To Catch a Thief Read online

  a cognizant v5 release august 27 2010

  “You do know what they say about all work and no play, don’t you?”

  He regarded her seriously. “That it gets the job done?”

  She groaned. “No, that it makes for a very dull guy.”

  A dangerous glint appeared in his eyes. “You think I’m boring?”

  “Not boring, just limited. Under other circumstances, I might be tempted to try and change that.”

  “Oh? How?”

  “Maybe one of these days I’ll give you a list of my recommendations,” she said. “Will you pay any attention to them?”

  “I might,” he said solemnly. “What would my reward be?”

  “More fun,” she said at once.

  He grinned. “You’ll have to provide more incentive than that.”

  “Such as?”

  “Will I get the girl?”

  Gina shuddered at the penetrating look in his eyes. “I suppose that depends.”

  “On?”

  “On how badly you want her.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder about that myself.”

  Sherryl Woods

  TO CATCH A THIEF

  Books by Sherryl Woods

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Safe Harbor #425

  Never Let Go #446

  Edge of Forever #484

  In Too Deep #522

  Miss Liz’s Passion #573

  Tea and Destiny #595

  My Dearest Cal #669

  Joshua and the Cowgirl #713

  * Love #769

  * Honor #775

  * Cherish #781

  * Kate’s Vow #823

  * A Daring Vow #855

  * A Vow To Love #885

  The Parson’s Waiting #907

  One Step Away #927

  Riley’s Sleeping Beauty #961

  Finally a Bride #987

  ‡ A Christmas Blessing #1001

  ‡ Natural Born Daddy #1007

  ‡ The Cowboy and His Baby #1009

  ‡ The Rancher and His Unexpected Daughter #1016

  ** A Ranch for Sara #1083

  ** Ashley’s Rebel #1087

  ** Danielle’s Daddy Factor #1094

  †† The Littlest Angel #1142

  †† Natural Born Trouble #1156

  †† Unexpected Mommy #1171

  †† The Cowgirl and the Unexpected Wedding #1208

  †† Natural Born Lawman #1216

  †† The Cowboy and His Wayward Bride #1234

  †† Suddenly, Annie’s Father #1268

  ◊ The Cowboy and the New Year’s Baby #1291

  ◊ Dylan and the Baby Doctor #1309

  ◊ The Pint-Sized Secret #1333

  ◊ Marrying a Delacourt #1352

  ◊ The Delacourt Scandal #1363

  A Love Beyond Words #1382

  § Do You Take This Rebel? #1394

  § Courting the Enemy #1411

  § To Catch a Thief #1418

  Silhouette Desire

  Not at Eight, Darling #309

  Yesterday’s Love #329

  Come Fly with Me #345

  A Gift of Love #375

  Can’t Say No #431

  Heartland #472

  One Touch of Moondust #521

  Next Time…Forever #601

  Fever Pitch #620

  Dream Mender #708

  Silhouette Books

  Silhouette Summer Sizzlers 1990

  “A Bridge to Dreams”

  Maternity Leave 1998

  “The Paternity Test”

  †† The Unclaimed Baby

  SHERRYL WOODS

  has written more than seventy-five romances and mysteries in the past twenty years. She also operates her own bookstore, Potomac Sunrise, in Colonial Beach, Virginia, where readers from around the country stop by to discuss her favorite topic—books. If you can’t visit Sherryl at her store, then be sure to drop her a note at P.O. Box 490326, Key Biscayne, FL 33149 or check out her website at www.sherrylwoods.com.

  Winding River High School

  Class of ’91

  Welcome Home—Ten Years Later

  Do You Remember the Way We Were?

  Gina Petrillo—Tastiest girl in the class. Elected most popular because nobody in town bakes a better double-chocolate brownie. Member of the Future Homemakers of America. Winner of three blue ribbons in the pie-baking contest and four in the cake-baking contest at the county fair.

  Emma Rogers—That girl can swing…a bat, that is. Elected most likely to be the first female on the New York Yankees. Member of the Debate Club, the Honor Society and president of the senior class.

  Lauren Winters—The girl with all the answers, otherwise known as the one you’d most like to be seated next to during an exam. Elected most likely to succeed. Class valedictorian. Member of the Honor Society, County Fair Junior Rodeo Queen and star of the junior and senior class plays.

  Cassie Collins—Ringleader of the Calamity Janes. Elected most likely to land in jail. Best known for painting the town water tower a shocking pink and for making the entire faculty regret choosing teaching as a profession. Class record for detentions.

  Karen (Phipps) Hanson—Better known as the Dreamer. Elected most likely to see the world. Member of the 4-H club, the Spanish and French clubs, and first-place winner at the county fair greased pig contest.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  The office at Café Tuscany on Manhattan’s Upper West Side was little bigger than a broom closet, large enough for a desk, a chair and a bookshelf crammed with cookbooks, nutrition reports, menus and file boxes of handwritten recipes. It could only hold one person at a time, but at the moment Gina Petrillo’s feeling of claustrophobia had more to do with the court document in her hand than the size of the space.

  “I’m going to kill him,” she muttered, fingers trembling as the summons to appear for a deposition slid to the desk. “If I ever get my hands on Bobby, I am going to kill him.”

  She had met Roberto Rinaldi when they were both studying cooking in Italy. A passionate enthusiast of fine food, Bobby was an intuitive genius in the kitchen. They had struck up an instant rapport that had more to do with ingenious blends of sauces and inventive uses for pasta than lust.

  Truthfully, Gina wouldn’t have trusted Bobby anywhere near her bed. The man was more fickle about women than he was about ingredients. He was constantly experimenting with both. He got away with it because he was charming, impossible to resist when he tempted with either delectable dishes or devilish kisses—at least according to his many conquests.

  Gina had ignored his romantic overtures and concentrated on his skills in the kitchen. He was the most creative chef she had met during all of her studies, which was saying quite a lot. After forsaking college, she had studied at some of the finest culinary institutes in Europe. Though she had loved French cuisine, from the gourmet recipes of Paris to the simpler fare of Provence, Italian cooking spoke to her soul. Maybe it was genetic, maybe not, but the first time she had walked into the kitchen in Rome with its aromas of garlic, tomatoes and olive oil, she had felt at home.

  It had been the same for Bobby, or so he had claimed. His recipes were both bold and adventurous. She doubted he
’d ever tasted plain old pasta and tomato sauce, much less eaten canned ravioli, even as a child.

  Five years ago, when the year-long course in Italy had ended, they had agreed to form a partnership, seek out investors among Bobby’s financial contacts and open a restaurant in New York. It had taken another year to put the deal together, but it had been worth all of the scrimping and sacrifice, all of the long nights scraping paint and sanding floors. Café Tuscany had been a dream for both of them.

  Apparently, it had also been Bobby’s personal get-rich-quick scheme.

  According to the summons she’d been handed an hour ago, Bobby had not only embezzled restaurant funds, but stolen from their backers, as well. A check of the café’s account, made just minutes ago, confirmed the worst—the coffers were empty. And the rent was due, as were payments on invoices from most of their vendors.

  Gina had no one to blame but herself for this disaster. She had allowed Bobby to keep track of their finances, because she was more interested in cooking and marketing than calculating. The fact that an outsider—an attorney representing the supposedly swindled backers—knew more about the state of the business’s finances than she did was humiliating. It didn’t seem to matter that she had done her part to make the business thrive. She was as much at fault as the man who’d run off with the money. At least, that was the implication in the summons.

  Gina thought of all she had sacrificed to put Café Tuscany on the map, including a personal life. But it had been worth it. With a promotional push by one of her old high school classmates, superstar Lauren Winters, Gina had launched Café Tuscany as the hottest restaurant in a town where five-star dining and excellent neighborhood eateries were a dime a dozen. Prime tables were booked weeks in advance, and special events were sold out. Celebrities liked to be seen here, their presence always noted in the next day’s papers. In the past year, their brand-new catering division had been booked for a dozen of society’s most important charity events. With each success had come new bookings that kept her on the go morning till night.

  So where had all that money gone? To finance some new scheme of Bobby’s, no doubt. Or perhaps to freshen his designer wardrobe of Italian suits. Or maybe to buy diamonds for his latest lover. All Gina knew for certain was that none of it was in the bank, and that second notices for unpaid bills were stuffed into a drawer of the desk that Bobby had kept under lock and key. She’d broken into it an hour ago, right after she’d read through the damning words in the summons.

  When she’d called Bobby’s home—an expensive brownstone on the Upper East Side—she’d discovered that the line had been disconnected. His cell phone had gone unanswered. The man was gone.

  The man was slime!

  And because of him, this lawyer—she glanced at the summons again—this Rafe O’Donnell was on her trail, apparently convinced that she was in on the scheme, rather than another one of its victims.

  Sitting there, stunned, Gina realized that her dream was not just ending, but crash landing. Unless she could come up with money—a lot of money—she would have to declare bankruptcy and close Café Tuscany within months, if not weeks. She might be able to stave off creditors for a while, but not indefinitely.

  “I have to think,” she muttered.

  And she wasn’t going to get the job done sitting in this closet. She needed fresh air and wide-open spaces. She needed to go home to Winding River, Wyoming.

  She could leave the restaurant in the capable hands of her assistant manager for a week or so. She could call this O’Donnell person and postpone the deposition until, say, sometime in the next century.

  With her high school class reunion in a few days, the timing couldn’t be better. Her friends—the indomitable Calamity Janes—would be there to bolster her spirits. If she decided to ask, they would offer advice. Lauren would write a check on the spot to bail her out. Emma would give her expert legal counsel. And Karen and Cassie would find some way to make her laugh.

  Gina sighed. They would do all of that and more if she decided to tell them just how badly she’d messed up.

  In fact, she thought with the first bit of optimism she’d felt all day, they might even offer her a shotgun she could use if she ever spotted Roberto Rinaldi again.

  Chapter One

  “Gina Petrillo has gone where?” Rafe O’Donnell’s head snapped up at his secretary’s casual announcement.

  “Wyoming. She called an hour ago and rescheduled the deposition,” Lydia Allen repeated, looking entirely too cheerful.

  If Rafe didn’t know better he’d think she was glad that this Gina had escaped his clutches. He scowled at the woman who had been assigned to him when he’d first joined the firm, Whitfield, Mason and Lockhart, seven years earlier. At the time, she’d been with the firm for twenty years and claimed that she was always assigned to new recruits to make sure they were broken in properly. She was still with him because she swore that, to this day, he was too impossible to foist off on a less-seasoned secretary.

  “Did I say it was okay to reschedule?” he inquired irritably.

  “You’ve been in court all day,” she said, clearly un-intimidated by his sharp tone. “We reschedule these things all the time.”

  “Not so some crook can go gallivanting off to Wyoming,” he snapped.

  “You don’t know that Gina Petrillo is a crook,” Lydia chided. “Innocent until proven guilty, remember?”

  Rafe held on to his temper by a thread. “I do not need to be lectured on the principles of law by a grandmother,” he said, deliberately minimizing whatever legal expertise she might legitimately consider her due.

  Typically, she ignored the insult. “Maybe not, but you could use a few hard truths. I’ve eaten at that restaurant. So have most of the partners in this firm. If you weren’t such a workaholic, you’d probably be a regular there, too. The food is fabulous. Gina Petrillo is a lovely, beautiful young woman. She is not a thief.”

  So, he thought, that explained the attitude. Lydia was personally acquainted with the elusive woman and disapproved of Rafe’s determination to link Gina Petrillo to her partner’s crimes. As softhearted as his secretary was, she’d probably called Gina and warned her to get out of town.

  “You say she’s not a thief,” he began with deceptive mildness in his best go-for-the-jugular mode. “Mind telling me how you reached that conclusion? Do you have a degree in psychology, perhaps? Access to the restaurant’s books? Do you happen to have any evidence whatsoever that would actually exonerate her?”

  “No, I do not have any evidence,” she informed him with a huff. “Neither do you. But, unlike some people, I am a very good judge of character, Rafe O’Donnell.”

  Rafe was forced to concede that she was…usually.

  “Now that Roberto,” she continued, “I can believe he’s stolen from people. He has shifty eyes.”

  “Thank you, Miss Marple,” Rafe said snidely. “Roberto Rinaldi was not the only one with access to the money.”

  A good chunk of that money happened to belong to Rafe’s socialite mother. She had been taken in by the man’s charm. Rafe hadn’t explored the exact nature of the relationship, but knowing his mother’s track record, it hadn’t been platonic. He was no more oblivious to his mother’s faults than his father had been before the divorce, but he did his best to keep her from getting robbed blind.

  “But Roberto is the one who’s missing,” Lydia pointed out. “He’s the one you should be concentrating on.”

  “I would if I could find him,” Rafe said, not bothering to hide his exasperation. “Which is one reason I want to talk to Gina Petrillo. She just might know where he is. Now, thanks to you, I don’t even know where she is.”

  “Of course you do—I told you. She’s gone to Wyoming.”

  “It’s a big state. Care to narrow it down?”

  She frowned at him. “There is no need to be sarcastic.”

  Rafe sighed. “Do you know where she is or not?”

  “Of course I do.”
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  “Then book me on the next flight.”

  “I doubt that Winding River has an airport. I’ll check,” she said, her expression unexpectedly brightening.

  “Whatever,” he said, not one bit happy about the images of Western wilderness that came to mind. “Just cancel everything on my calendar and get me out there by tomorrow night.”

  “Will do, boss. I’ll go ahead and cancel everything through next week. You could use the time off.”

  Lydia’s sudden eagerness, the spring in her step as she started to leave his office, had him frowning. “I don’t need time off,” he protested. “I’ll take care of this over the weekend and be back here on Monday.”

  “Why don’t you just play it by ear?”

  His gaze narrowed. “What are you up to?”

  “Just doing my job,” she said with an innocent expression.

  Rafe seriously doubted her innocence, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why Lydia was so blasted anxious for him to jet off to Wyoming. She was not the kind of secretary who used the boss’s absence to sneak out and shop or even to take long lunch hours. No, she was the kind who meddled, the kind who took great pride in making his private life a living hell with her well-meant pestering.

  And she liked this Gina Petrillo, he thought, suddenly making the connection.

  “Lydia!” he bellowed.

  “You don’t have to shout,” she scolded. “I’m just outside the door.”

  “When you book my room in Winding River, make sure I’m all alone in it.”

  She feigned shock. “Why, of course I will.”

  “Don’t look at me like that. It wouldn’t be the first time some hotel mixup had me sharing a room with a woman you thought I ought to get to know better.”

  “I never—”

  “Save it. Just make sure of it, Lydia, or you’ll spend the rest of your career at Whitfield, Mason and Lockhart doing the filing.”