Fin was spectacular, everything he’d hoped in his wildest plotting she’d be. But he’d forgotten himself tonight. He’d been careless with her. He should never have danced with her like that. They’d both enjoyed it too much, and his change in temperature when the lights came up had confused her. It confused him. If his adrenaline had spiked any higher, he might’ve blacked out from the sheer overload of sexual tension.
Those house lights coming on reminded him how in the dark Fin was about who he was and what he was doing.
He was awestruck by her performance and hated having to send her away in the VIP room, but he’d needed to concentrate on his whales, and she would have split his focus too easily. Once Belling asked about Fin’s charity, he’d had to use the right amount of nonchalance and keenness to tip the man’s inquiry from curiosity to conviction before the techno funk music forced Belling to quit the event.
As soon as that happened, he’d set off in search of Fin, not worried he wouldn’t find her, because she stood out in any crowd, and there was an unfathomable pulsing pull under his skin whenever she was around. It worked like a divining rod. But he should never have put his hands on her like he did, and now he’d have to pretend it was nothing, simply two people enjoying the music, acting the part.
Red Light. He braked hard. Tires squealed. Fuck.
Fin shattered his attention without being anywhere near.
Those brake lights in front reminded him how in the dark she needed to stay for her safety, for his, and what a fucking fool he was for being more than a little in love with her and wanting to show it.
Home. Drink. Snack, he was starving. TV on. Remote to hand. Sleep was a long way off. He flicked past a dozen channels, nothing catching his attention, and left the screen tuned to a Bond movie, Daniel Craig being suave.
It was the game; that’s all it was. He’d been at it so long he’d lost the thrill that’d come with taking money from people who should know better than to give it, but with Fin by his side, he felt reinvigorated. She made it fun again.
Of course, the future would be without her, because contrary to its name, the Everlasting con wouldn’t go on forever, and with Belling roped, it would move more quickly now. One Night Wives weren’t for forever, and he needed to stop acting like forever was an option with Fin. They had one, maybe two more events left.
There was always Plan B. He needed another drink. He swapped Bond for football.
Plan B: they could fuck.
In Plan B, he’d have total access to her full lips and her hesitantly aggressive kisses. He’d have the freedom to put his hands on her body in places he’d been smart enough to avoid. Her throat, her face, her breasts, her ass, her stomach, the hot sweet center of her. That would be the kickoff. The main event would open by stripping her naked, progress through tasting her skin, making her unravel, getting her wet, and touch down in the insanely mindful beauty of being inside her and fucking her senseless.
And she wanted all this. She’d asked for it up front, and she’d been disappointed, confused by his reticence since he’d wised up at the hotel.
What exactly was wrong with Plan B? It would be a hell of a lot of fun for both of them. And Fin was right, lately he’d been starved of a good time.
He got up and poured another drink, unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it out of his pants, and changed the channel to a wrestling smackdown. Everything was wrong with Plan B. Sex was an agent of change. They wouldn’t be the same people if they crossed that line. He’d be perpetually distracted, for one thing, looking for that next moment when he could get her alone and kickoff all over again. She’d start to trust him in a way that could hurt her, and she deserved better than that.
What undid things with Rory was an omission, a sleight of hand. With Fin, it would be a deliberate, premeditated lie, the desecration of her whole understanding of everything they’d done together.
There was no greater con than the one he was running on her. If he brought her closer without telling her the truth, he’d only amplify the deception.
Plan B, addendum. Tell her the truth. Fin was implicated now to the tune of several million, with more to come. She had an incentive to keep quiet. They could partner up in every sense of the word, and it needn’t end with the Everlasting con.
Plan B addendum to the addendum. Fin would be horrified. She would try to give the money back, which would bring Lenny along with Cal’s key marks into the picture. Fin could decide to turn to the cops. Complex legal wrangling would ensue. It would include discrediting her as a failed actor, a grifter, and desperate businesswoman with links to known felon Jeffrey Bradshaw.
The noise of legal wrangling would create the wrong kind of attention for Sherwood. All current cons would be threatened. As would all ongoing welfare and environmental projects. Every member of the alliance families would be out for his blood. He’d be ostracized, quite possibly castrated by Mom, as well as being functionally destitute and on the lam.
Worse, so much worse than Fin hating him, would be that she’d hate herself for falling for the con.
He couldn’t do that to her. He liked her too much. He respected her.
Ergo, he had to keep his fucking, needy hands off her.
Job approved places only—hands, arms, shoulders, the small of her back. He couldn’t put his fingers to the column of her neck again or touch her face. He couldn’t align her body against his in a simulation of the sex he wanted to have with her again.
Ever.
He was out of plans. He didn’t care for the theatrical muscled outrage playing out on screen. Another con, just like Bond. He shut the set down. On Monday, he had a family board meeting and that would be enough to remind him of his priorities.
He buried himself in work and the gym for the rest of the week, irrationally wishing Fin would show up with a picnic basket, knowing he’d been treating their time together like dates; trying to hide behind briefing packs and arbitrary rules like not walking her to her door, not calling her during the week.
Friday took its sweet damn time rolling around, and it was a reprieve from his indecision when it was time to pick up the Aston Martin and collect Fin.
If she slammed him for how unevenly he’d treated her at the XRad party, he’d apologize, explain that it wasn’t easy containing his feelings around her, and remind them both why that was important. Goddamn, why was that again? Like a man about to lose his pay packet to a slot machine, he was fatally addicted to spending time with Fin. He should be banned from the casino.
She wore an elegant, black dress that hugged her knees as she slid into the front seat. Seeing her smile at him did unreasonable things inside his chest involving his breath and his heart rate. Her hair was pulled away from her face and knotted at the back of her head, and there were small gold hoops in her ears. She would ease into the gallery fundraiser event with style and grace.
“I checked the traffic. We should make good time to Beacon.” He’d allowed two hours for the ninety-minute trip. It would be a late night. Ordinarily he’d have stayed over, made a weekend of it.
She watched the world outside the car and was quiet. He said something noncommittal, oddly tongue-tied because everything he wanted to say was inappropriate. I’ve been thinking about you all week. I’m so glad to see you. I am the least trustworthy person you’ve ever met. I wish things could be different.
They drove in silence, Lemonade as a backing track to his unease.
He was the pro, but Fin floored him with her professional take.
“Is everything okay?” he said when he couldn’t stand her unaccustomed silence any longer.
“I have a bit of a headache.”
He shot a glance at her. “Am I your headache?”
“No. I thought I might be yours.”
Mutual awkwardness. She was the highlight of his year. “How was your week?” That was a safer topic.
She talked then about donor registers and partner charities on the ground in Africa, the Middle East, an
d Asia, and the new batch of loans that was going ahead, and then made his foot stutter on the accelerator. “I hated that you thought I wasn’t serious about D4D, but you were right.”
He winced. “Did I say that?” Shit, yes, he had, when she was thrown by the excess of the XRad party. “That was unnecessarily harsh.” A useful but unforgiveable manipulation. “I shouldn’t have said it, and I don’t believe it’s true.”
“Wow, that sounded like an apology.”
So there was no question, he said, “I’m sorry, Fin.”
She poked him in the ribs. “I like it. But you made me think, and I figured out I’m still a flake. I liked the idea of running a charity and what that said about me as a person more than I appreciated what it means. I liked the romance of it but not the reality. Before we met, I was one of those people who’d wear colored ribbons, or tip a bucket of ice on themselves, or post on social media about supporting a cause because it’s fashionable. I was an armchair activist, wearing a pink pussyhat I knitted myself, except I was standing on a barstool and it was all about me, not the cause. D4D isn’t a fashion. It’s not a project to rehabilitate my self-worth, but that’s how I was treating it. I was using it to show people that I’m not a failure.”
He looked across at her. Eyes down on her lap, fingers twisting a plain ring. He wanted to pull over so he could yank her into his arms and sell his apology in a way that made her never doubt herself again.
“I spent part of this week angry with you and part of it coming to terms with the fact that you were right. It was a game for me. I don’t want it to be a game anymore.”
“Where does that leave us?” He was ready to look for an exit, turn the car around and take her home if that’s what she needed.
She smiled for the first time since she’d gotten in the car. “Halfway to Beacon and maybe friends.”
Friends would be a good outcome, better than he deserved. Friends would make things easier when they were on the job and easier when they weren’t, and friendships drifted apart, which is what would ultimately need to happen.
But he failed at friendship, because inside the Dia gallery, while they were walking through the exhibits, he touched Fin too often, stood too close, watched her too intently. He had a legitimate excuse. She was pale and not herself. She didn’t make funny, witty comments about the collection of minimalist and conceptual art as they moved from room to room in the old box printing factory, and she didn’t drink anything stronger than sparkling water. When they were around others she snapped back into her essential self and won new admirers and donors, but she visibly wilted when they were alone.
“It’s more than a headache,” he said, steering her into a space filled with crushed car parts and lit with the green glow of neon.
She waved it off. “I’m a little tired, that’s all.” But she leaned on him when he wrapped his arm around her back and during the formal dinner, she picked at five-star food, eating very little and barely saying a word.
By the time the speeches began, her skin looked translucent and she was slumped in her chair.
Cal turned her face to his. “You’re sick, my darling. I’m taking you home.”
“No. This is nothing. I’m fine.”
He had people to see; the whole point of being here was to tighten the net around the Everlasting investors, hint at even bigger gains from the fake gene therapy company, and up the stakes. “It’s not nothing.” She could barely sit straight.
She leaned in and lowered her voice. “I have menstrual cramps. It will pass.”
Ah. The women in his life had never suffered like this, occasionally felt low or off-color, but Fin was not all right, and he was not making her suffer any further. “I don’t care what it is. We’re not staying.”
He made their excuses, and she didn’t protest. She was unsteady on her feet and leaned heavily on him on the way to the car, and when she groaned as he helped her sit, he made a decision.
Hudson House was close by. It was a quaint bed and breakfast guest house. He’d noticed the vacancy sign as they’d passed. He’d take a couple of rooms, let Fin sleep, and they could go home in the morning.
She’d closed her eyes when he’d driven off, but when he stopped again, she opened them. “Where are we?”
“We’re going to get a room so you can be comfortable and rest.”
She peered at the big Federalist mansion with its wide porch, welcome lights on. “No, I’ll be fine.”
“Fin you’re shivering and miserable, and it’s ninety minutes until I can get you home. You can take a shower, warm up, sleep. Do you have what you need?” He’d break into a drug store to get whatever she needed, if he had to.
She nodded, let him help her out of the car, and wandered about the large living room of the house while he booked them into the last vacant room. It had a couch that would do for him.
She didn’t even notice the honeymoon feel to the Rose Garden room. She stumbled to the bed and barely got her shoes off before collapsing on it and curling in on herself.
“Can I get you anything?”
“Maybe they have a hot water bottle.”
In the time it took him to phone and ask, she was on her knees in the bathroom heaving.
When she got in the shower, he went back to the car to retrieve his go-bag from the trunk. It was made up with everything they would need in the extreme case they had to run. He’d pass the girl stuff off as Rory’s and hope Fin was too exhausted to care how she was presented with toiletries and fresh clothing that fit.
When the shower stopped running, he knocked on the bathroom door. “I have something you can wear to sleep in.” The door opened a crack, and she put her hand out. He put a soft cotton T-shirt and tiny shorts, a new toothbrush and toothpaste in her hand and backed off.
A moment later, she appeared. “Where did you get these? Her hair was wet, and she was pale still, but now there were two unhealthy red stripes painted across her cheekbones and dark smudges under her eyes.
He gestured to the open bag. “I keep gear in the car in case I want to stay over anywhere. Those are Rory’s. I must’ve forgotten to remove her stuff.”
That was the first deliberate, outright lie he’d told her. Their whole relationship was built on deception but not directly spoken lies—until now.
Fin looked at the bed. “There’s only one.”
“I noticed.” He moved past her to the bathroom and opened drawers till he found a hairdryer, brought it out into the bedroom and plugged it in. “You can’t go to bed with wet hair.”
She had no argument left in her. She stood while he used the dryer on her hair, letting it curl and tangle, not bothering to brush it. He had no expertise at this, but she didn’t object. When it was dry enough, he turned the bed down, and she crawled in and turned on her side.
“Did they have a hot water bottle?”
“No, baby, they didn’t.”
She sighed. “It’s okay.”
“You sleep. I’m going down to the living room, read for a bit. I’ll sleep on the couch.” He got as far as the door.
“I’m going to pass out in five minutes. It’s a big bed. You can sleep in it, too. I won’t even know you’re here.”
She was a huddled lump under the covers, her back to him. He turned the old-fashioned knob on the door. He wasn’t getting into bed with her. He valued his sanity too much. “I’ll go read for a bit.”
“You can stay here and read.”
He didn’t have a book, and he didn’t want her to think he had any predatory thoughts after securing a hotel room with one bed.
“Is there another blanket? I’m freezing.”
It wasn’t a cold night, and she’d been sweating earlier.
“I’ll think there’s something permanently wrong with me if you leave me alone in another hotel room.”
Ah hell, that stung. He felt the weight of her words heavy on the back of his neck. He closed the door and locked it, walked around the bed and stood in front o
f her. “I’ll stay but go to sleep.”
“You know what would make me feel better?”
She was a little pale face tucked into the quilt. He couldn’t deny her anything.
“If you came to bed, now.”
Except that was severely testing his endurance. “You really want me to get into bed with you?”
“I don’t understand how you can sound surprised by that. But to be clear, I feel like death warmed over. I want you to get into bed with me because I ache and I’m freezing, and it would be nice not to be alone.”
It was impossible to say no. “You had better be asleep after I get out of the bathroom.”
She grinned with her eyes jammed shut, and when he washed up and changed into sleep shorts and a T-shirt, she was breathing evenly, curled up tightly. He eased in beside her and lay on his back. She faced away from him, her hair streaming out on the pillow.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“You’re welcome. How do you feel?”
“Imagine someone stabbing you in the gut and back repeatedly with a dozen rusty serrated knives.”
He rolled to his side, facing her, and played with an errant curl of hair, hoping she wouldn’t feel it, wishing there was something he could do so she didn’t feel this pain. “Is it like that every month?”
“No. I usually lack energy, feel achy, and nauseous for a couple of days. It’s not often as bad as this.”
“This is why women are tough. Remind me to tell you how tough my mom is.”
“Tell me now.”
He pulled on the curl. He felt incredibly protective of her. It was a steady hum in his chest, a hot glow of contentment. “Go to sleep.”
There was a moment or two of silence, but it was hollow, as though they were both waiting for something to fill it.
“Cal.”
If she could see him, he’d have to moderate his expression. He knew his joy at hearing her say his name was disproportionately enormous for a man who could be her ruin.
“You know what would help me sleep.”
“I am not singing you a lullaby.”
One Night Wife (Confidence Game) Page 13