“No.”
“What do you mean ‘no’?” Nash wanted to smash something. “Ryanne, this is serious.”
“I don’t care. I’m not doing it.” She held up a hand to stem his protests. “It’s not like you’re asking me to put on a French maid costume and play some sort of sex game. You are asking me to pretend to be my sister and seduce Victor Salinger into giving me a necklace.”
She jabbed him in the chest with her index finger. Hard.
Nash winced. He caught her hand and drew her close. “Okay, we’re going to get back to the French maid costume and sex games right after this, but I said nothing about seducing Victor. And for what it’s worth, I’m highly opposed to that course of action.” He sighed his frustration. “I know what I’m asking goes against your sense of right and wrong, but hear me out. Victor has a necklace dating back to the time of Isis. That one piece of jewelry has the power to topple dynasties and induce chaos throughout the world.”
“That sounds a little extreme, don’t you think?” She scoffed her disbelief.
“I have in my possession a journal that states otherwise.”
“You have hundreds of journals. I’m not sure how you keep everything straight in that head of yours.”
“I was gifted with a high IQ.”
“Yeah, it goes right along with all those cool superpowers. So why can’t you use magic to steal the necklace from Salinger?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Look, Nash, I can’t get my sister to return a phone call. It’s doubtful she’ll agree to this plan.”
“Yeah, about that… I don’t think we should ask her.”
“What?”
Nash winced again for an entirely different reason. The ear-piercing octave of Ryanne’s voice set his ears to ringing.
“You cannot be serious? What do you plan to do, kidnap her and put me in her place?”
He remained silent. Color crept up his neck due to her accurate guess. When she put it that way, it sounded a bit asinine.
“No! Not just no, but hell no!”
“Ryanne, babe, please be reasonable.”
“I’ll give you reasonable, you…you…you…”
Nash had done it. He’d officially broken Ryanne. Liz was going to kill him. “Look, it’s not like she’s going to come to any harm. We grab her, put her under a sleeping spell, and you take her place until we can swap the necklace.”
“What happens when she wakes, goes back to Victor, and then has to face the music because it’s discovered the real necklace is missing, Nash? Did you ever think of that? You’re putting my sister’s life in jeopardy.”
“Okay, so maybe I didn’t get that far in the planning stage of this little scheme.”
“Gah!” She threw her hands up and headed for the door. When she reached it, she wrenched it open. “Get out!”
“Ryanne—”
“I said, get out! I mean it, Nash. I want you to leave.”
“Please listen to me. This goes much deeper than you know. Let me show you.”
Ryanne silently studied him. Nash could see the wheels turning in her brain. Inasmuch as she was pissed at him, she was also bright and logical. Eventually, she’d agree to the proper course of action. Or so he hoped.
She closed the door. “Show me how?”
“Be right back.” Nash teleported to his study. When he returned, he brought with him the journal he’d mentioned a few minutes before. He opened it to one of several bookmarked pages and set it on her dining room table. “Here.”
“I’m never going to get used to you disappearing into thin air,” she muttered as she picked up the book. While Ryanne read, the frown line between her eyes deepened, as did the compression of her lips. Five minutes after she started, she looked up. “Holy hell!”
He knew what she’d read. He’d read it himself—many times. It discussed how influential the object was in the second World War when it fell into the hands of Adolf Hitler.
“And look here…” Nash brushed her shoulder as he reached past her to turn to another marked section. The resulting zing he experienced nearly caused him to chuck the book across the room and sweep her into his arms to make long, leisurely love. Shoving aside all thoughts of sex, he tapped the page for her to read. “Prior to that, Napoleon Bonaparte sent an unscrupulous character to Egypt in an attempt to acquire it. According to Lady Hester Tremayne, Napoleon had already escaped Elba at that point. His hired henchman stole the necklace from her in his quest to help Bonaparte defeat England.”
When she turned toward him, he cupped her face between his palms to emphasize his urgency. “I’m not crazy, and I would never do anything to hurt you or Rylee, but you’re the only one who stands a remote chance of getting that necklace from Victor.”
“Why can’t we bring Rylee into this? Why not tell her what’s going on and get her help?”
How did he tell her that he didn’t trust Rylee as far as he could throw her? Or that he secretly believed her sister was behind the fiery death of Ryanne’s adopted parents?
He didn’t need to. Ryanne guessed his reticence in mere seconds.
“You don’t trust her,” she stated flatly. “Why?”
“I don’t know her enough to trust her.” As far as evasions went, his answer was extremely lame, but Nash didn’t wish to offend her any worse than he already had by not believing her sister was the be all, end all.
“You’re lying.”
His brows slammed together as he glared down at her. “You can’t possibly know that!”
“I know you, Nash Thorne. And I certainly can tell when you aren’t giving me the full truth.”
He opened his mouth to swear, but she slapped her hand over his mouth.
“I also know you are about to curse up a storm and call North Carolina’s entire population of raccoons to my apartment.”
The wry twist of her lips struck him as funny. Yes, maybe she did know him better than he thought. He gave her a single nod, at which she slowly removed her hand. Had he imagined her regretful sigh and how her eyes had dropped to his lips?
“Fine.” He sighed his frustration and ran a hand through his hair. It was imperative to get her on his side with this project before any romantic overtures because he didn’t want her to believe he was only seducing her for his personal gain. “I don’t trust your sister.”
“Do you care to tell me why?”
“I don’t want to, no.”
“Then I can’t help you.”
“You’d put the fate of the world at risk simply because I don’t like your sister?” he asked, incredulous and on the verge of a meltdown.
“You have the right to not like my sister. But what I find difficult to come to grips with is your refusal to tell me why.”
She took a step forward, closing the short distance between them. Her chest brushed his, and Nash sucked in his breath. She placed her hand over his rapidly pounding heart and smiled.
“Is this a ploy to get me to tell you? Touch me and make my mind go to sludge?”
Her smile widened. “Is it working?”
“Better than you can possibly know.”
Ryanne sobered, and her face took on a look of soft pleading. “Tell me, Nash.”
He closed his eyes and almost shook his head at how easily she could manipulate him without trying. “Your sister is not what she seems.”
“Why would you say that?”
“When you first came to work for me, she tried to pass herself off as you.”
“What?”
“You had left with Liz not ten minutes before when she sailed into the office in the exact outfit you’d had on. It meant she had been watching and waiting for you to leave. Unless I miss my guess, she used magic. How else could she have known what you were wearing?” He shook his head. “At the time, I thought maybe she had someone scrying for her. Now, I wonder if she found a way to revive her powers long before you.”
Ryanne sank onto her coffee table and gripped the edges. “What happened?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he poured her a glass of water and brought it to her. He waited until she took a sip and put the glass down.
“Okay.”
“She tried to seduce me.”
“Ohmygod!” Disbelief gave way to her building rage. “I…how…what…”
Nash cupped her jaw and brushed his thumb back and forth along her cheekbone. “She came on to me, pretending to be you. I knew immediately that she wasn’t.”
“Why would she do that?”
“I let the scene play out, and—”
“Wait! What? You let her seduce you?” The fury in her tone couldn’t be mistaken.
“No!” he denied quickly. “It never went past a few kisses.”
Ryanne smacked his hand away. “Are you freaking kidding me right now? You kissed my sister? More than once?”
“Strictly to find out what she was after. I swear.”
“I can’t handle this right now.” Once again, she stalked to the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow at work.”
His instincts were screaming at him to resolve this here and now, but the set expression on her face told him she’d already made up her mind. Nash moved toward the door but stopped inches away. “She made a mistake by approaching me.”
Ryanne’s head snapped up. “How so?”
“She isn’t you.” He let her see his sincerity. “She doesn’t have your light.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I think you do. Or I hope one day you will.” He wanted nothing more than to lean down and kiss her doubts away, but he refrained. “Call or text me as soon as you’re finished with the journal tonight. I’ll return for it.”
“I can bring it with me tomorrow.”
“I know you’ll need time to read it, but I’d prefer it not be out of my sight for that long. Since you don’t want me here, you’ll need to let me know when you’re done. I’ll come back when you’re through with it for the night.”
As he turned to leave, she grabbed his arm. “Nash?”
His silence encouraged her to continue.
“Did you really know the difference?” Her voice sounded small and uncertain.
His wide smile came unbidden. “Yeah, I really did. In my dreams, I’ve kissed you a million times, Ryanne. Rylee didn’t even come close. You, on the other hand, put those dreams to shame.”
The anger drained from her. “Come back in a half hour. Bring Häagan Dazs’s Midnight Cookies and Cream from the Decadent Collection.”
“Should I buy out the whole freezer section or only a few pints?”
“I’ll leave that up to you in case you want any.”
He lifted the hand clutching his forearm, and dropped a whisper-light kiss on her knuckles. “I’ll see you in a bit.”