“I won’t be in class on Wednesday,” said Stu, breaking me from my thoughts.

I pulled back to look at him. “Why not?”

“Got a meeting with Renfield at his place,” he answered, nodding to the house. “I’ll have to convince him I’m the real deal.”

I frowned, not liking the sound of that. “On your own?”

He nodded, his expression deceptively blank. I’d come to recognise it as a sign he was uneasy.

Stu stroked a hand down my hair. “No other choice, Andrea.”

I studied him a moment, taking in his features and feeling a sudden burst of protectiveness. “I’ll come with you,” I blurted.

Now Stu was the one frowning. “You will not.”

I stroked his dark hair away from his forehead. “I’m not letting you go alone.”

“Oh yes, you are. And anyway, he’s only expecting me. If I show up with some bird on my arm it’s only going to look suspicious.”

“Hey,” I said, suppressing a smile, “I’d prefer it if you didn’t refer to me as ‘some bird’, thank you very much.”

Stu gave me a sexy smirk. “Yeah, you’re right. You’re too classy for that.”

“My point exactly. My fine breeding will see you well when you meet with Renfield. I’ll bring an air of sophistication to the dealings,” I said, only half joking.

He studied me now, and I could tell he was considering it. “You know what, you’ve actually got a point there.”

“So you’ll let me come?” I asked, hopeful. I knew it wasn’t a good idea putting myself in harm’s way, but I cared too much for Stu now. I needed to be there to make sure nothing bad happened. Just because this Renfield lived in a fancy house in a wealthy neighbourhood, didn’t make him a good person. And I couldn’t help hearing Stu’s earlier words. People like you give people like me a soft place to fall. Otherwise we’d just be cold and hard. I wanted to be his soft place, his safe place, more than I wanted anything else.

Amid all my attempts to the contrary, my heart had latched on to Stu and I cared about him too much to let him go it alone.

He let out a long, exasperated sigh. “Yeah, Andrea, even though I know I’m probably going to regret it, you can come.”

Seventeen

“So, remind me again. Where exactly did Jamie get these clothes?” I asked Alfie as I studied myself in the mirror. I wore a tight black pencil skirt and a white blouse, courtesy of Jamie, oddly enough. I hadn’t found anything suitable in my wardrobe to wear to the meeting with Renfield.

“He dressed up as Dita Von Tease for Halloween last year,” Alfie explained, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

“What?” I chuckled. “How did I not know about this?”

“You were visiting your parents.”

“And what about the wig? Doesn’t Dita Von Tease have black hair?”

“Oh yeah, the wig was from the year beforehand,” Alfie informed me casually. “Sandra Dee.”

I sputtered a laugh of disbelief. How had I not realised that Jamie was so fond of dressing up as a woman? And there was me thinking he was eccentric for wearing a three-piece suit on a regular basis. I straightened out the blonde wig, then went to collect the blue contact lenses I’d picked up from a nearby pharmacy yesterday. Pulling my eyelids back, I quickly popped them in, having taken lessons on how to do it from the girl at the pharmacy. Can’t say I’d want to put contacts in every day. Once finished, I studied myself in the mirror. My transformation was complete.

“You look weird,” said Alfie, taking in my altered appearance.

“Weird good or weird bad?” I asked, anxiety kicking in. Why had I volunteered to do this again? Right. Because I was an idiot.

“Weird good. The contacts and the wig look surprisingly natural, but I still think this is a terrible idea. If Renfield cottons on, then the entire plan goes out the window, and you can kiss goodbye to being debt free.”

I’d told Alfie a bit of a white lie. He thought Stu needed me with him to pose as his business partner. That I didn’t have another choice. My cousin was still entirely oblivious to my newly developed feelings for my student. It only added an extra layer of anxiety to my already frazzled nerves. He was going to blow a gasket when he eventually found out.

“What did you tell Jamie I needed the outfit for?” I asked, a little dismayed by the fact that everything fit me perfectly. Either I was big boned or Jamie had decidedly feminine measurements. I hoped for the latter.

“I said you’d been invited to a fancy dress party for a work colleague’s birthday and wanted to go as Blondie. Don’t worry, he doesn’t suspect anything untoward. No offence, but we don’t exactly come across as hardened criminals.”

Well, he was right there. I swiped on some red-tinted lip gloss just before there was a knock at the door. Sliding on my black heels, which I thankfully already owned and didn’t have to borrow from Jamie (a woman needs to keep some dignity), I went to answer the door. When I did my breath caught because Stu stood on the doorstep, looking like an Armani model. Just like me, he’d undergone a transformation in the hopes of not being recognised further down the line should the robbery go south.

Stu wore a fitted navy blue suit, white shirt, a slim black tie and horn-rimmed glasses.

Actually, I take back the Armani model comment. He looked like a spy from the fifties, a very, very sexy spy.

“Um,” I said, looking him over as I chewed on my lip, “come in.”

“Andrea?” Stu asked, taking in the wig and the contacts, and well, the entire outfit really. “You look . . . you don’t look like you.”

“That’s the intention.”

“Is it weird that I’m a little bit turned on?” His grin was wicked.

“Yes, very weird,” I said past a nervous chuckle as a flutter went through me.

“Well, I am. I didn’t expect your disguise to be so . . . believable.”

“Some of us decided to put more of an effort in than using the old Clark Kent trick,” I teased as he stepped inside the flat, his chest brushing mine in the narrow doorway. I glanced over his shoulder, surprised to see a silver BMW SUV parked outside.

“Is that yours?” I asked, gaping at the car.