One Night Wife (Confidence Game)

by Ainslie Paton

  “How do you know all these rich people?” she whispered. At first, it’d seemed like Cal was born into this, but after they’d attended a few events together, she’d realized he wasn’t, and that this was the world’s most exclusive club.

  He put a hand on the archway behind her to shelter their conversation. “I made it my business to know them, and I only get to belong when I’m selling something they want.”

  Fin was building her own network, but she wasn’t selling anything anyone needed. They all had their own private charitable interests, so she’d never be on the guest list alone.

  She reached up and smoothed the lapel of his coat. It didn’t need smoothing, but it put her hand near his heart. “And what is it you sell? I know it’s stock in companies. I know it’s investments. You help people make even more money, but secretly, I think you’re selling something else entirely.”

  He smiled. Not the poised smile he used for working a room; a shyer, gentler twist to his lips. He lifted her hand off his jacket and held it. “And what would that be?”

  “I think you sell them their own egos.”

  He laughed—it was sudden, and the smile that came with it was brilliant.

  “I think you find out what a person is missing deep in their souls and you wrap it up in pats on the back, and you put a bright red bow on it, and they can’t wait to buy it from you.”

  He brought his face closer. “Is that really what you think is going on?”

  She might go blind from staring at the gleam in his eyes. “I think you could make them believe you owned the moon and buying a piece of it from you was the only thing that would make their lives complete.”

  He kissed her forehead. “Ah, Fin.” His breath against her cheek, a brush of his hair against her temple. She flushed all over. “Every person who ever underestimated you—your parents, your superior sister, those agents and directors, that fuck-awful boyfriend, even Lenny—should see you now.”

  She tipped her chin up. It was a staggering thing to say. She needed him to—

  “For the love of God, stop teasing us old folk and kiss that girl properly, sonny.”

  Whoever that was had the right idea. Cal cupped her cheek. “Do you want to be kissed properly?”

  “You so want to kiss me.” If only because of everything he’d said in the bedroom and how he had her pressed up against the archway. She draped her hands over his shoulders and pressed her hips to his.

  “Hmm, I’m taking that as a yes.” He tilted his head and kissed her. Light, fleeting, not nearly properly. She went to her toes to chase his lips as he pulled back.

  “Seriously, Sherwood, you can do better than that.”

  Something in the heckler’s words galvanized Cal. He took his hand off the wall behind her and wrapped it around her waist, keeping her on her toes. She angled her face, and he kissed her again. This time, he didn’t pull away. This time, he didn’t break the connection; he deepened it, moving his lips over hers firmly, pressing her mouth open and claiming more.

  He kissed her with the right amount of greed and the right amount of anxious longing. She gripped his neck so he’d keep taking, keep demanding; and she kissed him back with a flicker of tongue and her heart fit to burst. When they broke apart to wonder, to breathe, there was clapping.

  “That’s how you do it. Knew you had it in you, son.”

  From inside the shelter of Cal’s arms Fin looked for the heckler. He sat on a couch, a black man with walker by his side, an unlit cigar in one hand, and a whisky in the other. He winked. He was her new best friend forever.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I was having trouble getting him started.”

  Cal tucked his face into her neck, laughing, and the heckler shook his head ruefully. “Men these days. No gumption.”

  “They need so much reassurance,” she said, making a production out of patting Cal’s back.

  “Hope now we got him started he doesn’t clap out on you. Would be a terrible thing.”

  She was about to express agreement, but Cal called a stop to it by scooping her up in his arms and she whooped instead.

  “Old folks these days,” Cal said. “Gotta watch ’em. Never know when they’re going to spot a good opportunity and try to steal it from you.”

  He swept out of the room to a shock of laughter, and when he put her down, she said, “That was—”

  He put his hand over her mouth. “Don’t say it. If you say it, it happened.”

  She peeled his hand away. “How very superstitious of you.”

  “You were the one who said I sold men their own souls.”

  She laughed. “That was a little creepy. Who was that old guy?”

  “Bernie Warren. Runs an investment firm. Could buy out the Astors without raising a sweat. Gives all his money away. He’s one of the good guys, but if he tries to look up your skirt again, I will take an eye.”

  “He uses a walker.”

  “Likely excuse.” He took her hand. “Time to introduce you to Alex and Paris.”

  They went out onto the lawn area where there was a big open-sided marquee pitched and a famous DJ spinning house electro swing and at least a hundred people milling about.

  Alex was tall, built, and handsome. His good looks somehow survived his arrogance, and that proved how unfair the world was. He high fived Cal; he eye-fucked Fin. His new fiancée wasn’t two feet away.

  “Glad you could come, Cal,” Alex said, looking directly at her.

  Cal made prayer hands, help me, and his voice got rough. “Congratulations on setting a date.”

  “Just an excuse for a bash. The weed is mellow, the E is good, the coke is better, but stay out of the ocean after dark because it bites.” He gave Fin the once over again. “If this shithead leaves you all alone, lovely Finley, you come find me and I’ll bite you and you’ll love it.”

  She almost laughed in Alex’s face. No one talked like that. No one who wasn’t an enormous try-hard douche. She and Cal needed a new cue, one that said, OMFG, this guy.

  “Charming.” Cal said. “Fin has a microfinance charity, and you’re going to be a regular donor.”

  She looked at Cal. Hell of a shortcut. She could hold on to her purse this time.

  Alex waved a hand. “Whatever. You know how to get to my money. Make it work.” He drifted away. “Come find me and hang out, charity girl.”

  She watched Alex go. He turned around twice to see if she was checking him out, and she didn’t bother to pretend she wasn’t. It was like watching an accident about to happen, and in this case, knowing it never would. “Did he tell you to help yourself?”

  Cal growled. “He’s an idiot. I know his banker and his lawyer. You’ll get a slice of him.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ve already got a slice of him. It’s the only reason I can stand breathing the same air he does. Stay away from him and his posse.” He jerked his chin to show her the posse. A group of men snorting lines off a woman’s bared belly.

  “For some reason, I thought rich people had more class,” she said.

  “You can’t buy class,” Cal said, and then, as if to challenge the point, introduced her to Paris.

  “Fin, you must come to morning yoga tomorrow,” Paris said. She was one of those brilliant, bossy, sorority types who expected everyone to fall in line with her. Fin was only too happy to if it got her Paris as a donor.

  They exchanged pleasantries for a while, and then Paris put her hand to her ear. “Oh, I’ve dropped a diamond earring.” They all looked down. “It must be somewhere here in the grass.”

  Cal flattened his hand between her shoulder blades, the sign for stop, but it was just a lost earring. She kept her eyes down on the lawn searching for something shiny walking in the direction Paris had waved, but when she looked up again, Paris and Cal were where she’d started from, facing off. Cal had his hands in his pockets. Paris had her hand on his chest, standing in his space, and she was wearing both her jeweled earrings.

&
nbsp; That was a dirty trick. And to think it was done with an earring poured salt in the gaping wound that was Fin’s pride. She couldn’t believe she’d ignored Cal’s warning and fallen for it. Or that she couldn’t call Paris out for it if she wanted her money.

  That really sucked.

  Women like Paris had ignored, insulted, and demeaned Fin when she took their orders, brought their meals, and poured their drinks because she was invisible to them. She wasn’t a waitress now, and Paris wasn’t her way to a decent tip, but the imbalance of power was the same. Fin was still invisible, even wearing criminally expensive sequins, still dependent on Paris’s generosity, except this time, she could use it to do good in the world, so she wasn’t going to shove Paris or pull her hair or find a plate of truffles and dump them on her.

  And wasn’t that thinking like a grown-up.

  Except, the woman had her hand on Cal and had contrived a diversion to do it, and he’d known it was coming and tried to warn her. Which didn’t explain why he was tolerating Paris’s touch, and that made Fin feel like lying on the lush green grass into which her heels were sinking and kicking and thrashing.

  She had no choice but to act the part. She took her shoes off and marched back to Cal’s side. “See you found it. That was lucky,” she said, swinging a shoe in Paris’s direction and not letting go. “Cal, however, isn’t lost, and you can’t have him till I’ve finished with him.” That part apparently, was jealous-as-hell fake girlfriend who Cal fake kissed the stuffing out of because some old guy suggested it.

  Paris laughed. “Rawr. Got yourself a kitten who thinks like a tiger, Cal. Don’t stress, Fin, your man and I go way back.” She ran a manicured nail over his jaw. “I finished with him before you were even on the scene. You and I are going to be friends. He just told me all about your charity.”

  Cal pulled on his earlobe. No, she was not okay. She didn’t brush hair behind her ear to signal him back. Why was he tolerating Paris’s touch and her proprietary prowling? “This one likes to exaggerate, Fin,” he said. “She likes to start wars, bet on the victor, and humiliate the loser.”

  And Fin was the loser in this scenario because Cal wasn’t doing anything to deny he’d been with Paris. He’d only told her half the truth when he’d said Paris would hit on him. He’d never said they had a history. She didn’t know what to do about that. Why did he kiss her like it meant something when it obviously didn’t?

  “Fun game,” she said, staying in character as more of Cal’s acquaintances closed in on them, but she couldn’t keep up the charade. She ignored his stay with me cue and then his outstretched hand and his pointed look. While he was busy answering a question about stock prices, she muttered, “I’m going to go wash a bad taste out of my mouth.”

  She made for the marquee. She’d get something to drink. She’d ditch this party and go down to the beach.

  The music was louder in the tent, and the alcohol was flowing. She had a barman make her a highball with deadly amounts of Bacardi and gulped it down. All of that took less than five minutes. She expected the heat behind her to be Cal. The graze of a hand over the back of her thigh to be him, saying it was time to leave together, because of course he’d know she was upset.

  “I’m fine.” Going to the beach by herself in the dark was a dumb idea, but she wasn’t ready to be alone with him yet; she’d hang out here for a while.

  “So fucking fine.” Two hands on her ass.

  Not Cal. Fuck. She tried to jerk away.

  Hemmed in by the bar, she couldn’t turn her body, but she didn’t need to move to know it was Alex because he was all over her, pressed to her back, his face to the side of hers.

  Anger flaring tight, she jabbed him ineffectively with an elbow. “Get off me, fuckwit.”

  He slid his hands around her waist, over her ribs to plump her breasts. She bucked against him, trying to push him off.

  “You came looking for this, but if you want to pretend, I’m all for role play,” he said.

  If she’d been wearing her shoes she could’ve stomped a heel into his foot. “I said get off me.” She said it louder, and the barman looked at her and then looked away. No one on Alex’s payroll was going to help her out. There were other people at the bar, backs turned, eyes twitched away. No choice but to cause a scene. She tried to head butt him, but she was too short to break his nose or his hold. He laughed the whole time. So, she picked up her highball glass and smashed it over his head.

  Everything moved quickly then. Alex yelled and let go, people scattered, the barman appeared in front of her with a worried expression and said, “Oh shit.”

  Oh shit indeed. She’d smashed a glass on her host’s head. She spun around. Alex was holding his face. There was blood between his fingers and a slice of lime on his shoulder, but he looked otherwise very alive.

  “You bitch, you fucking bitch.”

  “I told you to get off me.”

  “I’m fucking bleeding.”

  “I didn’t come looking for you. I didn’t ask you to maul me. What do you expect?”

  “That’s assault with a deadly weapon.”

  Someone laughed at that, saving Fin the effort.

  “I glassed you. I think you’ll live.” It wasn’t like blood was pouring out of him. And since that’s often what happened with a head wound, she felt safe saying he was in no danger of permanent damage, except to his ego.

  “Kiss and make up,” another voice called.

  No chance of that happening. Cal wouldn’t be happy she’d caused a scene. Maybe this was how their fake relationship broke up. How much was a cab out of here going to cost? She could steal a golf buggy, since she was already on a crime spree.

  One of Alex’s posse took a look at his head. “Just a scratch,” he declared.

  Another of them jumped in front of Fin. “Hit me. Go on hit me. Then I’ll know you love me.”

  He shaped up, dodged, and weaved. He was drunk or high; it was hard to tell. He was as despicable as all the rest of them.

  “No one is ever going to love you, honey.” Despite the way her hands shook and her eyes watered, her voice was impressively steady.

  He clutched his heart and moaned, went to his knees, hamming it up. Alex roared with laughter, cuffed his friend on the back of the head; they grappled and fell to the ground, and just like that the drama shifted. Now it was all eyes on the wrestling match.

  Fin stepped around them, not sure what she was feeling, just wanting to get away, to kick someone, scream, cry. People shifted to let her pass. Someone said, “You’re awesome.” And then there was Cal coming into the tent at a run, concern slashed across his features.

  She stopped a little apart from him. He’d warned her, tried to stop her leaving his side, and she’d seen what Alex was like with her own eyes, and still she was mad at Cal. Burning, vibrating with it. Mad at every man in the history of the world who took it upon himself to presume he had a right to touch a woman without permission.

  He opened his arms to her. “What happened?”

  She shook her head. She was shaking, but she didn’t want him to hold her. She would rattle apart. “Alex.”

  The one word was enough. Cal was a brewing apocalypse, fists up, face contorted in cold fury. “Are you hurt?” He was scanning the space behind her.

  “No.” Her dress wasn’t even torn. She snapped her fingers in his face and gave him the walk away signal. “I handled it. You’ll make it worse.”

  “It can’t be worse.” His jaw was so tight, he barely got those words out.

  Yes, it could. These people could have her charged, sue her, screw up her entire life. “I hit him. I made him bleed. How much trouble am I in now?”

  He moved in closer. He didn’t try to touch her, except with a look heavy with regret, remorse and other desolate emotions she couldn’t process. “You’re not in any trouble.”

  That couldn’t be true. “I assaulted our host.” She wrapped her arms around her waist, literally holding herself together,
and she didn’t need body language lessons to know that.

  “Alex is not going to remember what happened. If he does, it will morph into a legendary exploit where a woman flipped out over a little show of affection.”

  “I don’t think so.” A man drinks, he didn’t mean it; a woman drinks, she was vulnerable and should know better and every woman knew that was the double standard. And no man forgot being humiliated.

  “A tussle with a woman is nothing for that prick. Won’t stop him doing it again to someone else tonight. I will take him apart and fucking bury him in a way he’ll never see coming.”

  There was something almost medieval about the way Cal spat that out. It made her shiver. “I should leave.”

  “I’ll take you home now.” He held his hand out.

  She didn’t take it. If she left now, Alex won. He’d expect her to run. She’d never get Paris’s money. The Prosper Dog Food empire could help thousands of women feed their families, send their children to school, live safer, healthier lives.

  “You never told me you were with Paris.”

  Cal dropped his outstretched arm. “I’ve never been with Paris.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Because she said so?” He rubbed his forehead. “I told you she was ruthless. I tried to warn you she was up to no good. All the visual clues where there.”

  “You let her touch you.” God, she was raving.

  He stepped closer. “You know when you were a kid if you didn’t want your sister to keep hassling you, you found the strength not to show she annoyed you because if you reacted, you gave her ammunition, and she’d keep doing whatever it was that was driving you mad. That’s Paris. The best way to handle her is give her nothing to feed off.”

  Why did that sound incredibly sensible? He’d had his hands in his pockets when Paris was all over him. He hadn’t given permission either. She was burning and freezing; what was cold was savagery and what was hot was jealousy. “I thought—” If this was what being Cal’s fake girlfriend made her feel, she’d never survive a relationship with him.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t make it clearer.”