Free A Touch of Minx by Suzanne Enoch

bat cave, as she'd begun calling the stadium-size car storage facility, every one of them had its place. "Ben, what time did Rick leave?" she asked, noting the absence of the Jag.
    "At about two-forty," the driver returned.
    "Thanks." He and Tom had probably gone golfing again. Personally she didn't see the point of hitting a little ball around a park unless there was loot in the holes, but Rick enjoyed it. And he'd taken her advice to go have some fun.
    Smiling, she headed upstairs to change out of her business clothes. And then she went up to the third floor and the long art gallery there. Long, floor-length windows lined one side of the hall, while suits of armor stood on the other side, other war-related artifacts scattered among them.
    This was where she and Rick had first met. Of course she'd been trying to rob him at the time, and he'd returned home early from a trip to Stuttgart in time to get himself involved in an explosion and a triple-cross that had nearly killed both of them. "Ah, the good old days," she murmured, grinning.
    A large part of the gallery had been replaced after the explosion, and several of Rick's pieces had been damaged or destroyed. Anyone coming for a first look wouldn't have any idea—not only did Rick have enough antiques and pieces of art to keep several houses full, but he had very sharp taste about what looked good where.
    She sat cross-legged on the floor beside a set of samurai armor and looked through the magazines. A couple of the houses in the layouts featured Japanese and other Far Eastern decor, but she knew enough about the items she saw in the photos to eliminate all of them. People showed off their best staff for a photo shoot, and while she didn't expect to see the Yoritomo armor, there wasn't anything close to that monetary value.
    "Damn." Okay, no suspects, but at least she had six non-suspects. That was a help, dull and mundane as finding it out was.
    "How was the camera installation?"
    She jumped, looking up as Rick topped the stairs. Her breath always caught when she first got a look at him—if she'd been the girly, giggly type it would have been flat-out embarrassing. Wherever he'd been, he still wore the jeans and gray T-shirt with a black open shirt over that, a pair of sockless loafers on his feet. "Lucrative," she returned, standing up to grin at him. "When I told Gwyneth that my appearance would cost her an extra grand, she was too snooty to turn me down, so I stood there for two hours and ate her cashews."
    Rick chuckled. "You still want spaghetti, though, I assume?"
    "That's a different stomach." She slid a hand around his waist. "What did you do this afternoon, stud muffin?"
    He closed his arm over her shoulders and drew her closer to kiss the top of her head. "More golf."
    "Did Donner lose?"
    "Yes."
    "Excellent."
    "Any leads on the school or the armor thefts?"
    "Some ideas on the school. And I know a couple of collectors who didn't take the armor."
    After a moment Rick let her loose and walked over to one of his two prime suits of samurai armor. He'd gotten pretty good at letting her go before she started to get squirrelly about it, but she'd been working at stuff, too, at touching him before he had to reach out to her. She and Martin had left her mom when she'd been five. She didn't remember anything about unconditional acceptance before then, and after that her job had been to learn everything she could to be good at what she did. Better than Martin, eventually. Rick was a whole new chapter; hell, a whole new life.
    "The armor Joseph wants you to look for is from the late Heian period," he said, half to himself. "This is about three hundred years later, from the middle Muromachi period."
    She nodded, strolling over to join him. "Viscanti seat me the exhibit book and a couple of photos. How much do these things weigh?"
    "About sixty pounds. It's mostly metal and leather. Samurai fought from horseback then, and the saddle supported some of the armor's