Page 55 of Don’t Go Stealing My Heart

Better than fine if she didn’t hang around Clementine. Still, Jack’s declaration gave her pause: I haven’t seen her this happy in ages. He would know. They really had had fun together.

None of it changed Lucien’s text.

Clementine needed to gather herself, create space to choose the less horrible option: steal from the best man she’d ever known or abandon Nisha. She swiveled for the door and stopped breathing. There, across the room, was the whole reason she’d traveled to Whichway.

The reason she’d met Jack.

Since the Van Gogh had originally been owned by Jack’s grandfather, it made sense to be hung in a room Maxwell the First had loved.

Shades of green whirled and eddied, bringing the landscape to life. A sunny day. Fields. Grass. Trees. Bushes. Simple in its serenity. It wasn’t as stylized as Van Gogh’s better-known works. It had been a study, one of five that hadn’t been signed, exactly why it had gone undetected, sold and resold, its true value undiscovered. Now it hung in a basement room on a purple wall, mocking her.

Her and Jack’s mutual attraction was undeniable, but envisioning their happily ever after had been nothing more than a teasing lottery ticket you scratched, only to be disappointed by a predictable womp, womp. Clementine ached to date Jack, maybe stay in Whichway, but he had a family to care for, an entire factory and town depending on him. He deserved an honest partner who could love his perfectly shy self. He deserved Rachel Dawes, not Catwoman.

The Van Gogh was Clementine’s life. Little Nisha and the orphans in India—they were real. Helping them was the one true thing she’d accomplished in her twenty-eight years. A fact she should remember.

“Your mother was right,” she said. “I should get going.”

His brow furrowed. “My mother is overreacting about work. I have it under control.”

“You barely slept last night, and you’ve concocted an elaborate lie about your father’s traveling because your business is in trouble. So no, I’d say she isn’t overreacting. And I’m tired as well.” She touched his arm, savored the feel of his steadiness one last time. “Are you staying here again tonight?”

If he said yes, she’d slip in tomorrow night, steal the painting then and leave these conflicting feelings in her Prius’s rearview mirror. Disappear before she hurt someone else besides herself. If he said no, she would steal it tonight and get it over with. Burgling the estate while Jack was here wasn’t an option. It would induce mistakes.

She pressed her nails into her palm, focused on the sharp sting.

“I wanted to stay,” he said, “but my folks forbade it. Told me to go home and get some rest.”

That was that, then. She’d steal the Van Gogh tonight and complete this job like all the others. She’d save the Delhi orphanage from ruin. She’d return to New York and the life she knew. Maybe move to a new apartment, away from Jenny and her friends. So why did her chest feel like it was caving in?

The creases in Jack’s forehead sunk deeper. He ran his thumb down her cheek. “Everything okay with you?”

“Yeah. Fine.” It would be tomorrow, at least. After she’d done the heist.

17

Jack stared at his ceiling, his sheets bunched around his knees. Hot. His parents kept the house so damn hot. He should have listened to them, slept at home like they’d asked, but Chloe, who often shut him out of her room these days, had looked at him with her big blue eyes and asked him to stay. She’d claimed her window had been opened, that she hadn’t done it and she was scared. A move she’d often pulled as a kid. Back then, it had been more of a sobbing plea, and the culprit had been a boogeyman who’d threatened to eat her. This reeked of a different fear.

She hadn’t admitted she was worried Dad would get violently sick again. She didn’t have to.

Now it was two a.m., and Jack was in nothing but his briefs, sweaty, awake, in his teenage room, wishing Clementine was still on his bed.

He kicked the covers lower, scrubbed his hands over his face. Clementine. There was that folk song about her name: “Oh My Darling, Clementine.” He closed his eyes, tried to remember the lyrics. Something about Clementine drowning, her man unable to swim and save her. One of those depressing old tunes about losing the woman you loved.

It struck a chord in his gut, mimicking how he’d felt with his Clementine in the sound room, when her eyes had shifted—kind to hard—shutting him out. She had kissed him sweetly when leaving, after agreeing to meet the next day for their run, but there had been coolness in her tight-lipped smile. Like she was slipping through his fingers. It could have been the dinner and his mother’s prodding. More likely it had been him. He shouldn’t have cornered her afterward, asked outright if her job had been a lie, after promising he wouldn’t demand answers. His promise had lasted half a day.

Oh My Darling, Clementine.

How little I know you.

He’d been as open with her as he could be. He hadn’t confessed he’d stolen Mr. Hawthorn’s oxygen tank during Jack’s week of being “cool.” The rat hand job was an embarrassment. His brush with crime and moment in jail shamed him to his core. It still baffled him that fitting in had been important enough to him that he’d dropped his morals and had hurt an old man just to feel part of a group. Clementine had marveled that Jack had forgiven and hired Darrin and Dale. How could he judge others when he’d been just as heartless?

No. He didn’t want to tell Clementine about that. But he wanted her, more acutely than he’d ever wanted a woman. A normal, no-strings affair would be tough to fit into his unforgiving schedule. And nothing about Clementine would be no-strings. She affected him, deeply. Every real detail she’d shared about her past had felt like a hard-earned reward. If he had to guess, he’d say she didn’t reveal herself often, if ever.

He closed his eyes and tried to relax into his mattress. A muffled clang sounded, and he tensed.

The nurse? His father? Chloe awake and scared? Anxiety tightened his stomach. It wouldn’t be Colonel Blue. That old boy never left his bed, his arthritic joints happier pillowed by the cushioning. Jack’s overtired brain could be the cause, but his chance of sleeping would be nil without checking on his father.

Too sweaty to bother with a shirt or socks, he padded out of his room and down the hall. Chloe’s room was quiet except for a song drifting out. He’d suggested she sleep to music, a trick he’d used as a teen, to focus on the notes and lyrics instead of upsetting thoughts. He hoped it lulled her the way it had him.