She wanted to pretend the last fifteen minutes hadn’t happened. That she hadn’t overreacted and gotten inappropriately jealous, ignored warnings, been sexually assaulted in a room crowded by people who turned away and let it happen. “I’m furious.” That’s what the acid sear in her belly was.
“I should never have let you walk away.”
“It’s not your fault. I knew what I was doing. A woman getting a drink at a party shouldn’t be a dangerous thing. I don’t need a white knight, and you trying to take the blame doesn’t help.”
“It’s on me. I put you amongst people who come with a warning label. But you showed them who you are—a force to be reckoned with.”
“And why would I care about that?”
“Because after we’re done, you can go on. You won’t be dependent on me. Anyone who can handle Alex Astor can handle anything. You have a new calling card.”
“Like I’m your protégé and I passed a test? Tap, tap on my back, good girl. But that’s all I am, you’ve always been clear about that. I’m a joke to you, a One Night Wife.” That more than anything made her eyes sting. She was the only one confused about where she stood with Cal, about the fact his kisses and caresses were just a performance.
They were nothing, less than a diamond earring lost in the grass to him.
“It’s not clear to me any longer.” He pushed a hand through his hair, a soothing gesture. Why did Cal need soothing? “I want to tear that prick’s ribs open with my bare hands and feed him his own evil heart.” He folded his arms over his chest, self-protective. “I’m not supposed to feel this way about you, Fin.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Finley Cartwright.”
She turned towards the voice. Arguing with Cal was a waste of time. She’d never win with him; they were always on his turf, she was always at a disadvantage. Now, she had to deal with Paris.
“I heard about what happened with Alex and before you get defensive, I want to say I wish you’d hit him harder,” she said. “You’re not hurt?”
Fin shook her head. She didn’t understand what Paris was up to. She braced for the inevitable awfulness coming.
“Good. Yoga is at seven, by the main pool.” Paris poked a finger at Cal. “Admirable restraint. It’s kind of a poor show you didn’t hit him, but thank you, it would’ve really spoiled the official photos if you’d broken Alex’s face.”
Cal grunted a response, and Paris walked on, calling over her shoulder, “We’ll talk about your charity later, Fin. Alex and I will both make it up to you.”
She watched Paris go. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s all a game to them,” Cal said. “And the only way to survive is to create your own rules.”
“That’s what you do.”
He nodded. “You did it, too. You’re a save-yourself heroine.” He looked away. Cal self-conscious, dodging eye contact, was disorienting, and she was unsteady enough.
“Would you like me to take you home?” he asked.
“I’d like to walk on the beach.” And then, if she could get her insides to stop jittering, her stomach to stop rolling, and her head in the game, she had an appointment at seven to get some justice, make some money, and do some good in the world.
Chapter Eighteen
Fin walked toward the beach without waiting for him, but Cal wasn’t letting her out of his sight again until she was locked behind their bedroom door. He wanted to haul her back there now, check her all over for bruises, and put her to bed where she’d be safe.
Knowing Alex had attacked Fin had aged him. It was diabolically wrong. He didn’t feel right in his body. His skin was too tight, and he didn’t know what to do with his hands. He’d wanted to pull that tent down on everyone’s heads and rip into Alex. But all his bravado was too little and too late. Fin had saved herself because she was smart and quick, capable and ready. And lucky. Jesus fucking Christ. She should not have needed to be any of those things in that moment. He’d let himself get distracted; he’d let her walk away from him.
And on top of all of that, he’d been as self-serving and arrogant as the marks he professed to hate. Fin no longer needed any of what he’d brought her into; not the events and parties, not the unsavory people, or their dirty money. And certainly, not the risk. He could finance D4D from his own pocket now.
He stumbled on a runner of grass atop the sand dune and went to one knee. He could hardly see straight for the effort of remaining calm.
He got up and brushed the leg of his trousers down, then took his shoes and socks and suit coat off and left them at the edge of the dune with her sandals and purse. Fin was almost at the shoreline, a glittering silhouette against the thick darkness.
He shouldn’t have kissed her like he wanted to keep her. Shouldn’t have let their arrangement drift into more if he wasn’t prepared to love her right. It’s not like he was unaware it was happening. It’s not like she was blind to it, either. He wanted to eat his own heart for the mixed signals he kept sending and the damage he’d allowed to happen to her.
He caught up with her as a wave flowed over her toes. She jumped back.
“Cold?” He bent to roll his trousers up. The dizziness he felt wasn’t anything to do with a rush of blood to his head. He felt like shit and was lost for eloquence. There was no easy way to talk about any of this. He wanted to wrap Fin in his arms and make ridiculous promises about her safety, her life, but he hadn’t earned that right and empty sentiment wasn’t what she needed.
They stood at the shore and let the waves lap at their legs, the sand suck at their feet, bury their heels, toes, ankles, and wedge them in place. Not being able to touch her and understanding why she didn’t want that was like having his fingernails ripped out, his hands made numb and clumsy.
“I’m stuck,” she said after an agonizing silence.
He was stuck, too, between truth and fiction, lies and duty, between what his heart wanted and what was possible to have. Between Fin and a future that wasn’t turning him into the very thing he despised.
“Can I help?” He held his hand out, naked hope she’d take it, if only for balance while she pulled free of the sand.
She put her hand in his but didn’t otherwise move and just that contact, light, tentative, eased the tightness in his chest.
They stood there, the sand burying their feet, slick and cold, the sea bringing foam and salt fragrance and everything unsaid swirling between them.
She squeezed his fingers. “I’m not supposed to feel like forgiving you. I’m not supposed to be angry with you in the first place. You didn’t make Alex a predator. It’s like I’ve been tipped upside down and shaken, and all of my emotions are tumbling about. I can’t tell what’s going to come out. I’m jealous of Paris for hitting on you and furious about Alex, and mad with you and confused about what your kisses mean and wanting more of them. I’m hating you for how unruffled you always are, and suspicious you’re not calm at all. That you’re only holding onto your temper because you’re afraid of what might happen if you let go.”
He gripped her hand firmly. Fear had kicked him so far off his orbit he was struggling to regain his balance.
“Mostly, I’m confused because on top of all that, I badly want to go to bed with you, but sleeping with you would be a fatal mistake because I think you’re about to end things with me.”
Keeping distance between them was supposed to ensure Fin didn’t become collateral damage, but she was getting hurt anyway, and he was letting it happen. He might as well have been eating the beach for how dry his mouth was.
Another set of waves hit the shore and swept up over their feet, another layer of sand deposited. The sea was a dark maw but for swaths of reflected light arcing out from the half-moon and the row of mansion homes behind them. So much glamorous darkness, so little clarity. That’s what his life would feel like without Fin.
“I think you’re stuck, too.” She threaded their fingers together, but her eyes were on the ho
rizon. “You want to be with me, but you won’t let it happen.”
“It would change us.” His regular sad, tired excuse, from a time when he’d thought he was in control.
“It’s sex. We both want it. I don’t understand why it’s complicated. People were fucking behind potted palms up there.”
“It wouldn’t just be sex with you.”
“What if I promise not to fall in love with you?”
He cleared his throat; it was choked up with lies and deceit and a life he couldn’t lightly drag her into. And a single brilliant truth. “I couldn’t promise not to fall in love with you.”
Because he was already there.
She grunted in annoyance. “I see why you’re stuck then, because falling in love with me would be a tragic waste of your time.”
“Ah, Finley.” He’d gotten it wrong in choosing her, in thinking he could remain aloof and unaffected, pull all the strings and cut them when necessary. The strings were tied around his heart and knotted so tight he could barely breathe.
“I can’t feel my toes any longer, and I can’t work out how to make you take a chance on me.”
She was the best of what he needed for the game and the worst because of how he’d come to need her for himself. “You only have to look at me and smile.”
“That is not true.”
“It’s the truest thing I know, and it terrifies me, Fin.”
She shook her head. “You can’t say things like that.” Disgust in her voice. “You can’t.”
“It’s not easy for someone like me.”
“A stubborn jackass. A power jerk.”
“A Sherwood. It’s difficult to explain.”
She pulled her feet out of the sand, one by one, and then dropped his hand. “You’re not going to try either.”
“You stood on that barstool at the Blarney, and you made me notice you. You sat beside me, and you intrigued me. You kissed me, and you had my full attention. But I had to work out what to do with you.” God. Fuck. In constructing lie upon lie, he’d forgotten how to be a human being and treat people with respect.
“Before or after you dumped me at the hotel.”
“You were worth more to me than a one-night stand.” She had to see that. “I choose you.”
“I seem to recall, I chose you, jerk face.”
“To fuck with your ex, yes. I choose you for more.”
“All the way back then,” she scoffed, disbelief and scorn mashed together in her voice.
“From the moment you sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in that blonde wig, in that dress that fit you like a slick of daylight.”
She looked at him for the first time since they’d arrived at the shore. “You never saw me in the Marilyn dress, Zeke did.”
“I never told you I saw you in that dress. I never told you I was your Mr. Anonymous.”
She stumbled backwards in her haste to move. He snatched her arm to stop her falling, and she wrenched it out of his grip and pulled her feet free of the sand.
“You bastard. You set me up. It was a test. For what? To see if I could shill for you, to be your party favor.”
“Yes.” The truth was ugly, but it was all he had.
There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of waves rhythmically hitting the shore to the distant backbeat of the DJ’s tunes.
“Now I understand.”
“You wanted this as much as I did, and you had the skill to make it happen. That’s what I was testing. It would’ve been appallingly unfair to you otherwise.”
“At least you had the decency not to fuck me.” She broke off and left his side to walk along the shore on the hard-packed damp sand.
Now she understood that, too. He let her get ahead and then followed. All his abilities to manipulate the truth dissolved in the face of her anger and loathing. When she stopped, he did, too, but he allowed the distance between them to remain.
She spun to face him, hands thrown out in front. “I’ll never be anything but a tool for you. Your disposable fake wife.”
He pushed a hand into his hair. If he could yank out a handful, he would. He needed to do something with the things he was feeling, and he couldn’t shout, or he’d spook her further.
“I’ve been trying to tell myself that’s all you are since we began. I don’t think of you that way. I tried, but it’s better for you not to get too close to me, to have deniability.”
“You love to talk in riddles. I can’t listen to you anymore.” She took off again, her feet squeaking in the sand.
“We were meant to use each other.” His voice carried easily, and it stopped her. “It was meant to be simple to cut you loose.” He’d caught up with her by the time he said, “It’s not fucking easy. I would keep you forever if I could, if only to hear you laugh, see the pleasure you take out of working your favor with a purse or an earring or a tilt of your head. Watch your confidence grow, expand until you shone with it.” He said all that to her back, but now she turned to face him. “You already shine with it. You underestimated yourself. I never did.”
She took a step backwards, shaking her head, wrapping her arms around herself. “What does all this mean?”
It meant she was upset, and he couldn’t comfort her. “You were just assaulted. You’re angry, hurt, and chilled. You’re disappointed in me, and you have a right to be.” It meant he needed to think about what he said next because he couldn’t afford to be impulsive. “We should go back.”
They walked along the shore the way they’d come, collected their gear, and went on to the pool house, Fin wearing his coat. They didn’t speak. He didn’t try to touch her because if he did, the only impulse would be to risk it all with her.
Without Fin, he had a great life. High uncertainty, but big rewards. He was a bad guy who did good work; redirecting money from worse men to causes that made the world a better place. He didn’t feel guilt. He was proud of the work he did. Mom’s albatrosses were his willingly and yet for all that, he ached for an incandescent slice of something all the way honest and real with a woman he cherished—with Fin.
She spoke when the grass became a pathway to the pool house and they were almost on the blue glow of the pool itself. “Alex wanted everyone to see what he was doing. He wanted to hurt you as much as me.”
He nodded, and she took a step toward him. “And he did hurt you. It’s in your voice and the way you don’t know what to do with your hands. You’re not okay, and you do care about me.”
He reached for her because he couldn’t not. She came into his arms with a moan, and his blood started coursing again. “More than it’s safe to say.” There was salt spray on her skin and in her hair, and as his arms closed around her, he felt her body mold to his.
“In the morning, I want to take Paris’s money. I want to take Alex’s, too. Tonight, I want you to hold me while we fall asleep.”
It was the very least ease he could give her.
They went hand in hand to their assigned bedroom, and Cal felt a violent kind of satisfaction when he locked the world of brutal entitlement out. He used the bathroom while she unpinned her hair. Then they swapped. While her shower water ran, he changed into sweats and a T-shirt and channel surfed waiting for her, waiting for his brain to come up with answers. But he couldn’t think past his duplicity and rage, Fin’s hurt and confusion, and how he’d brought that disaster on. She reappeared with a cloud of steam, her hair brushed out all around her shoulders and faded kitten print pjs washed soft and shapeless.
She pulled at the leg of the shorts that went almost to her knees. “Sexy huh?”
He didn’t have it in him to joke. His money would buy her lace and silks and satins, but naked would be all the riches he would ever want.
“Get in the bed.” He turned the TV off, ditched a bunch of decorative pillows, and pulled back the covers.
She crawled over the bed from the foot and flopped on her back. He got in beside her, lay on his side looking down on her. “You want to spoon or cuddle?”
Her answer was to put a hand to his shoulder and push and keep coming at him until he was on his back and she was where she wanted to be. Head on his shoulder, leg hitched over his thighs, hand on his hard, black heart.
He didn’t hesitate to hold her there, to kiss the top of her head, and was grateful she fell asleep easily. An hour later, when she rolled away, he got up, took a room key, and locked her in as he left.
It was two in the morning, and the party in the main house had wound down. No one was interested in a sun lounge by the pool. He made himself comfortable and waited for a sense of clarity to hit. In that bed inside the house was the woman he wanted to be with more than he wanted the use of all his limbs. It was the complication he could no longer avoid. He wasn’t going to let her go, but he was a Sherwood and that brought with it obligations and constraints.
His first obligation was to protect the family and its business. That came above all else.
It meant he could casually fuck his way across the entire country, but other than find a steady partner from one of the other alliance families, that’s all he could do. He couldn’t get close to anyone, love anyone sincerely, without also deceiving them as to who he was.
And he cared too much for Fin to keep cheating her.
At four in the morning, the pool lights turned off. He could hear the sea. He could almost feel the gears in his brain clanking. He couldn’t make Fin his without telling her the truth. He couldn’t tell her the truth without breaking a sacred oath to the family. And he couldn’t ensure she was safe and happy either way.
“For fuck’s sake,” he told the moon. He’d never felt anything like this before. He was in love with Finley Cartwright, and they were a lie. He didn’t know what to do about that, and he had no idea what she wanted from him other than sex.
He was a con artist, one of the best in the business, and that meant he was a master storyteller, but he couldn’t puzzle out a simple boy-meets-girl, boy-falls-for-girl plot to save his own life. Fin didn’t believe sex would change things between them. Why couldn’t he think that way?
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