Cheating At Solitaire.
It was the weekend. Murphy had toddled off to wherever people like him toddled off to for the weekend, Bernice had headed for a weekend at a friend's place in Santa Monica and even Laura had hung up her fedora and settled down to ... well, he wasn't sure what she did at home, but he suspected it ended with her whole life neatly balanced. As for Steele, well, he could hang up the halo for a while and slide from Steele to Spade and then down into Rick Blaine.
He was in Los Angeles. He was a sparrow's stretch from San Francisco. He was footloose and fancy free and he was still the most skilled thief in the northern hemisphere. The possibilities were endless.
The Steele thing was great. He loved it. He was playing Steele, though. It was a movie. It was a game. He didn't have to be Steele at the weekends.
In the elevator, as she charmingly adjusted her scarf and pretended not to notice how much he noticed it, she had smiled and said, "Try not to get arrested." and she hadn't been joking.
He had made no pledge of reformation, no sureties of future conduct. He provided the smile and reassuringly immaculate appearance of her figurehead, his hands never touched the wheel of her ship and of his, he remained the only captain. He was free to do as he wished and right now, he wished to break into a museum of moderate means and liberate something of value.
He hated the way she played fair.
She'd said it with no ulterior motive, just a reminder that he could damage the agency if he were caught. She wouldn't ask on Monday. She would wonder, her eyes would show the doubt, but she wouldn't ask. His weekends were his own and she wouldn't ask with whom he spent them or on which side of the law.
He wanted her to ask with whom, at least. He wanted her to question and interrogate and get jealous if he so much as hinted at female companionship.
He was free and wasn't freedom everything he wanted? No ties except silk ones, no promises, no plans. Wherever he temporarily stashed his stolen hat was his home. Nothing was easier than to just slip out of this city where he had to play Steele and become a little less stainless. He looked at the possibilities he had assembled on the table, guidebooks to little storehouses of portable profits that called to his fingers almost as insistently as did the tendrils of her hair.
If she had feelings for Steele, it was for the myth. He was upright and civilised and didn't tend to burgle art repositories for fun. Steele was dull and all the inclinations of this expert thief and conman ran counter to the image.
Steele didn't know how good it felt to free a tethered painting from the wall where it was admired by people who felt a duty to admire it - people who used words like "energy" and "vivacity" in cold blood - the ones Daniel mocked, Daniel who knew more about real art than any of the fools who paid to see it and more to own it.
To compete with Steele in the eyes of Steele's creator, he would have to quell all natural tendencies but one. He would have to become something he wasn't and give up all the old ways. He would have to show Laura Holt, a woman who would not buy even his best and most polished deceptions that he had integrity, or could acquire it.
There was the De Young Museum in San Francisco. It was perfect. It was sitting there, waiting for a thief worthy of it, and Felicia was far away. It seemed almost rude to make it wait and Laura was never going to ask.
He took off his identity bracelet and dropped it onto the coffee table. Remington was gone. Michael O'Leary could handle the weekend pursuits.
He poured himself a drink and then called the airport and booked a flight. Weekends were weekends and work was work and what happened in San Francisco would never touch Steele.
"Try not to get arrested." Well, when did he ever get arrested? She hadn't said, "Resist temptation." She knew better than to command him against his nature. He wasn't Steele. He could comply with her wishes without damaging his weekend. After all, he tried not to get arrested for purely personal reasons too.
And if on Monday, he told her he had spent the weekend in legal and ethical ways, would she believe him? Of course not! Even if it were true, she'd never believe it, because she saw him as a criminal, first and foremost and ... and proving her right suddenly didn't seem like as much fun anymore.
He called and cancelled the flight. When they asked the name, he almost said Steele, but stopped himself. He wasn't Steele. He was a dozen other people, but didn't meet the qualifications for the paragon that was Steele, but one weekend wouldn't fuse the halo to his skull. He was who he was, whoever the hell that was, and he accepted the fact. He took a pack of cards from a drawer and settled down to cheat at solitaire.