“It won’t be a late night,” he said. “I’ll have you home by ten thirty. Earlier, if we’ve made contact.”
Too early, and it would be a waste of this dress and the time spent on her hair and makeup and agonizing about just how she was going to make the most of introducing them to Cookie Jar.
That was the objective tonight. It was simple enough. After this, it got more complex. A series of repeat meetings, each allowing Halsey to spin his web of deceit like an enormous charcoal spider who could lull you into trusting his silken hammock and then bite your head off.
It was notable he hadn’t made any comment about her appearance. It was the obvious thing to do, and he didn’t go there. It’s not like she needed to be told she looked good. She knew she had room presence, and this wasn’t a date. She still wanted to kick his shins for the oversight. She closed her clutch and clutched her house keys. “Let’s go.”
“Wait. Your arm. That bruise.” He frowned. “Did something happen?”
He hadn’t made any comment about her appearance, but he noticed a slither of faded purple unicorn. She tugged at her sleeve until it was covered. “It’s not a bruise, it’s a fake tattoo that didn’t wash off.”
He visibly relaxed as if he was relieved he didn’t need to seek vengeance on whoever had given her a purple splotch. It gave her the silliest thrill that he’d gotten all puffed up and protective.
He held the door for her. He had a town car waiting. It wasn’t a date, but apart from the fact they weren’t talking, it had all the trimmings of one. He didn’t talk in the car, either. He kept to his side of the back seat, and she kept to hers, except that her skirt spilled over, tipping against his legs. “Sorry.”
“It’s no problem.”
The problem was how stiff they unexpectedly were with each other. “We’d better warm up,” she said.
“How was your week?” he responded.
“Is that written on a cue card?” Questions to ask a date.
He gave her a quizzical look. “I just wondered how your week was.”
“It was okay. Thank you for asking. How was yours?”
“It was okay, too.”
She turned her face away so he couldn’t see her smile. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was nervous from the way he rubbed his finger rhythmically over a smooth silver cufflink.
He made a grunt of annoyance. “I hate small talk.” She turned back to see him close his eyes and drop his head to his hand. “I’m making this awkward. It’s”—he touched the hem of her skirt—“I should’ve asked who the designer was. It’s a classic dress.”
He should’ve simply said, “You look lovely,” like any regular date might. “It’s a vintage Dior from 1955. The original was designed for Sophia Loren. I bought it at auction, back when I did things like that.”
“And the shoes?”
“You’re not interested in my shoes.” She threw him a bone. “You’re doing fine with the small talk.” Although their body language was blind date from hell.
“I am interested in your shoes. They’re incredible.”
They were rather incredible, and there was joy in wearing them again. “Dolce and Gabbana glass slippers.” Although they were translucent crystal-studded PVC and leather rather than actual glass with four-and-a-quarter-inch heels. They essentially looked like she was walking on air.
“Cinderella shoes,” he said.
She was no Cinderella. She’d always been at the ball, except for this recent history that was more ugly-stepsister oriented. Halsey might well qualify as her fairy godmother, except she’d make her own kingdom from here. “They were two grand. I won’t be leaving one behind.”
He smiled. Goddammit, he was drop-dead handsome; he made her heart hiccup. How is he still single?
“I’ll try not to be so weird,” he said.
How is he not in jail?
He did slightly better at pretending they were together when they arrived. He helped her out of the car, and he was every confident New York millionaire she’d grown up with. A good many of them were frauds, too.
Halsey smiled more often, and he nodded to people he knew, stopping to make introductions that were smart and sensible and didn’t put an irksome label like girlfriend or partner on their relationship. But he did it all with a clenched jaw, an attitude of being wanted elsewhere, and an eye on the room that was more defensive than a cocktail party deserved, as if he thought a gathering of charity donors in their finery, free drinks, and fancy finger food were out to get him.
He plotted a course through the room that was more about avoiding conversation than it was connecting, and he didn’t let up the pace until they were ensconced in a corner almost by themselves, where he took an audible breath that seemed to come from the shine in his shoes.
“Might have mentioned you speed cocktail partied,” she said. “I’d have done some sprint training.”
He gave her a wry, raised brow look that was somewhere between wanting to laugh and being too keyed up.
“You really don’t like these things, do you?”
His lips twisted. “You thought I was lying.”
Not lying. Making an assumption he knew how to turn on the charisma when it was needed. She’d watched him do it with Mallory. He was physically built to charm, but now that she knew him better, Halsey wasn’t anything like Dad. Jeffrey Bradshaw could make an entrance. Could summon attention, could make you feel like you were essential to his existence. He had a knack of remembering the details of peoples’ lives and creating a kind of intimacy through that. People wanted to talk to him, to catch his eye, to trust his word. They vied for a chance to join a conversation he was in, and he’d always had a current of energy flowing around him.
Lenny had watched that, learned from it, and put it into practice establishing D4D. Part of the betrayal was that she’d never understood Dad’s social finesse was a talent tuned to ill-gotten gains.
Halsey’s energy was less a steady current than a single crashing wave. He was focused on avoidance while giving the appearance of being agreeably available. It was a neat trick, but it wasn’t going to cut it if the objective was to make the prime minister of Ossovia pay attention to them.
“I see why you needed me, Excel Boy.”
“Got it in one, PowerPoint Girl.”
He gestured to the door, and she turned to look. The official party arriving. A small group of suited men. She searched for Cookie Jar. Google showed him to be a distinguished-looking man. She knew he was fifty-two and could pass for ten years younger, that he was tall and usually pictured smiling as if he’d recently become enlightened. She’d studied his images looking for shifty eyes, evil intentions, only to find a man who could stunt double for Pierce Brosnan.
But she saw the woman first. Stately in her bearing, cheekbones to cut diamonds on, white-blonde hair piled elegantly on her head, a long fitted dress in ice blue that draped around her body like a banner proclaiming her some kind of superhero. She entered on the prime minister’s arm, well aware of her impact, but not the lightning bolt that cracked over Lenny’s head.
PowerPoint Girl didn’t stand a chance getting Cookie Jar’s attention. Not even with all her fly-in features and metallic pen effects activated. It was unlikely any other woman in the room would command Cookie Jar’s attention unless she was standing there naked waving a bag of money at him, and even that might not be enough. This woman made Lenny feel like a dowdy pigeon pecking for scraps.
“Who is she?” It was a question half the room was probably asking.
“Princess Ketija Jurkute,” said Halsey, as they watched the official party get swallowed up by well-wishers and hangers-on. “She’s from an ancient Ossovian family once considered royalty before decades of war, annexation, and rule by the Russians all but wiped them out. Sonny has restored the royal family. He thinks they’ll be good for tourism. She’s also an engineer.”
Oh fuck. “A real princess?”
He nodded. “And a real e
ngineer. She works for a firm in London but is hoping to build a new power grid in Ossovia to replace the aging Soviet one they’re still tied to.”
Royal, stunningly beautiful, and accomplished. “Is she on the take, too?” That would be too bad.
“Not that we could establish.”
“You might have told me about her.” Halsey’s briefings left a few gaps, like the fact he truly couldn’t work a room and the complexity of competing for attention with Super Princess.
“I had no way of knowing she’d be here.” Where was his CIA-level intelligence when you needed it? “Why does it matter?”
“Look at her.”
The under-sufferance expression Halsey had worn since they’d arrived lifted. The smile he gave her was genuine and astoundingly irritating. “She’s quite something,” he said. She is impossible. “It’s not a beauty contest. Your job is to establish contact, mention D4D is a supporter, dangle the promise of more donations and the idea that your friend”—he pointed at himself—“is a big-wheel finance guy.”
Cookie Jar was going to stare right through her if Princess Ketija was anywhere near, and being annoyed about that wasn’t helpful. “I think we should split up. I have some people to see, and it’s too soon for me to hit on the prime minister.”
She didn’t wait for him to agree, disagree, or suggest an alternative. She had her own agenda, and Halsey was the most disappointing fake boyfriend ever. He hadn’t once reached for her hand or offered the crook of his arm or looked at her like he’d spent the week wondering about the kiss that didn’t happen. Which was a gross dereliction of duty as far as she was concerned, given she’d spent the week working herself up to resisting him. Time away from him would be well spent. She headed out in the opposite direction to Cookie Jar, his cronies, and his super princess.
She’d do her own social skills warm up, make some new acquaintances, build up her confidence, and then she’d be ready to do what she came here for—kick off the first step in the downfall of a thief and a despot.
She was rocked off her game plan when the first step in the scheme came to her, moving into her line of vision with a shiver of color that should’ve been an appropriate warning, but somehow left her scrambling for words.
“Excuse me. Your shoes. I just had to come and tell you how incredible they are.”
She blinked at Princess Ketija, who was smiling excitedly, a beam to dazzle electrons and tame currents. “My shoes?”
“She’s very taken with them,” said a deep, accented male voice to her right.
Lenny nearly fell out of her much-admired shoes when she realized that was the voice of a man who’d stolen her charity’s money and spent it on an old car.
Chapter Seventeen
I’d start with kissing her back. Those were Zeke’s words of wisdom, and Halsey needed to ignore them. He’d been wanting to touch Lenny since he’d arrived to collect her, and she’d tied his tongue in a knot by dazzling him. She was a beautiful woman, but he wasn’t ready for the perfection of her in that dress.
He’d wanted to kiss her since she’d cleaned up his hand.
All the bruising was gone. He flexed it—only some puckering across his knuckles left over from the scabbing. He’d wanted her in his bed since she’d pelted glassware at him. He felt like jamming his fist into the wall behind him to wake himself up. All he’d managed to do was avoid looking at her, finger the hem of her dress like he had a fabric fetish, make the most ridiculous conversation, and whisk her through this place as if his hair was on fire.
He should turn himself over to the cops if he couldn’t do a better job of being a fake boyfriend to a woman he admired more each time he saw her. To a woman he wanted more each time, she was near enough to touch.
And that was the problem.
He’d started out resentful about having to be involved with Lenny and her accounting. That’d lasted right up until Easton arrived, and then he’d felt concerned for her. But since their combative, combustible back and forth, since she’d agitated and challenged and flustered him, he was hooked. The fact that she knew the truth about him was part of it; he didn’t have to rely on lies. By itself that was a high, but the novelty of that hit had long passed.
This was something deeper and more troublesome, and he couldn’t separate it from the effect she had on him. She made nerve endings buzz and pleasure sensors skate over his skin at the thought of taking her hand. He could barely get his lips to function for wanting to work them up her neck, and his tongue just gave up the fight from the knowledge it wouldn’t ever get to taste her.
They were a ridiculous match, aligned as they were on either side of the law. Lenny’s every motivation was to restore her social standing, be seen as a respectable, trustworthy person, and his was built on generations of lies and deceit. He needed to keep his reality check topped up. He was everything she was trying to get away from, and the curse of it was he’d do everything he could to help her succeed.
Still, all things considered, it simply wouldn’t do for Lenny to think for a fraction of a second she wasn’t the most beautiful, most determined, resilient, and wonderful thing in the room.
He’d start by holding her hand, by kissing her cheek, and telling her she was the only princess here he was interested in. And if that was too much for her, he’d play it off as part of the con. No point denying duplicity had its uses.
He was moving before he could talk himself out of that plan, taking the direction Lenny had taken. A waiter got in his way, and when his path cleared, he saw the moment Ketija stepped in front of Lenny with Cookie Jar stalking her. He got to Lenny’s side as she lifted a foot and waggled it, and Ketija said, “Bunions. I have to have my shoes made.”
He slipped in behind Lenny, tipped his fingers to her waist, and felt her start. “Thought I’d lost you forever, Cinderella.” She gave him a quick, wide-eyed glance, and he used the turn of her head as the invitation to nuzzle her temple. Up close, she smelled like a garden paradise he could live in, notes of jasmine and orange that brought a rush to his head.
“Oh, that’s just what they are. Cinderella shoes. I want them, in my size of course,” Ketija said.
Lenny’s hand went out and met Ketija’s. “I’m sure Dolce and Gabbana would oblige. I’m Lenore Bradshaw. I manage a not-for-profit called Dollars for Daughters. We fund projects in Ossovia, and this is my, er, this is Halsey Sherwood. Halsey is in finance.” Halsey moved to Lenny’s side and shook Ketija’s hand as Lenny turned to Cookie Jar and offered hers. “Mr. Prime Minister, I’m excited to meet you. My charity is a Heroes League donor.”
Cookie Jar took Lenny’s hand and held it. “You must tell me about your charity. Heroes League is so very close to my heart.” He put his other hand over where his heart was meant to be, a consummate con, then turned to Halsey and offered to shake. “You are a financier. I hope also a man who gives to those less fortunate and can buy his woman the incredible shoes she likes.”
Nothing in their handshake said fight to the death, but that’s where this was going. It would be civil, and it would be savage. As an antidote to the flood of testosterone, he reached for Lenny’s hand, enfolded it in his own, and let that thrill of skin contact wash over him.
Cookie Jar was a more sophisticated psychopath than Easton Bradshaw. Halsey needed a different strategy for dealing with him, not aggression and not deference. “Lenore doesn’t need anyone doing her shopping for her,” he said.
“What woman does?” said Ketija.
Cue polite laughter. Lenny didn’t let it distract her, homing in on Cooke Jar with a question about aid funding. Halsey lost her hand and felt it’s absence as she engaged Sonny.
“You are in finance, Mr. Sherwood?” Ketija asked.
“Call me Halsey. Yes.”
Ketija touched his forearm and angled them away from Cookie Jar and Lenny. “Are you in the kind of finance I could use to build a power grid, perhaps?”
She clearly didn’t want the question overheard, a
nd his senses prickled. They had no information to suggest Cookie Jar was a sexual predator, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t. “Is there anything I can do to help you?” He framed the question deliberately vaguely. If he was wrong, he wouldn’t embarrass the princess.
Ketija looked briefly over her shoulder at Cookie Jar. “You’re very kind to be concerned about me. I am not in any personal difficulty. I need the prime minister to sanction the budget for my project.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “It means pandering to his ego. I have a bodyguard, and he does not care about power grids or egos, only about my safety. Would that all women had such security and the kindness of men who have no reason to care. Miss Lenore is lucky to have you at her side.” She straightened up and flashed him a radiant smile. “But you should know that if she and I were the same shoe size, this might be a very different conversation. Are you any good at breaking up fights?”
He smiled. “I fear not, and I think Lenny has that covered. If I were in a position to finance a power grid in Ossovia, you’d be the only engineer I’d want to build it.”
She laughed and gave a slight eye roll as Cookie Jar broke from Lenny and said, “Please excuse us,” before piloting Ketija away.
Halsey’s smile fell fifty-two stories and splattered on the sidewalk when he looked at Lenny and took in the rigidity of her posture. “What happened?” He’d had half an ear on her conversation with Cookie Jar, but he’d missed what had upset her, unless what had upset her happened before her private confab with the prime minister.
“I need a drink,” she said, marching past him.
He turned to follow and found Baiba Jansons waiting for him. “Mr. Sherwood. How nice to see you again. I see you met our esteemed prime minister.” She opened her arms wide. She wore a kaftan that sparkled, and if he wasn’t mistaken, it was trimmed in emerald-colored jewels. “Do I not look resplendent?”
Fool Me Forever (Confidence Game) Page 13
