“You can prove you should be here, right? On your aunt’s premises?”
Her mouth opened. Then closed. He was obviously trying to rattle her. On the other hand it was a burglar alarm. It seemed there was a fairly good chance that she and Jonas were going to be presumed to be burglars!
“What kind of proof would they want?” she asked him, trying not to let on she felt quite nervous.
“I don’t know. A note from your aunt? Evidence that you work here? Don’t worry, though. They’ll get it all sorted out. Probably at the station.”
A flashlight shone through the window, bouncing off her aunt’s cluttered bookshelves and file cabinet, but it just missed catching Krissy and Jonas in its beam.
“The police station? Am I going to get arrested?” she squeaked.
“It seems doubtful, but not impossible. If you do—”
“Yes?”
He leaned toward her and smiled a rather wickedly satisfied smile. “I can give you a get-out-of-jail-for-free card.”
She scanned his face. She knew he was kidding, and was not kidding at the same time. He oozed the confidence of that kind of man, the kind with the money and the connections and the innate sophistication that made people respect him and bend over backward to solve his difficulties.
“Why in the Monopoly game of life do I always end up in jail?” she wondered out loud. “Instead of owning the hotel chain?”
Jonas threw back his head and laughed when she said that. His laughter was like that get-out-of-jail-for-free card he had just offered. It seemed almost enough to erase the predicament they were in.
Unfortunately, both policemen froze outside, alerted by the sound that someone was in the building. They looked so ready to handle whatever jumped out at them. Krissy had a new appreciation for the difficulties of the job they were doing.
“Okay,” she said, “I’ll take that get-out-of-jail-for-free card.”
“Well, nothing is actually free,” he said easily, his tone playful, as if he hadn’t even noticed guns. “We’d have to negotiate terms.”
She could not help but appreciate how his lightness was distracting her from the very real intensity of what was going on—policemen advancing toward them assuming there were criminals in the building.
“If I go to jail, I’m sure you’ll be going to jail, too!”
He showed her the appointment card in his hand. “No, I don’t think so. This appointment card will show I had legitimate business here.”
“Well, then, you can vouch for me.”
“Or I could say I interrupted a burglary in progress, depending how willing you are to negotiate terms.”
Jonas was teasing her. He was doing it on purpose, proving that Krissy was not hiding her nervousness as well as she might have hoped. The policemen had moved out of her range of vision.
“It’s not funny,” she told him. “What are they doing out there?”
“Calling the SWAT team.”
She gasped.
“I was kidding. I think they are looking for signs of a break-in. Broken glass. A kicked in door. If you do go to jail—
“You don’t really have a get-out-of-jail-for-free card,” she said irritably. He obviously did not get the seriousness of this situation.
“No, but I have the next best thing. A team of lawyers on call. I’ll lend them to you.”
She groaned.
“For that cost we have yet to negotiate,” he said silkily.
“What kind of man has a team of lawyers on call?”
“One who handles a lot of real estate.”
“You ended up with the chain of hotels!”
“Very true.”
She refused to be impressed. “That isn’t the right kind of lawyer!”
“It would probably do in a pinch.”
“What’s the cost?” she asked Jonas. He was so calm and so confident that it eased a bit of her panic. He was actually playing. Unfortunately, he was just the kind of man you would want in your corner if you were about to be arrested.
And, she warned herself, that you could get addicted to playing with!
“Fiancée for a weekend.”
The door flew open. The flashlight blinded her.
“It’s a false alarm,” Krissy cried. “I have a right to be here! I’m the owner’s niece.”
She glanced at Jonas. He didn’t look terrified at all, but faintly amused, as if this was going to be a great story to tell at the office. She was pretty sure he winked at her.
To be honest, if you had to find yourself in a situation like this, somehow it was a man like this one you would want at your side.
How could she possibly know that?
* * *
Jonas shot his companion in crime a look, but she obviously was not seeing the humor in any of this, especially now.
“We just have to ask a few questions and then we’ll be on our way,” one of the policemen said.
“Perfectly understandable,” Jonas replied.
She shot him a look that said she was relying on him to get her out of this, to be her prince, riding in on a white charger to save her. He hadn’t had anybody look at him like that since his mother and father had died.
And then his sister had cast him as her hero. According to her, he had lived up to her expectations.
But he had paid a price for shouldering all that responsibility very young. Ever since then, he’d avoided having people rely on him. According to his sister, Theresa, who liked to offer her opinion even when it hadn’t been asked for—especially when it hadn’t been asked for—it was her fault he had become the quintessential bachelor, so allergic to commitment he couldn’t even have a houseplant in his apartment.
And now Theresa and his brother-in-law, Mike, were gleefully getting ready to cash in on a bet he’d made a long time ago, when he was young—and possibly full of tequila.
Be committed by thirty or—
“You obviously don’t look like our typical burglars, but due to the circumstances if you could tell us your business here at this time of night, it would be appreciated.”
“I have an appointment with Jane Clark,” Jonas said.
“See, that’s the problem,” the policeman said. “She died last week, and there are actually people scummy enough to read the
