One Night Wife (The Confidence Game 1)

He used a finger to turn her chin. He was mad, and he was not mad, and she was the same. “Yeah.”

“Why are we fighting?” It was a W word. She wasn’t going to like the answer.

“Because we both want the same thing.”

“I just wanted a picnic.” Her second-best undies could possibly burst into flames, and when he kissed her, because he was going to kiss her, the burn would be delicious.

He scanned her face. “You’re a good actor, but a lousy liar. What do you really want?”

His arms and his lips and the surprised grunts he made as the tension shifted from his body, softened, as he gave up not having fun. But she couldn’t push herself on him again, not now that he’d called her on it, even if he did appear to be so leashed, so wanting someone to light his fuse. And so willing to share the explosion.

“I want you to spot for me again. Introduce me to more trout and catfish and whales, men you loathe who have money to give away without half a thought.”

He stepped back. Picked up a corner of the rug and straightened it. Toed his shoes off and sat.

“And I want to understand how you worked that room like you owned it. How you make your money as a VC. I want you to tell me what venture capital is. Your website is useless, and nothing comes up when I google you. It’s like you’re not real.”

He opened the lid of the basket. “What kind of sandwiches?”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“I’m real and I’m hungry.” He unwrapped sandwich bags. “Venture capital is money provided to small companies and businesses starting out because they’ve got long term potential for growth. It’s a large-scale version of Dollars for Daughters. Do you want pastrami or meatballs?”

“Pastrami.”

“There’s a lot of risk. The company’s leadership or technology might fail. The way they predict the market might be wrong. Venture might as well stand for adventure. You could score the trip of a lifetime or find yourself in a flea-ridden hovel, in a dangerous neighborhood, in a foreign country, missing your passport and all your cash.” He patted the space beside him.

She went to her knees, then her hip, then stretched her legs out in front and crossed her ankles while fussing with her skirt. All because she didn’t want to look at Cal, with whom she was about to picnic, and who was complicated. When she looked up, he passed her the pastrami sandwich.

“A venture capitalist raises money for these companies by tapping the uber rich because they’re the least likely to have a problem if the investment goes bust.” He took a bite of sandwich and chewed. “This is good.” He took another. “Unless they’re greedy or ignorant and they don’t read the fine print. But mostly they understand the failure rate is high and the investment is speculative.”

That sounded deceptively simple. When D4D lent a woman money to buy feed for animals she was raising to sell, there was a risk the animals could sicken and die, and the woman wouldn’t be unable to pay the loan back.

“We’re in the same kind of business. We both redistribute wealth.”

She took a bite of sandwich. That was what D4D did, but why did Cal saying it like that make it sound like plain, simple theft? Robin Hood and his merry men stuff. She’d have to remember to ask Lenny. She was a business major; she understood how finance worked.

Cal balled his sandwich wrapper and pitched it into his office trash can. It bounced on the side and then fell in. “There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in high finance. A lot of playing within the margins of the law and market forces.” He peered into the basket and found the grapes.

“Are you the smoke or the mirror?”

“A little of both.” She watched him toss a grape and catch it in his open mouth. Did he have to make everything he did appear effortless?

“As to how I worked the room. It’s a skill like anything else. My father taught me.”

“You make it look natural. Why do you have no online profile?”

“Eat your sandwich. It’s deliberate. Less to manage.”

She took another bite; it was easier to digest pastrami on rye than what he was saying. “Do you dislike everyone you raise money from?”

He rummaged in the basket again and came up with the ginger beer, opening a bottle for each of them. “The very rich are very different.”

“But you’re rich.”

He inclined his head. “I’ve got nothing on a multibillionaire who works out how not to pay his taxes for thirty years. That guy is a real hero.” Cal took a sip of the beer and smacked his lips together.

“Then there’s the guy who owns coal power stations who’s funding fake research to say global warming is a conspiracy invented by NASA. And the guy who said he could revolutionize the pathology industry and lost investors billions of dollars on his lie.”