~ A Thief At Heart ~

by

B. G. McCarthy

Fortunately there were no guard dogs at the Connors’ mansion. He hated that. He’d been bitten twice in the last six years.

It had been a piece of cake to scale the sandstone wall near the edge of the property--it backed onto a private stretch of beach--and find the back door servant’s entrance. Like most grand homes the servant’s entrance had a bypassed alarm. It prevented having one’s hired drudges try to remember codes--a good thing for the average break-and-enter artist.

Not that Rob was an average break-and-enter artist.

Once he was in, Rob discovered that the alarms were not engaged anywhere else within the house, but the outside doors and windows gave the obligatory buzz as soon as they were opened.

He was pleased. They’d made it easy for him. Someone had walked out and left the huge, opulent home virtually open. He was home-free for as long as he needed. There had been no cars in the Connors’ drive and no neighbors in close sight or hearing range. He would have preferred to have had a schematic of the house so he could go directly to his target, as he’d had in most other operations lately, but that was just his personal leaning. He’d once liked flying by the seat of his pants, but as he got older he found a simple, well-executed plan was better.

As he’d expected, the office was alarmed by a separate system, but it only took him about five minutes to disarm it. There was no one in the house in the way of servants, but he could hear the excited yips and yaps of a couple of small dogs behind one of the doors. He didn’t like dogs as far as a break-in job was concerned, but these exuberant little guys probably behaved like this all the time.

The room next to Mary Conners’s must belong to Riley. He decided that he’d check out Riley’s room after he finished in Blake’s office. Not that he’d really come to suspect her of any involvement with Vasco, but stranger things had happened.

Maybe she had some information on her sister somewhere in her room that he could use to help her. He knew that she wasn’t likely to come to him for help, even if she had reluctantly told him about Grace while they were at the burger place. If he could find out what she had so far--the sister or her sister’s father’s last name, some birth info--he might have something to he could use to help her.

He also wanted to see where she slept.

Rob sat down in a sumptuous leather chair at the late Blake Connors’s mahogany desk. He searched through a ledger and had a peek through the drawers. He was in no big hurry. He figured he had an hour. Maybe more.

It took the better part of a minute to get into the safe, ten more to search the hard copy files in a cabinet hidden behind a mahogany panel. When it came to the computer Rob discovered that for a man who had a crappy safe and a cheap file cabinet, access to the hard drive was extremely well protected. There was no way he was going to figure out how to crack the codes tonight. All the files were heavily encrypted, not necessarily proof that Connors had been doing bad stuff before his untimely demise, but very interesting all the same.

He decided he’d have to come back and steal the whole hard drive. Otis and the boys could open it up and have a good look at their leisure.

He closed the office carefully, reset the alarms and headed back down the hallway. As he’d have suspected, Riley’s door was locked. Not much of a lock, he discovered after six seconds of fiddling. It bugged him, especially with that sleazy Todd slithering after her

Robin looked around the room where Riley lived. Everything was neat, orderly. Almost pathologically perfect. She didn’t even leave her nighty lying on the pillow.

If she wore one.

He looked over at the queen sized bed with the thick, pristine white coverlet and sucked in a breath, imagining Riley reclining there in all her glory. Honey hair spread over the pillow, full breasts thrust up, arms beckoning him to come and do whatever he wanted. What she wanted, too.

Rob felt his sigh tug in his chest. Damn. Damn he wanted that. He wanted her so badly he could taste her.

He looked around. She didn’t have much. Not like you’d expect a young woman her age to have. She owned mostly plain serviceable clothes from places like the Gap and Old Navy, half a dozen pair of shoes. No valuable jewelry, and certainly no stuff that might have been given to her as gifts by boyfriends or lovers. A good sign because Vasco was reputedly generous with his lovers. If Rob was her man he’d buy her something she’d wear to tell the world she was his. Tell everyone else hands off.

She had good taste in music. From her CD collection she liked what he liked. Pete Yorn. Weezer. Marshall Crenshaw. Ryan Adams. Early Bowie and Led Zeppelin. A little bit of early Elton, but you’d have to beat on Rob to make him admit he liked Elton. A nice mix of stuff.

He searched the desk, coming up with correspondence that pertained mostly to Mary and her charities. There was nothing personal to be found at all, other than Riley’s ledger of personal expenses, her checkbook and her own income tax stuff. She was paying off a huge student loan every month.

He admired the hell out of that. That she paid her debts on time.

He walked over to a highboy against the wall, looking down at it with a stab of conscience that fled quickly. Had to do what he had to do.

He started with the bottom drawers. Most people were more likely to store important papers in the bottom drawer. There was a photo album. He opened it, finding lots of pictures of Riley and Craig, probably taken sometime after he’d left town. She didn’t seem to have that many close girlfriends that he could see. Maybe she didn’t go out that much with the girls. Other women probably found her coolness and beauty intimidating.

He found her graduation photo. She’d been a mature student, but she’d gone through all the pomp and circumstance anyway. His heart twisted at how happy and excited she looked in her blue cap and gown, holding a bouquet of red roses. There were pictures of her at a graduation party, flanked by Aggie--looking like she was suppressing a flood of tears--and the handsome Craig, who was proudly bussing Riley’s cheek and pinching her butt. They made a great looking couple. Rob didn’t even want to go there.

He went methodically through the other drawers, coming upon ones reserved for lingerie. She had a real nice stash of underwear, mostly serviceable cotton and work-out stuff in one drawer, but there was another drawer with several hot little numbers. Silk panties. Stay-up stockings with wide lace bands that would hug her slender thighs. Scanty bras in size thirty-six-C. God damn...

Robin Butler didn’t normally get off on looking at lady’s underwear; to him it was more about what was in the underwear, but hell... All he’d done the last few weeks was fantasize about her. And what he’d been doing to quell the urges wasn’t all that intellectually satisfying.

He reached in with his gloved hand and took out a racy little pink lace high-cut bikini. The garment wrapped around his fingers with a will of its own. He could smell perfume, something floral, wafting up from the dainty article. What the hell, he decided. He was a thief at heart and he wanted something to remember her by.

Rob tucked the panties into his pocket.

That was when he heard the beeping from the vicinity of the foyer. He heard the hurried steps on the marble staircase. Someone was in; someone was coming to this floor.

Rob couldn’t open the balcony door. Whoever it was would hear the alarm buzzer sound in the panel in the hallway.

Damn. The plantation shutters that covered the balcony doors were good enough to hide behind until she went into the bathroom. The dogs, who had settled down within a few seconds of his being in Riley’s room, started yipping in the next room again.

~ * ~

There was no one as useless or irresponsible as that spoiled brat Todd, fumed a deeply aggravated Riley. The alarms weren’t even activated and he’d been the last person in the household to leave that night. Todd acted like a six year old sometimes. A lot about Todd resembled a six-year old.

Riley had taken the liberty of checking converted stables, now the garage, for Todd’s favorite car. The Viper was gone and that gave her a sense of relief. The fact that every other car belonging to staff or family was gone as well was not that comforting given that she was feeling nervous. Like she wasn’t alone.

She just hoped Todd didn’t come home right now and catch her near his luxurious guest house.

Riley decided to head upstairs for a bath and hopefully a deep and dreamless sleep. She was going to meditate herself into a state of calm. She’d go to her imaginary beach, she decided as she slipped off her jacket and kicked off her shoes. She’d be blissfully alone on the vast beach with the sugar sand, azure sky with clouds like the swirling tops of Dairy Queen ice-cream cones, a sun like a bright yellow balloon--

Suddenly the balloon popped and there was Robert Murphy, lounging beside her on a towel, holding out a rum punch and wearing nothing more than a sheen of suntan oil, nice lean muscles and a wide smile--

Dammit. She muttered something else under her breath and tromped up the cold marble staircase. The dogs were barking like crazy. Hadn’t Alice bothered to feed them before she left? Usually they were curled up together on Mary’s bed.

She wasn’t going to bother with them. She didn’t relish the thought of a face licking with their disgusting poodle breath. They were lazy little beggars and would settle down soon enough. They could do their business in their litter box.

~ * ~

He was right. It was her.

Shit.

She’d just had to come back, hadn’t she? Damn her for doing that. Bloody predictable, unpredictable Riley Jane Turner. She was stubborn. Stubborn to the point of stupidity.

Reckless girl thinking she was safe.

He was here, wasn’t he? She’d come back because she was pissed at him and that pissed him off.

Riley flipped on the television as she yanked off her jacket. He could see the television flicker through the shutter slats. Some sort of soap opera was on the television. She’d taped it.

Passions if he wasn’t mistaken by the theme music. He’d fallen out of a third story window a year and a half ago, did a stint in traction and had gotten hooked on the damned thing. Hadn’t watched it since, but he’d lay odds that the plot hadn’t progressed too much. That little doll kid was likely still up to a lot of weirdness.

He watched as she tossed the jacket on the chair. She was wearing a black lace camisole top of some kind. It hugged her body like a second skin; the stretchy fabric charted her curves, calling attention to the creamy tops of her firm breasts, long neck and toned arms. Beneath--no bra. The lace thing seemed to be support enough for her. He could see the outline of her nipples just obscured by black lace swirls.

She bent at the waist and undid her shoe straps, kicking them off one by one. Satiny dark honey-brown hair flopped over her shoulder. She undid the side zip on her pants next. Why were side zippers so damned sexy? He found himself biting his lip, clenching his hands against his thighs. The teeth of the zipper slid down revealing the pale curve of one hip, the thin strap of a black lace panty that stretched as high as her waist.

Something tugged hard in Rob’s groin.

It was that old firecracker thing again. He bit back a moan.

The silk trousers slithered down around her trim ankles. She stepped out of them, clad only in her tiny panties and that sweet little lace camisole thing.

God... damn.

She quickly divested herself of both and tossed them on the chair.

Okay, poke me. I’m done, thought Rob.