One Night Wife (Confidence Game)

by Ainslie Paton

  He looked up at the house, not a light in a single window. Like the night, it had no answers for him. What weighed on him was how offensively coldhearted he was. How much of an unfeeling monster that made him and how unlikely it was he knew how to be in love, how to care for another person, or that by breakfast, Fin would want to know him.

  Since he was paralyzed by indecision, all his studied cunning and superior manipulation skills having deserted him, rats on a sinking ship, perhaps that was best. Let her decide. It was like the toss of a double-sided coin or a shell game, and he would be the patsy and let her win however she wanted to play.

  Dawn came on in a slow break of vibrant color at the edge of the horizon. Pink inside gold inside blue. Cal’s eyes felt like buckets full of silt, gritty with lack of sleep, and his neck and back ached from sitting propped up for too many hours.

  Fin came, still in her cat pjs, with her hair pillow wild, as the sky turned the color of a glorious bruise. “How long have you been out here?” She looked out at the sea and mumbled, “It’s beautiful,” through a yawn.

  “Can’t compete with you.”

  She made a rude noise. “Cal Sherwood, so smooth he spends the night in a sun lounge instead of a comfortable bed with a hot woman in kitty pjs.” She yawned again and then shoved his leg, climbing onto the lounger with him, slotting herself into his side, her head on his shoulder, her thigh over his, her hand on his heart.

  All the unquiet tension in him went still. It felt like he’d come home, and he put himself entirely in her hands. “What do you want from us, Fin?”

  She patted his chest. “That’s a W question.”

  “That has to tell you what a mess I am about you.”

  “I think you trying to sleep on a sun lounge did that. I want more of what we were like at Beacon and all this week. More of you in bed with me that doesn’t only involve snuggles. I want us to screw till we’re too tired to eat burgers, to even know they’ve been invented.”

  He hugged her closer. He didn’t want a reason to reject the simplicity of that, but he still had a dozen of them, and the frayed piece of rope that tied his sense of self, duty, and family to the roar of desire that fed his hope, pulled dangerously taut.

  “I don’t need you to be in love with me, Cal. Just love me the best you can while we’re together.”

  She would tire of him. He didn’t know how to have fun. He worked all the time. He was guarded and secretive. He talked in riddles, and she knew that, and still, she wanted him. He was the worst possible choice for her.

  That rope was going to strangle him.

  “I’m not asking for forever, only for however long we enjoy ourselves,” she said.

  It snapped.

  It was as if a physical thing in his body went slack. Constraints released, caution fell free, obligation unwound until he wasn’t choked by it. He tipped Fin’s chin up, lowered his head, and kissed her firmly enough to make their own sunrise. This was the shell game of his life, and she’d won, and he’d con the heavens to keep her on the winning side.

  He kissed her till she moaned and squirmed and climbed over him. He let his hands move on her body in all the ways he’d denied them and exalted in the way she rocked against him, dug her fingers into his skull, and held his eyes with a look of surprised delight.

  “Like this, Cal. I want us to be like this.”

  “But with less clothing and more privacy.”

  She laughed. “You’re such a grown-up.”

  Skin on skin and no interruptions and time. He wasn’t about to rush this, a hasty coupling where they could be discovered at any minute. They weren’t kids, and speedy wasn’t going to tie a single helium balloon on the weight of his lust for her. He brought their mouths together again and licked into Fin’s as he palmed her ass and pushed his hips against hers. He wanted time to devour her thoroughly, systematically, utterly, and he told her that as he kissed down her neck and throat, opening the buttons of her kitty shirt in advance of his lips.

  “I want you long and loud, Fin. I want you hot and wet and needy, and I’m taking my time with you. Every part of you will be mine. All your secret places and sounds and smells. Everything you feel and are and need is mine.”

  She got loud when he licked over her nipple, and it reminded him he wasn’t about to share the sounds she made with anyone. Good sense didn’t stop him turning a lick to a kiss to a suck. Recklessness tasted like honeysuckle cream and Fin’s soft skin and smelled like sunshine and the sea. She was more addictive than any of the legal and illegal substances he’d been offered in the last night, but there was no darkness to cover them, and he could hear movement, voices in the house behind them.

  He kissed the runaway pulse in her neck as he buttoned her back up. “Not here. Not now.”

  She tried to slap his hands away. “No, no, you can’t stop.”

  “Don’t want to share you with the morning yoga class.”

  She slumped against him. “Oh shit. You have a golf game.”

  Maybe he didn’t care about that. Recklessness was pushing work aside for true pleasure. A day in bed with Fin would take the edge off, would stop him pretending what was between them could be compartmentalized and kept separate.

  “I have to extract my revenge with big dollar donations.” She pulled out of his arms and sat back on his shins as the first early jogger sauntered past them with a quick double take while she jammed earbuds in.

  There it was. Fin’s self-preservation skills were better tuned than his.

  She swept her hand over his chest. “You’re not going to go cold on me, are you?”

  He sat forward and brushed her nose with his. “Not a chance. I’m untethered now.”

  She shivered. “That sounds so hot.”

  They managed to get to their room, bouncing off each other and various walls and once there, he pestered her with kisses while she got ready for the day. His tee time was later. He was in no hurry, and he could grab a couple of hours sleep while she was gone. He’d need it. He stretched out on the bed while she fixed her hair. She wore yoga pants that showed off every curve and a top that was a second skin. It was as close to being naked as he’d seen her.

  Cue a long hard staring contest that was laden with all kinds of heated promises. “You really want to do yoga?”

  “I really want Paris’s money.”

  “That’s my girl.” Maybe he could do this without hurting her, if he kept taking her lead, borrowing her focus.

  With two different itineraries running, it was unlikely they’d see each other until tonight’s formal engagement dinner, and he must’ve had the devil in his eyes, because Fin skipped around the bed, not getting close enough for him to grab. “If you kiss me again, I’m never going to get out of here, and you need sleep.”

  She locked him in, and it made him smile. He set an alarm, and he did sleep, exhaustion beating out invigorating sexual tension. He only felt like he was eighteen again. He couldn’t go without sleep like back then. He made it to the golf course to tee off with the last group, about the time Fin would be attending a chick flick premier movie screening.

  Eighteen torturous holes where Cal pitched Brainstorm, the scam that would replace Everlasting. The concept was brain fingerprinting, the idea that with special equipment you could read someone’s brainwaves to determine what they were thinking. It was bunkum based on good science, the kind of could-be-true story Sherwood specialized in. Cal was able to talk up military and corporate uses for the technology and ensure rumors got started. By the end of the weekend, he’d have interested investors.

  Then it was lunch in the clubhouse. That’s where he caught up with Alex for the first time. He had a threat to deliver and an engagement gift to present. One shouldn’t balance out the other, but it likely would in Alex’s twisted brain.

  He pulled the prospective groom aside, his blood running so hot he imagined it sizzling in his veins. “If you touch Fin, you fucking worm, if you look at her, or speak to her with anyth
ing but courtesy, I will bring such financial havoc to you not even your parents will be able to bail you out.” Ah hell, he’d do it anyway, slowly, painfully.

  Alex couldn’t say he wasn’t warned. He tried a look of shock and incomprehension on for size. It wasn’t a good fit.

  “Why would I—” He gave up and fell silent.

  Cal pressed the key ring of a racing dune buggy he’d had delivered to the golf course lot into Alex’s hand. A suitably unexpected and extravagant gift he’d managed to have Alex unknowingly pay for himself. “Exactly. Why would you?”

  After that, there was way too much informal dick measuring and ego pimping. He should’ve been more focused on who was saying what. He talked with his Everlasting whales, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d extracted what he could from them for the moment. His focus was all the way back at the pool house on a sun lounge with Fin with the sunrise behind her and jewels in her eyes, her breath shorting and her taste intoxicating.

  By the time he got back to their room, Fin was off having a massage. He was due in the home theater for a screening of the newest Bourne or Bond and planned to doze through it. They were all the same fantasy, anyway. Truth and justice won out. The hero always saved the world and got the girl, but he never kept her, never got a happy ending.

  That was the part that distressed him because Cal was no one’s standard definition of a hero, and yet he ached for that triumph.

  There was a note from Fin when he got back to the room after the movie. She’d meet him at the dinner. He took the quickest swim, showered, dressed in his tux. She would be wearing something sedately glamorous, and the sooner they got through dinner and he got her out of it, the happier he’d be, because what he felt now as he muffed it with his bowtie for the second time was anxiety.

  He’d had trouble naming the feeling, it was so foreign. He’d called it boredom and frustration, but what he felt was nerves, not the reluctance he’d shown Fin in the car that he’d called stage fright, this was full-on, mood-altering, hesitant, uncomfortable apprehension.

  Fin had a whole day to wonder, back away. Fuck. He could bank on a stranger’s intentions better than he trusted his luck would hold with her. He wasn’t eighteen again, but this was another way he felt it—rampant insecurity in a world that felt out of his control.

  The notion that he had indigestion before he’d seen a plate of food followed him across the property to the main house where the lawn had been turned into an outdoor dining room with a raised wooden floor and chandeliers cleverly rigged to appear to float in space. He couldn’t find Fin, and he tried to avoid getting dragged into a conversation with anyone. He was still fretting on her appearance when he spotted her unexpectedly above him on the staircase from the house.

  With the exception of the expression on her face, she was elegance personified. The gown was deceptively simple, no frills or straps or embellishments. The neckline was a heart shape, dipping between her breasts, held up God knows how, caressing her body all the way to her feet. It was a lush red, and she stood there with her hand on the stair rail, her eyes crossed, and her tongue poked out.

  Her extravagant loveliness, her delicious playfulness sent him into full body shock.

  Fin was the prize of his life in a game he wasn’t making the rules for. She came down the stairs to him and walked straight into his arms.

  “You were nervous.” She laughed, and it was humbling. “I’ve never seen nervous Cal before.” She took a hold of his satin lapels. “Did you think I was going to skip out on you?”

  He breathed her in: suggestively sexy perfume, jeweled pins holding her hair up, rubies glittering in her ears, and tried to form a coherent thought.

  She put her hand to his face. “You weren’t sure, were you?” She brushed her lips on his cheek and said, “I did that to you,” with a tone of such amazement she cured his anxiety.

  “You make me question everything I thought was fixed in stone.” He’d been in a state of flux since the night he’d watched her struggle with pain in Beacon, but he only saw that now.

  “You don’t look happy about that.”

  Indecision, vacillation, and timidity, unless played for effect, were lethal in his line of work. “Watch me get happy with it.” He took her hand and twirled her under his arm, then brought her close, swaying.

  She tried to pull away with a self-conscious blush. “There’s no music.”

  “Yeah, there is.” Bells in his head, harps in his heart, a whole soaring string orchestra in his gut, and piano riffs up and down his legs. “It started when I saw you on the stairs.”

  She laughed. “How hard do you have to work tonight?”

  “The only thing I’m hard at work on tonight is you.”

  He barely noticed what they were served. He had no conversation for the other guests at the table. He suffered through the speeches, toasts to the future Mr. and Mrs. Alex Astor. He was ready to whisk Fin back to the pool house when the band started up.

  “Dance with me,” she said.

  All night, if that’s what she wanted. They were one of the first couples onto the dance floor. The music was smooth, the singer crooning Train’s “Marry Me,” and the mood was pure unadulterated romance because the woman in his arms was his triple threat—captivating, smart, funny, and the night was brilliant with possibility.

  “You can dance the old-fashioned way.” Fin was delightfully shocked.

  “I have a lot of tricks up my sleeve.”

  With Fin smiling up at him, he felt a kind of powerful weightlessness, a separateness from the world and its chicanery, a closeness that felt like a healing wound. A return to health after a long illness.

  He hugged her closer than the dance demanded. His head was full of nonsense. It was the singer’s voice, the poetry of John Legend’s “All of Me,” the sensation of Fin in his arms. He hadn’t known it was possible to feel so burned through with light and seared with happiness.

  She touched his cheek. “What are you thinking? You have the strangest expression.”

  “That as much as I love dancing with you I’d love being alone with you more.”

  She wanted one more song and then one more, and it was no hardship to oblige, and when they finally left the dance floor and the party, it was to stop on the lawn for the fireworks.

  With rockets squealing and pink starbursts streaking across the sky, he put a hand to the column of her neck and his nose into her silky hair. She watched the sparkles, and he watched her, letting his fingers trail down her back, flattening his palm under her waist, cuing her to a whole new language of love they’d finally make together.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Under the starlight and firework sprinkles, Cal’s touch felt different. Fin had learned to distinguish between his professional cues, firm but glancing, and his affectionate touches, which were gentle, lingering, and assertively possessive. But since Beacon, the way his hands moved over her body when they were in public had changed. It was as if he couldn’t stand not to have physical contact with her; as if he craved it.

  When he wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and stroked down her spine, he made her tremble. When he rested his hand in the small of her back and whispered his desire in her ear, she felt invincible.

  She leaned into his body while an orange and silver flower exploded overhead. It opened from a pinpoint of light, wider, wider, expanding fast at the center, slow at the farthest edges until it froze in momentary perfection before falling in a shower of winking sparks.

  “Ah, that was lovely,” she breathed as Cal kissed her neck.

  “That’s how I want to make you feel inside. An explosion, bright and hot, petals unfolding, rippling out and growing bigger and more perfect until it shatters and flashes out.”

  “Oh.” Her head dropped back to rest on his chest.

  “How many times, Fin? How many times can I make you come?”

  “You’re asking the wrong question.” He nipped her. “You should be asking how easy i
t will be. For your information, if you describe a firework as an orgasm again I might come on the spot.”

  He spun her so they were face to face, and she looped her arms around his neck. His eyes were bright, reflecting none of his secrets but all of his wishes, and that was more than she’d expected to win from him. “Take me to bed and make me sparkle, Cal.”

  He kissed her while the sky lit up above them and the sound of rockets echoed, soaring in her chest. They took a golf buggy back to the pool house which was deserted, not a light on, outside of those illuminating the pool itself, the color an echo of Cal’s eyes. She felt giddy from his attention, and while he parked the buggy, she took off her heels and tossed them on a sun lounge and turned to look for him. He was right there, shrugging off his coat and undoing his tie. She added the jeweled pins from her updo to the pile of clothing and accessories they no longer needed. He added cufflinks, his watch, and then his shoes and socks and belt.

  She’d started this, but she wasn’t sure what she was doing. He was right—sex would change things between them. They’d already changed; they could never go back to the Fin and Cal from barstools at the Blarney.

  Everything before they had sex was discovery and boundary pushing, working together and falling, falling like so much gunpowder from the sky without any trace of how they’d blasted into each other, marked each other. But that time was done. The moment they went upstairs and abandoned the roles they’d played—coach and protégé, mentor and newbie, director and actor—they’d become something new. And Fin wasn’t sure who she’d be to Cal when she wasn’t his favor to promote, his One Night Wife.

  “What’s wrong, my darling?” His strong arms circled her from behind.

  “Stage fright.”

  “Inconvenient.” He groaned into her neck.

  “I’m having second thoughts, but mostly they’re about what you look like when you’re not all buttoned up.”

  He laughed and stepped away. His shirt hit the pile. Oh. “Come swim with me.” His trousers hit the pile.