The Mysterious Stranger (The Confidence Game 3)

He was hollow to his core. Committed to a woman who was burned by being faithful to his own brother.

He grasped her hand, pulled it away from his chest, needing badly to get a lungful of fresh air. “Let’s go.”

They went out the way they came. Zeke through the door, which Rory locked behind him, and Rory from the window after she’d reset a laser alarm. He took her weight in his hands, against his chest. His pulse rate soaring the moment she relaxed into him. He held onto her longer than necessary once her feet were on the ground because his heart was conflicted, and his head was full of fear. Not for their mission, the missing signal jammer, their lack of a cell phone, not for the Continuers, or for Rory, but for himself.

He was not coming out of this unchanged. Loving someone who didn’t love you was baggage you heaved around and never put down, and without truth between him and Rory the future looked stunted with his own personal decay.

Chapter Ten

First thing Rory did as the sun broke the horizon Monday morning was find the spare cabins. A dozen at least, strung out in a row, hidden from view by a massive stand of trees, each one with its own unique identifier, as if it was already lived in.

She entered the cabin on the end, furthest from the rest of the settlement with a flying duck family on the wall, to find it laid out and furnished in the same way Cadence’s cabin was. Same galley kitchen cupboards, dining table and chairs, same lumpy couch and bedroom furniture. There was power to the lights and water in the taps.

Dammit. She could’ve been living here with Zeke. They’d have had a safe place to catch up, wouldn’t have had to waste time looking for each other. She pulled out a chair and sat at the table, the events of last night turning over in her head.

She was not under any circumstances having sex with Orrin.

Fortunately, her femme fatale experience came in handy there. She’d spent years helping men fall in lust with her and then disappointing them in all the ways possible while stealing the money they ripped off others. And if Orrin got physical with her, she was more than capable of breaking his hand and making him feel like it was his fault.

She put her head down on the smooth varnished surface of the table. It was cool after her run and smelled of the varnish used to treat it.

This latest development put her closer to the center of Abundance’s corruption and would limit her movements while keeping her occupied in fending off unwanted attention. Orrin was too clever a con to reveal anything useful to someone he hoped to seduce and didn’t trust.

“Oh fuck,” she said into the table. She had to win his trust. She had to find the signal jammer. And she had to not let Zeke see she was worried.

Better that she wasn’t living here with him. They’d learn more working independently. Yeah, keep kidding yourself. Snuggled in the dark with him, she’d almost kissed him. Full on the lips. The memory made her face heat up and she pressed her cheek to the table’s smooth surface.

It had to be because of the live sex act going on not five feet away. “Fuck you very much Hank and Tina, and you too, Donna.”

She’d never wanted to kiss Zeke like it meant something before. He was for messing about and dirty dancing and having her back. He was for pranks and fried food after midnight and hysterical laughter. He was her friend and her safe port in a love-gone-wrong storm and for always being there to comfort her when she was down. He was the one person she knew who was reliably better than a book for company.

He was also one of the most gorgeous men she knew but it took more than a pretty face for her to find a man attractive. It took a sharp brain, emotional intelligence, a strong sense of justice, matched with a wicked sense of humor and a deep connect—

“Oh Jesus Christ.”

She got up from the table and did a circuit of the room. Identical to the one she lived in and equally incapable, with its hard, bland surfaces and its lack of personality, of being somewhere she could relax.

She’d wanted to kiss Zeke because she was relieved he wasn’t in danger, because of Hank and Tina, that’s all it was. Extreme provocation on top of isolation and the thrill of the break-in, coupled with what she’d learned about Orrin wanting her and the fact they were stuck there, huddled together on the floor in the dark with a sex soundtrack of grunts and sighs and groans.

“That’s all it was, that’s all.”

That was all it could be, because they were working and there were lives at stake and if she didn’t start running from this idea of holding on to Zeke and kissing him till her only breath was the one they shared, she’d come apart at the seams.

She’d loved one Sherwood and that had almost wrecked her. She wasn’t getting romantically attached to another and wrecking a good friendship just because she was unbalanced by an undercover assignment.

From a more practical point of view, she was going to be late for corner duty at breakfast.

Half an hour later, hair still wet from the shower, she watched the action in the kitchen and settled her thoughts. It’d happened. She’d wanted to kiss Zeke. She knew it would be good. He’d wanted to kiss her too. That last part wasn’t in dispute. He’d gotten awkwardly hard over H

ank and Tina’s floor show and though he tried to laugh it off, the way he’d looked at her had fogged her heart with desire. If she was honest, it wasn’t the first time she’d sensed that need in him and chosen to ignore it.

And that was what she had to do now. Nothing in Abundance was real and that moment wasn’t either.

As breakfast service wound up, she found herself in the dining room with eggs and bacon and one of the line cooks called Beth.

The woman took a seat opposite her. “Good morning, new girl. Did you enjoy the social?”

Rory pointed at herself. “Are you voluntarily talking to me?”