Hustled To The Altar

by Dani Collins

  “No,” she said firmly.

  “So you’ll think about it,” Con said.

  She groaned in frustration.

  He grinned. She had hesitated too long before answering him. Part of her wanted to do it. Good, because he really wanted to put the screws to this jackass who had messed with his grandmother.

  “I got in this car because I understood all I had to do was point out Felix Newman to the police,” Renny said.

  “My way would be more fun.”

  “You’ve told me a thousand times you don’t do games with partners.” She had her nose in the air, as if that particular preference of his bothered her.

  It bothered him to realize he had automatically unrolled this as a partners game when, as she had pointed out, he usually went on the assumption that there could be only one winner in any game and he was it.

  “There’s a difference between partners and allies,” he pointed out, pleased it occurred to him.

  She raised her brow, unimpressed.

  “Come on, cookie. You liked pretending you were a hooker at the Games Convention.” He had worried she was bored last year when she had moved through the exhibition a lot faster than he had. When he had caught up to her, he had propositioned her loudly enough to raise eyebrows.

  “That was just goofing around. Sexual fantasy, in your case.” She lowered her lashes.

  He knew she was remembering exactly what kind of sexual fantasies they had explored. He could have dwelt on the memory for the next half hour, but he had to stay focused on the task at hand: persuading her to con a conman without letting on he knew she could do it.

  He had never told her he knew where she had come from. All his staff underwent security checks. Renny’s had been more rigorous than most because she had been hired to work with Gran. Digging into her “sealed” record hadn’t been strictly legal, so he hadn’t bothered mentioning it. She appeared to have rehabilitated herself and Gran liked her, so Con had hired her. As for the actual crime, he had pulled some wild stunts in his adolescence, so he didn’t judge.

  Even so, he’d given her plenty of opportunities to talk about it. She never had. He wondered if he should bring it up now. No. He couldn’t be sure how she would react. Better to let her believe he simply admired her ability to play a role.

  “What about when we pretended to be deckhands on my boat and chartered it to those tourists?”

  “It was a nice day and they were nice people.”

  “That woman almost pushed me overboard when you told her I was a smuggler!” Their role-playing games always seemed to evolve into a competition over who could be more outrageous.

  She stifled a grin.

  “See? You loved it.” Renny was always pretty, but when something grabbed her, really caught her attention, she sparkled. He loved seeing her catch fire like that.

  She frowned and began chewing the side of her thumb.

  He wondered what was making her so tense. Lack of sex, maybe.

  “Those were just games,” she said. “It’s not hard to fool a few tourists and some nerdy convention goers.”

  “I’m not a nerd.”

  “You hide it better than most. The fact is, a professional criminal isn’t going to be as gullible.” She lifted her hands to pull her flying hair off her face.

  The pine-scented air cooled as they gained elevation. They were approaching the outskirts of a town big enough to service the ski resort further up the hill.

  “Besides, he would recognize me,” she added.

  “So we’ll buy you some spray-on hair color and a pair of glasses.”

  “With a fake nose and moustache, maybe? You’re dreaming. A superficial disguise isn’t going to fool anyone.”

  “Sure it will, especially if you distract him with a bra that pushes your boobs up to here.” He cut his hand into his neck.

  “You’re nuts.”

  “We could try that, too, but it won’t have the same effect.”

  She turned her face away.

  “I know you’re laughing.”

  “No, I’m not.” Her voice was strained.

  “Hey!” he said with a zing of discovery as he spotted a Walmart. He slowed to turn into the parking lot. “This’ll have everything we need.”

  “Con—”

  “Quit telling me why it won’t work. We won’t know unless we give it a shot.” He parked and climbed from the car. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

  “I don’t want to.” She stayed in the car, her brow crinkled in distress.

  He pushed the door shut and waited.

  She didn’t say anything.

  Despite knowing she was tough enough to handle anything, he felt a little compassion. She was more sensitive than he was and usually wound up doing some hand-wringing over the innocent bystanders in their escapades. When she had wanted to come clean to the tourists on his boat, he had distracted her with a quickie in the galley. Sex wasn’t an option this time and railroading her didn’t seem to be working.

  “What’s wrong?” he finally asked.

  “Jacob—”

  “Doesn’t have to know. It’ll be our secret.”

  “Con, you don’t get the concept of marriage at all, do you? Married people don’t keep secrets from each other. A woman doesn’t conspire with one man the day before her wedding to another.”

  “So tell him what you’re going to do.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not exactly . . . it’s kind of . . . regular people don’t—”

  “I have a feeling you’re trying not to insult me. Look, I already know Jake lacks imagination. What’s his idea of a good time? Dinner and a movie?”

  “Believe it or not, the ability to arrange an afternoon in a shark cage is not the top item on my list of qualities I need in a man.”

  “You told me you liked it. Geez, you try to show a woman a good time . . . . ”

  “Con, you have a wonderful imagination, but not everyone is capable of living on that same plane of existence. I enjoy visiting, but Jacob wouldn’t understand. His mother heads the women’s group at her church and his father is a professor of ethics at the university. These people are ultra-conservative, ultra-ordinary, ultra-respectable.”

  Ultra-anal-retentive. “And that’s what you see in him? His parents?” He leaned down so his forearms rested on the top of his door.

  She looked at her hands and tested the edge of her thumbnail. The cuticle was a mess but the nail was perfect. “I’m just saying he wouldn’t understand.”

  What she didn’t say, but what he thought she meant, was that she wouldn’t measure up to their expectations.

  He had felt that way once. He understood the longing, the desire to stifle your true self to gain a glimmer of acceptance. He had learned to walk his own path, though, to quit living his life based on other people’s opinion of him. He wouldn’t hold onto a multi-million dollar company just because people expected him to and he wouldn’t succumb to marriage because the prevailing attitude said it was the next step in a relationship.

  “You can only be who you are, Renny.”

  She flicked her hair back and lifted her chin. “Then I’m a woman who does the right thing.”

  “And what this guy did to Gran wasn’t right.”

  The defiance in her eyes faded and she looked away.

  He let her chew on that a minute, along with her thumb, before he straightened.

  “I’m going shopping. If you don’t come with me, I’m likely to get you buck teeth and an ugly hat.” When she didn’t move, he added, “At least wear a disguise so when you spot Felix, he doesn’t recognize you.” He started walking.

  Behind him, he heard the click of the car door opening. He slowed his step but didn’t turn. He was hiding his grin of satisfaction.

  10:41 a.m.

  Deception Springs

  “Some trapper gets the idea to dam up the hot water seeping out of a fissure in a rock and a couple hun
dred years later it turns into this abomination. I thought people came here for their health, not shopping,” Con said, as he drove down the main street of Deception Springs.

  Renny looked for Felix’s blond head among the tourists shuffling in front of shops that sold everything from batik sarongs to llama-wool sweaters. Squeezed between the cluttered sidewalk displays were the modest fronts of banks, jewelry stores and art galleries, hinting at a greater wealth beneath the town’s grassroots image.

  “I think the Native Americans were the first to use the mineral waters, for medicinal purposes, but I imagine they got a couple of sacks of flour when they led the pioneers here. This is America. Healthcare is a business.”

  “Gran likes this place?” Con asked.

  “Loves it. She figures everyone here has a screw loose and it’s her personal mission to tighten it. When a waitress lectured her on saturated fats, she said, ‘Which end did you stick your bran muffin in this morning? I asked for butter and all I hear outta your mouth is crap.’”

  Con chuckled.

  “It’s the perfect place for health scams,” Renny said. “New people coming all the time, some of them already worried about their health. They’re willing to place their faith in anything. When a respectable-looking man offers them a deal on health insurance, with no exam, they snap it up, go home and wait for a policy that never comes.”

  “And if they do follow up, they talk to a florist in Detroit.”

  “Exactly. By then they’re too mortified to tell anyone they were duped.”

  “Sounds like Felix has got a good set up. He’ll probably stay for a while.”

  She rolled her shoulder. “Maybe. The hotel promised to issue a description and warnings, too. Like I said before, he might get spooked and leave, or he might be carrying on with a different look.”

  Like her. She touched her temple self-consciously. Her coppery hair, porous from months of traveling in the sun, had sucked up the wash-out color she had applied in the Walmart washroom. It was a darker shade of brunette than Con’s natural color. With her hair gathered in a silk bandanna, and her skin still tanned, she looked like the gypsy woman who’d read her tarot while she’d been in Europe, right down to the risqué neckline, she decided, as she glanced down at her dress.

  She had ripped off the frills and hemmed the skirt with a length of masking tape. She had also dropped a pair of falsies into her bra so her breasts overflowed the tops of the cups and the bodice of her dress strained across them.

  The alteration had been a series of quick decisions, an impulsive desire to test her resourcefulness. Re-making herself in seventeen minutes had been a kick and Con’s double take when she had walked out of the ladies’ room had been a nice bonus, but she already regretted the changes. The hair color wasn’t going to wash out before her wedding photos tomorrow and twenty years from now she would be wondering what she had been thinking. Worse, an hour from now she would have to explain to Jacob what she had been thinking and the answer would be that she hadn’t been thinking at all.

  Maybe she could have a professional change it back before he caught up to them. She would have to delay Jacob to give herself more time, though.

  “I need to phone Jacob.” She freshened her lipstick and slipped on her mirrored sunglasses.

  “We need to make an entrance in this town, spend some money.”

  “Why?”

  “So we won’t have to look for Felix. It’ll be less obvious if we let him follow the smell of cash.”

  “I’d like to get in touch with Jacob first.”

  “Cookie, if you climb out of this car and ask for the nearest phone, people are going to forget us before you drop the quarter in the slot.”

  “Turn here. That’s the hotel we want.”

  He started to make the turn, shied at the last instant and kept going, earning a honk from a fellow tourist for his indecision.

  “Con—”

  “That one’s no good.”

  “Jacob expects to meet us at the Glacier View.” She looked over her shoulder at the hotel and saw the white media van parked in front of it. It had a big number six on it, along with the Montana Minutes logo. “Oh.”

  For all Con’s outrageous behavior, he didn’t go looking for attention from reporters, particularly the woman who worked for that show.

  “We need a busy hotel. That one looks good,” he said of the one kitty corner.

  “Why a busy one?”

  “We need an audience. When I pull up in front, I want you to make sure everyone knows I’m rich enough to afford you.”

  She dropped her shades down her nose and regarded him over the lenses. “Why does everything have to be over the top with you?”

  “Because it’s fun.”

  “You understand I’m going to find Felix, ask the police to arrest him, and leave town, right?”

  “You understand Felix will be out on bail in an hour and will continue hurting others the way he hurt Gran, right?”

  True. Damn.

  “Can’t we behave like adults this time?” she asked.

  “Renny, that’s so boring.”

  “But I can’t pretend—”

  “Sure you can. Use the force.”

  “Only geeks quote Star Wars.”

  “So I’m a geek. That’s why I have to pay for sex.” He grinned as he rode the car gently over a speed bump.

  Pursing her lips, she studied the people milling beneath the portico of the Juniper Hotel. Parking attendants and doormen, likely students and musicians in their other lives, mingled with hotel guests wearing bright fleece sweatshirts and unscuffed hiking boots.

  Con’s flippant advice to “use the force” tickled the back of her mind, leading her to thoughts of her mentor in the con game: her mother. She never saw her, rarely spoke of her, hardly let herself think of her because shame and disappointment overwhelmed her every time. But as Con braked the car and a valet opened her door, she remembered her mother bragging, It’s how you sell yourself. The sell is more important than the con.

  Now she was irritated. Con didn’t know it, but he was forcing her to go places in the past she preferred to avoid.

  “You want to make an entrance?” she muttered.

  Exposing her leg to the lace of her panties, she climbed from the car and said loudly, “Is this the hotel you’re buying?”

  Every pair of feet froze for a split second as Renny’s words bounced around the shelter of the portico. After a moment, people rustled into motion, but Con sensed their attention still on Renny. Lots of furtive glances and zero conversation.

  Hiding his smile of satisfaction, he slammed his car door and came to her side.

  “Babe, what did I tell you about discretion?” he asked, his tone exasperated.

  “Oh,” Renny said, eyes wide and voice not lowered at all. “When you said I wasn’t supposed to talk about why we were coming here, I thought you meant your impotence.”

  For a moment, the only sound was a passing car while everyone had a look at the guy with erectile dysfunction.

  Well played, he thought, and silently vowed to trump her next deal.

  “Let’s check in—” he began.

  She balked as he tried to take her arm.

  “You promised to buy me some sparklies. Don’t you dare back out now!” She talked fast, not giving him an opportunity to jump in. “Remember? You asked me to come here with you and I said, ‘Why bother? You don’t need me until you’re cured,’ and you said you’d make it worth my while. Well, I’m here and I want something pretty to wear for dinner.”

  A knot of people to their right stopped pretending they were studying a brochure and stared outright.

  Con turned to the doorman. “Jewelry store?”

  “Inside, sir.” The young man’s voice strained with curiosity. He smiled when Con slipped him a tip.

  Renny beamed.

  Her smugness prodded the competitor in Con. Gripping her shoulders in a firm hug, he steered her through the glass d
oors. “Having fun yet?” he asked in an undertone.

  She cleared her throat. “Don’t distract me. I don’t want to lose character.”

  She had to be dreaming if she thought he wouldn’t take that as a direct challenge. He loosened his hold as they passed through the door of the jewelry store.

  The décor was supposed to resemble the gold rush era, with uneven floor planks and a rusty scale dripping glitter. The image was spoiled by several security cameras and the smell of ammonia from the spray an employee was using to polish the display cases.

  Renny cooed over chunky stones in fussy settings but would have settled for a modest string of pearls. Con overrode her and pointed to several flashy pieces, ending up with a necklace, brooch, bracelet and ring that didn’t match and would have paid Gran back several times.

  Renny turned her back to the display case and gave Con a “What are you doing?” face.

  Con handed his platinum card to the clerk, enjoying both the flush he caused in Renny’s cheeks and the fluster he caused behind the counter as the employee handed the card to his boss before searching for boxes beneath the display case.

  “Is that enough sparklies?” Con goaded.

  “You’re a lunatic,” she said in an undertone. Her lips quivered, almost caught by laughter.

  He raised his brows, waiting for her to break.

  She showed him her cheek, clinging to the spoiled mistress role. Just.

  Well, shoot, he almost had her. He’d give her another nudge. Tipping her into his arms, he kissed her, half expecting a knee to the groin.

  What he got was a start of surprise and a soft shudder that melted her tension. Her hands slid up his chest and linked behind his neck as she curled into the embrace and pressed his head down, sealing their mouths.

  Deprived of her for months, he deepened the kiss, found her bottom lip and gently sucked. Her tongue touched his, causing a thump of sensation in his chest. Warmth pooled through his belly and into his groin while their mouths broke apart only to meet again with parted lips, like starvation victims slaking their hunger with bite after bite of sumptuous fare.