The Cunning Thief (Stolen Hearts #6)(10)

“I just can’t believe how lucky I am,” he said.

She frowned and glared at him. “Lucky? You almost burned down the place you’re renting, and you think you’re lucky?”

“What’s pretty damn lucky is that you were there. What would I do without you to save my ass?”

Shae just glared at him wordlessly, unable to find an adequate way to express how stupid he’d been. He had a good attitude, though. Maybe she should look on the bright side too. It had been lucky that she’d been around. It had been lucky that she knew exactly what to do to save the McCormicks’ house. She might’ve had a shitty couple of days, but at least she’d been able to do this one good deed. Maybe she should consider herself lucky too.

“I tell you though, that was a damn nice steak.”

Nope. She wasn’t looking on the bright side of things. He deserved to go to hell. In a rush, the nine hours of work caught up to her, and she was suddenly starving. The idea that he had destroyed such a good dinner affected her more than it should’ve.

As though he read her mind, he said, “You know, you saved my ass. The least I can do is buy you dinner.”

She blinked a few times, not sure she heard him right. “You want to buy me dinner?” she asked skeptically.

“I say you deserve a damn nice dinner too. And, in the spirit of things, I think it should be steak.”

Her mouth watered at the thought of a steak dinner. She probably smelled like smoke and vinyl glue, and she had no idea how she looked, but she didn’t care at this moment. She’d been on such a tight shoestring budget with this house project that she hadn’t had anything more expensive than Taco Bell the past three months. Quite frankly, even if the super-hot guy did work for Damask, she didn’t care. “I can’t go like this...” she said, to herself more than to him.

“Well, considering you saved my life, I can wait for a while. How long do you need?”

All the nice steak houses would be closing by eleven. She mentally calculated the time she had to get ready and drive and get there without being a complete jerk to waitstaff. “Give me ten minutes.”

He looked at her skeptically. “Just ten minutes?”

She wasn’t sure whether she should be offended by his opinion of her time to get ready. But she’d always been efficient in everything she did, and makeup wasn’t any different. “Eleven minutes,” she said. This gave her buffer time to reach her bathroom. Without waiting, she took off running back to the house, calculating all the things she needed to do to be presentable. Not just presentable, but so she didn’t look completely out of place on the arm of someone as handsome as Tristan.

She ran to the small bedroom she was using as her own on the first floor. Her hair was a mess, so she just pulled the curly mess back into a simple twist. As for makeup, she did a quick brush of foundation, which did wonders to even her skin, threw on loads of mascara, blush, and then found her bright-red lipstick. No matter how plain her makeup was, Shae found that when she put on bright-red lipstick, she would immediately look so much more put together.

She had very few nice clothes. Considering how often she was sweaty and covered in dirt and dust and glue, nice clothes didn’t really make sense. But it was Florida, so she found the nicest-looking summer dress she had. It was blue, with some large orange flowers in the pattern. The bright-red lipstick brought out the bright orange in the dress and it almost looked as if she’d planned this. The dress was very, very light. It was long enough normally, but in a breeze it would go dangerously high. If she were going on a date, this would be the perfect dress. Flirty, but not too tight and high enough in the front to not be too revealing. Sexy without trying too hard. She looked herself over in the mirror. Pretty good for—she checked her watch—seven minutes. She smiled and practically skipped down the hall. She didn’t know what had her in such a good mood. Well, she did know. It was rather obvious. The date with the handsome, mysterious stranger, with the promise of some good food. She never realized how easy she was to please until now.

She came out of the house to find Tristan waiting for her on her back porch. She smiled at him—a genuine, authentic smile. She really was excited about spending the night with him.

He didn’t smile at her. In fact, his face was utterly serious as he looked her up and down. “Well damn,” he said quietly. “I might be in over my head here.”





Tristan hadn’t been lying for once. He really did think he might be in over his head. The thought kept on hitting him every time he looked over at Shae and saw how gorgeous she looked in that dress.

He had no illusions. He’d known she was a pretty girl; he just hadn’t realized she was an utter knockout. She worked on houses for a living, which explained why her body was so toned. She didn’t even have to go to the gym to look like that. It was just a byproduct of what she did for a living. Even though she hadn’t put on much makeup, this was the first time he was appreciating her features. Her eyes were dark brown, almost the same color as the pupil. It gave an almost ethereal effect that went along with her dark-brown curls. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but there was still one strand of wavy hair that framed her face. She kept pushing it back, but the stubborn strand would continuously fall right back onto her cheek. He had to keep his grip on the steering wheel tight to stop himself from reaching over and adjusting it himself. But he knew he had to be smart about this. She wasn’t just anybody. She was obviously relatively reserved, and the only way he got her to agree to go out with him was because he’d staged a fire and waited until she was exhausted from the workday. If he started touching her right away, her walls would go all the way up.