One Night Wife (Confidence Game)

by Ainslie Paton

  He’d been certain Fin would make an ideal One Night Wife, and he’d tested that theory before he’d moved forward on it. He’d been certain he couldn’t partner with her and love her at the same time because one would trade off the effectiveness of the other.

  He was certain he was wrong about that now, and that he loved Fin and had been falling for her since she’d woken him with her stolen kiss. But it was stronger even than that. He was in love with her, and this was a whole new and incredible feeling, especially as he was certain she was in love with him.

  He could see a future with Fin, his goals and hers meshed together. But more than that, he could see a way to build a life outside of work. He could see her as his own family. The problem was, he couldn’t tell her there was a quantum difference between loving her and being utterly, irrevocably, and forever in love with her until he could also tell her the truth.

  “I’m certain to the marrow of my bones,” he said.

  Dad’s steepled his fingers. “You’re certain of her?”

  Fin was his wildcard. She was the hand he hadn’t expected to be dealt and the only one worth winning. He’d been practicing his whole life to claim her. He’d bet the house on her.

  “I’ve met the woman I want to be with for the rest of my life. She makes me happy. I want your blessing, but I’m going to ask her to marry me whether I have it or not.”

  “Would you leave the company for her?” said Dad.

  He took a breath, let it go, took another. It wasn’t an unreasonable question. Dad had retirement forced on him by his stroke, otherwise he’d still be running Sherwood. Cal loved heading the company. Even when he was dispirited, even when it was more hard work than fun, it was still the best part of him because of the good he could do in the world.

  But it couldn’t be the only part of him, and that’s what it had become before the lucky accident that was Fin. He didn’t have the right skills to fit in the regular world and no desire to try, but if it came down to a choice between Fin and the company, he chose Fin. There was only one answer.

  “Yes.”

  His parents exchanged a look. Dad shook his head. Mom got glassy-eyed. He wasn’t sure what he’d said to bring that on. He’d expected yelling from Mom. To see his father wheel himself into the garden and refuse to speak at all.

  “I would have left it all for your mother.” Dad looked at his hands, then took Mom’s when she rested hers over his. “I almost did.”

  Cal sat. His parents’ marriage was born of conflict, forged on the shared social justice ambitions of Sherwood using its stolen wealth wisely, and until Dad’s stroke, it had been a partnership that was loud in laughter and anger and brooding silences, in broken plates and shouted curses, in extravagant make up gifts and passionate encounters.

  As a kid, it was as equally unsurprising to find his father banished to the couch for weeks as it was to find his parents dancing, barely dressed, barefoot in the garden in the rain or simply gone missing, off adventuring, leaving Cal in charge of the younger kids with no idea what to tell them about when their parents would be back.

  As he got older, he’d wondered whether they’d burn out. And with the family grown, separate, look for ease outside the marriage. It hadn’t been a huge leap to understand that what he’d had with Rory was a similar relationship—unpredictable and exciting, but also exhausting.

  After Dad’s stroke, everything changed. Running the company fell to Cal. The brooding silences were Dad’s as he retreated from the world, and Mom went on adventures alone. But if they’d seemed volatile in their love before, they were steadfast after. They were still a team, both terrible and wonderful together.

  It’s what he’d found in Fin, that unique person who would love and be loved by him no matter what.

  Dad brought the back of Mom’s hand to his lips, and their eyes locked. “If you feel the way about Fin I felt about your mom, the way I still feel about her, then you had better find out if your Finley can love you through and through.”

  “You would’ve left the company for Mom?” He’d never have guessed that.

  Dad rocked a flattened hand and pursed his lips, maybe; then he thumped the arms of the wheelchair. “Conned her for life.”

  “He only thinks he’s not the mark,” Mom said. “Can’t you find a nice Archer, Robins, or Johns to settle down with and have a lot of random sex on the side and be done with it?”

  “Your mother is the romantic in the family,” said Dad. He lost Mom’s hand from his grip as she snatched it back.

  “But it’s not up to us alone. It’s a board decision,” she said. “It has to go to a vote. And that vote has to be unanimous.”

  Which is why Cal had already called an extraordinary board meeting for later in the week. He wasn’t leaving anything to chance with Fin.

  On his way out, Dad pulled him aside. “Let me look at you.”

  He smiled. When he was five, his father could tell if he was lying with a casual glance. By fifteen, Dad needed a concentrated second to learn the truth. At twenty-five, Cal had begun to perfect his trade, and it took a full minute of Dad staring in his eyes for him to know if Cal’s heart was true. At thirty-five, Cal should have him beat, except he had no incentive to.

  He bent and braced his hands on the arms of Dad’s chair. “I’m in love with Fin. I can keep her safe and make her happy. We can build a good life together.”

  For his trouble, he got a grimy palm that smelled of fertilizer in his face pushing him away. “I know it. It’s all over you. Why haven’t I met her?”

  “Because I want her to know the truth before I bring her here. Everyone else had to keep the con live. I want to introduce her to the one family member she can trust from the outset.”

  “I don’t know where your Mom and I got you from. You were a wise old man at birth. Nothing like either of us. We want you to be happy. You have my vote. I’ll support you with the other families, and I’ll sit on Katrice, if I have to, till you get hers.”

  It was what he’d come home to hear.

  When the family gathered in the boardroom the next day, he gave them the good news first. “The final fix for Everlasting is in. After costs and an initial return to keep the marks on side, we’ll bank thirty billion.”

  “That means we can fund programs to eradicate polio, malaria, and HIV,” said Mom. “And my albatrosses can have more money. And the Great Barrier Reef, we have to do something to stop coral bleaching.”

  “All of the above,” Cal said, genuine pleasure in the fact they were back on top.

  “Does it mean you’ve fully restored your own fortune?” asked Dad. He was a voice from the speaker pod in the center of the table.

  “Got my eye on a nice little Mer—”

  “Environmentally friendly car as befitting the head of Sherwood,” said Mom from the other end of the table.

  He looked at his siblings with an expression of abject dismay but had to laugh when they did. He’d be driving a secondhand Prius, if he wanted Mom kept sweet.

  “This is all great news, but that’s not why we’re here,” said Zeke.

  He nodded. “We’re here because I want to talk about a personal matter that affects us all. As you know, the no outsiders rule is part of our charter to protect our business and keep us all safe.”

  “We’re getting a history lesson,” said Zeke. “Oh shit, this is big.”

  Bigger than fake start-ups and freshly made dinosaur bones. “But we all know that rule is broken. At some point, a Sherwood was going to fall for an outsider.” He looked down the table at the people he trusted most in the world. He wanted their support, but it came at a risk they’d all bare. “I’m in love with Fin, and I want to make something permanent with her, and that means I need to tell her the truth. I need your permission to do that.”

  “You want to marry, Fin?” asked Halsey. Classic Halsey, wanting absolute clarity. He sat so far forward to look down the length of the table at Cal, he almost had his chin on the surface.r />
  “If she’ll have me.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Zeke, hands to his head. “You sneaky bastard. You never let on.”

  “You’re sure?” said Sherin. “It’s a big deal.”

  “Yes,” said Rory. All other movement stopped. “Yes,” she repeated, then said, “What?” when everyone looked at her. “Cal knows his own mind. If he says he’s in love and he’s brought that to us honestly, then we can trust he knows what he’s doing. I want him to be happy.”

  “It’s not Cal we need to worry about,” said Mom.

  Cal opened his mouth to respond. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Rory, so Halsey got there first. “Fin is deeply implicated. She’d have to trash her own charity, bring suspicion down on herself and her business partner to expose us,” Halsey said.

  “She won’t do that,” said Rory.

  “She does own that sad fleabag cat,” said Zeke. “Proves she’s a soft touch.”

  “The cat has no fleas,” said Mom. She pointed a finger at Zeke. “Don’t pick on defenseless animals.”

  Zeke readied a volley to lob at Mom, but Rory sitting beside him cut him off with an arm thrown across his chest. “Does she love you? Does Fin love you the way you deserve to be loved? Does she love you so you can feel it in the air you breathe, in the space you take up even when she’s not near? Does she love you so you have comfort and protection, laughter and truth, because if you have that with Fin, if you have a haven that’s full of joy, then all of us are voting yes.”

  He’d had no doubt Zeke, Halsey, Sherin and Tresna would give him the votes he needed. It wasn’t in their interest not to. He counted on Dad to sway Mom, and he’d banked on Rory choosing to abstain. That she was his champion astonished him. That she understood how he felt rendered him speechless.

  Sherin bumped his arm. “Caleb?”

  “Yes,” he said. It was the only way to answer Rory.

  “Yes,” said Dad.

  “Yes,” said Zeke, his hand coming up.

  “Yes,” said Halsey and Tres together.

  “Yes,” said Sherin.

  Mom was shaking her head. “You can’t all go off and fall in love with just anyone. It can’t work like that. There have to be rules. There are consequences.”

  “Katrice,” said Dad with a warning tone.

  Mom looked at the speaker pod. “It’s not only about Sherwood and the alliance families. Marriage isn’t easy. It isn’t all sunshine and flowers blooming. Sometimes it rains for a month, and you have a headache and bad sinus, and the roof leaks right above your bed. And you had kids, and they’re a handful, and your brain turned to mush, and nothing you do feels like you’re making a difference because rich bastards keep getting richer, and they don’t share it around.”

  She was visibly upset, not making eye contact, her hands twisted together, her voice cracking. “All you want to do is go hiking and not talk to anyone forever, but you can’t because the world is killing albatrosses and polar bears and coral. And you fell in love, and you have a responsibility that keeps you tied to your partner even when you sometimes hate them, and you hate yourself and not even a great new haircut will fix it.”

  “Mom,” Zeke put her arms around her. “We’ll make up new rules, okay. None of us want to bring outsiders in if it puts the rest of us at risk, but Cal’s got this. He always does.”

  Mom sniffled. “No one else gets to fall in love till I’m ready. No one else.”

  “Does that mean I have your vote?” Cal asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He sat back in his chair, his system flooded with relief, making it difficult to focus on the conversation around him. After all this, Fin had had better say yes, too. And he wasn’t leaving that to chance.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  After that night on the carpet, Fin didn’t need a brief. She was in a no-holds-barred, capital L. O. V. E. relationship with Cal. It went from lifestyles of the rich and famous fake dating to sharing a tub of Chunky Monkey with a single spoon in front of an Alien marathon.

  She loved the normality of it. Cal was positively changed by it. She’d never heard him laugh more, seen him smile more. He relaxed into her saggy couch wearing well-worn sweats, and she loved him more for the lack of ceremony. They didn’t have to be anywhere, know anything, talk to anyone. There were no cues to send, no earrings to twiddle, or purses to drop. It didn’t take her hours to get ready to go out. She wore a baggy tee and no bra and got more affection than she’d ever had from him when she wore designer clothing.

  If he were a social media savvy guy, she’d have declared they were in love everywhere. She’d have been overdosing on couple selfies. But her guy didn’t even have a decent website for his business, let alone any of his own personal accounts, so she took the pics and kept them private.

  Not that they were hiding out. The official business functions had tailed off as the Everlasting deal closed, and his Brainstorm deal wasn’t yet at the One Night Wife stage, but that meant more time for doing their own thing.

  She dragged him to off-Broadway plays. He bought her a mountain bike, and they went on rides in Cunningham Park and Blue Mountain Reservation. They took weekend trips out of town and slept late, went to dinner after work, and ate too much. They hung out with Zeke and Lenny, and one night, Halsey made an appearance and so did Rory. Rory was surprisingly cool. She teased Cal mercilessly and went out of her way to make Fin feel like family.

  As did Cal’s dad when his badass mom insisted they meet. He gave her a tour of his prized rose bushes and told her stories about Cal as a kid that embarrassed him and made Fin weak with joy.

  That night, she was Cal’s sex slave in bed, anything, everything he wanted and had never asked for. All the things she’d learned from him about reading other people she used on him to find out what those things were. She made him melt, kissing and sucking on the pulse point behind his ear, lose it to shouts of laughter when she blindfolded him and tickled him with a feather boa, and shudder uncontrollably when she deep throated him. They broke a slat in her bed base because in the end, it was wild and fast, and he was virtually unconscious when she’d finished with him.

  In the morning, he fixed the slat along with waffles. He was a keeper with maple syrup and bacon on the side.

  And maybe the best part was the way she didn’t lose herself in him. She worked hard in the office with Lenny, taking Skype calls with project partners on the ground in various parts of the world with inconvenient time zones.

  They built a totally new website with more funds to add more features and better apps. Lenny’s work brought in companies, clubs, and groups for small amounts they could match with the big foundation donor funds Fin had attracted to double then triple their effectiveness.

  Lenny’s family was still in disarray, but Fin’s parents were finally impressed with what she’d made of herself. She wasn’t a flaky little wannabe anymore. Like Marilyn said, dreaming about being an actress was more exciting than being one.

  Her life would be entirely transformed if she could only decide on a costume for the benefit Cal was taking her to.

  She put a mug of coffee in front of Lenny. “Famous couples in history for ten points.” That was the theme of the benefit.

  Lenny pushed the spreadsheet she was studying away. “Adam and Eve.”

  “I’m not wearing a fig leaf.”

  “You could do Marilyn and Arthur Miller.”

  “They didn’t stay together.” Fin struck a pose to quote the star. “Husbands are chiefly good lovers when they are betraying their wives.”

  Lenny rolled her eyes. “I assume hard pass on Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Scarlett and Rhett.”

  Fin sat on Lenny’s big old desk. “Oh, imagine Cal as Rhett in a frock coat, a cravat”—she drew a mustache on her upper lip with her finger—“and a cigar. But a big dress with a hoopskirt is a pain to wear.” She’d appeared in a college production of The Importance of Being Earnest,
so she’d had experience with something similar.

  “Jamie and Claire.”

  “Cal in a kilt. Och, lassie, that has promise. I’d time travel with him.”

  “Ana and Christian.”

  “He wears a suit. I’m naked but for panties, a ball gag, and cufflinks?”

  Lenny laughed. “You both wear Venetian masks, and you have some rope dangling off you somewhere.”

  Fin wrinkled her nose. “Weird. Too weird.”

  “Robin Hood and Maid Marian.”

  “I’d want to be Robin Hood, and it’s a bit hinky, given the whole Sherwood thing.” Fin crossed her legs and kicked her top one. Maybe she could talk Cal into Brad and Janet from Rocky Horror.

  “Leia and Han.”

  Cal had the swagger for Han. “What’s the bet there are a dozen of them.”

  “Bonnie and Clyde.”

  Cal as a young Warren Beatty, in a double-breasted, pinstripe suit and a fedora or maybe braces over a white tank, and she’d wear a pencil skirt and a tight little sweater with Mary Janes and a beret. “I think that’s it.”

  “Bank robbers who died in a hail of bullets.”

  “Yeah. But I get to carry a machine gun and have a cigar.”

  “You want to be a gangster’s moll?”

  “Uh-uh.” She swapped legs. “Badass gangster in my own right.”

  Cal loved the idea. He wore an old-fashioned cut, brown pinstripe suit with braces. With his fedora pulled down low on his forehead, he looked more movie matinée idol than a thirties crime boss. Fin bobbed her hair, wore stockings with seams, and had a plastic cigar prop and a realistic-looking pistol in her garter belt.

  The benefit was a legitimate work night for them both. Cal was talking up Brainstorm, and Fin was out to find new investors and remind her existing ones of what good work their money was doing. The problem was that with the costumes, everyone was unrecognizable.

  “Is that Alex Astor as Fred Flintstone?” She pointed the caveman out to Cal from a balcony looking down on the main ballroom.