And if she’d missed those signs from someone she knew to the bone and back, how could she trust anything? There was nothing more humiliating than being a con who’d conned herself.
She’d wanted to hurt Cal. Punish him. She’d let her anger and disappointment get the better of her. She broke character. Lashed out. Blackened Cal’s reputation, branding him a womanizer, an abusive asshole when he was anything but, blowing their cover and making it impossible for them to continue a play that was eighteen months in the making and almost at payday.
She’d poisoned a well of marks, putting their ill-gotten wealth forever out of reach and cost the family business a lot of money that had been earmarked for funding environmental rehabilitation projects. More fish and birds choked on plastic in the ocean because she’d lost sight of the big picture, along with her temper.
She’d ensured she could never partner with Cal again and she’d damaged her own standing in the family.
Oh, she’d tried to pay the money back, but Cal had denied her that easy recompense, taking the burden on himself. That just left the massive dent in her reputation and the gaping hole in her confidence to deal with. Once reliable Rory, an impeccable manipulator of over-inflated egos, was now what no one needed in a partner for a risky job—dangerously unpredictable.
That’s why she had this hangover. Anyone about to spend the best part of a year living off the grid in a cult as penance for being a fool for love deserved a good solid send off.
“Cal would blame you for my compromised brain cells,” she said, pulling the band out of her hair and pressing her fingers into sore spots on her scalp.
Zeke dipped his head and peered at her over the top of his shades. “You’re right. He’d blame me for making you dance till two and getting you up again three hours later.”
“I’m not complaining.” She’d had five hours to sleep on the flight from Kennedy to New Mexico and it’d been a great party. She hadn’t had to charm anyone, or cross her legs a certain way, or laugh at terminally unfunny men with self-belief made from meringue. All she’d had to do was bump and grind and sweat with Zeke until they’d had to leave the pub and crash a late-opener Mickey Ds for a refuel. “Any night I get to dance my feet sore with you is a good night.” Worth the hangover and the tender toes.
“I wonder if the Continuers shake their booties?” he said.
“I wonder if they screw around.”
Zeke snorted. “Like your good self.”
She reached over and slapped his chino-clad thigh. “You can talk.”
After Cal, she’d taken up sorrow drowning by way of regular hook-up, trying to prove that what she’d had wasn’t so special after all and knowing even while she was having fun, she was simply trying to fill a void that no amount of curling up with a good romance could cure. But hook-ups were Zeke’s specialty, along with disguises. “It’s a wonder your little black book hasn’t burst its bindings.”
He rubbed the spot on his thigh she’d stung. “I went electronic years ago. Cloud. Unlimited storage capacity. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent uptime,” he said, making the phrase uptime more a comment about himself than the technology with a waggle of his brows above his sunglasses.
“There’s no need to boast.”
He laughed, pleased she’d caught the innuendo.
She squinted at his profile, a smile riding triumphant on his cheekbone. He was such a catch. One hand on the wheel; the long fingers of the other on his knee, tapping out some beat he had in his head. Sex in motion while he was barely moving. If he’d just slow down enough to let someone grab one of those ropey forearms or pumped-up guns, get their claws into his muscle-bound hide. Even as his Zack character, with his longer hair, the heavy scruff, careless way of dressing, and looking like he needed a good wash, he was utterly lickable.
He’d always had a wild,
kinetic energy that made him exciting to be around. As a kid he was the head troublemaker and she was his devious shit-stirring sidekick. Cal was forever covering for them with their parents. She could still hear her mom yelling, “Aurora Rae Archer, you stay away from Zeke Sherwood. He’s bad news.” Ironic given the Archers and the Sherwoods were generations-old unrelated partners in crime who considered themselves blood.
By the time she was eleven and Zeke was thirteen, they were a match made in accidental fires and “misplaced” valuables, in playground hustles and elaborate excuse-making.
She was always game to follow his lead. He always considered her crazy suggestions and had her back.
And then Rory grew up, ditched pranks for more the practical magic of a professional con and fell in love with Cal and the way they could use that magic together to reallocate money from people who abused it to causes that could better use it, rebalancing the inequality of the world one con at a time.
Now here they were again. Trouble and his trusty slightly hungover sidekick, in a rental car hurtling towards their latest prank, busting up a destructive cult. Because no one hated a con that took advantage of innocent people more than an Archer or a Sherwood. And when you combined an Archer and Sherwood, you got divine retribution.
“Neither of us will be drinking, dancing or fucking around while we’re inmates,” she said.
Add the attention to detail, Zeke camouflaged in a laidback manner and a wicked sense of humor and why the hell was he still bouncing aimlessly from bed to bed? She’d tired of doing that in six months.
She had her reason for being jaded and commitment shy, but Zeke had never stayed with anyone long enough to involve his heart.
“Not a good idea to meet the love of your life in a cult. Think of the dueling psychoses. The inmates have enough problems without falling for another con,” he said.
Which was the reason why forming a romantic attachment and sex were off the agenda for both of them. It would make things more complicated than they already were.
“Just clean living, bein’ right neighborly and wholesome family relations,” Zeke said, winging his elbow in a good-old-boy kind of way.