The Mysterious Stranger (The Confidence Game 3)

“There’s no might about it.”

Desperate times. He went to his knees. “Might not be worthy of you.”

“I don’t know about that.” A glimmer of a smile at the corners of her eyes. “You have your good qualities.” She ruffled his hair and it was a relief to have her hand on him until she yanked hard. “Buried in there somewhere.”

He had to scramble to his feet to follow her when she walked on. He wasn’t losing her in the aisles again, anywhere again. “I’m sorry I was gaslight central. I’m sorry I made you doubt. I’m sorry I doubted you. I was wrong to do that. Wrong in so many ways.”

“Keep apologizing. It looks good on you.”

“You know how when you’re running a con and you press your advantage and the mark keeps falling for your story and you think any minute now he’ll wake the fuck up and work out what you’re doing?”

“Every single Continuer is wondering how they fell for a con like that.”

“It’s the moment when you can see a prize way beyond what you were aiming for and you almost, almost have it. So close you can smell the color of it, but you’re a pro and you know that greed can turn you into a mark, so you check yourself.” Pride was exceptionally bad company after the fall. Had Orrin checked himself, they might never have busted Abundance.

“You’re that prize for me, Aurora Rae. Always close but out of reach. When I could finally see a way to win you, I checked myself.”

“A great con never leaves money on the table and you’re a great con.”

And he’d never been greedier. Time to stop being a pretender and claim his prize. He followed her to a row of shelves in a nook near the darkened coffee station.

“This is my favorite part of this shop. The romance section.” She stopped in front of the shelving, not moving aside when he stood beside her. “I love what we do because there are too many bad guys who consistently get away with crimes that no one prosecutes. Tax evasion, money laundering, bribery and worse. But it means I spend my time managing uncertainty.”

She ran a finger across the spines of the books on an eye-level shelf. There was love in that gesture. He missed her touch, the rough of their past and the smooth they’d only begun to explore. It made him feel as if he’d found a firm place to stand in a confused world.

“In every single one of these books there is the comfort of knowing the hero and heroine will be happy in the end, no matter what. When I read a romance, I don’t have to worry about playing my role, about risking my freedom, and I sure as hell don’t have to worry I’m going to lose the love of my life.”

He opened his mouth and shut it again. She wasn’t finished, and she made him breathless.

“Right up until you scurried out of Abundance without a word, you were never something I was uncertain about. I thought we were headed for our own happy ending.”

Christ. Was she telling him it was off the table? “You said the folks in these books get to be happy no matter what happens to them.”

She nodded. “I don’t confuse fiction with real life, just like I don’t fall in love without a good r

eason.”

Hope was a borked coffee machine that could be made to work again. It was a business sold and a job saved, a salary raised and five-thousand people who knew the truth about the fake future they’d been promised. Hope floats, but he was sinking.

“Are you still in love?” His voice came out like it didn’t belong to him. Like he was still an imposter.

“I am.”

His body flooded with whatever the heck sixth-sense hormone signaled hold on to the ledge because there was a rock fall coming, a monster wave, a wipeout.

“What do I have to do to convince you I won’t ever run without you?” she said.

The rigidity of her posture signaled go away. He wanted to touch her so badly, he didn’t know what to do with his hands. He gripped a shelf, then shoved a hand in his pocket, then crossed his arms. A plastic cable tie and a goon to bind his wrists could come in handy. It wasn’t on her to convince him of anything.

“Way I see it we’re at an impasse. You’re my greatest adventure. I am in this life with you no matter what ugliness or misfortune gets thrown at us. But I’ll do everything I can to prevent you sacrificing yourself for me.”

“I didn’t sacrifice anything,” she snapped, eyes like arrows. “I did my job, protecting my partner.”

That she’d had to was still something that rattled him from sleep, but he was ready to accept she didn’t need him to overthink this. “Who was a shit, right?”

“Completely.”

The elbow she rammed in his side made him grunt. He tempted more violence by saying, “No happy ending for us then.”