One Night Wife (The Confidence Game 1)

It might’ve been an hour or a week later when Cal startled her, appearing at her side on the terrace. He put a blanket around her shoulders, and that’s when she realized she was freezing. She’d wandered out from the kitchen, hoping the night air would explain it all.

There was a scene in Bonnie and Clyde where Bonnie asked Clyde what he’d do if they could make a clean start, if no one was chasing them, if they could live ordinary lives. Clyde couldn’t even imagine what that would be like. Could Cal?

“You could stop. Just stop being a con. Raise money the way ordinary people do. You could charm the skin off a snake, so it’s not impossible. We could do it together.”

&nbs

p; She was surprised to hear the “we” come out of her mouth. Apparently, she hadn’t quite given up on him yet, which proved she’d lost her mind.

“That’s not as easy as it sounds. I have commitments, and I believe in my heart in what we do.”

He was right. He was typecast. He was Clyde, and there was no hope for them. Because if she stayed with him, she was Bonnie, and it would all end in a hail of blood and bullets.

It was ending now.

He touched her arm through a layer of blanket, and she shied away. “If you’re asking me to give it up, I will.”

She jolted at that. “Like that. You’d go straight for me.” It was another trick from a man who didn’t know honesty, who fooled other people into thinking he was loyal and trustworthy.

“I’d resign. Zeke would step up. This has been my life. I don’t know what else I’d do, but I have money we can live on.”

Money that was stolen, not earned decently.

“Is that what you want?” She studied his face as best she could in the dark, with no hope of understanding what she saw.

“It’s what I’d do for you.”

What he’d done was made her an unwitting accomplice, his puppet, his fool. Made the money she’d raised feel like it was stolen, too.

Made her fall in love with him when she didn’t know anything about him.

He’d opened her heart, stretched it into a different shape, one he’d designed to suit him, and now she didn’t know if she could shrink it back the way it had been. If she could get it to beat without wanting it to beat alongside his.

He must’ve thought she was a big joke when they met and when she’d been desperate enough to sing that stupid song in the Marilyn get up on that bar top. And he’d swept her up, dressed her up, showed her off, taught her how to shill for him. And the clues were all there from the beginning, but she’d been too stupid to see them. He’d used his charisma on her like he did with everyone else. He hadn’t lied about her role as his One Night Wife. He’d even shown her how it all worked, and still, she’d been naïve. And the sex. All along he’d resisted. And she’d fallen for that trick, too, exactly like his whales did. Pressing when he retreated until he took everything she had.

“Go away, Cal.”

He left her on the patio with feelings that flashed through her like rapid onset symptoms of an illness. They came on too fast to name: shock, disbelief, embarrassment, horror, anger, sorrow, humiliation. They made her shiver, they made her sweat and tremble and gag. He expected her to accept all this. To get along like a good girl. He expected her to forgive.

To believe he was in love with her and marry him.

He was everything he’d said his marks were—arrogant, entitled, proud, rich, too sure of himself ever to think someone could con him.

He’d given her a disease, and its name was revenge. And he’d given her the skill and all the tools she needed to execute it.

She tracked him to the bedroom. He lay on the bed but wasn’t sleeping. She sat, keeping her face away. “This is a shock.”

“How can I help?”

She shrugged and then accepted his arms around her, his lips to her temple.

“I need to see it again.” She turned to face him. “I need to see where the money goes. I couldn’t concentrate on it before. Can you show me?”

Together, they went into the other room. The red velvet box still sat on the side table. She made a point of looking at it. He’d expect her to. He picked up his laptop and logged in. He opened the banking site and coded in the long string of numbers and letters and magic spells he knew by heart to open the page he’d shown her earlier.

“Would you leave me with this?”

If he did, he was knowingly entrusting her with billions of dollars. He stroked her hair as he came to stand and handed her the laptop. “I’ll wait for you in the bedroom.”