Confidence Tricks

by Tamara Morgan

“Just take Asprey home, will you? I think he might try to strangle me if he stays here any longer.” The look Graff settled on Asprey was almost gentle. “I’m sorry things had to turn out this way.”

  He tossed her the keys, but Asprey intercepted, catching them easily. “I can drive,” he muttered. “But before we go, I want you to give me your gun.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Asprey extended his hand. “You heard me. I’m not leaving you here with Todd and a gun. Is it loaded this time?”

  Asprey still sucked at having a staring contest, blinking several times as he met his brother’s eyes and refused to back down, but Poppy couldn’t help a tick of pride from beating in her chest. Graff needed taking down a notch. Or twelve.

  “Jesus, Asp. I’m not a murderer.”

  Asprey’s hand didn’t move.

  “Fine.” Graff reached into his waistband and handed the gun to Asprey, but not before pressing the magazine catch and pulling back the slide. “See? There were never even any bullets.”

  For some reason, that fact only served to make Asprey angrier. She’d never seen him like that, the finely chiseled angles of his face hard and resolute, the laugh lines all but disappeared. He snatched the gun out of his brother’s hand and tossed it into the trunk of Poppy’s car, the dark stain of blood a testament to the night’s activities.

  “Come on, Poppy.” Asprey moved his hand on her lower back as he helped her into the car. Always the gentleman, even in the face of spiraling criminal intent. “There’s not much more we can do here.”

  She slid into the passenger’s seat, careful to keep her shirt-slash-dress from riding too high up her legs. The last thing either one of them needed was to be reminded of their current state of undress.

  Not that it would have mattered. Asprey stabbed the keys into the ignition and forced the stick into reverse, his foot heavy on the pedal as he spun the car out of the empty parking lot. His eyes didn’t once stray from the road. She could have been sitting there naked and he probably would have remained at ten and two, fury rising from the surface of his skin in a smoldering combination of hot and cold.

  “You probably shouldn’t drive so fast,” she murmured after a few minutes. They took the freeway onramp at a good eighty miles per hour, traffic being almost a negligible entity this time of the night. Or morning, depending on which way you looked at it.

  “This isn’t fast.” He passed a car with a sharp turn. “This is efficient. The less time I spend on the road, the more time I have to devote to plotting Graff’s demise.”

  Grumpy Asprey sounded so much like his brother she had to laugh. “Try explaining that to the cop who’s bound to pull you over. You don’t think that driving a car with a large amount of blood and a gun in the trunk might call for a little more moderation?”

  He let out an irritated growl and lifted his foot from the pedal. Instead of slowing to a more reasonable speed, as she expected, Asprey took the nearest exit and pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned gas station.

  “I don’t think loitering in this part of town is very smart either.” She peered out the window. Darkness enveloped the fifties-style building, the ancient pumps standing like stone relics to a simpler era. “Even in this crappy old car.”

  “A carjacking is the least of my worries right now.”

  “Oh yeah. I’m always forgetting—money is like a toy to you. Lose a car, buy a new one. Run out of funds, take a man’s briefcase full of blood money.”

  “Why are you taking this out on me?”

  Irritation slammed into her. “He’s your brother! You’re the untouchable thieves, rolling in trust funds and only out for—what? Fun? Is that what this is supposed to be?”

  “That was not my idea of fun.” His voice was very near a growl—the good, protective kind. His hand gripped the back of her neck with intensity, forcing her to meet his gaze. “You could have been seriously hurt back there at the poker game. I swear to you, if I’d had any idea he was going to pull something like that… It’s not okay with me, Poppy, endangering your life.”

  “Well, Graff seemed to be enjoying himself.” She tried not to notice how his sudden burst into heroics affected her, like she wanted to curl up in a ball and let him ameliorate every problem she’d ever had. First tackling Todd, then demanding the gun from Graff, now this smoldering, protective anger. She wasn’t the type of woman who needed rescuing, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate a man who wanted to try—especially when he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

  “Graff is a sociopath.”

  “And yet you take all your orders from him,” she countered. “How comforting.”

  Asprey gave a reluctant laugh and lowered his hand from her neck, letting his fingers fall softly through her hair. “He’s a sociopath with an innate sense of right and wrong—he always has been. He was the type of kid who saw a bully knock someone down on the playground and fought back, no matter how much smaller in size he was. I never knew if it was because he loved to beat the crap out of people, or because his moral compass was just that rigid. These days, I think it’s a little of both. If what he said is true—that Todd’s been cheating people across several states—then this is exactly the kind of vigilante justice he’d go for.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “What about you?”

  “What about me?” Asprey’s voice was hoarse—raw and resigned. “I was the kid on the playground who stood near the monkey bars to watch the girls swing upside down in their dresses.”

  “You never helped him fight?”

  Asprey smiled tightly, etchings of sadness along his eyes. “He wouldn’t let me. But I always helped him get home afterward. Which is why—”

  She didn’t wait to hear anything more. Leaning in, a hand flat on that gloriously bare, hair-smattered chest, she kissed him.

  Asprey was hesitant at first, as though he wasn’t finished with their conversation and planned on fighting the baser urges that held her in their fiery grip. But her persistence won out, and his lips parted to allow her entry.

  The victory of it was short-lived.

  “I never thought I’d say this, but maybe we should save the kissing for a later date.” His mouth pressed gently against hers as he spoke. “We need to talk.”

  She pulled away just enough to see his face, but not so much that the connection between them was lost. She’d almost died, and the need to feel connected to something, to someone, was stronger than any presumption at common sense. Especially since the morning was likely to bring with it the realization that she had officially ruined her chances of getting out of this unscathed. “I don’t want to talk, Asprey. I don’t want to think about Graff or Todd or jail or Bea or even what I’m going to have for breakfast in the morning. I just want you.”

  Snagging his lower lip with her teeth, Poppy resumed their kiss, refusing to hold anything back as she climbed out of her seat and into his lap, reaching down to push the driver’s seat back as far as it could go. It wasn’t far, but by that time, she had either leg straddling his lap, their bodies a jumble of half-clothed limbs, so it didn’t really matter.

  “We should get you home.” Asprey’s words carried no meaning, as he’d completely fallen into the kiss, his mouth hot and searing where it landed—on her lips, along her jaw, at the open collar of her shirt—causing her body to respond with shivers of pleasure.

  “Absolutely,” she agreed, arching her back as his lips slid even further under the collar. “But if you’re going to sit there all night without a shirt on, I refuse to be responsible for my actions.”

  Asprey’s hands moved to her bare thighs, running up the length of them but stopping before he got to the good parts. She grabbed the headrest to give her leverage and ground her hips against his. He groaned, and his grip on her tightened.

  She undid the top two buttons to the shirt she wore, which smelled like Asprey. Everything smelled like him, the crisp, clean scent of bergamot and mint. It filled the air and her senses, making it
easy to conceal herself in the moment. She wasn’t covered in Todd’s blood. She wasn’t parked in the lot of a gas station that probably housed an entire family of opossums. She wasn’t falling headfirst into a situation that was so far outside her plans it might as well have been on the moon.

  There was just that smell and his lips and the hot, steady pulse of desire that she felt in every place their skin touched.

  “In all my years, I don’t think I’ve actually steamed up the windows before,” Asprey murmured, using a momentary pause to catch his breath and adjust her hips so that she could feel the entire length of him pressing against her. The shirt had hitched up enough so that the only thing separating the two of them was the thin cotton of her panties and his dark slacks. The direct pressure was enough to send mounting pleasure to every nerve ending she had.

  Using one hand on the ceiling to steady herself, Poppy let out a low moan. “Asprey, if you’re paying attention to the windows right now, I’m doing something wrong.”

  His laughter shook the car, the vibrations working a number on her body. A strong arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her back down into a kiss that stretched into the night as an explosion of bright lights and flashing colors.

  Until the lights dimmed and the colors stopped flashing and a heavy knock on the window startled them both.

  Poppy scrambled off Asprey’s lap and into the passenger seat, her fingers working quickly at the open buttons of her shirt, but it was a severe case of too little, too late. A second knock sounded, this time accompanied by the all-too-familiar rap of metal on glass, of flashlight meeting window. Like the ubiquitous crash of a domestic squabble next door, it was a sound that took Poppy right to her youth.

  “You decent?” Asprey asked, a wry twist to his smile.

  “As decent as it’s gonna get,” she managed, tugging the shirt down her legs. It was a silly attempt, seeing as how Asprey was shirtless, sweating and had an undeniable and substantial swelling in his pants. “It’s not like we have much in the way of options, and they don’t like waiting long.”

  “I see you’re an old hand at this.” He rolled the damp, murky glass down. The look he gave her was wary but confident. “And look natural. This, at least, is something I can do.”

  Poppy wished she had a tenth of his reserves of charm, able to be conjured at a moment’s notice. She’d bottle it up and keep it stashed in her bra for just such an occasion.

  “Hullo, Officer,” he called. “How can I help you?”

  “This is a No Park zone,” the officer said, clearly not as impressed with Asprey’s nonchalance as she was. The officer’s head moved down into Poppy’s line of vision, and she was able to breathe when she saw the pinched, weathered face of a complete stranger. It wasn’t like she knew all of the Seattle cops, but it only took one of the many officers who’d processed her to turn this evening into a nightmare beyond her worst imagination. “That means you can’t park here.”

  Another big sigh of relief. He obviously wasn’t the brightest cop on the beat.

  “We were just on our way,” Asprey said, not once losing his smile. “I guess we got a little caught up in the moment, if you know what I mean. We’re newlyweds, heading to the airport right now for our flight out. I’ve always wanted to show the little woman Bali. She’s never been, but there’s this incredible place in Denpasar I stayed once. Small but cozy.”

  Hilarious. Asprey was cracking inside jokes about Balinese prisons now, of all times.

  The cop moved his flashlight around the inside of the car, lingering a bit too long on their attire—or lack of it—for Poppy’s comfort. “You lose some clothes on the way?”

  Asprey looked down, as if seeing his state of undress for the first time. “Well, look at that. I guess we got a little more carried away than we intended. Honey, have you seen my shirt?”

  “I’m sure it’s around here somewhere,” Poppy managed, pretending to rustle around the floor of the car.

  It must have been a convincing show, because the cop pulled the flashlight far enough out of the car they were no longer spotlighted. “You seem like decent folks, but this isn’t a good part of town, so you’d best be on your way.”

  “Of course, Officer,” Asprey agreed. “Couldn’t agree more.”

  They might actually get away. She might actually end the night without handcuffs on her wrists, Nancy the parole officer’s wrath upon her head and years more of regret. Hope, an ever-elusive prankster as far as Poppy was concerned, reared her bright head.

  “I’ll just need to check your IDs.”

  And then it disappeared.

  “Just as a precaution, of course.” The cop ran his gloved hand over the door.

  Asprey reached across the car, presumably to grab identification, though he used the moment to look at her and offer a reassuring smile. “I got this,” he mouthed.

  She smiled tightly. He had no idea how close they were to the precipice—how close they were to losing it everything. It was like he was incapable of understanding that not everyone had a wink and several thousand dollars at the ready to emerge unscathed from every situation. There was blood in the trunk, for crying out loud.

  “This isn’t normally my kind of car,” Asprey said casually, handing over his driver’s license. “It’s my wife’s, but since we’re parking at the airport, it seemed safer to leave this one. I’m more of a speed man myself, though I shouldn’t be saying that to you.”

  “Oh yeah?” The cop peeked in. “Your wife there have ID?”

  “Not on her,” Asprey said calmly. “Most of the time, I reserve my speed for the skies, so you don’t have to worry about pulling me over. Once you hit the clouds at a good two hundred mile an hour pace, no car can compare.”

  “You a pilot?”

  “Amateur stuff, mostly. I used to fly with my dad when I was a kid, and he bought me my first Cessna the day I turned eighteen. I’m pretty sure my grandmother didn’t talk to him for a month after that. She was sure I’d crash the damn thing into Mt. Rainier or something.”

  “But you’re still here.”

  Asprey spread his hands. “Ten crash-free years and counting. What’s the fastest your patrol car hits?”

  “Highest I’ve ever gotten her is ninety-two, chasing down a drunk teenager in a stolen Miata.” The cop handed back the paperwork. “How is it your wife expects to get through airport security without any identification? Or pants?”

  Poppy gripped the door handle so tightly she almost lost feeling in her fingers. For a second there, she thought Asprey had it covered, what with his tales of a rich snob childhood and manly pursuits of velocity. He was a definite people person—hitting all the right notes, engaging the officer in conversation as though they’d been golf buddies for years.

  “Oh, I’m flying us out,” Asprey said easily. “Didn’t I mention that? We shipped most of our stuff ahead of time—Ruby, my plane, she’s great with a tailwind and a lightweight like the little woman here, but she can’t handle the long-distances with a ton of luggage. And between you and me? My wife packed twelve suitcases for our two week trip. Twelve, and I swear most of them are full of shoes.” Asprey reached over and patted her leg.

  The cop chuckled appreciatively. “You two kids have fun on your honeymoon—and try to keep it all buttoned up until you get there, okay?”

  Asprey nodded and winked, waving a cheerful good-bye. They waited until the cop car pulled out of the lot before daring to move.

  “That was close,” Poppy said. She clamped her hands in her lap to keep Asprey from noticing the way they shook. “It’s a good thing you can think on your feet. That cop was about to offer to take my place on the honeymoon.”

  He started the car. “I do have my occasional uses.”

  “Hey,” she began. Her initial urge was to protest the bitter note in his voice, but a sinking feeling took the place of anything warmer or fuzzier. His privileged roots were showing again—a strong reminder of the places they needed to maintain. “I
s there anything you can’t talk your way out of? Any situation that doesn’t naturally work out in your favor?”

  He cast her a sidelong look so full of meaning she squirmed uncomfortably. “There is one thing I have my doubts about. But I think our first task should be to demolish my brother.”

  “Which one?” she asked wryly, playing along.

  “Honestly?” He cocked his head her direction, and this time, his smile seemed genuine. “At this point, I’m not so sure I care.”

  “He’ll be here.” Asprey sat on one of their folding chairs, a bowl of Rice Krispies balanced on one knee. The act of bringing spoon to mouth was doing wonders in helping him keep his calm. “He’s probably just running late.”

  “Six hours late?” Poppy, on the other hand, paced the floor of the hangar at an almost frantic pace, Gunner on her heels. “I don’t like it. He should be here by now.”

  She came to a halt in front of him. Under any other circumstances, the sight of Poppy in a leather bustier over faded, form-fitting jeans would have him dreaming of spaghetti westerns and saloon girls. But even though he wouldn’t have minded wrapping his arms around her and forcing her to sit still, she had a point. It wasn’t like Graff to be late.

  “We probably shouldn’t have left him alone with Todd.” Asprey gave voice to the worst of his concerns.

  “We shouldn’t have left him alone with that money. It looks an awful lot like Graff took that briefcase and skipped town.”

  Asprey couldn’t help the laughter from rumbling through his chest.

  “What’s so funny?” Poppy leaned in, and might have been menacing if the curve of each breast wasn’t exactly on his eye level. Those were not the parts of her that scared him the most. “I’m glad this is all such a nice joke for you.”

  “Poppy, stop.” He placed the cereal on the floor for Gunner to lap. “I’m only laughing because that is the exact same thing Graff said to me the day after the first poker game—only he was talking about you.”

  “What?” Some of her stiffness gave way as she searched his face.