If that name didn’t scream princess, he didn’t know what did.
She and Jake had been playmates as children, reluctant acquaintances through their teenage years, and he’d been half in love with her for as long as he could remember. Not that he could ever act on his feelings. She was American royalty and he was the hired help.
The red lace dress she wore was sinful.
It hugged all her curves, her tight round ass, her more-than-generous handful of breasts. He’d jacked off to the thought of those breasts more times than he could count. Every time he saw her he made a mental note to thank his tailor for his well-fitting suits so no one could tell how hard she made him.
Leonard could never know how Jake felt about Ana. At times, Jake wondered if Leonard suspected. Luckily he’d always been able to distract Leonard with something else. If Leonard caught on, he’d find new ways to make Jake’s life miserable. And he couldn’t take the chance that Ana would be affected. So Jake did what he always did. He waited and he watched and he planned, biding his time until maybe someday they could be more than whatever the hell they were now.
He followed Leonard around. The man didn’t need a bodyguard. Leonard didn’t matter one bit in the grand scheme of things. No one was out to get him. Even Leonard’s shady business deals with people who shouldn’t be crossed weren’t enough to get him in real trouble—not yet anyway. Leonard was, in a word, unimportant.
Still, Jake spent more time than he wanted following the idiot around.
It was payback for all the times Jake bettered Leonard. Leonard had been forcing Jake to compete since they were children, and Jake won, every time. So as punishment, he had to stand three feet behind a man he hated, listening to him prattle on about unimportant things.
Ana was the only bright spot in this party.
It was difficult to believe that Ana and Leonard could actually be related. For all the Staffordshire money, Leonard couldn’t seem to do anything about his appearance. He was in his early thirties, but looked a decade older. His expensive suits couldn’t disguise his expanding belly, and nothing could help his receding hairline. Jake knew Leonard hadn’t exerted himself in years, yet a light sheen of sweat shined on his forehead. The overhead lights in the museum were unforgiving and he somehow looked both pale and ruddy at the same time.
Ana most definitely got the better genes. She had her grandmother’s auburn hair, her grandfather’s blue eyes and the Staffordshire height.
She’d been the bright spot in a lot of Jake’s life, though he didn’t see her much these days.
Her red dress called to him like a beacon in a sea of black and white cocktail attire. She laughed with old friends and acquaintances, but no one seemed to care that she never smiled for real. She kept darting glances at the Staffordshire Diamond.
“Fuck,” he muttered, earning a “we’ll talk about this later” glare from Leonard.
But they wouldn’t.
Leonard had no idea Jake was finished with Staffordshire International. After the museum closed tonight, before the sale could be made sometime tomorrow, he was to stay overnight with the diamond, a stupid job Leonard came up with just to make Jake suffer.
But the joke would be on Leonard, because neither Jake nor the diamond would be here in the morning. Jake had a buyer lined up already. A private buyer of gemstones who simply wanted it in his collection to look at. He’d stroll out of the museum with the diamond in his pocket in the wee hours of the morning, after one of the preprogrammed check-in times, make the sale, and be on his way to his new life by the time anyone knew he was missing.
Jake was going to steal the Staffordshire Diamond.
And he knew with sudden clarity
that Anastasia was here to do the exact same thing.
Chapter Two
Jake struggled to keep a smile on his face as the party droned on endlessly. The invitation very specifically said the party lasted from seven to nine, so why were all these people still here at ten-thirty?
Since Jake’s primary job was the diamond, he’d pawned off Leonard bodyguard duty to someone else. After making sure all was right with the necklace, he headed off to find Ana. Until now, he hadn’t lost sight of her since he’d arrived. He found her behind the same potted plant as before.
“These people can party,” he said dryly, coming up behind her.
She didn’t react to his sudden presence. Could she be half as attuned to him as he to her?
“Yeah, or they’re waiting for me to make a scene.”
Honestly, he figured that was the case, but he wasn’t going to be the first to bring it up.
“Hell, it’s been years since you’ve made a scene,” he said with a smile. Not many people would joke about her troubled past, but he wasn’t most people.
Ana rolled her eyes but smiled up at him. She’d had a rough time of it in her early twenties and, on more than one occasion, had been portrayed by the media as a raging bitch. She didn’t suffer from the spoiled rich kid syndrome most people thought. Her grandmother had been killed in a plane crash on the way to Ana’s nineteenth birthday party. This had been after her parents and Leonard’s parents had been killed in a car accident ten years prior. Suddenly, Ana had been alone in the world.
She hadn’t been a bitch, she’d just been suddenly thrust into adulthood with no one to lean on. Jake had tried to do as much as he could for her, but he’d been off fulfilling his duty to his country after graduating from the Naval Academy. When he came back to take over for his father as head of security for Staffordshire International, Leonard had kept him on a very short leash.