One Night Wife

by Ainslie Paton

  He failed at faking it.

  She fucking kissed him again.

  She laughed and dragged her teeth over his bottom lip, and he had to hold her then, because she was vibrating with excitement, had to wrap an arm around her, span his palm about the back of her neck, soften his lips and kiss her back, because he was throbbing, too.

  That’s all it took for don’t-do-this to become don’t-stop-this.

  He was backed against a wall with a live wire in his hands, with a bolt of lightning on his tongue, and a complete loss of his better intentions. Gone. Gone to her champagne taste and her hot enthusiasm. Gone to her honest desire and her kitten whimpers. Hero to zero in the space of a lick. Hands on her skin, pressing her fast to him, riding the surge of passion with the skill of a thief and the remorselessness of a liar.

  When she broke from his lips to moan, to bend her knee, to ease off a shoe, he had enough sense left to steady her, to strangle his own impulses.

  “Finley, no, we have to stop.”

  The shoe clattered to the floor and she wobbled, hands to his chest for balance. “We can go somewhere.”

  Out of here, for sure. Somewhere public he’d be forced to remember how to behave with her.

  She wrestled the shoe back on and led him by the hand down a corridor to another door that brought them out in the vestibule. Before he could explain he’d lost his head and why they had to stop, John Alington interrupted.

  “Been trying to get to you all night, Cal. You got a minute now?”

  He kept has arm around Fin, hoping that would dissuade Alington, but he was one of those inconsiderate assholes who thought the world revolved around him. He owned a TV station and a couple of magazines. He’d been accused of sexual harassment over a dozen times. The victims were threatened with the worst kind of intimidation until they withdrew their complaints while Alington won industry awards. That made him a whale of an investor Cal wanted to noodle. But first, he wanted to throat punch Alington for the way he was looking at Fin as if she was a pretty thing he wanted to paw at and wouldn’t care if he broke.

  “A word about Everlasting, Cal.” He’d roped Alington to his latest scheme well. The man wanted to drop money on the promise of a cure for aging. “I know you say it’s not a safe investment, but I want in.”

  “John, I’m done with business for the night.” He looked at Fin. She was business and he needed to close the deal with her, but she made him feel drunk: reflexes shot, internal engineering malfunctioning, senses dulled to the point where knocking out one of his prize whales and taking her home to bed was a good idea.

  He was conning himself.

  “I want to be a first-round investor. Ground floor stake. I don’t want to hear any excuses why that can’t happen.”

  “I’m not talking business now.”

  “You’re always talking business, Sherwood.” Alington favored Fin with a predatory smile. “I’ll see you at the Langely’s anniversary party,” he said and left to join his sour-faced wife.

  “He’s a peach,” Fin said. “He’s one of your trout, and you just upped the stakes with him. You sent him away.”

  Cal caressed Fin’s bare shoulder, satin under his fingers to soothe the violence John Alington put in his heart. “He’s a whale and it’s a tried and true formula.”

  “What is Everlasting?”

  “Gene splicing. It’s a start up business we’re capital raising for.” It was a paper business with no staff, no premises, no product to sell, and absolutely no cure for disease or aging. It was the one thing he never spoke of tonight, which ensured it was the only thing all those trout and whales wanted to talk about.

  “Are you a workaholic, Cal?”

  He turned to face Fin. This was goodnight. It had to be goodbye because he couldn’t be detached around her. She’d passed every test he’d set her, but in succeeding, she’d made herself much more than the girl who’d made a surprise pass at him in a bar. The experiment was over. He still had to find a new wife candidate, and Fin couldn’t be it, because she was under his skin and he couldn’t let that happen again on a job, and certainly not the Everlasting job. Especially as it was turning out to be the one that could rebuild his own fortune.

  “Sadly, yes. I’m Caleb Sherwood, and I’m a workaholic.”

  “What do you do for fun?” A hand to the center of his chest. “Wait, I know. Adventure sports.”

  He peeled her hand away and held it. “No, that’s Zeke. I like my body parts to remain attached at all times.”

  “Visit exotic places?”

  “It’s mostly work related.”

  “Collect fast cars and faster women.”

  “I seem to have forgotten to do that.” He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. “Must remedy it immediately.”

  She made her eyes go wide. “I’m collectable. One of a kind. Impeccable condition, but I have a requirement to be serviced regularly.” She blinked up at him, chin lifted, head tilted, angling for a kiss.

  He bopped her nose. “You’re funny, Finley Cartwright.”

  “You do this”—she waved a hand to take in the venue, the stream of folk leaving, the cars lined up to take them to penthouses and mansions, hotel suites worth thousands a night, and airstrips where private jets waited—“for fun.”

  For a long time, the confidence game had been his work and his enjoyment, his adventure sport and his exotic places. He collected scores, made trophies of his conned mark’s silences, and celebrated their willingness to come back for more of the same. That was before Dad’s stroke and retirement, when the list of good works they funded was more manageable and the money they brought in was always enough, before Mom went vigilante and Rory pressed for more, and in admitting to a lie of omission, he’d betrayed his family.

  “I need a vacation.”

  “What a coincidence,” Fin put a hand to her throat, fingers fanned out across her collarbone. “I vacation.”

  He made a shocked sound. “What a coincidence.”

  She shifted on her feet, and he remembered she’d said they were killing her. “In fact, now that we’ve got the money, I need to visit our project partner agencies in Africa and Asia. You could come with.”

  He unkinked the piece of hair that’d twisted around her earring. Seeing anywhere with Fin was his idea of a good time. “I have responsibilities.” He signaled for his car.

  “Don’t you ever get to bunk off?”

  Twice, lately. In an alley off an Irish pub and in the service corridor of the Met. “Never.”

  “You kiss like you’re on a mission to make me forget I’ve been kissed before. What are we going to do about that?”

  He would catch her in a web of lies and deceit, a tangle of false promises and glittery hopes. He liked her too much for that. He lowered his head and kissed her forehead. “It’s time to go home.”

  He left to tip the parking attendant, and when he turned back, she was standing on the red carpet with her shoes in her hand. “Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.”

  “Marilyn?”

  “Yes.” He walked her down the carpet to the car. “That was the most amazing night of my life. I don’t want it to end,” she said as he opened the rear door.

  “What do you want?”

  “More.”

  Didn’t everyone. He wanted more with Fin than he’d wanted anything for himself for a long time, and he was a guy who had everything money could buy or his wits could appropriate. “It’s a modern curse.”

  He closed her in the car, the window rolling down immediately. “Am I going to see you again?”

  “You don’t need me anymore.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re my spotter. I can’t noodle on my own.”

  “Trust yourself.”

  She shook her head. “It’s your stage, I’m just an actor walking it, waiting your direction.”

  That’s exactly what he’d wanted in a One Night Wife. Shame he and Fin simply weren’t compatible.

&nb
sp; Chapter Nine

  Lenny sat away from the laptop with a sky-is-falling look on her face. “No, Fin, no.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “I wasn’t speaking in riddles. It’s pretty clear what I mean.”

  Fin pulled at her hair. After last night, touching it had become a habit. “Not to me.”

  “There’s a hundred and fifty-eight thousand dollars here.”

  “Two of that was from being Marilyn.” She left off hovering over Lenny and sat. Her feet still ached, and she had a whopper of a blister on the back of one heel.

  “Stop it, Fin.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re upset.” This was the kind of marvel Lenny would never expect her to be able to pull off, so why wasn’t she outrageously happy? “This is the best thing that could’ve happened to us.”

  “Did you rob a bank? Where did all this money come from?”

  “It was hard to keep track of their names. I’m going to have to work that out backwards.” What was the problem here, dammit? She’d planned a victory celebration lunch, but Lenny looked like she might barf.

  “We can’t touch this money. You have to give it back.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Fin sat forward. “We’re not giving it back. I have to work out how to get more of it.”

  “More!”

  “It was easy. I did everything Cal told me to do, and the money fell in my lap exactly as he said it would.”

  Lenny held her head in her hands. “This can’t be right. It’s totally fishy.”

  Fin choked back a laugh. “They were catfish, trout, and whale.”

  “What?” That came out of Lenny like a sob.

  “Cal picked the men I pitched to. He knew they’d be soft touches. And then he egged them on. There was all this rich person macho posturing going down. I couldn’t pull this off on my own. Cal is the yellow brick road to the money.”

  “What does that make you, the Wizard of Oz?”

  “I’m Dorothy or Toto or who cares, but you’re being the Wicked Witch and the Cowardly Lion. And D4D isn’t in the red anymore. We’re not a month from having to close.” And they’d be even more stable, able to help more families, make more loans than they’d projected if she could convince Cal to let her do it again. “So, what’s the fricking problem?”

  Lenny closed the laptop. “I thought you’d come back with a few thousand and be discouraged, and we’d come up with something else.”

  “You thought I was going to quit.” That sucked. It was vinegar in her mouth.

  “I didn’t think you were going to pull off a miracle.”

  Fin shrugged. She wasn’t quitting. Not anymore. Lenny would have to get used to the idea. “I want to do it again.”

  “How?”

  “I have to convince Cal he needs me.” That sounded possible until she caught Lenny’s expression of my-parachute-has-a-busted-ripcord. “Don’t look at me like that. He does need me. I just don’t know how yet. He’s like Edward Lewis in Pretty Woman. He does all this captain of industry work, and he never gets a break. He’s tired and a little bad-tempered, and he needs to have some fun.”

  “Grass.”

  “You mean weed?” Cal wasn’t drinking last night. Would he enjoy a toke?

  “No. I mean grass. Didn’t Vivian make Edward take off his shoes and walk on the grass?”

  Could she stroll into Sherwood with a sod of turf and get Cal to walk on it? “Not helpful.” She slipped off her shoes and wriggled her toes—that blister wasn’t any smaller.

  “Take the man to lunch.”

  “I think he can buy his own lunch.” He could buy his own chain of restaurants.

  “Take Cal to lunch to thank him for helping us.”

  Mid-wriggle she looked at Lenny. “Oh, holy cow, yes. I can pack a picnic and take him to Central Park.” Genius.

  It was too late to do that today, but not too late to call Sherwood and find out if Cal was going to be around tomorrow. She made the call and recognized Camille’s voice.

  “Cal. On a picnic.” Camille laughed, a sharp unexpected sound like a bite of Honeycrisp apple. “I doubt Cal has been on a picnic since he was a kid, but you’re welcome to tempt him.”

  When she arrived at Sherwood before lunch hour the next day, Camille wasn’t laughing. She motioned Fin to a seat and then said to another woman standing at the reception desk, “It’s clogging my sinus,” waving her hand over the smoke spiral of a burning incense stick.

  “But it’s galangal and gardenia. It’s anti-trickster incense. It’s supposed to break curses and protect against evil spirits.”

  “Please take it away, Tresna.”

  Tresna picked up the incense holder and turned to Fin. “Sorry, it was meant to be a joke.” She pulled a face. She had Cal and Zeke’s dark hair and blue, blue eyes. She had to be related.

  “Are you Cal’s sister?”

  “Yeah, but don’t hold that against me.” She licked her fingers and snuffed the burning stick out. “Wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked that. That’s the family curse, to look like Dad. Only Halsey escaped it.”

  Fin watched her leave. Halsey wasn’t your everyday name. It wasn’t Pete or Mike or John. What was the likelihood of hearing that name twice in the same week, and it being a different person?

  “Cal is on a call, but he knows you’re here,” said Camille.

  “Does Cal have a brother called Halsey?”

  She nodded while answering a call. “Sherwood Venture Capital. This is Camille. How may I help you?”

  Well that was something.

  Fin waited, worried her deli-bought sandwiches would get soggy and her bottles of ginger beer lose their chill. She smoothed the skirt of her dress. It wasn’t office ready. It was a fifties throwback with a full circle skirt, made for sitting pretty on her borrowed tartan picnic rug.

  By the time Cal appeared, she’d started to fret about this brilliant idea. He’d lied to her. Halsey was his brother. How many of the other people she’d pitched had a family relationship with the Sherwoods? Maybe Lenny had been right to think something was off.

  “Finley,” Cal said, striding across the white expanse of foyer. He looked far too pleased to see her. She stood so when he arrived he’d get the full effect of her dress, ponytail, and lace-up, polka-dot, Mary Jane shoes.

  He reached for her hand, and she forgot to be annoyed with him. “What are you doing here looking like an extra from Happy Days?”

  She held up her basket, the tartan rug on top. “I’m Vivian, and I came to take you to lunch.” He frowned, so before he could object she said, “It’s to thank you for all you’ve done for us.”

  He let go of her hand. “You’re who?”

  “You’re Edward and I’m—never mind. You have a brother named Halsey, and I pitched Halsey with the art deco cufflinks, and I can’t help thinking they’re the same person. I feel like I was set up, but I still want to take you out for a picnic lunch.” Because she was officially starstruck by Cal Sherwood.

  He reached for the basket, and she let him take it. “Come with me.”

  They went down the same central corridor and past the room where she’d learned about W words and fantasized about unprofessional activities happening on the table, right to the corner office.

  There was a big squishy, brown leather couch and a glass topped desk with a massive screen on it, and the view was over the park.

  He put the basket on the desk with a heavy enough hand the rattan squeaked.

  “First off. I like your outfit, but I don’t know who Vivian and Edward are. Secondly, the Halsey you pitched is my brother. Did you think I’d let you go into that room and pitch cold without a dress rehearsal?” He shook his head as if that was just damnable. “I was going to tell you, but I thought it might throw you off, and you were happy. I didn’t want you to think it wasn’t real. Also”—he pushed his hand through his hair—“you distracted me with those fucking incendiary kisses. I can’t come to lunch wi
th you, Fin.”

  He snapped that last part out, so she knew he was irritated. What did he have to be angsty about? “Why can’t you come to lunch?”

  “How do you know about Halsey?”

  She pointed down the corridor toward reception. “Your sister had incense.”

  He looked at the ceiling. “That explains everything.”

  “It’s only lunch.”

  “No, it’s not.” He waved a hand at her, up and down, expression all hot and bothered. “It’s you in that outfit sent to drive me mad. It’s you being a distraction again. Doing your triple threat thing.”

  She tapped the basket. “It’s a sandwich and a ginger beer.” No one had ever called her a triple threat.

  “You have a rug.”

  As if that was the problem here. “For the grass.”

  “There’s not going to be any grass.”

  “Figures.” He was a big grumpy, stick-up-the-ass, can’t-use-a-W-word, scared-off-by-kisses… “You said you weren’t having a good time. I wanted to give you some fun.”

  “You want to give me heartburn.” He stalked to the door and closed it.

  “I don’t know why you’re closing that.” At least when she opened it to leave, she could make an event out of it.

  “So the rest of the office won’t know I’m having a picnic.”

  “What, in here?” Trout faced, temperamental…

  He picked up the basket. “Can’t do it without grass?”

  She might be starstruck over him, but she wasn’t stupid. “Not sure I want to do it with you.”

  “Oh, you want to do it with me.” He put the basket on the floor, pulled the rug off the top, and snapped it out so it floated down over the carpet. He turned to face her. “You want to do it with me so badly, any minute now, you’re going to shove me up against a wall and stick your tongue down my throat.”

  Ah screw this. “If my tongue got that far it had help.” She was out of here.

  She took two steps around him, and he touched her arm. “Pretty Woman.”

  She didn’t look at him. “Is that a compliment?”

  He used a finger to turn her chin. He was mad, and he was not mad, and she was the same. “Yeah.”