One Night Wife (The Confidence Game 1)

“You said to remind you to tell me the story of how tough your mother is,” she said while they waited on their order inside Poppy’s.

“Ah. My mom. She has five kids. That alone says it. But on top of that, she lost two babies between my sisters, and then when my dad had a stroke, she took on caring for him, nursing him back to health.”

That wasn’t at all what she was expecting to hear. From a man so focused on business, she’d thought he’d prize more corporate-raider-style achievements. She’d imagined his mom striding around a boardroom in a power suit, humiliating lessor male specimens with her financial wizardry.

“She’s an environmental crusader, and she’s constantly getting into scrapes. Protests, petitions, occupations. Just this year, she was on a boat that rammed a whaling ship and went undercover in an abattoir to film inhuman slaughtering practices.”

Fin grinned at Cal’s pained expression. “When you say undercover?”

“She got a job there, snuck around shooting film, and gave it to a TV station. Sometimes I think she’s going to give me a stroke.”

Now she laughed. “Your mom is a badass.”

“You don’t know how true that is. Most of our profit goes to Mom’s causes. Her latest passion is cleaning up the Pacific trash vortex. It’s an island of plastic almost three times the size of Texas. As the debris breaks down, fish and birds mistake it for food, so it’s killing sea life and entering our food supply. By 2050, there will be more plastic in the sea than fish. It’s also killing the albatross population on Midway Island. Some days, I think Mom holds me personally accountable for all those dead albatrosses.”

“I think I’d like your mom.”

“I think she’d like you, but she’s an acquired taste, and I don’t want to spoil your appetite.”

“Do you want your own family and kids?”

He looked away as if willing a waitress to interrupt them.

“You don’t have to answer that.”

“I’m surrounded by family. My parents were absent a lot when we were kids, and it sucked being the oldest.” He shook his head. “I rebelled. I had a wild, reckless period and a lot of transactional sex before I took over running Sherwood from Dad. I’m not thinking about adding to the family right now. What about you?”

Transactional sex. Fin’s mouth went dry, and she was saved by their burgers arriving. She knew she could do what Cal had wanted to, avoid the question, but he’d been honest, and she wanted to match him.

“Scared of it. Having a family is the most grown-up thing you can do. I’m not a good grown-up. I don’t have any savings. All my money goes on rent. I don’t have any truly marketable skills. Waitressing or pouring beers is my fallback, and I’m not saying that’s bad, but it’s not ideal if you want to raise a kid. I think I’d be the worst parent in the world.”

“But you have D4D now, and it’s going to do well. You have new skills that are marketable.”

She shrugged. “But we’re only starting, and I still haven’t proven I can stick at something when the going gets hard. You came along when my stickability was being tested, and you made it all too easy. You don’t get to flake out on a kid. You don’t get to walk out on your partner when you have a commitment like family.”

Cal held up his glass of soda. “To never growing up.”

She picked up her glass but didn’t clink his. “I don’t want to be Peter Pan forever.”

He nodded, and it felt like she’d passed a test. “To stickability.”

“To stickability.” She clinked his glass. “Now tell me more about this reckless youth, and all the deets on the transactional sex part.”

He laughed. “This is a family restaurant.”

She put her glass down and sighed dramatically. “See? Families, they cramp your style.”

He eyed his burger like a man whose family was a force to be reckoned with. “My reckless youth would give you nightmares.”

“And your sexual transactions?”

He picked the burger up. “Were most satisfactory at the time. But I don’t want to be Peter Pan forever, either.” He took a big bite and looked at her as if to say, that’s all you’re getting.

She picked up her burger and watched his eyes go wide when she licked her lips. She ate as if she was starring in a food porno, with lots of unnecessary tongue and mouth action, complete with moans of delight and little shudders of ecstasy. It was the burger eating equivalent of the I’ll-have-what-she’s-having scene from When Harry met Sally.

Midway through her performance, Cal sat forward to whisper, “I can’t figure out if it’s the time of the month, the food, or the discussion that’s making you horny, but I like it.”

She almost choked on a pickle.