The Sapphire Heist

2016·0.41 MB·english

by  Blakely

ALSO BY LAUREN BLAKELY
The Caught Up in Love Series
(Each book in this series follows a different couple, so each book can be read
separately or enjoyed as a series, since characters cross over.)
Caught Up in Her (a short prequel novella to Caught Up in Us)
Caught Up in Us
Pretending He’s Mine
Trophy Husband
Stars in Their Eyes
Stand-Alone Novels
Big Rock
Mister Org@sm
Far Too Tempting
21 Stolen Kisses
Playing with Her Heart (a stand-alone Seductive Nights spin-off novel about Jill
and Davis)
The No Regrets Series
The Thrill of It
The Start of Us
Every Second with You
The Seductive Nights Series
Night after Night (Julia and Clay, book one)
After This Night (Julia and Clay, book two)
One More Night (Julia and Clay, book three)
Nights with Him (a stand-alone novel about Michelle and Jack)
Forbidden Nights (a stand-alone novel about Nate and Casey)
The Sinful Nights Series
Sweet Sinful Nights
Sinful Desire
Sinful Longing
Sinful Love
The Fighting Fire Series
Burn for Me (Smith and Jamie)
Melt for Him (Megan and Becker)
Consumed by You (Travis and Cara)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and
incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 Lauren Blakely
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of
Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503935693
ISBN-10: 1503935698
Cover design by Michael Rehder
Cover photography by Regina Wamba of MaeIDesign.com
CONTENTS
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
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
Steph wedged a fake ruby into the treasure chest, parking it next to a bright,
gleaming emerald.
Fake, too.
Like Jake’s feelings for her had been. Clearly.
Clenching her jaw, she fumed as she arranged the gaudy gems inside a
plastic underwater treasure chest, her mind latching on to Jake’s deception. She
could barely believe the man had stolen so brazenly from her.
She placed one remaining bauble in the chest, then stood up. “It’s a real
pirate’s bounty, arrr,” she said, fixing on her pirate tone, trying desperately to
cover up the cocktail of hurt and frustration roiling in her heart and head.
She gestured to the chest, her last bit of prep for the midmorning Stingray
City Sandbar visit to kiss and pet the sea creatures.
Her deeply tanned, longtime Caymans friend Devon joined her in the
corner of his snorkel shop. “Ah, but that’s a beauty right there. Worth several
thousand galleons,” he said in a pirate voice, too.
Despite the plumes of anger licking her veins, she managed a small laugh.
“I’ll just go bury it in the sea now,” she said, then grabbed the box, hoisted it up
to her hip, and pushed open the door of his shop. She walked along the dock, set
the treasure chest on the worn wood, then jumped into the shallow blue waters.
Ah, the ocean’s caress felt good. But even it wasn’t enough to numb the
pain.
Carefully, she tugged the chest off the dock, into the water, and under the
placid surface.
These phony gems were worth more than the contents of her hotel safe
now that Jake had pilfered her very real diamond. Handsome, charming, no-good
Jake. Her blood boiled as she thought about what he’d done last night. The man
had actually broken into her safe—again—and taken her precious diamond after
sleeping with her. That had probably been part of his nefarious plan. Drug her up
on multiple orgasms so he could make off with her big rock.
Admittedly, he was a master at delivering Os.
But she could not, should not, would not let that lessen his crime. He’d
stolen the one thing she owned that was worth something. She’d been planning
on cashing it in and using the proceeds as a thank-you for her mom, who’d
helped rebuild Steph’s adventure tour business after her ex-boyfriend had tried
to take it down.
So much for the gift.
She dragged the chest beneath the dock, then popped open the cover. The
ten-cent fake gems glittered, like a pirate’s booty. The customers would surely
get a kick out of discovering this pretend treasure after they smooched the
nearby stingrays. She popped up in the water, her hair sleek and wet, then took a
breath and climbed onto the dock. She marched to the store, annoyance
powering every step she took, her lips a tight, fierce line as she flicked back to
last night with Jake when they’d stumbled into her room, flush with lust and
desire, finally ready to give in to all that they’d felt.
The sex had been red-hot.
Out-of-this-world intense.
Butterflies had the audacity to swoop in her belly with the memory of how
he’d touched her. She wanted to throat punch her traitorous hormones for
longing for that cad of a man.
That damn pirate.
She couldn’t believe that sometime in the middle of the night when she
was sleeping, he’d actually sneaked out of bed, opened her safe, snagged her
diamond, then took off with it after making love to her again as the dawn rose.
They’d even eaten breakfast together, and she’d shared with him the honey
she liked so much. Such a little thing, but it was one more way she’d started to
knock down her walls and let him into her guarded heart. She’d been played for
a fool.
When she reached the screen door on the side of Devon’s snorkel shop, she
yanked it open, nearly ripping it off its hinges.
“Careful there,” Devon warned.
“I will,” she said, patting the door gently in apology, then fixing on her
best chipper tone. “And everything’s ready.”
She had to set aside her ire, because it was business time. Her job was to
show the customers a helluva good time in the water with the stingrays. She
wasn’t going to let a man get in the way of her work. She didn’t trust men. She