Fool Me Forever (Confidence Game)

by Ainslie Paton

  He’d said, “Your sister is my hero, and I’m sorry you walked in on that. We’re attracted to each other. We’re consenting adults, and that’s going to happen again.” He’d cut Lenny a questioning look. “I hope. But you weren’t meant to see it, and I’m sorry we squicked you out.”

  After that, he’d taken over the kitchen, made them ice cream sundaes, and admired the redrawn unicorn on Mal’s forearm, declaring it very Twilight Sparkle to her amazement. He knew his unicorns.

  It was funny now. Mal’s giddy delight at catching them out buried under her play-acted disgust. The way the leg of Lenny’s scuba pants had rolled up like a tourniquet, forcing her to go change or risk gangrene. How calm and measured Halsey was, taking Mallory seriously until he realized she wasn’t offended or scared, and not making any of them feel like what went down was anything other than inconvenient.

  Funny, except the bit about her being Halsey’s hero. It’d been so long since she’d been admired by anyone. She enjoyed that very much. Like the rest of his behavior that night, it was ridiculously endearing.

  Damn his con artist hide.

  “He’s not coming,” Halsey repeated. “I played this all wrong.”

  Zeke quit fussing with a Warhol, a Campbell’s Chicken ’n’ Dumplings soup can, and went to Halsey, putting his hands on his brother’s shoulders. “Live cons aren’t an exact science.”

  Halsey wasn’t reassured until the door buzzer rang, and then he couldn’t help but show his relief and pleasure with a lip curl. Lenny was there with him, tense from the waiting, excited by the coming showdown.

  “Amateur,” said Zeke on the way to the door.

  While he was gone, they watched each other through the glass. From the other side, it was disguised as a mirror. Halsey couldn’t see her, only himself. Still, it felt like he was standing in front of her with no barriers, drinking her body in.

  He’d made her feel beautiful on the couch in a way no dress, miracle underwear, makeup, and perfectly arranged hair could. He’d made her want him wildly and not be the least embarrassed when his hand had battled with her scuba suit. He made her feel that now, which was a better trick than shapewear, buttons, and Dixie cups, or the kind of ego play that made him bet on Cookie Jar being ripe to con.

  As soon as she could engineer it, she was seeing him naked. Mal needed to hurry up and apologize to Ginny and have another sleepover so they could have the apartment to themselves.

  God, I miss living alone.

  When Cookie Jar walked into the room, he ignored Halsey’s greeting, missed the way he tried to hide his amusement at that, and went straight to the Kandinsky. He’d been forced through a security check and left his security detail outside, and now Zeke attended to him with a bored tone to his voice.

  “What you see are paintings held privately by a number of high-profile families. I show private collections such as this annually to a select audience of discerning buyers.” Zeke gesticulated over his shoulder toward Halsey. “Mr. Sherwood vouched for you.”

  Cookie Jar bristled at that, as if he needed anyone to speak to his standing.

  “Each canvas in the room is on offer. No owner needs to sell. The auction is silent. I can guide you as to an appropriate bid. You’re looking at a Kandinsky.”

  It was a painting that looked to Lenny like pretty coffee cup rings.

  “It’s called Composition of Circles. Oil on canvas painted in 1926. One of the most important early abstract works still in private hands,” Zeke said.

  “What do they want for it?” Cookie Jar asked.

  “A bid of above one hundred and fifty million would be considered. A steal when you consider Picasso’s Woman of Algiers fetched one hundred and seventy-nine million two years ago, and of course da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi sold for four-fifty million.”

  Lenny’s hand flew to cover her mouth. Not that they could hear her exclamation of shock. Art was a rich person’s game, but she’d had no idea that when Halsey said he was going to bankrupt Cookie Jar sums of money this vast would be involved.

  Cookie Jar showed no emotion at all. He turned to Halsey. “Have you bid already?”

  Halsey gestured to the Caravaggio. “Prime Minister, I’m not one for old masters, and Warhol doesn’t do it for me.”

  Cagey. That left the Picassos and the Kandinsky, which made a flicker of annoyance flitter across Cookie Jar’s face.

  “The Kandinsky last sold for fifty million, twenty years ago. Imagine the value in another twenty,” said Zeke. “It’s a strong investment.” He went on to talk about the Picassos, while Halsey made a show of strolling slowly past them to the Kandinsky. He retraced his steps and then did something with his phone.

  “I have emailed you a bid,” he said to Zeke, almost as an aside.

  “On The Dream?” Zeke asked, naming one of the Picassos. A woman in a red armchair, her head tilted at an extreme angle, and her eyes closed. “A good choice.”

  “I’d rather not say,” Halsey said. “At these prices, I don’t need the competition. The prime minister is a wealthy man.”

  “I believe this is too wealthy for me,” Cookie Jar said, offering his hand to Zeke. “Thank you for your time.” He looked at Halsey. “I’m obliged to you for introducing me to these masters. I hope to see you again.”

  With that, he was gone. It was all over and done with in less than fifteen minutes. Curiously, neither Zeke nor Halsey looked upset at the failure.

  Mystified, Lenny joined them in the gallery. “You’re not concerned he didn’t take the bait?”

  The set up for this was elaborate. The artwork and lighting, discreet signage, security on the door. The gallery was a space that had once been used by a research company for focus groups, and in an hour, it would be a vacant shell once again.

  “He’s taken it.” Zeke held his phone out. “Wait, wait.” It pinged and he grinned and read the screen. “He just bid on the Kandinsky. One hundred fifty million.”

  Lenny grabbed Halsey’s arm. “Oh my God, is this real? Does he have that much money?”

  “He’ll need to find more,” Halsey said, putting his hand over hers.

  She checked his eyes; he wasn’t joking.

  “No?” How was that possible? Cookie Jar had grown up poor, and this was the kind of money only the one percent could afford to throw around on a whim.

  “Hell, yeah. The man nationalized an emerald mine and steals the profits. I’ll let him sweat for twenty-four hours, then I tell him there’s a higher bid,” Zeke said.

  Halsey took her hand and held it. Zeke made a silly kissy face, which made Halsey roll his eyes and mutter, “Grow up. He’ll assume the other bid is mine, and he won’t like being beaten.”

  Zeke pocketed his phone. “We’ll take him for one seventy-five.”

  “I think I feel sick,” Lenny said.

  All the chatter at parties had just been the warm up. This was the heart of the con, and it was formidable. It should’ve dampened her ardor for Halsey, but it was exciting and did nothing to make her think about backing off. Not yet at least. There were still events to attend that would help her reestablish her presence on the scene. And there was what promised to be great sex to be had.

  Halsey’s thumb stroked across her knuckles. She wanted to purr. “The people of Ossovia will be getting a Kandinsky and not a power grid.”

  Now she did feel sick, the shadow taste of bile in the back of her throat. Partly because she was enjoying the excitement of this, and that said something about her character not worth examining too closely.

  Halsey turned her body to his. “We’re going to get him. We’re going to return all the money and property he stole, remember. Doing this will flush it out from sources that would be difficult to trace. You’ll get to see Ketija sporting a hard hat.”

  “You’re so sure.”

  He smiled kindly. He knew this was shocking and she needed help to process it. “I could’ve chosen other ways to take his money: women, cards, the track. That would
take longer. I appealed to his ego. He likes to think of himself as a cultured man. Buying art is what a man who has more money than he knows what to do with, and believes he’ll still be around to capitalize on in twenty years’ time, does. It will make him a celebrity.”

  “And then, it will make him a laughingstock when it’s revealed he bought a fake,” Zeke said, yanking a dour-looking Rembrandt off the wall and stacking a Mick Jagger Warhol haphazardly on top of it.

  “What will you do with the paintings?” she asked, as Zeke packed them in a crate.

  “You don’t really want to know,” Halsey said.

  “Unless you feel like some soup,” Zeke said, spinning the Campbell’s Chicken ’n’ Dumplings to face her.

  She left the gallery with a Marilyn for Fin, who was a huge fan, and a massively conflicted heart. There was no way she should want a man who excelled at deception. There was no way a man expert at deception should be so honest with her. And Halsey was honest. He let her see his anxiety and his pleasure, and there was nothing in their relationship to make her distrust him, from the way he was careful with Mal, to the way he touched Lenny with a kind of heady relief that she gave him permission to do so.

  He played it straight with her in every way that counted, and there’d be time later to regret her double standards.

  In the three days before she saw him again, she worked. Her picture with Ida and Ketija appeared in Society and Page Six, Cookie Jar came up with the money for the Kandinsky, and Mal made her squirm about Halsey.

  “Isn’t it like a bad idea since he’s your accountant?” Mal wanted to know.

  “He’s not my accountant anymore. I got a new one, so the power thing isn’t an issue.”

  “You’re going to have sex with him.”

  No point playing coy since she’d been caught out with Halsey’s hand up her dress and piece of her Hollywood tape stuck to the hair on his chest. “He’s delicious and a nice guy.” The truth was better than a lie. “Yes. I’m going to sleep with him.”

  Mal had wanted to high five that announcement, which felt wrong, given Lenny was essentially acting as her parent, and there was nothing more awkward than talking to your parents about sex. It was even more awkward than talking about intrauterine devices.

  Unless it was talking to them about how they’d been defrauding half the city and your whole life was a lie. Because that last one was hard to beat.

  It was also hard to beat a grudge between two sixteen year olds, and Lenny didn’t feel right about having Halsey stay at the apartment with Mallory hanging on every bump and squeak in the night from the next room. She’d liked Ginny until the girl turned into a cock-blocker.

  Hoping for some last-minute best-friends-forever reunion, with a fall back to a naughty, no luggage check-in at a hotel, she set out to seduce Halsey at the Ossovia Green cocktail party where the amazing emeralds that came from Ossovian mines would be auctioned to raise funds for the Heroes League and establish the country’s first university. That was the public’s understanding. In truth, the money was being laundered and would flow straight to Cookie Jar’s Cayman Islands accounts.

  But hopefully not for long.

  Mal opened the door to Halsey when he came to collect her, voice rising to a semi-hysterical scream that had Lenny quitting her room with only one shoe on.

  Mal barreled past. “He got me tickets to Mean Girls. It’s for tonight. I have to call Ginny.”

  Halsey stood in the hallway, and her heart plumped at the sight of him. “You got her theater tickets?”

  In Mal’s room there was more shrieking as she called Ginny.

  He held up three fingers. Three tickets. “I’m not being subtle. I want you to myself for as long as you’ll give me tonight.”

  Mal reappeared stuffing clothes in an overnight bag. “Ginny’s mom can take us. This is the best thing ever.” She leapt at Halsey and hugged him then made for the door and stopped.

  For an insane moment, Lenny thought she was going to ask permission, but Mal said, “Oh I get it.” She turned around, grinning. “Go crazy, kids, but get enthusiastic consent and use protection. And don’t worry, I’ll stay the night at the Ginny’s, and I won’t hurry home.”

  She left them standing there, Lenny with one shoe on and Halsey with a flush along his jawline that made her want to skip the emeralds and get straight down to the seduction.

  “That was straight up the most devious and delicious thing anyone has ever done for me,” she said. He’d guaranteed them a whole night and a morning together, and her internal organs responded by squeezing in delight.

  “Can I assume I have your consent to blow past all the bases, strip you of your finery, and take you to bed?”

  She turned to go back to her room to get her other shoe, tossing, “I’ll think about it,” over her shoulder and being rewarded by his throaty chuckle.

  “You’re so sexy when you limp,” he said.

  Every fiber of Lenny’s body reacted to that, the humor, the affection in his voice, the desire on his face when she turned to flip him off. She had to collect herself with a couple of deep breaths before she rejoined him appropriately shod and ready to go.

  They didn’t kiss, but the want of it danced in his fingertips as they played at her waist and on her arm. At the cocktail party, he kept her body close to his, a hand in hers, his chest at her back, his voice close and conspiratorial in her ear. He was lucky she simply didn’t melt at his feet.

  They admired the emeralds. Halsey put in a bid for an Ossovian green, a color so vibrant and rich it reminded Lenny of stained glass windows in old churches and Midori Sours. It was the color of renewal.

  But there was business to attend to before the pleasure of turning to each other.

  “Watch,” Halsey said.

  They both witnessed an attractive older woman in a silver sheath-style dress holding a champagne flute walk backward and stumble into Cookie Jar. Cookie Jar caught her before she fell and produced a green handkerchief the woman used to mop her skirt. What should’ve been a quick embarrassing encounter that stopped the conversation and made the prime minister’s security team step forward, turned into a significant discussion.

  “What am I watching?” she asked.

  “That was no ordinary stumble. That’s my mom. Without you, PowerPoint Girl, I’d have needed some trick like that. Mom is congratulating our erstwhile prime minister on his purchase of the Kandinsky, praising his taste and his financial savvy, and right about now”—he turned them abruptly, so they were no longer facing the scene—“she’s telling him about her latest investment in cryptocurrency.”

  In the glass display cabinet in front of them, Lenny could see Halsey’s mom gesturing to them.

  The whole thing was staged and slippery and like something out of movie. She leaned into her beautiful rogue and didn’t care he was a criminal, because he was going to take the bad guy down, and if the quality of their heavy petting was to be believed, give her a bunch of orgasms. “What happens now?”

  Halsey kissed her hand. “I have to leave you. Go congratulate him on his purchase, acknowledge he beat me to the Kandinsky, make him feel victorious, and drop some mentions of my club.”

  “You have a club?” Why did she bother sounding surprised by that?

  “I will have when we build it.”

  If he could fake an auction house, he could fake a private club. “I should be appalled.”

  “You’re saving it up for later.”

  Much later, please, make it much later. “He’ll want to join to get access to more people to rip off.”

  Halsey brushed a hand over her hip and across her waist to hug her against him, making her pulse swing off the chandelier. “He wants the cryptocurrency investment. He’ll ask for it. I’ll palm him off by dangling a donation. He’ll join the club and pay a huge fee, because he thinks it will get him one step closer to what I won’t let him have, and when the club turns out to be a fake like the donation and the painting, he has no
one to complain to.”

  Her rogue was as disreputable as they came, and his mother looked like no slouch, either. As long as there was a chance to have her disgraceful man naked and on his knees for her, she was all in.

  “I’ll come with you.” There were his lips at the back of her neck, letting loose a shower of shivers. “I’d like to meet your mom.”

  “Not tonight. And no, you can’t come with me.” She pulled from his arms to face him, and he tugged gently on a lose lock of her hair. “I’m taking you to bed tonight, and I’m doing all the things you wanted, slow and thorough and devastating. And in the morning, I’m cooking you breakfast, but this is our last event together.”

  “But we have a gala performance.” It was marked in their shared calendar.

  “This is moving faster than I thought. I had a conversation with Baiba. She linked the purchase of the Kandinsky with government funds to the cancellation of Ketija’s dam project. The Ossovian parliament censured Cookie Jar and called for him to come home. He’s refused for now. He’s been censured a dozen times before. It doesn’t mean much, but it will when it comes out the painting is a fake. And keeping you out of the spotlight was part of our deal.”

  It was the rule she’d insisted on. She had a moment of disquiet that he’d been the one to remind her, but she was far too lost in him. “Are you breaking up with me?” It would be a terrible version of the best thing for her.

  He groaned and nibbled up her neck to her cheek. “I am mutually using you and then moving on, because I’m a dishonest con and not what you need in your life. If you’re with me, I can’t pretend not to want you, and I can’t protect you from the fallout.”

  “I thought we’d have longer,” she murmured.

  While Halsey went to work, Lenny circulated, trying to keep him in sight and losing him to clusters of people and waiters with trays of food and drink. When her phone chimed, she excused herself to check in case it was Mal. It was Mom. She was home, surprise, and wondering where everyone was. Lenny made a quick call, explaining what Mal was up to, and then lied her sex-starved tongue out. “I’m away for the weekend with friends. Back Sunday.”