“The plan?”
She frowns. “I mean, now what? What are we doing?”
I shrug. “We? I mean, I just came back for those diamonds, sweetheart.”
Her brow wrinkles. “Wait, you know I was wearing the fakes when they took me, right?”
I manage to keep my face hard for exactly one more second before I crack. Valentine scrunches her face up, shaking her head at me as she playful hits me.
“Ass.”
“Princess,” I grin back, kissing her slowly.
“You know I came back for you,” I growl quietly as I pull her tight to me. “You know I’d go to the ends of the Earth for you, angel.”
She curls into me, kissing me fiercely as I wrap her tight in my arms.
“The plan is, I’m retiring.”
She bites her lip, looking up into my eyes.
“Need a partner?”
The grin spreads across my face, and she shrieks as I scoop her up into my arms.
“Definitely.”
“So, does that mean you’re going to steal me away again?” she breathes, nodding at the window.
But I just smile as I shake my head.
“No, princess,” I growl into her lips. “This time, I’m walking right out the damn front door with you.”
I scoop her into my arms and kiss her.
…And then I do exactly that.
Epilogue
Valentine
Warm sand tickles between my toes, and the soft sound of the ocean sweeping the shore has almost put me to sleep. Somewhere, a shore bird cheeps in the soft tropical air, and I can just about smell the first scents of the feast the resort is cooking for tonight.
The specifics of where we are aren’t important. All you need to know is: it’s gorgeous, it’s paradise, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be with the man I love.
A week after we walked right out of my father’s estate, Dutch followed through with his buyers, and sold the Whistler necklace and earrings for two-hundred-and-forty million dollars.
…That’s a number I’m still trying to wrap my head around. But needless to say, we don’t want for anything these days. Eventually, we’re going to spend some of it on a forever home somewhere away from it all. But for now, we’re just traveling the world, living from resort to resort.
After the sale, I made sure we sent twenty million of it by way of a secret account to Diana. She ended up leaving my father the day after Dutch and I left. Apparently, even though I wasn’t even related to her, seeing my father act so heartlessly towards me was her last straw. So, I made sure she was taken care of for the rest of her life.
Another very big chunk of the money went to an education fund in my mother’s name to help the children of “the help” out in the Hamptons go to college. And I know she’d have loved that.
As for my father? Well, he’s not coming after us. You’d think we’d be worried about that, but trust me, we’re not. See, that was all part of the deal we struck the night we walked right out the front door. Dutch promised him that the dirty secrets he knew about my father’s company could bury him. He agreed to leave him the diamonds, and in exchange, he’d take me and his secrets and disappear.
Martin thought that was the deal of the century.
He exploded later, and did try to come after us once he’d heard through the grapevine that the real diamonds had been sold. But at that point, Dutch had leaked enough proof of what he knew to a few of the other board members of dad’s company, and they convinced him two-hundred-and-forty million was a small price to pay for not going to jail or losing a multi-billion-dollar company.
And so, it’s a truce of some kind. A treaty maybe? Whatever it is, it means we’re free of him, forever.
“Damn that smells good.”
I smile, pulling my sunglasses off and looking up at my husband standing over my beach chair.
…Oh, right, yeah. It’s husband now. My husband who stole me away—twice—and who steals my heart away every day.
“Yeah the dinner menu sounds amazing tonight. They’re cooking it all outside I guess.”
Dutch nods, but when his eyes slide over me and I see that hungry grin creep across his lips, I blush.
“What?”
He squats down next to me, leaning over and cupping my jaw as he kisses me slow and deep.
“I’ve mentioned how fucking great you look in a bikini, right?”
I blush. “I think you’ve mentioned that you think I look good in pretty much everything you’ve seen me in, dork.”
He chuckles. “You caught me. But still, you know my favorite.”
I blush, raking my teeth over my lip as I nod.
It’s diamonds, and nothing else. Not the Whistler set, but Dutch loves me stretched out in bed wearing only diamonds. I’m sure a psychologist would have a field day with that, him being a former jewel thief and all, but trust me, I don’t mind one single bit.