“We agree I’m long gone before you put a choke hold on Cookie Jar, and no whiff of scandal sticks to me.”
He stood and slipped his hand around hers. It felt right. “I promise to let you break up our fake relationship before that.”
“I’ll hold you to it.”
They shook on it because he couldn’t think of any other pieces of objectionable fine print to throw at her, aside from the big one.
None of it would feel fake to him.
Chapter Twelve
On her hands and knees scrubbing the toilet bowl, Lenny’s decision to meet with Halsey in her apartment felt like a rocky start to their fake partnership. Both of them were too busy to put the time aside during the day, which meant Operation Green with Envy planning had to be done after hours, and the glossy, respectable, prosperous offices of Sherwood Venture Capital had reminded Lenny too much of Dad’s office for her to want to hang out there.
On top of that, with Mom visiting her sister in Florida—indefinitely—Lenny felt she should be home for Mallory in case Mal thought she had an invitation to stay out late on a school night.
If Halsey showed up early, he’d get a shock. She wore bleach-stained track pants and a T-shirt she told herself had shrunk in the wash. Not that this was a date. She wasn’t going to dress up for him, but it would be useful to give him the impression she was professional no matter the setting.
And he’d no doubt come straight from the office where he’d looked so fine behind his Great Gatsby desk in his shirtsleeves, buttoned-up waistcoat with a hot pink tie, and a mop-top angel she’d mistaken for his daughter on his lap. She’d never seen him wearing glasses—they were half-moon and gave him a scholarly look—or expected him to be such a natural with a child.
None of that helped with the continual thoughts of wanting to kiss him. Wanting to ruffle his hair and hear him groan in her ear, and that was before she caught him with Amelia on his lap and got hit with a power shot of dopamine. When this sting was over, she had to get a hobby. Hopefully man-shaped with a preruffled and ready-to-get-laid feature. No knitting required.
“Damn you, Excel Boy,” she said to the toilet bowl, fist raised in a sad cartoon parody.
The fun part about her impromptu trip to Sherwoods’ office had been shocking Halsey rigid about her decision to partner up. And why not, when she could do a good deed and serve her own need to be seen at appropriate events around town.
It was a boost to know PowerPoint Girl could surprise her dastardly partner in crime.
She got off her knees and flushed. As far as Mal was concerned, Halsey was her accountant, not some guy who’d made her momentarily not sad by being a decent dancer, saved her from a mugging, and offered her the opportunity for soul-soothing vengeance and social status rehab.
She had time to shower and dress, put a cheese plate together, and worry that wanting to work with Halsey was her worst decision since losing her virginity to Gavin Rochford in his single sleeping bag at summer camp.
Gavin was a water sports jock who was into beach volleyball, wake boarding, and kite surfing and couldn’t remember her name or what they’d done on the beach. She spent the rest of the camp suffering him calling her Louise, telling everyone it was their in-joke, and pretending not to care.
She was the same age then as Mallory was now.
Back then, Dad was running a legitimate investment firm. Easton was at college. Mallory was a cute preschooler with gappy front teeth. Mom was the charity event hostess of the moment. Lenny wasn’t staying out late and lying about it. She was taking dance classes and lusting after the poet, musician, actor friends who hung around with her bestie, Fin, and too scared to act on any of that hormonal surge because of the bad taste for sex her sandy sleeping bag encounter with Gavin had left.
She wanted more for Mal than a muscle-bound dude drunk enough to not care beyond a half-warm start and connecting parts A and B, and drooling in his sleep.
Maybe her sister could have a series of fake boyfriends who looked the part like Halsey did but never touched her. That would solve the problem. Mal had probably already done the deed, despite not admitting to it. She should find out what Mal knew about contraceptives, because Mom had never done a thing to prepare Lenny for Gavin or anyone who’d followed him, right up to and including her newest fake beau.
Who she knew practically nothing about.
He had no social media profile. None. He was a ghost online and not exactly chatty about himself.
With his CIA-level research capability, Halsey probably knew her ovulation cycle, and she didn’t know the first thing about him, except that he was a well-dressed criminal who could duck a missile, dance a waltz, throw a punch, dandle a child convincingly, and possibly had magic fingers. How did he do that thing with the buttons and the cup?
She got in the shower and tried not to think about Halsey’s magic fingers while she soaped up. Then she stood in front of her wardrobe looking for something to wear that wouldn’t squeeze her waistline or pinch under her arms or require the Spanks she’d squirmed out of earlier. If she had to be uncomfortable around Halsey, she was going to make it metaphorical not physical.
Wearing comfy undies, she stared into the morass of her wardrobe. Clothing options for every conceivable occasion and nothing to wear to plot a con. Every time she’d seen Halsey he was suited up, the whole crisp shirt, glorious cut fabric, perfect tailoring, paired with the right tie, shoes, and cufflinks.
She went for a pair of wide-leg black pants and a white shirt and shoved her feet in ballet flats. The unhelpful full-length mirror read the look as trying too hard. Jeans would be better with this shirt. She was still sifting through looks fifteen minutes later for no good reason.
She didn’t need to impress Halsey. That made the plain pale blue, drapey, knee-length T-shirt dress just right. She swapped to red ballet flats and slung on a red resin necklace and its matching chunky bangle and was in the kitchen looking for the cheese board when Mal came in and dumped her satchel on the counter.
“Don’t leave that there,” she said and then grimaced, and followed up with, “How was your day?”
“No one followed me home or spat on me.”
Lenny winced. “Better than average, then.”
That got a grudging smile. “Who is this guy you’re meeting?” Mal said.
“Just the accountant.”
“Are you having a pajama party?”
“Why would we be having a pajama party?”
“Because you’re basically wearing your pajamas with jewelry.”
Lenny looked down at herself. Mal wasn’t wrong. “I’m sure you have homework.”
Mal laughed and the intercom buzzed. “Does he wear glasses and a cardigan? Does he have food stains on his tie and smell of baby vomit?”
“Yes.” Those glasses had been as unexpected as the child and just as annoyingly sexy. “Now go to your room and don’t come out unless I scream fire.”
Mal brought one sneaker-clad foot up onto the seat of the stool she sat on and hugged it, settling in to watch Halsey’s arrival. “He must really smell bad,” she said.
The intercom buzzed again. Halsey smelled expensive. Lenny added that to the list of things she knew about him—it wasn’t exactly an asset on the remember-he’s-a-grifter column—and told the doorman to send him up.
When she opened the door, it was to come face-to-face with a version of Halsey she’d not met before. His arms were full of groceries.
“Thought you could use these,” he said.
She reached to take the bag out of his arms. Arms that weren’t in a suit coat but a soft blue Henley with the sleeves pushed up to show stupidly nice forearms. He didn’t have suit pants on. He’d worn jeans. She didn’t know how she felt about seeing him dressed down. He looked accessible in a way his suits made it look like he really did take his joy from spreadsheets. She couldn’t stop staring at him. He looked like a mistake she was destined to make.
“Is this okay?” h
e asked softly, as the bag passed between them. And just that, the checking in made her feel less tense.
“Thank you,” she said, peering inside the bags. There was a bunch of bright tulips and fresh pasta and sauce plus breadsticks. The makings of a meal. “You shouldn’t have.”
“We need to eat,” he said.
He followed her to the kitchen where Mallory sat smirking. “You’re the accountant,” she said.
Halsey extended his hand. “I’m the accountant.”
They shook and exchanged names and Mal said, “You don’t smell bad.”
His brows went down. “I hope not.”
Mal grinned at him, star struck in the thirty seconds he’d been in the apartment. Lenny groaned, making them both look across at her. He didn’t present like a sexy version of Dad, but he was no role model, either. She put the bag of groceries on the counter with a thump, took the flowers out, and waved them at Mal. “Put these in a vase, please. There’s one in Mom’s room.”
“No starting the pajama party till I’m back,” Mal said as she made for Mom’s room.
“Don’t ask,” Lenny said to Halsey’s quizzical look. “I thought you lived in a suit.”
He smiled. Oh, he did have a lovely smile. The kind that warmed her over. The kind that could take anyone in. “It works as a uniform. No extra decisions to make. No surprises.”
“Handling surprises would be part of your training, I imagine.”
He reached into one of the bags and took out a bottle of wine. “I like surprises about as much as I like psychopaths and rich men with no social conscience.” He walked it around to the refrigerator, put it inside, and then stood close and said, “How do you want me to handle, Mallory?”
Carefully, because she’s already half in love with you. “Like Amelia but at sixteen, and no teaching her anything criminal.”
He laughed. “She’s like you.”
“She’s back,” said Mal. “Or do you want to keep talking about me? Who’s Amelia?”
“Halsey’s girlfriend,” Lenny said, and Mal’s smile fell.
She put the vase on the counter. “I’ve got homework.” Without looking at Halsey, she said, “Nice to meet you,” and left the room.
Halsey watched her go. “What did I do?”
Sixteen came with a tinder directory of emotions, each one coming at you fast and without warning. “She’s disappointed you don’t smell like baby’s vomit.”
His shook his head, but he picked up the vase and filled it with water at the sink. He had to pass behind her to do that. Close enough she could smell his ocean fresh scent. She poked him in the pec because he took up so much space, and yet he wasn’t intimidating; she couldn’t help herself but touch him. I’m in so much trouble.
“We’re going to pretend to be a couple for just as long as it takes for us to do this, but to my family, you’re the accountant.”
His eyes stayed on her face. “Agreed.”
“Don’t bring me flowers.”
He put the tulips in the vase. “I’m in your home. I was being polite. I suppose you don’t want the chocolates, either.”
Chocolates. She peered into the bag. She definitely didn’t want the chocolates. “They’ll last longer than our relationship.”
“Preservatives,” he said. “Also, changing your accountant frequently is a bad idea.”
She laughed. She didn’t mean to, but he’d done a better job with the groceries than Mom, and when she fished the chocolates out of the bag, it was to find they were her favorite brand.
She had to find a way of working with Halsey and keeping her head on straight and her hands to herself for the next six weeks. He’d said the sting would come down to four or five key social events she’d need to attend. She should be able to be sensible about him that long.
The chocolates wouldn’t last the night.
Chapter Thirteen
While Lenny fussed with a cheese plate, Halsey sat at the dining room table and used his laptop to set up a calendar they could share. He’d fill it with the details she needed about events they’d go to. A boring diplomatic dinner, a dance performance, a cultural exchange event, and an emerald auction so far.
He was about to explain all that when Mallory came back. He’d upset Lenny somehow. Maybe he shouldn’t have changed, would’ve looked more official in his suit. He hadn’t factored for Mal, and he’d screwed up with the flowers and chocolates. Not an auspicious start.
Mal took the seat beside him and looked him over. Her eyes were muddy with hurt and rebellion. “Are you fucking my sister?”
Lenny snapped, “Mallory, apologize at once.”
He returned Mallory’s stare. “I’m the middle kid of five. I’ve got two older brothers and two younger sisters. Everyone needed someone to pick on. You have to work a lot harder than that to get at me. I’m your sister’s accountant, but even if I weren’t, it’s none of your business.” Mallory kept eyeballing him. “Anything else you want to know?”
“Have you always been a smart-ass?” she said.
“Mallory,” said Lenny, using the least-effective parenting technique in the book. Zeke’s name would be worn out if that censorious name-uttering practice had any impact.
“I had an ugly period of being unfairly picked on, shoved around, scapegoated, and pranked. I wised up fast. You?” he said.
“Same,” Mal said, still with the mutinous expression.
He smiled, because underneath the brittle exterior, Mal wanted him to like her. They both knew her experience was nothing like his, and they both ignored Lenny’s, “Mallory.”
“My parents worked a lot. Left my oldest brother Cal in charge. He did the best he could. We were an unruly bunch. Now you, I’m guessing, had the opposite experience. Much older siblings, no one to pick on you, had to toughen up all by yourself.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“Sure, I do.” He got clues to who Mallory was from her tone, word choice, eye contact, and body language. The rest was demographics and family history. “You wish you were done with school. Want to blow the nest and do your own thing. You’re tired of the whole appearances thing. Everyone sucks.”
Mallory shook her head, unimpressed. Wait for it. He was still warming up. “You’ve got a collection of tattoo sketches. A Pinterest board, probably. Once you decide on the one that’s really meaningful, you’ll have it done, and I’m betting you already have a secret piercing.”
Her mouth opened, and her shoulders dropped. Bluff called. “You’re a clown,” she said, but without real heat, and she’d think twice about trying to rile him up again. She turned to Lenny. “Tattoos are gross.”
He was spot-on about the piercing. “Oh hell, Lenny,” he said, feigning disappointment. “I think your sister insulted my awesome tattoo of a mermaid riding a unicorn, holding a puppy, under a rainbow.”
Lenny laughed. She crossed behind him and brushed her hand over his shoulder as she put the cheese plate on the table. Hell, that touch, barely there, but enough to make him stiffen. He clamped his teeth together, so he didn’t make an inappropriate sound.
“You don’t really have that do you?” said Mal with barely restrained laughter.
He twisted his mouth into an expression of regret to indicate he was indeed a tattooed canvas of clichés beneath his clothing. He wanted Lenny’s hand back, the whisper of her fingers, a touch so fleeting it might not have happened, except for the fact it had made him hyperaware of her, worse than when she’d noticed what he was wearing and more intense than when she poked his arm in the kitchen.
Since his hyperawareness was already at count-her-eyelashes level, that said a lot about his divided attention. Right now, he needed to focus on getting Mallory to trust him to ensure there was less reason for Lenny to distrust him, and the best way to do that was to make them laugh at him. Self-deprecation, he had no trouble manufacturing; it was an attribute most tyrants didn’t understand.
“Next you’ll tell me you have carp
diem on your arm,” Mal said.
He shook his head. “It’s ‘this too shall pass.’”
Mal just about swallowed her lips in an effort not to laugh. “Better than keep calm and carry on. Or something profound that started as a T-shirt from Target.”
“You mean like live, laugh, love,” he said, expression blank. “I’ve got that on my ribs.”
“I’d have figured you for a world map guy,” she said, with her first careless, joyful smile; it went all the way to her eyes.
“They just look like fungus. I almost got a hummingbird, here.” He pointed to the inside edge of his elbow, covered by his sleeve. “But I went for coordinates instead.”
“Coordinates to where?” said Lenny in a way that told him for the moment she’d forgotten he was for business not pleasure.
He turned to her, wishing he could think of something to say that would make her trickle her fingertips over his body again. “The tattoo studio. I couldn’t think of anywhere else more meaningful.”
Lenny made an undignified snorfle. It was a sound worthy of its own music chart.
“I’d get a heartbeat thread, like on a monitor, but that’s so last year,” Mal said.
“You will not,” said Lenny, but there was humor in her voice.
“I’d have taken you for a paw prints person or a feather that turns into birds,” he said.
“I’m more a city skyline or a constellation girl. That’s if I don’t get the word ‘perseverance’ spelled wrong, you know, totes ironically.”
“Classy.” He looked at Lenny. “You should get matching tattoos.”
“How do you know we don’t have them?” she said.
Utterly inappropriate, he wanted to strip her to check. “You mean you both have ‘I’m up to no good’ across your ribs?”
“Mal, seriously, for a second, you didn’t get a tattoo, did you?” Lenny said.
Mal shook her head and lifted her shirt, flashing her belly button ring. Bingo. “I got this, and I have a Pinterest tattoo page. I can’t decide. Whatever is cool one minute is basic the next.”
Fool Me Forever (Confidence Game) Page 10
