“I have a bit of a headache.”

He shot a glance at her. “Am I your headache?”

“No. I thought I might be yours.”

Mutual awkwardness. She was the highlight of his year. “How was your week?” That was a safer topic.

She talked then about donor registers and partner charities on the ground in Africa, the Middle East, an

d Asia, and the new batch of loans that was going ahead, and then made his foot stutter on the accelerator. “I hated that you thought I wasn’t serious about D4D, but you were right.”

He winced. “Did I say that?” Shit, yes, he had, when she was thrown by the excess of the XRad party. “That was unnecessarily harsh.” A useful but unforgiveable manipulation. “I shouldn’t have said it, and I don’t believe it’s true.”

“Wow, that sounded like an apology.”

So there was no question, he said, “I’m sorry, Fin.”

She poked him in the ribs. “I like it. But you made me think, and I figured out I’m still a flake. I liked the idea of running a charity and what that said about me as a person more than I appreciated what it means. I liked the romance of it but not the reality. Before we met, I was one of those people who’d wear colored ribbons, or tip a bucket of ice on themselves, or post on social media about supporting a cause because it’s fashionable. I was an armchair activist, wearing a pink pussyhat I knitted myself, except I was standing on a barstool and it was all about me, not the cause. D4D isn’t a fashion. It’s not a project to rehabilitate my self-worth, but that’s how I was treating it. I was using it to show people that I’m not a failure.”

He looked across at her. Eyes down on her lap, fingers twisting a plain ring. He wanted to pull over so he could yank her into his arms and sell his apology in a way that made her never doubt herself again.

“I spent part of this week angry with you and part of it coming to terms with the fact that you were right. It was a game for me. I don’t want it to be a game anymore.”

“Where does that leave us?” He was ready to look for an exit, turn the car around and take her home if that’s what she needed.

She smiled for the first time since she’d gotten in the car. “Halfway to Beacon and maybe friends.”

Friends would be a good outcome, better than he deserved. Friends would make things easier when they were on the job and easier when they weren’t, and friendships drifted apart, which is what would ultimately need to happen.

But he failed at friendship, because inside the Dia gallery, while they were walking through the exhibits, he touched Fin too often, stood too close, watched her too intently. He had a legitimate excuse. She was pale and not herself. She didn’t make funny, witty comments about the collection of minimalist and conceptual art as they moved from room to room in the old box printing factory, and she didn’t drink anything stronger than sparkling water. When they were around others she snapped back into her essential self and won new admirers and donors, but she visibly wilted when they were alone.

“It’s more than a headache,” he said, steering her into a space filled with crushed car parts and lit with the green glow of neon.

She waved it off. “I’m a little tired, that’s all.” But she leaned on him when he wrapped his arm around her back and during the formal dinner, she picked at five-star food, eating very little and barely saying a word.

By the time the speeches began, her skin looked translucent and she was slumped in her chair.

Cal turned her face to his. “You’re sick, my darling. I’m taking you home.”

“No. This is nothing. I’m fine.”

He had people to see; the whole point of being here was to tighten the net around the Everlasting investors, hint at even bigger gains from the fake gene therapy company, and up the stakes. “It’s not nothing.” She could barely sit straight.

She leaned in and lowered her voice. “I have menstrual cramps. It will pass.”

Ah. The women in his life had never suffered like this, occasionally felt low or off-color, but Fin was not all right, and he was not making her suffer any further. “I don’t care what it is. We’re not staying.”

He made their excuses, and she didn’t protest. She was unsteady on her feet and leaned heavily on him on the way to the car, and when she groaned as he helped her sit, he made a decision.

Hudson House was close by. It was a quaint bed and breakfast guest house. He’d noticed the vacancy sign as they’d passed. He’d take a couple of rooms, let Fin sleep, and they could go home in the morning.

She’d closed her eyes when he’d driven off, but when he stopped again, she opened them. “Where are we?”

“We’re going to get a room so you can be comfortable and rest.”

She peered at the big Federalist mansion with its wide porch, welcome lights on. “No, I’ll be fine.”

“Fin you’re shivering and miserable, and it’s ninety minutes until I can get you home. You can take a shower, warm up, sleep. Do you have what you need?” He’d break into a drug store to get whatever she needed, if he had to.

Tags: Ainslie Paton The Confidence Game Romance
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