One Night Wife (The Confidence Game 1)

Didn’t everyone. He wanted more with Fin than he’d wanted anything for himself for a long time, and he was a guy who had everything money could buy or his wits could appropriate. “It’s a modern curse.”

He closed her in the car, the window rolling down immediately. “Am I going to see you again?”

“You don’t need me anymore.”

“Are you kidding? You’re my spotter. I can’t noodle on my own.”

“Trust yourself.”

She shook her head. “It’s your stage, I’m just an actor walking it, waiting your direction.”

That’s exactly what he’d wanted in a One Night Wife. Shame he and Fin simply weren’t compatible.

&nb

sp; Chapter Nine

Lenny sat away from the laptop with a sky-is-falling look on her face. “No, Fin, no.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“I wasn’t speaking in riddles. It’s pretty clear what I mean.”

Fin pulled at her hair. After last night, touching it had become a habit. “Not to me.”

“There’s a hundred and fifty-eight thousand dollars here.”

“Two of that was from being Marilyn.” She left off hovering over Lenny and sat. Her feet still ached, and she had a whopper of a blister on the back of one heel.

“Stop it, Fin.”

“I don’t understand why you’re upset.” This was the kind of marvel Lenny would never expect her to be able to pull off, so why wasn’t she outrageously happy? “This is the best thing that could’ve happened to us.”

“Did you rob a bank? Where did all this money come from?”

“It was hard to keep track of their names. I’m going to have to work that out backwards.” What was the problem here, dammit? She’d planned a victory celebration lunch, but Lenny looked like she might barf.

“We can’t touch this money. You have to give it back.”

“Have you lost your mind?” Fin sat forward. “We’re not giving it back. I have to work out how to get more of it.”

“More!”

“It was easy. I did everything Cal told me to do, and the money fell in my lap exactly as he said it would.”

Lenny held her head in her hands. “This can’t be right. It’s totally fishy.”

Fin choked back a laugh. “They were catfish, trout, and whale.”

“What?” That came out of Lenny like a sob.

“Cal picked the men I pitched to. He knew they’d be soft touches. And then he egged them on. There was all this rich person macho posturing going down. I couldn’t pull this off on my own. Cal is the yellow brick road to the money.”

“What does that make you, the Wizard of Oz?”

“I’m Dorothy or Toto or who cares, but you’re being the Wicked Witch and the Cowardly Lion. And D4D isn’t in the red anymore. We’re not a month from having to close.” And they’d be even more stable, able to help more families, make more loans than they’d projected if she could convince Cal to let her do it again. “So, what’s the fricking problem?”

Lenny closed the laptop. “I thought you’d come back with a few thousand and be discouraged, and we’d come up with something else.”