Fool Me Forever (Confidence Game)

by Ainslie Paton

  “You do indeed.”

  “Do I dare hope you are big bear baiting at this little event?”

  He patted his pockets. “Readying my traps.” He had hope she was readying hers.

  She touched his shoulder as she passed with an enigmatic smile he found encouraging, and he went in search of Lenny, finding her chatting with people he had no reason to interrupt. Though he wanted to. Wanted to take her hand again and see if that’s what had upset her. He stood off to the side and waited, and when she rejoined him, she stood apart and faced away.

  “Who was the woman in the kaftan?” Lenny had a champagne glass in one hand and her other was wrapped around her waist, a definite don’t-touch-me move that went with her skipping-all-over-the-room eye contact.

  “The future prime minister of Ossovia.”

  Lenny handed her glass to a passing waiter. “You stand there, barely able to make small talk, and yet you plan to topple a government. It’s like buttons under cups to you, and yet it’s absolutely terrifying.”

  Not as easy as a sleight of hand. His side of the con was planned meticulously, and it wasn’t guaranteed to work, except that greed and ego were the easiest of all failings to target, and Cookie Jar had those attributes by the container load. “Lenny, I—”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.” She broke away, making for the exit.

  She should’ve been triumphant—contact made, the first step in their plan faultlessly executed.

  She didn’t wait to see if he trailed her. She moved like it was midnight and her shoes might turn into leg irons and prevent her from escaping. When she veered into a corridor right before taking the entrance doorway, he caught up with her.

  “You’re upset.” It was a dangerous statement. They were alone, far enough from the party he could no longer hear the zither and the fiddles, but this wasn’t the ideal place to have an argument.

  She flung a hand out, gesturing to the partygoers outside. “Are you sure about him?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “Because he is impeccable. Beautiful manners, the way he made me feel like I was important to him and to the Heroes League. That the work I’m doing is valuable. I just. I can’t.” Lenny put the heel of her hand to her forehead and bounced it twice. “I can’t take it in. I wanted him to look like a monster, and he looks like a movie star. I wanted him to give me some sign he was a terrible person. I wanted my skin to crawl and my spidey sense of evil to zing, but I felt nothing like that.” She dropped her hand, and her anguished expression told him what her words didn’t. “Is there any chance you’re wrong about him?”

  What he shouldn’t have felt was relief. The kind that imprinted on you when your big brother let you out of the garden shed after you thought you might be stuck in there for the rest of your young life. She wasn’t upset because he’d touched her; she was meeting her father’s deceit all over again in Cookie Jar and in Halsey.

  “It’s why he’s successful at being a tyrant. It’s why he’s survived politically.”

  She looked away. “I hate him so much.”

  He couldn’t think of a response that would make her feel better. He wanted to reach for her hand, and if she let their fingers twine, to draw her into his arms and try to ease away the sting of discovery, but there was half a corridor and an agreement to be partners only in this one endeavor between them.

  And his promise to keep her safe, if only from himself.

  “And you”—she gave him a scalding look that raised the fine hairs all over his body—“you can’t even fake boyfriend properly.” She took a step toward him. “You kissed me here.” She tapped her temple. “Was it an accident? Just for show? You could barely look at me tonight, and then suddenly you want my hand, you want to kiss me.”

  He closed some of the distance between them. Another ill-advised move. He was full of them tonight. “I wanted to tell you how beautiful you are. Not just tonight. I wanted to tell you that I think you’re wonderful. Strong and passionate and resilient and brave, but the way you look tonight, you turned my tongue into leather, and I couldn’t form the words.”

  She made a hah, sound, disbelief and hurt.

  “If this whole thing is too much for you—”

  She closed the rest of the distance between them, poking him hard in the chest with her finger. “I want that bastard reduced to dust. And if you want to kiss me, you should be a man and do it like it means something, not like it’s acting.”

  It wouldn’t be acting, and he definitely shouldn’t do it while she was angry. “Lenny, are you telling me you want me to kiss you, even though I’m a con and you despise the ground I walk on?” She was taller in those fairy-tale shoes; she was brighter and more present and more wanted than anything in his life. “Because if it’s something you need, me kissing you, then—”

  “Shut up.”

  They were both out of breath. He was the worst possible choice for a girl who wanted nothing more than to be virtuous, and she was the only losing bet that was worth placing. She put one hand to his chest, the other to his face, and leaned into him like she’d done in the doorway of her apartment. She’d scrambled his brain then. This time he was ready. When she lifted her chin, he lowered his, and she kissed him, meeting his lips, making bells ring in his head and lights pop under his eyelids.

  His hands went to her waist to steady her, keep her there, hell, just to make this moment, this delicious sip of her, last for as long as it took for her to realize this was a mistake. But she didn’t pull away. She gripped his shoulder and angled her head and the kiss went on, shocking him with its drenching sweetness, with its spike of heat. He didn’t want to breathe in case it broke the spell, in case he opened his eyes to find himself alone in a fevered dream. He sealed her lips with his and embraced the threat that this would end before he’d properly discovered it.

  When Lenny broke off, he let his arms drop away from her, dead weights, while his head felt light enough to lift off his neck. She shifted restlessly, taking a step away and then another, half turning, and then coming to some decision and retracing all those movements until she was right in front of him again. He had no idea what she was thinking, but she had determination in every curve of her lovely body.

  “Apparently, I’m damaged, and I want things that are bad for me. I need to be kissed by you.”

  Who was he, not to give her what she needed? He reached for her, and she crashed into his arms and they kissed again, this time with none of the earlier tentative curiosity and angst, and a whole lot more intentional damage.

  These kisses were harder, wilder, wetter, made to create a memory. A challenge and a punishment, a promise and a dumb idea, and wonder, so much wonder at what else they could make each other feel.

  He lost the sense of where they were because Lenny’s lips were his new reality, her hands moving on him, his new air and water and shelter. He’d danced her up against a wall, before he realized he’d taken it too far.

  “I’m sorry.” He stepped away, senses overloaded, muscles tight with how good this wrongness felt.

  Her breath came heavily in short snatches. “I’m not.” She pushed away from the wall. “Halsey Sherwood, I’m going to treat you like you’re my newest bad habit, like smoking, like too many cocktails and forgetting not to be sad. I’m going to flirt with you mercilessly. I’m going to fall straight into this addiction with you and use you up, and I’m going to love it. And then I’m going to dump you hard, regret you bitterly, and never look back.”

  She moved past him and headed for the exit, focused and sure and steady where he was reeling. “Let me know if that works for you,” she called.

  She got all the way to the street before he caught up and took her hand. This would wreck him, but it would be just fine. He had the rest of his life to get over it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Baltic Cultural Exchange Dinner might be stiff and formal, but Lenny’s dress wasn’t. It was all about the plung
e and the Hollywood tape and seeing if Halsey could take the heat.

  She wanted him to take the heat as well as he’d taken her tantrum and her ultimatum. At least he couldn’t say he hadn’t been warned.

  She wanted him. The breath stealing, heart-in-mouth adventure of them. And she’d keep herself safe by calling it off before it got deep enough to cause a permanent stain. There was justice in that, in the same way there was justice in Cookie Jar being brought down.

  She’d never felt quite so fierce in all her life as when she’d kissed Halsey and then told him she was going to use him and lose him. Not even when she’d been elbow deep in lawyers and dodging press packs wearing a red wig as a disguise during Dad’s arrest and trial had she felt this kickass.

  She’d walked away from him expecting him to let her go—a fake date who’d become too much trouble. After all, he’d had his introduction to Cookie Jar, he had the next prime minister in his pocket, and could no doubt summon his inner scam artist and pull off the operation on his own now.

  He hadn’t let her get far, and he didn’t say much, other than an emphatic “yes” to her proposition, but he’d slowed her roll with a kiss that made her kneecaps dissolve and her skin shimmer. For the next half block, as they walked hand in hand, she not only looked like she was floating in her glass slippers, she felt like it.

  Since then, they hadn’t talked, retreating to their corners, as if they’d spooked each other, only an email to confirm the details for the dinner devoid of any personal information. A week was long enough for Halsey to rethink that yes and revert to being aloof with her. In about half an hour, she’d see exactly what mood he brought.

  She picked a fallen hair off the shoulder of her dress. It was sleeveless and fitted. It had a deep vee almost to her waist at the back and well down to her sternum at the front. Without being truly revealing, it was elegantly suggestive of lots of va-va-voom. The color helped, a rich, raunchy red. She piled her hair up, made it artfully messy, wore statement diamond earrings and, since the dress was knee length, gold heels that bound her ankles with straps.

  If the look, complete with foundation underwear that deserved a sainthood for the physical miracle it performed, didn’t make Halsey’s eyes fall out of his head, no dress she owned would.

  “What do you think?” she asked Mal and her friend Ginny in the living room.

  “A three,” said Mal, without looking up from her phone.

  “You look hot, Lenny,” said Ginny.” She elbowed Mal, who stood and grabbed her overnight bag.

  “If you’re going to sleep with your date, Len, make sure you’ve straightened your Mirena, discussed any boundaries, and he shows you his test results and uses protection.”

  Lenny looked at the ceiling. “Oh my God, Mal.” She pointed to the door. She’d had the contraception and consent discussion with Mal this week, because she couldn’t be sure Mom ever had, and Mal had been talking about condoms, dental dams, lube, and IUDs ever since. She wore the new word “intrauterine” out, finding creative ways to add it into almost any sentence. Is there any intrauterine left for my toast? Can you pick up intrauterine from the market on the way home from work? She thought she was hilarious.

  “My Mirena is plenty straight, and I will not be sleeping with my date.” Not tonight, at least.

  Tonight, she planned to have more of his kisses and see where that led.

  Halsey was on time, of course. She opened the door to him, a tightness in her chest because of all the winged sprites that’d taken up residence there. Why was it this man, whose secrets she knew, whose profession she despised, who could inexplicably make her heart speed, her breath catch, and her insides flutter?

  She opened her mouth to say hi and swallowed the word when he put his hand to her waist. “Am I going to ruin your makeup if I kiss you?” he asked in a husky tone that melted critical faculties in her brain.

  He took the slightest movement of her head as his answer and cupped her face, tilting it up, and bringing their lips together, giving her plenty of time to change her mind. He locked his eyes with hers until the hand on her waist became an arm at her back, and the sprites in her chest went still momentarily and then lifted into flight in one swooping motion, making her lean into Halsey and clutch at his suit coat.

  He had control of the kiss and made it a full-scale production that could play for years on Broadway. The soft, mysterious meeting of lips that opened out into something fuller and warmer and became a tangled greedy demanding force before a third suspenseful act where it nipped and teased and backed away to a cliffhanger, promising more.

  “Hi,” he said, seemingly unaffected, when he drew back. “I don’t think I messed you up.”

  But he had. He made her heart swell and her senses swirl. She didn’t want to let go of his coat or move to draw him properly inside the apartment, and the words in her head weren’t the right ones to say aloud. Again. More. Now.

  “Lenny, are you okay?”

  What happened to the Halsey Sherwood who couldn’t even say, “You look nice” while avoiding her eyes? “I wondered how we’d be after you had a chance to think.”

  “I only thought about two things all week. What needs to happen with Cookie Jar tonight and kissing you. Did I do all right?”

  It wouldn’t do to give a confidence man a swollen head. She pulled out of his arms. “It’s an improvement. Gold star for effort.”

  She left him in the doorway and went to pick up her purse. From across the room, she snuck a look at him: black suit, rose-pink tie and pocket silk, white shirt, silver at his cuffs. The details were ordinary; the combined effect was like she’d shot-gunned half a bottle of whisky. He made her feel deliciously woozy.

  He wasn’t avoiding her anymore. He gave her the same rude appraisal she was covertly giving him, except his was no undercover exercise—he wanted her to know he was looking and that he liked what he saw.

  “You’re stunning, Lenore Bradshaw. And I’m not finished kissing you. I’m more in awe of what’s inside you, what drives you, than how you fill out that dress. Since I’m trying to be a better fake boyfriend, let me just say you’re incredibly sexy, and I’m not exactly myself when I’m around you.”

  As compliments went, that one was in a class of its own when she’d have sighed for a tossed off “you look beautiful.”

  “I’m pretty sure I don’t know who Halsey Sherwood is. Oh, I know the broad strokes.” Did his lips quirk on the word “stroke”? Oh, yes, they did. Damn, that was surprisingly cocky. “Crook, collector, cup wrangler, calculator of sums in cells, corruptor of small children.”

  She tossed her house keys at him, and he caught them.

  “Good catch. Equally good at ducking, talks a tall story about tattoos, but sucks at chit chat if there are more than three people in the room.” She checked her makeup in the hall mirror, moved across to him, and let him close and lock the door behind them. It wouldn’t do to have him think she was going to be easy. She was going to be easy, though not without some pretense of a chase. “Under all those labels and the sharp dressing, you’re a ghost.”

  “What do you want to know about me?”

  A dangerous line of inquiry. “Nothing.” She didn’t want the responsibility of really knowing him. If she imagined him all gloss and no substance, it would be a no-brainer to walk away.

  He adjusted his tie needlessly, and that made her feel shivery. She still made him edgy, and she liked it.

  “I want to know all about what’s inside you, Lenny.” He pushed a folded knuckle against the elevator call button.

  Inside. That made her eyes flutter. She imagined how good that knuckle on his big hand would feel pressed against her call button. Unf.

  “I want to know what your favorite food is, what you like to do when you’re not working, what you watch and read and dream about. I want to know how you hold your family together and what you want your future to be.”

  Unbelievable. He should stop talking. It was easier to deal with
him when he was only semi-articulate. The elevator car arrived, and she stepped inside. He moved in beside her and reached for her hand. Giving it to him made her five kinds of foolish, because she wanted it like she always wanted Li-Lac chocolates—greedily, voraciously—and it was just two hands pressed together.

  She’d held his hand before, but it felt different now because she’d told him exactly where handholding was going to lead, and he’d had the chance to renegotiate the deal and let it slide.

  They made acceptable “how was your week, what about those Yankees, Giants, Rangers, Knicks” conversation, laughing at each other. It was clear Halsey wasn’t a sports fan, didn’t know his touchdowns from his home runs. By the time they arrived at Pier Sixty, they didn’t sound so much like a couple who should never have swiped right.

  This dinner was a big deal. It was a virtual Academy Awards event for the charity sector. She’d never have been invited, not only because of being an on-the-nose Bradshaw, but because D4D was an upstart, too young and small to be counted. Everyone who had a seat at the table in this room had given millions to fund aid and development in newly emerging nations for many years.

  She pulled on Halsey’s hand as they passed through the reception area. “How did you wrangle this?”

  “Didn’t have to.”

  “Found it under a Dixie cup?” Sherwood gave money they stole to charity, but there was no way he’d been legitimately invited. She shook free of his hand. “You do remember you don’t have to lie to me?”

  He wheeled around and stepped in close. “I’m not lying to you. We have our own programs in developing nations. Health care, mostly. We’ve been supporting developments in places like Africa since before I was born.”

  Over thirty years? That couldn’t possibly be true. “Sherwood isn’t part of this network.” She’d never heard the name bandied about in the forums or on the databases of registered not-for-profits who specialized in developing nations.