The Sapphire Affair (Jewel #1)(54)

She snapped her fingers. “Penny! She used to do some work for my dad. She’s supposed to be at the boat party later this week. We could talk to her. She might know something.”

Damn, she was indeed changing her tune.

He smiled. “Perfect. You seem more gung-ho than you were before.”

She shrugged. “I suppose it’s the cherry Popsicle. Or it might be seeing the diamond on Isla’s throat. Made me mad.”

Anger was good. He could work with that.

“I still don’t want him to go to prison, though,” she said.

Jake held up his hands. “Not my job to put people behind bars. I work around the law, not for the law.”

“You’re not going to turn him in to the SEC or something?”

He laughed, shaking his head. “I work for clients, not government agencies. When I find the diamonds, I return them to their rightful owners. Andrew and the Eli Fund. Simple as that.”

She quirked up the corner of her lips, as if she was considering all he’d said. Then she nodded. “Fair enough.” She picked up her Popsicle, licked it one last time, then set the stick on the table. She placed her chin in her palms. “OK, let’s play truth or dare.” She waved her hand in the air. “Wait. No. Just truth.”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re pissed that I didn’t tell you what I was planning tonight?”

She held up her thumb and forefinger to show a sliver of space. “It feels a teensy bit deceptive.”

He leaned forward. “Steph, I did it because I knew we’d have a better chance of pulling it off if you didn’t know.”

“Do you think I’m not a good partner?” she asked, her gaze intensely serious. “Tell the truth.”

He scoffed. “I think you’re great.”

“But yet you didn’t think I could pull off being in the house and knowing you were there.”

“Next time I’ll tell you. Does that work for you?”

She nodded. “Good. Now, the next truth. How was it?”

“How was what?”

“Sneaking into his house?”

“Fun,” he said, since that was wholly true. His job came with an adrenaline rush that he craved.

Her gaze drifted to his arm, and the scar he’d recently acquired. “Truth again. That’s not from a fishing accident, is it?”

He held up his hands in surrender and laughed.

“How did it happen? Tell the truth this time. If you even can,” she said, but her tone was teasing, and he sensed they’d moved beyond her annoyance over feeling tricked. Especially when she dropped her hand to his wrist and ran a finger along the scar.

He shook his head. “Knife fight in Paris. Couple of thugs who stole a Strad.”

“Did it hurt?”

“At the time, yes.”

“And now?” she asked, running her fingertip along the line of raised white flesh. His breath hitched.

“No,” he whispered.

He blinked and did a double take when a brunette walked by. She wore cat’s-eye glasses, and something about her looked familiar. Then he remembered. She was the woman who helped him at the diamond shop. Monica.

He took Steph’s hand. “Truth or dare?”

She flashed him a grin. “Dare.”

“I dare you to go for a walk on the beach with me.”

“I thought we were trying to focus on work, not on ridiculously romantic situations that are going to make it hard for you to resist throwing yourself at me?”

He laughed, loving her sense of humor. Then he did his best job tricking himself when he said, “We can just talk shop.”

He tossed some bills on the table for a tip and headed along the sand as the ocean waves gently beat against the shore in a peaceful night rhythm. “You said you appointed yourself private detective. What made you want to do that? For your mom, you said.”

Steph nodded and sighed heavily. “Eli screwed around on her for years.”

Jake burned. He nearly growled as he narrowed his eyes. “There’s a special place in hell for people who do that.”

“Maybe there is.”

“Did she know about it?”

Steph shrugged. “I don’t think so at first. I knew by the time I was a teenager, and I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to be wrong. He was such a good dad that I tried to deny it, telling myself maybe he just had friends who were women. Maybe they were colleagues. I didn’t want to think he was cheating, that he’d hurt our family like that. I sort of hid from the truth at first, but even when it was clear what was going on, I wasn’t sure if I should say something or not. Is it my place to tap my mom and say, ‘Hey, your husband’s screwing the assistant?’ Eventually she learned on her own, and he groveled, and she tried again. But it didn’t work.”

“She’d had enough of him?”

She nodded. “At that point, my brother and I were both out of the house and living on our own, so she didn’t feel that obligation anymore that I think was the biggest driving factor for her in staying with him when I was younger. So they got divorced, but he’s a very shrewd man and knows how to manipulate anything. He was able to get away with pretty much everything and leave her with very little.”

Jake scoffed. “That’s just shitty.”