One Night Wife (The Confidence Game 1)

“Make her your mistress.”

He looked at his father for an intervention. “Dad.”

Dad picked up the secateurs and studied the blades. Granddad had apprenticed him to a stand-over man as part of his education as a con. He probably knew a dozen ways to make a mark submit with the threat of garden implements. But he’d never been a violent person and had made sure activities that attracted criminal elements weren’t part of the Sherwood operation. That’s why they didn’t indulge in simple crimes of opportunity like robberies or deal drugs. No Sherwood would ever knock over a casino, rob a bank, or get into the manufacturing and distribution of illegal substances.

None of that stopped Cal from wishing Dad would put the blade down.

“You got agreement to partner Finley on a One Night Wife.” Dad looked up from the secateurs. “That arrangement doesn’t have to stop with Everlasting.” He wiped the blades on his trouser leg. “No reason you can’t keep it going long term like you did with Rory.”

“That’s only part of what I want.”

Mom took the secateurs out of Dad’s hand and put them on the table. “I like Fin. She has a spark, and that terrible cat, poor fur baby, proves she’s a soft touch. You chose her well to be a patsy, but there’s more at stake here.”

“I want to tell her the truth.”

“She doesn’t need the truth.”

“I love her. She does.”

Mom sighed. “That’s a technicality.”

“I’m in love with her. I want to marry Fin, and that’s a technicality, too, but not one I’m prepared to compromise on.”

“No, you don’t.”

Mothers, the original gaslighters. Ready to tell you what you really need is the opposite of what you actually want.

“Are you seriously going to try to convince me I don’t know my own mind? I’m not five or fifteen or twenty-five. I’m not asking to join the circus.”

“Yes, because you can’t marry an outsider. It’s my job as your loving parent to convince you to keep Fin as a piece on the side.”

A

piece on the side of the truth.

He pushed back from the table and stood. “You know that rule had to break at some point. There aren’t enough alliance family members to go around. If it wasn’t me asking for this, it would’ve been one of the others.”

“Finley is implicated. Her complicity makes a difference,” said Dad. He tapped the tabletop with a soil stained finger. He wanted Cal to sit.

He was too agitated to be still. “But if she wasn’t, I’d want the same thing. I trust her.”

Dad tapped again. “Does she have any idea we’re not aboveboard?”

“She knows we have a process, and it involves manipulating our marks. She doesn’t think of them as marks, and she doesn’t know we con them. She thinks we’re sharks but what we do is within the law.”

Fin knew Cal used his charm to cultivate people with money to burn. She knew he had rat cunning and was a master manipulator. But she thought he was like any other successful, high-pressure, big-ticket item salesman who had a lot of rich friends. She had no idea his deals were an illusion.

“If Fin is the person you think she is, someone worthy of your love, she’s not going to take well to learning she’s been a conspirator in a long con,” said Dad.

“Listen to your father. How is this going to play?” Mom lifted her chin and waved a hand. “Darling Finley, I love you. Marry me. Make me the happiest grifter alive, but first you have to understand you were my accomplice in a billion-dollar scam.” She rubbed her hands together warmed up by her love gone wrong story. “Ka-ching. That sure puts a price on your love.”

“No. That’s not how it’s going to go.” Much as it would shock Fin, horrify her, like boosting the Bugatti had, he was confident that when she knew the whole truth, she’d adjust to it. “Fin is in love with me. We’ll work through it. She’ll understand I protected her. She’ll understand we’re the black hat version of what she’s doing with her charity. When she sees how we use the money, she’ll forgive me.”

“You’re certain of how you feel?” said Dad.

Certainty was a rarity in the field of cons. Much as you studied people’s behavior and predicted it, they could up and do something to surprise you. In his work, Cal looked for certainty, and he was rarely ever surprised.

He’d been certain Fin would make an ideal One Night Wife, and he’d tested that theory before he’d moved forward on it. He’d been certain he couldn’t partner with her and love her at the same time because one would trade off the effectiveness of the other.