Page 14 of Benjamin and the Thief

He refrained from rolling his eyes. “You mean your wig. Yeah, not buying that either.”

She shook her head and freed her hand from his grasp. “I really don’t have time to stand around here arguing with you. I need to be back in the kitchen.”

She made an attempt at squeezing past him, but he stopped her simply by planting his body squarely in front of her.

“Not happening. You think you can deny that I just caught you trying to break into the Prestons’ safe?”

“Break into a safe? That’s ridiculous. I don’t know why you would accuse me of something like that!”

Now it was outrage she’d switched to in order to get him off her case. It wouldn’t work either. There was no way he could just let her go knowing what she’d been trying to do. Well, wasn’t that just his luck? He’d slept with a woman he wanted to have more than just one night with, and she turned out to be a thief! How ironic was that?

Perhaps not that ironic after all. Somehow, it seemed to run in the family. When his father had met his mother, Nina, for the first time, she’d been intent on killing him because she’d falsely assumed that Amaury had been responsible for her brother’s death. That was when nobody knew that her brother, Eddie, was actually still alive.

Damian had fared similarly when he’d first met the love of his life, Naomi. She’d been a reporter and had snooped around in Damian’s nightclub to find evidence of supposed blood rituals being performed at the club. It had all turned out to be a ruse concocted by her editor to get the club shut down.

So maybe him finding out that Catalina was a common thief wasn’t too far off from the experiences that had shaped his family. And just like Amaury and Damian had made sure that the women they loved wouldn’t do anything stupid or irreversible or something that would get them locked up in prison, he’d have to do the same for Catalina.

Hold it!

He didn’t love Catalina. Hell, he barely knew her. He certainly didn’t have any deep feelings for her. He was still pissed at her for sneaking out of his bed in the middle of the night. His pride was hurt. Normally, he was the one who snuck out of a woman’s bed after he’d gotten what he wanted. The fact that Catalina had done the same to him had hit him broadside. He hadn’t expected it. No wonder he was confused about what he should be feeling, and why he was taking the situation they were in right now personally. That was the reason. The only reason. There was nothing deeper than that between them.

“Let’s go,” Benjamin ordered, snatched her by her biceps, and dragged her out of the walk-in closet.

He closed the double doors and assured himself that Catalina hadn’t dropped anything that could lead back to her later. Now all he needed to do was to get her out of here without a scene.

He jerked her toward him so she had to look at him.

“Here’s the deal. We’re leaving this room and going downstairs. We can do this the hard way or the easy way. Make a scene, and I will drag you to the police myself. Understood?”

It was a bluff, but she didn’t have to know that. The last thing he wanted to do was involve the police. If anybody doled out punishment, then it was him. And he knew exactly what that punishment would include.

She clenched her jaw. “You have no idea what you’re doing. I wasn’t going to steal anything. I can prove it.”

“You can tell me everything later.”

But right now, they had to leave. He couldn’t risk anybody noticing that she was up here, and that he knew and had no intention of handing her over to the police for attempted burglary.

“Let’s go. And not a word out of your mouth.”

The warning seemed to finally make her compliant.

They left the master bedroom, and Benjamin was relieved to see that the second-floor corridor was still empty. At the top of the stairs, he put his hand to her elbow, more in a gesture that was meant to remind her that he was still in charge, rather than in a restraining grip. Inside him, a storm was brewing.

What the hell was he going to do with her? If it hadn’t been him who’d caught her, she would be on her way to jail, and that thought made the vampire inside him revolt. He felt like slapping the beast inside him over the head for falling for Catalina’s act of playing the innocent. She’d totally fooled him last night. He hadn’t even seen it coming. Some hotshot investigator he was! His colleagues would have a great big laugh if they found out about this.

7

Catalina’s heart was beating out of control. She’d gotten caught! By Benjamin of all people!

She couldn’t believe her bad luck. Her sixth sense had tried to warn her, yet she’d ignored the signs—and now she was paying for it.

She hadn’t recognized Benjamin from behind when he was dealing with the newly arrived guests, while she’d snuck up the stairs as quietly as a mouse. She’d been concentrating on picking the lock of the safe, and hadn’t heard him enter the room. Picking locks was a skill she’d taught herself in the past two months while working a temp job at a locksmith firm. She’d told the owner, who’d had a little crush on her, that it would be cool if she learned how to pick a lock. He’d never asked how she would use that skill, and she hadn’t volunteered any information either.

In his tuxedo, Benjamin looked different from the previous night. He looked older and carried an air of authority with him that had been entirely absent when they’d been alone in his flat. In bed, he’d been more than accommodating to her needs rather than being demanding. Nothing of that man was visible now.

Had somebody else caught her, she could probably have talked her way out of what she was doing in the Prestons’ master bedroom, but obviously, Benjamin wasn’t taking any shit from her. He was all business. Figured that he would side with the rich people, just like everybody else. It pissed her off, particularly since he’d been her hero last night. He’d somehow made the rich asshole who’d nabbed her parking spot give it up, and in that moment, he’d looked like a man who would always help those who couldn’t help themselves and put the entitled rich people in their place. Apparently, she’d misjudged him.

At the foot of the stairs, she noticed Benjamin put his finger on his earpiece.