Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle, Pauline Jones [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

at the head of the table with an almost queenly aura about her. So might Queen Elizabeth had looked when she summoned her advisors to plan for war. It didn’t matter that she was wearing shorts and a tank top in deference to the muggy warmth of the room. Her eyes, so like their captain’s, followed him as he sat down on one side of her.

“What?” Mickey asked, as his instincts went from dormant to full alert. “What’s happened?”

Her gaze pinned him in his chair, her search for words playing out in her eyes. “I got a note from Arthur Maxwell this morning.”

Mickey straightened, looked at Delaney, then back at Luci. “Let’s see it—”

Luci shook her head, the movement sharp and regal.

“What?” Mickey almost shouted the single word as rage did a quick crawl up his throat.

“What’s going on, Luci?” Delaney cut in.

Luci leaned back in the chair, her hands relaxed against the carved wood. “We need to agree on a few things first.”

Mickey choked twice before he gritted out, “The only thing we’re going to agree on— “

“If you don’t, then I’ll handle it myself. He says no cops. By talking to you I put my aunts at risk.”

“Really?” Mickey leaned back. “You’ll handle it yourself?” Luci nodded, her eyes calm in the face of his glare. “You may have the note, but we have the money— “

The gentle shake of her head, the apology that softened the determination in her eyes, were the first warnings that she controlled the board.

“I’m afraid you don’t,” she said. “I took the liberty of moving it while you were asleep.”

“How— “ then he remembered the truck that woke him earlier.

She pushed back her chair and stood up, looking first at Delaney, then at Mickey, showing them her resolve. “I would be grateful for your assistance, but only on my terms. They’re my aunts and we’re going to do this my way.”

It was, Mickey realized, probably the most frustrating moment of his existence. And there were a lot to choose from, most of them revolving around her in some way. An earthquake, at least an eight on the Richter scale, shook him from the inside out. His fingers curled as he visualized them around her neck—

“I’m sorry,” she said, her sudden smile a mixed package of sorry and entreaty, “but I’ve thought this through. This is the best way.”

“Why can’t you trust us to do our job?” he burst out.

“I do trust you.” She looked down, one hand tracing a pattern in the lacy tablecloth. After a long moment, she looked up, her gaze slamming into his. “It’s you who can’t trust, Mickey. I may not see the world the way you do, but that doesn’t make me an idiot. Or wrong. Will you, can you, trust me?”

Mickey stared at her, his thoughts churning with protests, with defenses, with reasons why he couldn’t...

Except for one small thing. He did. He did trust her. It was insane. It was madness. But looking at her, looking into her calm and steady gaze, he found he did trust her. Of course, it was far worse than that. Like a wave breaking over his bachelor head, he realized that the reason he trusted her was because the worst had happened.

He loved her.

He’d done the unthinkable. He’d fallen for a Seymour woman.

He looked away, took a steadying breath and sat back down, more worried about Luci and Delaney finding out his awful secret than about being right.

“Sure. Fine.” What did it matter anyway? If she got him killed, it would be a mercy. “I’m in.”

He felt Delaney looking at him as he, too, sat down. Mickey kept his gaze fixed on the tablecloth and after a pause heard him say, “Okay. I’m in, too.” The chair creaked a protest, then subsided. “What’s the plan? What do you want us to do?”

Mickey had thought the Seymour house was quiet before, but he discovered it was worse without the old ladies. It had lost its heart and its soul. It didn’t help that Louise glared at him and ran her fingernail down her chalkboard every time she saw him. And the seconds of the old grandfather clocked ticked away the time like a Chinese water torture. It was a day with too much time to reflect on the insanity of his promise to trust Luci’s plan and his feelings for her, neither of which inspired hope, joy or optimism. That she’d also extracted a promise to keep their bargain from Pryce also upped the temperature in his personal hell. Mickey felt singed after a short session with his captain.

Delaney looked as shaken when their captain’s gimlet gaze had lighted on him, but he had also stood firm, then sought out Gracie to cool off. He was sitting in the corner with her, the heat of his passion and her cooling draft almost creating their own weather system.

At least Delaney knew where he stood with his lady. The only thing that kept him from assuming the coyote position in front of Luci was his dissipating pride and the fact that he still couldn’t bend from his night in the chair. Besides, what girl wanted to be proposed to by a guy with a sleep crevasse running like a scar from hair to chin line?

Luci sighed as Mickey paced by her for the hundredth time in a quarter hour. If he kept up the pace he’d be through to China before it was time to go. Maybe she shouldn’t have told him about the note until closer to the hour. Though it seemed like more was bothering him than the Plan. He kept throwing brooding glances her way, like a sleep-creased Heathcliff. What was going on inside his cute head?

She felt like her brain was playing ping-pong. There were too many things to think about. Pryce, her aunts, Mickey, Delaney and Gracie, and, of course, her Plan. If it didn’t work and she survived, Mickey would never let her hear the