
    Her eyes snapped to his, their hazel depths flashing. She said, “You wouldn’t,” but her tone was laced with doubt.
    He watched the muscle in her throat work as her pulse sped beneath her flesh, and her chest heaved. “You don’t know me well enough to say for sure. Do you want to find out?”
    She shook her head, her gaze never leaving his. He leaned a trifle closer until her breasts were almost touching his chest. Though she was petite, she was gently curved in all the right places. Her fresh apple scent assaulted him as surely as her proximity.
    “Remember what I told you? About my stolen—”
    Voices sounded outside, and Daniel instinctively put a finger to her lips. She’d kept her voice low, but only silence would do. How many times had he had to stop an informant from speaking so they wouldn’t be overheard?
    Her eyes widened. Was it because of the imminent danger in the corridor or because he was touching her mouth? A number of illicit thoughts raced through his mind. Perhaps she was feeling the same.
    After a few breathless moments, the voices faded. Daniel gently exhaled, letting his shoulders relax and his finger—regrettably—drop from her lips. He braced his hand against the door near her head, again caging her within his arms. “Your stolen property?”
    She blinked at him as if she didn’t remember who he was, let alone what they’d been speaking of. Then she gave her head a slight shake. “Yes,” she whispered. “Lord—or I suppose Lady—Aldridge is the man in possession of my necklace.”
    She had to be mistaken. “Are you certain it’s your necklace? Perhaps it’s merely another one like it.”
    “ Just like it?” She pursed her lips. “It’s a one-of-a-kind pendant. Hand-painted on ivory.”
    “How can you be sure it’s one of a kind?”
    Frustrated lines etched across her forehead and around her mouth. “Because my father commissioned it from the artist specifically for my mother. It commemorated their first meeting, when he took her for a boat ride. Furthermore, it has a scratch in the glass—which I caused when I knocked it off Mama’s dressing table.”
    That was pretty damned specific. Still, couldn’t the artist have liked the piece so much that he’d duplicated it? And perhaps Lady Aldridge’s necklace simply had a similar scratch. More likely, Aldridge had somehow purchased stolen property without knowing. Despite Miss Renwick’s insistence and the apparent coincidences in the pendants, he found it impossible to think that Aldridge was involved in the theft of her items. More likely, he’d somehow unwittingly