The Mysterious Stranger (The Confidence Game 3)

His brain must must’ve been knocked loose from its stem. He shouldn’t have said anything now. “I saved it up as a special present.”

“You think I don’t know you care,” she accused.

“I was there for you.” He pushed his hands through his hair. His mental stability pouring out the holes in his battered ego. He’d been there for her when she’d been free to choose him. “I’m always there for you.”

“I know that. You even took my side against Cal when it wasn’t smart to, but I was lost, the whole of this last year. Didn’t know who I was without being Cal’s partner, his lover, without being someone everyone could trust not to screw up a job. I didn’t have anything worth giving anyone. It was better I wasn’t around. But I don’t feel that way now.”

She took a step toward him and he almost pushed her away because what he most wanted to do was hold her tight enough to meld their skins together. She was worth the breath in his lungs and the light in his eyes but his own loss of cool was fueling his anger.

“I had to make my own peace with what I did. I couldn’t separate my professional relationship from my personal one with Cal. I exposed him and wrecked the con and lost the family a lot of money. I was ashamed. I still am. And yes, I wanted to take this job to make amends, to prove I can be trusted, relied on.”

“That’s not a good reason to—” That wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear.

She put her hand on his chest, fingers spread wide. “And I wanted to take it so I could hang out with you.” He made a sound of distress not unlike the goat. “You don’t have to worry. I’ve got my head on straight again. We’re friends. This is a job. I’m Rosie and you’re Zack and sometimes I want to make you do push-ups till your arms turn to jelly and sometimes I want to go dancing with you till I can’t feel my toes. You’re the only person I want to get a hangover with, run a break and enter with, and I can’t wait for us to tear this place apart.”

In front of Cadence, he’d told Rory she was his life and she’d straight-up assumed it was just a line. Where the fuck was his head that he’d expected something different. The goat squealed help, help. He might never get that sound out of his head. “Right, I didn’t mean to—”

She cut him off, which was a good thing, since he didn’t know what the hell he was saying. He didn’t mean to need her so badly, to hate her just a little bit for not needing him the same way. Help. Help.

“It’s okay.” She came in for a hug. “It’s your turn to have a little freak-out.”

Was that all this was? The goat squealed, a random human sound of outrage and it was everything in his heart. When she was hurting most, she’d turned from him. She’d never need him beyond what they were to each other now, and this place, and lack of quality sleep and sugar was screwing with his head, doing a smash and grab on his sense of self-preservation.

Rory had it together and he was the one suffering from lack of reality vertigo.

He wrapped her close, rubbing his chin on the top of her head, letting regret pool in his gut. “I really miss my bed.”

And his otherwise timeworn ability to be Zack to Rory’s Rosie and not fall in love with her all over again.

Chapter Twelve

Rory stood at the door of the community center and checked out the games night scene. Everything from the bright lighting, the urns set up for tea alongside plates of homemade cookies and the saggy paper streamers said hello 1950 and not in a hip cat, razz my berries way.

There were dozens of folding tables set up in neat rows and hundreds of people bent over game boards. The soundtrack was made of low murmurs, bursts of laughter and victory cries, of the clack of game pieces and the rattle of dice with the occasional bell ring, and the thwack of darts hitting targets.

There were a bunch of giant jigsaw puzzles and a group making a Lego castle. Another playing charades. There was a knitting circle. A ping pong tournament. Nothing that needed an electricity source. No children. No alcohol. No pool.

She half expected Mr. Rogers to walk out on the stage and call bingo on the hour.

It was original flavor geeky and looked heaps of fun.

She fully expected Zeke would beg off, especially since there was no sign of him and he was never late. She should’ve known not to be weird with him. He knew she’d tried to avoid him and instead of admitting it when he called her out, she’d pushed back, poking his general annoyance until it became something much darker, made of a wound she’d unknowingly given him.

When she ran from losing Cal, she’d spent a weekend crying on Zeke’s shoulder and then she cut him out. She hadn’t wanted to make him choose between a friend and a brother, between his boss and his family’s business and her less than professional behavior. She’d thought she was saving him from trouble, not tearing a strip off his thick hide of loyalty and leaving him feeling raw.

So many mistakes, the impact of them still unraveling, all because she’d been unable to tell the circumstance of being in love from the reality.

No, not unable. Stubbornly unwilling.

For four years she and Cal had played a part, the made-for-each-other couple, who glamored their way into the wallets and bank accounts of New York’s most revolting people. It was as easy to be in love with Cal as it was with the long con they were engaged in and the good work it allowed them to do. They were partners in ballrooms and boardrooms and gloriously in bed. It had never been in her best interest to separate the fact from the fiction. Cal had to do that for her and she’d hated him, taken revenge on him, for making her see they weren’t forever meant for each other in real life.

She’d since come to terms with her blind spot about Cal, her own self-deception, and they’d made peace. Learning she’d been so enormously blinkered to Zeke’s feelings was a new pain and not one she felt equipped to deal with.

Zeke was Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky. Mr. Water-off-A-Duck’s-Back. He got sulky if he felt unwell; he got angry when he sussed out some new injustice. He got fantastically flirty. He got annoyed, and on occasion he got explosively silly, but he didn’t let things that concerned him go unsaid. When he wasn’t in character for a con, he was straight talk and no bullshit all the way, even when he knew it wouldn’t please others.

Con artist Zeke could make you believe Yetis drank piña coladas with the Loch Ness Monster in the Bermuda Triangle. Everyday Zeke didn’t have a manipulative bone in his body, a tolerance for fools or a sense of diplomacy worth a damn.

None of which explained why he’d stewed on a year-old hurt and been triggered by a little poorly executed avoidance sparked by her own inexplicable unease around him. This place was getting to him too.