Caging Kat

Excerpt:
Kat did her best to suppress a groan as she took a quick survey of the ballroom. This was going to be easy. Too damn easy, she thought bitterly. Her hazel, almond-shaped eyes caught the flash of another extravagantly crafted diamond necklace, fastened to the throat of a slender, masked girl, who twirled by in the arms of an equally slender, masked gentleman. She shook her head, then ran one exquisitely manicured hand through her chin-length, red hair. Like shooting fish in a barrel. But, as her mother always said whenever she retrieved a liquor bottle from the microwave -- under the sink -- beneath the sofa cushions– desperate times call for desperate measures.
Her profession – and she used the term loosely, since she could never put it on her tax forms – had gotten boring of late. Seriously boring. Being the most sought after art thief on the black market had been extremely appealing in her youth, but after the fifth or sixth Van Gogh…she’d lost interest. It wasn’t that she’d had a moral change of heart; hell no, she could care less whose wall Starry Night hung on, but there just wasn’t any challenge in it anymore.
By the time she’d realized it though, she was stuck. At twenty-nine, she had never held a real job in her life. She’d dropped out of college after her second year, when she’d successfully stolen the Ancient Roman urn out of the Walter’s and sold it for twelve million dollars. Who gave a shit about Calculus 102 anyway, even if she was driving to and from class in a brand new Ferrari? Scratch that, especially if she was driving to and from class in a brand new Ferrari.
And that was her other problem. Living off the grid in America these days was damn near impossible. She’d already had to switch her identity and run like hell twice, because her careless flaunting of her wealth tended to raise eyebrows. The old family inheritance/trust fund baby excuse only worked for so long before people started wondering why she wasn’t on the cover of People next to Paris Hilton and the other spoiled little rich girls.
Ninety five percent of Kat’s money now rested safely in offshore banks, scattered across the globe. Ten million here, thirteen million there…she pitied the poor soul who ever tried to track her down. Not even she could access her accounts without jumping through more hoops than Shamu at Sea World. So, when her damned house had burned down in a freak accident last month, she’d been up shit creek without a paddle. She couldn’t make an insurance claim without raising some red flags about her financials. She couldn’t sue the dumbass who’d plowed into her house driving a propane truck for the same reason. She didn’t keep enough funds readily accessible to buy a new place. Always have a rainy day fund, dear, her mother had said whenever she’d revealed another hiding place for her booze.
Kat had never made a rainy day fund. And now, she found herself living in some flea-bag dump motel while she scrambled for money to get herself a new place to live. She was worth at least a billion. And she was currently homeless.
Get a job? Part of her actually wanted to. Despite the fact that most Americans would kill for the independence she had, she found herself wanting a normal, working class life. She’d watch TV and sigh with longing at the women who put on their power suits and black pumps every day for their nine to fives, then came home and cooked dinner for the two point five kids and husband, before putting out the trash just beyond the white picket fence and letting the dog out in the backyard to take a piss. The funny thing about corporate America was that no one wanted to hire a twenty nine year old woman who had no education and zero job experience. Apparently, a name, address, and career objective didn’t make a sufficient resume.
Which brought Kat to the here and now. Though she had, of course, laughed at the invitation to the Plantation House Masquerade Ball – the invitation that mysteriously appeared in her mailbox year after year, regardless of where she was or what name she was going by at the time – she needed money, and she couldn’t be conspicuous about it. A masquerade where all the rich and chi-chi poo-poo’s showed up in disguise on the condition of anonymity? Perfect for snatching up some jewelry and building herself that long overdue rainy day fund. It wasn’t quite the challenge her restless heart longed for but, as her mother used to say whenever she ran out of vodka and had to resort to gin, any port in a storm.
“Wanna dance, sweetness?” the voice materialized out of nowhere, its owner so close that she felt the warm puff of his breath against her ear.
She jumped and whirled around. Son of a bitch. She hadn’t let anyone sneak up on her in years. It seriously pissed her off, even if the culprit had the kind of body that made her want to throw him down and ride him like the mechanical pony outside the grocery store. The man was tall, her 5’5” frame didn’t even top his shoulders. He was broad shouldered and muscular, wearing a sleeveless vest that was left unbuttoned, revealing the smooth, defined planes of his chest and the sculpted six-pack of his abdomen. The ridges of his hips were chiseled lines, forming a ‘v’ below his six-pack. There wasn’t an inch of fat on the man. His skin was a dark, golden color, and his torso was almost entirely hairless, save the flaxen trail that began just beneath his navel and blazed a suggestive path down to the waistband of his black jeans, which hugged his ass so tight they might as well have been painted on. And that ass…good god, it should have been a sin to have an ass that fine.