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Too Hot to Handle
Nancy Warren
Manhattan jewellery designer Lexy Drake knew the warning signs even as she was tempted to have a fling. Charles Pendegraff III was too rich, too good-looking – and light-fingered.He had to convince Lexy he’d been framed before she’d believe that all the times they’d spent burning up the bed sheets were not just stolen nights!
About the Author
USA TODAY bestselling author NANCY WARREN lives in the Pacific Northwest where her hobbies include walking her border collie in the rain and searching out unusual jewellery. She’s the author of more than thirty novels and novellas and has won numerous awards. Visit her at www.nancywarren.net.
This is for my readers.
Thank you for your kind messages
and for reading the books I love to write.
With love, Nancy
Dear Reader,
What is it about a thief hero that we love so much? Is it that he will take what he wants without asking—and that just might be the heroine? Is it that he’s a man who lives life on his own terms and makes his own rules? Of course, the thief hero is not some thug who hits little old ladies and steals their purses. No. Our kind of thief would risk his life to protect that little old lady and make sure she got her purse back. He’s elegant, smooth, only takes things from not very nice people who can afford to lose the stuff. He’s a pro. He’s Cary Grant in It Takes a Thief, he’s Robert Wagner in To Catch a Thief, he’s Pierce Brosnan in The Thomas Crown Affair.
He is, in a word, dreamy. Tough, smart, a born rule-breaker, and yet the right woman can tame him. Mmmm. Too Hot to Handle is my first attempt at writing a thief hero. I’ve always wanted to and never had the story. Until now.
I hope you enjoy Lexy and Charlie as much as I did. As always, you can come visit me at www.nancywarren.net.
Happy reading,
Nancy Warren
Too Hot to Handle
Nancy Warren
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#uf429cd8b-4b08-53f9-bc97-084ad31da48d)
About the Author (#ub0118fd8-2822-51e2-aa66-e4ab9b1d4bff)
Title Page (#ua086cd00-00db-588d-ad66-d7b8087aad0f)
Chapter One (#uafb23cf0-e87a-5241-b8e5-983f0d2e3f4e)
Chapter Two (#u21016f13-a6d3-51df-a841-17d1836c60b2)
Chapter Three (#u26ad4f66-8e28-5868-8158-78c88fa27915)
Chapter Four (#udf59799b-2cf7-5252-8c7a-760715f665e6)
Chapter Five (#u76ef39ac-8bbc-57bf-ba69-1007c69ce615)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ninteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
1
LEXY DRAKE LOVED CONTRASTS. Delicate with bold, hot colors with cold, new mixed with old.
Hard rock music played as she peered through the binocular magnifier and looped a string of molten gold with infinite care around a ruby.
She loved every one of the creations that were slowly making her rich—this one a pair of wedding rings for a young couple who’d come to her with his grandmother’s rings and a brooch that had been in her family so long no one knew its provenance.
Lexy would transform the old and forgotten into the new and now. It was the best kind of recycling, combining art, family history and love.
She worked alone, which was how she liked it. But never in silence. Her work might be delicate but her music provided much-needed contrast. Hard-driving rock and roll hammered the air around her. She’d have preferred to let the music reverberate off the walls, but since her tiny studio was tucked behind her SoHo store, she kept the volume low.
With the metal soft, she had a little time to bend it to her will, but only a little. With a final twist, she had the look she wanted; a bold swirl of gold twining around a ruby.
A sudden prickling at the back of her neck told her she was no longer alone.
She turned sharply in time to surprise a man standing in the doorway. The way his gaze suddenly rose, she suspected she’d been shaking her booty in time to the music and her latest customer had stopped to watch her swaying hips.
He didn’t look at all embarrassed to have been caught staring at her gyrations. If anything he appeared—interested—that would have to be the word.
“There’s a salesclerk out front if you need help.” It was rare for a customer to bumble back here to her private work space, but it happened.
“She’s busy. So I followed the music.”
“Oh.” She picked up the remote and punched down the volume on her iPod. “I should hire more staff now we’re getting so busy, but I haven’t got around to it. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s fascinating to watch a master craftsman at work.” He spoke in that perma-bored drawl with the crisp inflections she’d come to associate with the rich. She was pretty sure he’d been studying her ass—not her master craftsman hands—but he was a potential customer so she didn’t call him on it.
Probably a lucrative customer, too. His handmade suit and shiny leather loafers screamed Daddy owns a bank, while his tie had one of those crests from a fancy Ivy League school. She could never keep them straight, wasn’t interested enough to bother.
“I’m Charles Pendegraff III,” he told her in that snooty tone, holding out his hand to shake hers.
“And I’m Alexandra Drake. Lexy.” An imp inside her who would probably make sure she ended up broke, added, “The one and only.”
His gaze sharpened on hers and she was struck by the gleam of powerful intelligence behind the laziness. The impression was gone in a second. He said, “I see you’re working on a ring. I’m thinking of having one commissioned, myself. Do you mind if I take a look?”
“Sure.” He had money to burn and she had self-defense skills that would flatten him in a New York minute if he tried anything. He strolled toward her and she figured he might be rich, but he wasn’t idle. When he moved, his slacks molded around powerful thighs and as the blazer shifted she got the impression of a broad, muscular chest.
She loved contrasts and he seemed to have enough to be interesting. The lazy speaking voice was at odds with the sharp green eyes; the soft manicured hands didn’t match the hard planes of his face.
And when he moved closer she felt the punch of his forceful sexuality.
Wowza.
“How did you hear about my studio?” she asked him. She nearly always started with a little market research and in this case a chance to distract her from the instant and powerful attraction she was experiencing.
“One of the fellows I play polo with, Jeremy Thurston, had you design an amulet for his mother. I bumped into her when she was wearing it at one of those tedious fundraisers. She was dull. The bracelet was stunning.”
“Thanks.” She remembered the piece, of course. She remembered them all.
“So, I’d heard of you, but I hadn’t imagined you’d be so young. And somehow one never imagines a jeweler as sexy, now why is that?”
“Oh, well …” She could not think of a thing to say. Lexy was rarely thrown off her stride, and getting hit on wasn’t a completely foreign experience, so to be tongue-tied in front of this stranger was infuriating. But then she rarely felt the punch of attraction quite this strongly. And never from a guy with a number after his name.
No wonder she was speechless.
“Let me show you what I’m doing here,” she said, deciding to ignore the sexy comment and reaching a hand toward the design she’d penned. “I’m combining elements—antique gold, a splash of platinum, those tiny rubies and the diamond solitaire, it’s sort of my signature, you see—”
She stopped when he suddenly reached for her hand, taking it in his. “You’ve hurt yourself,” he said, pointing to a red patch on her index finger.
“Oh, that’s nothing, I burned myself on the soldering iron. I got careless.”
She tried to pull away from the intimate warmth of her hand resting in his, but with a strength that surprised her, he prevented her. “Do you have a first-aid kit?”
“Yes, but I can’t have cream or bandages on my fingers. I need them to do my work.”
His gaze rose to meet hers and she thought he had the most amazing eyes she’d ever seen. “Then I’ll use an old home remedy of my grandmother’s.” His words licked at her, soft, caressing. Intimate. “I’ll kiss it better.”
Her hand fluttered in his. She felt it, knew he must have felt the instinctive movement, too; she was completely annoyed by her reaction, but she didn’t yank her hand away, either. She watched him raise her fingers slowly to his lips. Felt the lightest whisper of a kiss land on the sore spot and then he returned her hand to the worktable.
“I—um.” She completely forgot what she was going to say.
He glanced through her magnifier at the ring. “This is exquisite.”
“Thank you. What kind of a ring are you looking for, Mr. Pendegraff?”
“It’s Charlie. And I need an engagement ring.”
She blinked. “An engagement ring?”
“Yes.” He raised his head and glanced at her. His green eyes were like cloudy emeralds, with too many occlusions to make them gemstone worthy, but it was the dark lines, the faults that made them so magnetic.
“You’re getting married?”
“Yes.”
She couldn’t believe the balls of this man. He was kissing the fingers of the woman he wanted to design his wedding rings?
But then she reminded herself of one of her mother’s favorite sayings. “The rich have different rules than the rest of us.”
That was why she stayed away from them.
“Penelope and I are getting married in September. That’s six months from now. Lots of time.”
“I see.” Ice coated her tone. “Well, if you’d like to come back out front, I’ll show you what’s in stock. All the designs are original, of course.” Lexy was a certified gemologist and she’d apprenticed with a designer in London. When she’d returned to the States, she’d been unwilling to work in one of those design factories that turn out diamond solitaires and wedding bands by the thousand. So, she’d gone out on her own, building herself a perfect little studio in SoHo, a live/work loft that meant she and her livelihood were never far apart, and her commute was less than a minute.
One of the things she loved about New York was how quickly word spread when somebody found a new designer. She’d gone from complete obscurity, to a few select jewelers selling her unique creations, to becoming the go-to designer for wealthy trendsetters in less than two years.
She was so hot that men like Charles Pendegraff III came slumming in order to get his bride the trendiest engagement ring possible.
“Or, I could have something designed, just for me?”
“And for your fiancée. Yes.”
As luck would have it, when she returned him to the storefront, her assistant, Amanda, was returning a ring tray to its display case. Her customer was walking out the door with one of their signature boxes made from recycled metal.
“Oh, good. Amanda’s free now. Amanda? Would you help Mr. Pendegraff? He’s looking for a ring. Goodbye, Mr. Pendegraff, and best of luck with the wedding.”
“Bye, Lexy.” He stuck out his hand and what could she do but return his clasp? Amusement lurked deep in his eyes as he gazed down at her. “I look forward to seeing you again.”
