Free Too Wicked to Keep by Julie Leto Page A

without asking questions?”
    â€œJust because she asks doesn’t mean I have to answer,” Abby countered. “It’s just the basics, but we’ll pick up more later.”
    â€œNo reason why we can’t plan a heist in the buff,” he suggested, handing her back the bag. He had no real objection to the clothes inside. He didn’t have many preferences when it came to fashion. But he did like teasing her, especially when she skewered him with one of her dangerous looks.
    Five years ago, he never would have imagined Abigail Albertini had any dangerous looks. She’d been secretly passionate and publicly malleable. But in the time since him, she’d grown a backbone lined with steel that glinted straight through her cognac-colored eyes.
    He took the bag back.
    â€œRight. No naked strategizing. It was just a suggestion.”
    She groaned and marched—quietly—out of the room.
    He dumped the contents onto the bed, then pawed through them to see that her friend had indeed purchased the right sizes. As he tested the softness of a dark gray cashmere sweater, the Murrieta ring caught the eastern light streaming in through the guest-room windows. Hetried once again to remove it from his hand, but it was stuck. The ring he’d been so keen to own for so long was now starting to piss him off.
    He’d only met his biological father, Ramon Murrieta, once, but he distinctly remembered the moment he’d first noticed the man’s ring. About five seconds into his explanation that Danny’s mother had never told him she was pregnant, he’d lifted his hand to wipe sweat from his temple and the ring had sparkled green in more ways than one.
    But Danny hadn’t had a chance to take it. He’d dismissed Ramon’s offer for a relationship. Already adopted into the Burnett family, Daniel hadn’t seen any need to know more about the man who’d done nothing for him except provide half of his DNA.
    At sixteen, Danny had not been interested in the history. He’d seen right away that the center stone was scratched and the gold showed signs of sloppy repair. Both then and now, the only things that kept the signet from being a total piece of junk were the brilliant black opals. But the ring had meant something special to Ramon. He turned it while he talked, as if contact gave him a measure of comfort or a jolt of courage.
    From that moment, Danny had dreamed about stealing it. Not because he needed courage or comfort, but because the ring meant something to his father. He’d considered holding it for ransom or keeping it as punishment for his father’s oblivious neglect. He’d considered selling it and destroying the family legacy he’d never be a part of.
    As he’d done none of the above, now he was stuck with the thing.
    And what was worse, he’d seen with his own eyes what had happened to his brothers when they’d wornthe damned thing. Alejandro, a confirmed bachelor, was now planning his marriage to Lucy Burnett, Danny’s adopted sister and the only woman he’d ever trusted. And upstanding, reliable Michael had chucked his law-enforcement career aside to remain in New Orleans with a sexy private investigator who had a reputation for bending laws until just before they snapped in two.
    And he was no better. Danny had been wearing the ring for less than twenty-four hours and he’d already spent the night in Abigail Albertini’s bed without touching her once.
    What the hell kind of magic did this thing have?
    Determined to use the soap in the shower to coax the ring off his finger, he stripped off the rest of his clothes and headed into the bathroom, where he found a disposable razor and the toothbrush he’d scored last night from her drawer, along with a travel-size shaving cream, toothpaste and deodorant. The precision of Abby’s thought processes took him by surprise. Apparently, she’d prepped the room for his