“I’ve never seen an actual gold record,” she said.
One that was undoubtedly worth a bucket of cash. Lucien would drool over it, could probably earn a mint selling it off. She immediately bit down on her tongue. This wasn’t a thing to be sold for money. This was a precious memento, and she was a guest in this house. A house she planned to rob.
The room suddenly felt too small.
Jack’s hands wandered around her hips, securing her in a tight hold. “I want to thank you,” he murmured. “Chloe may have pouted when we left the dining room, but I haven’t seen her this happy in ages.”
“It was nothing.” She leaned her head back onto his shoulder, tried to elongate her neck, allow more oxygen into her lungs.
“It wasn’t nothing. Things have been rough with her the past year.”
“Because of your father?”
“My mother, too. She’s been more distracted. I think the older Chloe gets, the more alone she feels. With our age difference and my work schedule, she’s pretty much an only child. All our aunts and uncles and cousins live in different states. And our mother isn’t exactly young and hip.” Jack rubbed his thumb along Clementine’s belly in a slow pattern. It wasn’t soothing her much, but it seemed to calm him. “She needs a woman to look up to,” he said.
Nope. The thumb rubbing definitely wasn’t soothing. “She has teachers, and she talked about friends.”
“She got in trouble recently, spray painting graffiti in town. Just to fit in, like a typical teen, but I think she’s lost. Isn’t sure who she is. Spending time with a woman like you could really help her.”
Forget stretching her neck, Clementine needed an oxygen mask. “You give me too much credit.”
“You don’t give yourself enough.”
He didn’t have a clue. Clementine was as good a role model as Al Capone. She was a criminal. She had no friends. The hours gossiping in Chloe’s room had been selfish time to pretend she was normal, to swoon over Chloe’s crush and just be a freaking girl. Not a con-woman. Another reason to quit procrastinating.
Agitated, she shrugged off Jack’s hold and banged into a cymbal. The clang vibrated in her chest. “Chloe’s smart enough to scare you in the woods. She’ll be fine.”
Better than fine if she didn’t hang around Clementine. Still, Jack’s declaration gave her pause: I haven’t seen her this happy in ages. He would know. They really had had fun together.
None of it changed Lucien’s text.
Clementine needed to gather herself, create space to choose the less horrible option: steal from the best man she’d ever known or abandon Nisha. She swiveled for the door and stopped breathing. There, across the room, was the whole reason she’d traveled to Whichway.
The reason she’d met Jack.
Since the Van Gogh had originally been owned by Jack’s grandfather, it made sense to be hung in a room Maxwell the First had loved.
Shades of green whirled and eddied, bringing the landscape to life. A sunny day. Fields. Grass. Trees. Bushes. Simple in its serenity. It wasn’t as stylized as Van Gogh’s better-known works. It had been a study, one of five that hadn’t been signed, exactly why it had gone undetected, sold and resold, its true value undiscovered. Now it hung in a basement room on a purple wall, mocking her.
Her and Jack’s mutual attraction was undeniable, but envisioning their happily ever after had been nothing more than a teasing lottery ticket you scratched, only to be disappointed by a predictable womp, womp. Clementine ached to date Jack, maybe stay in Whichway, but he had a family to care for, an entire factory and town depending on him. He deserved an honest partner who could love his perfectly shy self. He deserved Rachel Dawes, not Catwoman.
The Van Gogh was Clementine’s life. Little Nisha and the orphans in India—they were real. Helping them was the one true thing she’d accomplished in her twenty-eight years. A fact she should remember.
“Your mother was right,” she said. “I should get going.”
His brow furrowed. “My mother is overreacting about work. I have it under control.”
“You barely slept last night, and you’ve concocted an elaborate lie about your father’s traveling because your business is in trouble. So no, I’d say she isn’t overreacting. And I’m tired as well.” She touched his arm, savored the feel of his steadiness one last time. “Are you staying here again tonight?”
If he said yes, she’d slip in tomorrow night, steal the painting then and leave these conflicting feelings in her Prius’s rearview mirror. Disappear before she hurt someone else besides herself. If he said no, she would steal it tonight and get it over with. Burgling the estate while Jack was here wasn’t an option. It would induce mistakes.
She pressed her nails into her palm, focused on the sharp sting.
“I wanted to stay,” he said, “but my folks forbade it. Told me to go home and get some rest.”
That was that, then. She’d steal the Van Gogh tonight and complete this job like all the others. She’d save the Delhi orphanage from ruin. She’d return to New York and the life she knew. Maybe move to a new apartment, away from Jenny and her friends. So why did her chest feel like it was caving in?
The creases in Jack’s forehead sunk deeper. He ran his thumb down her cheek. “Everything okay with you?”
“Yeah. Fine.” It would be tomorrow, at least. After she’d done the heist.
17
Jack stared at his ceiling, his sheets bunched around his knees. Hot. His parents kept the house so damn hot. He should have listened to them, slept at home like they’d asked, but Chloe, who often shut him out of her room these days, had looked at him with her big blue eyes and asked him to stay. She’d claimed her window had been opened, that she hadn’t done it and she was scared. A move she’d often pulled as a kid. Back then, it had been more of a sobbing plea, and the culprit had been a boogeyman who’d threatened to eat her. This reeked of a different fear.
She hadn’t admitted she was worried Dad would get violently sick again. She didn’t have to.
Now it was two a.m., and Jack was in nothing but his briefs, sweaty, awake, in his teenage room, wishing Clementine was still on his bed.
He kicked the covers lower, scrubbed his hands over his face. Clementine. There was that folk song about her name: “Oh My Darling, Clementine.” He closed his eyes, tried to remember the lyrics. Something about Clementine drowning, her man unable to swim and save her. One of those depressing old tunes about losing the woman you loved.
It struck a chord in his gut, mimicking how he’d felt with his Clementine in the sound room, when her eyes had shifted—kind to hard—shutting him out. She had kissed him sweetly when leaving, after agreeing to meet the next day for their run, but there had been coolness in her tight-lipped smile. Like she was slipping through his fingers. It could have been the dinner and his mother’s prodding. More likely it had been him. He shouldn’t have cornered her afterward, asked outright if her job had been a lie, after promising he wouldn’t demand answers. His promise had lasted half a day.
Oh My Darling, Clementine.
How little I know you.