Free Hot Ice by Nora Roberts

penalties.”
    She stared at him. “Is that what you consider Juan? A penalty?”
    “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he told her, unknowingly echoing Butrain’s words. But she heard something else. Regret? Remorse? Though she couldn’t be sure, it was something. She held on to it. “We can’t go back and change what happened, Whitney. So we go on.”
    She picked up her neglected drink. “Is that what you do best? Go on?”
    “If you want to win. When you have to win, you can’t look back very often. Tearing yourself up over this isn’t going to change anything. We’re one step ahead of Dimitri, maybe two. We’ve got to stay that way because it’s a game, but you play it for keeps. If we don’t stay ahead, we’re dead.” As he spoke, he laid a hand over hers, not for comfort, but to see if it was steady. “If you can’t take it, you’d better think about backing off now because we’ve got a hell of a long way to go.”
    She wouldn’t back off. Pride was the problem, or the blessing. She’d never been able to back off. But what about him? she wondered. What made Douglas Lord run? “Why do you do it?”
    He liked the curiosity, the spark. As he settled back he was satisfied she’d gotten over the first hump. “You know, Whitney, it’s a hell of a lot sweeter to win the pot at poker with a pair of deuces than with a flush.” He blew out smoke and grinned. “One hell of a lot sweeter.”
    She thought she understood and studied his profile. “You like the odds against you.”
    “Long shots pay more.”
    She sat back, closed her eyes, and was silent so long he thought she dozed. Instead, Whitney was going back over everything that had happened, step by step. “The restaurant,” she asked abruptly. “How did you pull that off?”
    “What restaurant?” He was studying the different tribes of Madagascar in his book and didn’t bother to look up.
    “In Washington, when we were running for our lives through the kitchen and that enormous man in white stepped in front of you.”
    “You just use the first thing that comes to your mind,” he said easily. “It’s usually the best.”
    “It wasn’t just what you said.” Unsatisfied, Whitney shifted in her seat. “One minute you’re a frantic man off the streets, and the next a snooty food critic saying all the right things.”
    “Baby, when your life’s on the line, you can be anything.” Then he looked up and grinned. “When you want something bad enough, you can be anything. Usually I like to case a job from the inside. All you have to do is decide if you’re going in the front door or the servants’ entrance.”
    Interested, she signaled for another drink for each of them. “Meaning?”
    “Okay, take California. Beverly Hills.”
    “No, thanks.”
    Ignoring her, Doug began to reminisce. “First you have to decide which one of those nifty mansions you want to take. A few discreet questions, a little legwork, and you hone in on one. Now, front door or back? That might depend on my own whim. Getting in the front’s usually easiest.”
    “Why?”
    “Because money wants references for servants, not from guests. You need a stake, a few thousand. Check into the Wilshire Royal and rent a Mercedes, drop a few names—of people you know are out of town. Once you get into the first party, you’re set.” With a sigh, he drank. “Boy, they do like to wear their bank accounts around their necks in the Hills.”
    “And you just walk right in and pluck them off?”
    “More or less. The tough part is not to be greedy—and to know who’s wearing rocks and who’s wearing glass. Lot of bullshit in California. Basically, you just have to be a good mimic. Rich people are creatures more of habit than imagination.”
    “Thanks.”
    “You dress right, make sure you’re seen at the right places—with a few of the right people—and nobody’s going to question your pedigree. The last time I used that routine, I checked into the