The Perfect Con (A Bad Boy Romance Novel) (Bad Boy Confessions Book 1) (16 page)

T
he sun was sinking
into the horizon and I was sitting on the deck, my legs crossed, my back straight, cycling completely calm breaths through my system. Maybe if I lived out here, I wouldn’t have anger management problems. I hadn’t felt this relaxed since—well—since I’d been inside Sofi on the hood of her car, right before I’d confessed everything, like a damn idiot. In that moment, it had felt like everything was really going to be okay.

That moment blew this one out of the water, no pun intended.

But part of the point of meditation was to cleanse my thoughts of Sofi Castillo. Wash her out. No thinking about her curls wrapped around my fingers. No thinking about her vanilla and coconut flavor. Her golden stretch of thigh.

Nothing but
om.

The first unwelcome fantasy to creep into my mind wasn’t specifically about Sofi, though. It was the thought,
I wonder how long I can possibly stay out here before someone ends up in jail.

My eyes popped open. Now that the thought had stricken me, I couldn’t shake it.

I was the one who kept everything together. Without me there, it was only a matter of time before everything fell apart.

Om,
I repeated forcefully.

Javier was an excellent forging artist, but without my guidance, he would get carried away and pursue a forgery beyond his means.

Om.

Damian, our fencer, could probably sell to an undercover fed without my instincts there. I knew the law enforcement better than he did.

Om.

And who could imagine what Gabe might do? Hire seven new hands at the estate without vetting anyone. He’d fuck up some petty, simple crime with a negligible yield like hoisting someone else’s cargo off the airport baggage claim, get caught, detained, charged, and debilitate the whole family for the rest of the summer. Good God, maybe he’d get someone pregnant. I was surprised he hasn’t already.

Om. Om, om, om. Come on, inner peace, hurry up. Om.

I sighed deeply. I was going to have to go back soon.

The mantra crumbled apart in my mind, and all the peace fizzled away with it.

A breeze moved off the ocean and through my hair. I inhaled and exhaled. Shit, even that salty wind was a reminder of Sofi—how it had filled the car the first time I’d been inside her. It had torn through her hair, swirling all around us, and I’d whipped the car off the road, unable to resist. That had been an amazing night, hadn’t it? Full of adventure and whimsy without even having to break the law once: dancing to a beat that didn’t even match the “music” from the speakers, her buttons popping open at the lagoon, belting those douch-bag twins…hmm. I guess it is hard to avoid breaking the law over the course of an entire evening. But we’d come close.

I did still have her number. All was not lost. Once I got back to a portion of the land which received network coverage, I could try calling her. Maybe she would pick up.

Probably not, though.

The sound of an engine pulled me from my thoughts and I vaulted up from the deck, scanning the vast waters for any approaching tourist ship or, worse, a ship from the National Marine Park. I was queerly completely unconcerned about the possibility of pirates, and had been ever since departing. It was as if I wanted to lose everything.

“Holy shit,” I breathed, almost certain that I had to be hallucinating.

It wasn’t a tourist boat, and it wasn’t anyone from the National Marine Park coming to apprehend me. It wasn’t even a throng of pirates.

It was The Wet Rocket, Gabe’s boat, and it was pounding across the waves toward me.

I rushed to the farthest point on the yacht and leaned against the railing, glaring out at him. That son of a bitch. It really was him, wearing loose cargo shorts and another t-shirt with some flippant message and sneakers. Sneakers. Naturally, unlike me, he was not a solo sailor. Solo sailing was dangerous, demanding, and rewarding. It would only appeal to a certain kind of man. The Wet Rocket was fully staffed. I was pretty sure Max was the blond securing some rigging in the back, not Gabe. And it wasn’t just Max, it looked like there was a small crew working on his boat.

Gabe was just waving grandly to me, his arm swinging back and forth in the wind, like a damn tourist realizing he knows someone at the same theme park.

I felt my blood pressure practically double. Shit. They would never come out here unless something was really wrong. It took me half a day to get out this far, and Gabe had known that it wasn’t for sight-seeing.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” I yelled out to him.

“I’M GREAT!” he called back, grinning like a big dog. I think it might have been the first time since childhood that I was seeing him without any styling product in his hair. “HOW ABOUT YOU?”

Behind him, the rest of the crew scurried to bring the boat to a stop alongside mine. Gabe braced the rail and stood as calmly as a sneaker model.

“I was better about five minutes ago,” I told him honestly. “What are you doing here?”

“You could’ve had your radio on, and saved me the trip, but—”

“I wanted the privacy!” I snapped. “But, that clearly didn’t matter, so, out with it.”

Gabe averted his eyes, bit his lower lip, and then peered back up at me, scowling against the setting sun. “Okay, well, you’re not gonna like it,” he confessed, “but it’s still worth mentioning that I dropped everything and brought the boys up here to get you, even though I was picking my fantasy football team when Madeline showed up.”

All the tension flowed out of my face at the mention of her name, and my shoulders went round. Madeline had come by the house. That couldn’t have been good. And then they’d dropped immediately prepped and come up here—that must have been worse.

I swallowed and asked, “What was Madeline doing at the house?”

Gabe grimaced. “Well,” he said, “I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news. Really bad news. And, also, the good news might not be that good. The good news is actually totally subjective. I guess the bad news is too—”

“Jesus Christ, Gabe!” I laid my hands out on the railing as if I could neatly divide up the things I needed to hear from the bullshit my brother was spouting, and then just ask him for that instead. “WHAT HAPPENED TO SOFI?”

Gabe took a deep breath. “She got arrested,” he said.

“But—but she left—she went—”

“Yep. She got arrested for van Buiten,” Gabe continued. “Madeline came to tell you, but you were out here.”

My eyes softened as it hit me. Madeline came to tell me—which meant that Sofi had told her to do so. I didn’t know if it meant that Sofi had forgiven me, but it did mean that Sofi might concede to needing me.

“Fuck.” I exhaled and bowed against the railing, running my fingers up into my hair.

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you got a little rest over here before real life came crashing back down,” Gabe said. “It’s really gorgeous out here. Hot as balls, though.”

“There has to be some way out of it,” I muttered, still not looking too closely at Gabe. My mind was churning slowly over this dilemma, like teeth gnashing through wood. “She wouldn’t have told me if there wasn’t anything I could do for her. There has to be something I can do.”

“Well,” Gabe said, his voice hitting an unusually high and uncomfortable pitch. “Well, she didn’t necessarily say that. I mean…the arrest might not have even been the news she was supposed to give me.”

Now I looked up to glare at him. I normally hated when Gabe played around, but when I was already stressed out, it was enough to make me wring his neck, brother or not.

“What are you TALKING about?” I seethed.

“You know, Maddie’s a weird girl,” he said mildly. “She brought this thing with her, but, I don’t know, I guess, if you wanted proof—”

“No, I don’t need any proof that—”

And then it hit me. There was a thin white object in his hand. He’s been waiting it the whole time, and I only noticed it now. It was a pregnancy test.

Madeline had brought Gabe a pregnancy test. And the news that Sofi had been arrested wasn’t necessarily the news she’d been sent to give.

I swallowed thickly.

“She’s pregnant,” I breathed. The deck beneath my feet fell away, and I mused as to whether or not I was going to pass out and plunge headfirst into the Atlantic. “She’s pregnant, isn’t she?” I asked dreamily.

Gabe pursed his lips and nodded. “Yup.”

I took a deep breath and, when I let it out, it trembled. “Okay,” I whispered. “Then I was right the first time. There has to be something I can do. There has to be a way out of this. She’s not going to have our baby in jail.”

Images of Sofi fluttered through my conscious mind—her with her bare feet propped up on the Porsche’s dash; her grinning impishly at me on the beach, saying, “You don’t look like it’s physically possible for you to relax;” her face between the wooden rails of the Rainbow Disco deck, begging me to get out of there before we were banned. And all these moments, Sofi smiling, Sofi being gentle, laid-back, and sweet, all these moments culminated into another moment, a future moment I could see with staggering clarity: Sofi as a young mother. Sofi as the mother of my child. Sofi as the woman I would spend the rest of my life with.

“You came to tell me and you told me,” I said, flicking a finger at Gabe. “Now let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve got to get home.”

* * *

W
e needed
to sail throughout the night. I lost track of the hours and thought only in terms of knots and miles. My knuckles bound so tightly around the steering wheel that they ached. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the shadowed sea, from the lights of The Wet Rocket, running parallel—but my mind was two hundred miles away, detained with Sofi.

“Hey, boss,” Max called, loping up the companionway toward my station. “I came to relieve you of your shift.”

I shook my head and frowned. “Not necessary.”

Max stroked at his chin and laughed softly. I looked back out to sea. “It’s going to be a long night.”

I took a long breath and inhaled deeply, gratefully.
Om.

“You’re a funny guy,” Max went on. He shot me a look I pretended not to notice. “Look, man, I’m, eh, sorry about earlier, before. Back at the house the other day.”

I kept staring ahead. “Not sure what you mean, Max. I tried to stop you from doing your job, but I was too late. You called de Silva, just like I told you to.” I took another deep breath, but the tension wouldn’t flow off me anymore. Not without her. No amount of
om
could erase the truth. This was my fault. I’d been the one to give the hounds her scent.

“You’re not going to make this easy, huh?” Max sighed. “I’m sorry I said that you were going soft.” He hesitated. “This is different.”

“I know it is.”

“I thought she was just a good-looking mark,” Max explained. “I didn’t know she was pregnant.”

I grunted. “Me neither.”

“And I didn’t know the break-up was sail-across-the-ocean material.”

“Well, a couple hundred miles. Not across. Though—I did think about it. Thanks for coming by, Max,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. “But, hey, I think I’m going to stay and steer a while.”

I didn’t accept anyone’s help until near dawn, when Max insisted and I relented, finally claiming a bunk. It would still be about six hours before we arrived in Aurora Beach. I had six hours to lay in bed, stare at the ceiling, and think about how the hell to get Sofi out of this, for the second time since we’d met over a pair of shoplifted rose print panties and—

And then it hit me.

Sofi hadn’t really been the one to
pull off
the van Buiten score. I had. Spider had just betrayed me, and she’d swiped the jewels out from under me.

But I could tell them everything they needed to know. Things even Spider didn’t know. How I had known the combination to the safe. Who was waiting to purchase the jewels from me in Madrid.

Why I had chosen Sofi Castillo as my fall guy.

They would believe me, and they would take me, and they would let her go.

They had to.

I
stared
at the bars all damn night, trying to get used to the idea of living the foreseeable future in a cell. And I had thought that my father had been too controlling. At least he’d never locked me up in a cage.

I pressed my palms to my forehead and tried to stop the room from lazily spinning. I was still nauseated, though I hadn’t mentioned anything to the guards. They wouldn’t care, and it wasn’t any of their business. It was my problem—not theirs.

I guessed that Leo hadn’t cared about my future imprisonment. Hell, I didn’t want to believe it, but maybe he had been angry enough that I’d left, angry enough to turn me in. The last time I’d seen him, on the side of the road in his soaked suit, he’d looked heartbroken, not vengeful, but maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did. How well can you really know a man, just because he makes your mouth catch on fire, just because he makes you wither up at his touch? That kind of thing doesn’t mean anything. No matter how badly I wanted our connection to be true, there was no denying solid, physical facts, like time and space.

Because I’d sent Madeline to tell him about this more than a full day ago, and Aurora Beach was less than two hundred miles from Port Primavera. And I knew that Leo was morally comfortable with doubling the speed limit when he felt so inclined. But he hadn’t come.

I massaged the back of my neck and rolled my head to the side. God, I felt like crap.

Shit, I’d thought that I could trust Spider. I thought he’d been my friend. But he’d left something behind, a fingerprint, or maybe the old hag had hidden cameras that even “Mr. del Papas” was not privy to, and they knew they were looking for Lorenzo “Spider” Iglesias. And they knew that Lorenzo Iglesias had been a private chauffeur for Ronaldo Castillo for four years. And when they’d decided to start looking at me more closely—thanks to Leo—they had all the dots they needed to connect the pieces together. They followed the trail right to my apartment in Port Primavera, where I was letting Spider lay low for the summer. My apartment hadn’t been a secret, hadn’t been under a false name, and if they could bust down the door at my parents’ place, that apartment door, by comparison, would’ve folded with a hard enough knock.

And he’d rolled right over on me. Lorenzo Iglesias had told them everything.

I wondered if he’d told them about Leo, but I couldn’t imagine why he would. There’s no use making enemies for yourself on the outside, especially when you’ll be free after your testimony is complete.

And I was relieved at that. It was crazy and it was stupid, but I was relieved that Leo wasn’t going to be behind bars, too. Even if he had been poised to set me up for the Heart of Icarus. Even if he might have been the one to turn me in for van Buiten. Even if Madeline had told him that I was arrested—maybe even that I was pregnant—and he hadn’t responded, hadn’t cared, I still didn’t want him to end up in jail alongside me.

I guess I was an idiot, but that’s how I felt. I didn’t want any harm to come of him, even when he deserved it, even when I was the one hurting, I was the one in trouble.

I swallowed and my eyes crusted over with tears.

I guess I was an idiot, but that’s how I felt. I was in love with the jerk.

I bowed my head into my hands and let out a good cry. God, it felt good, like a rubber band had been over my heart, looped again and again, and it had finally snapped and let all the pressure loose. I sobbed until my shoulders racked, sobbed out loud, lost myself in the pleasure of wallowing. Fuck, I was pregnant, and the dad didn’t even give a shit. FUCK, I was in jail, and I wasn’t going to get back out. Not with Spider’s testimony, not with all the corroborating details. Hell, my fucking skin cells were on the emerald earrings; I was fucked. Fucked!

All around me, the other cells echoed with women sneering that I should shut up, women mimicking my sobs with snide theatricality.

“Fuuuuck!” I cried out. “Fuuuck youuu guyyy—”

“Castillo,” a gruff voice interrupted me. I jolted. It was the bailiff. dammit. I was already in trouble, and I’d only been in this cell for one day.

Keys jingled and I blinked hard.

He was unlatching the cell.

I started up from the floor. “What are you doing?” I asked hopefully. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be what it looked like. It had to be something even worse—yes. They were probably just remanding me to a cell in Aurora Beach. Of course. That was where I’d stand trial.

“You’re free to go,” the bailiff said, nodding slowly as the door came open. “No more need to scream the ‘F’ word at our other fine citizens.”

I stared at him with a slack mouth. “Uh. What?”

“You’re free to go.” The bailiff kept nodding for me to advance past him, but I wouldn’t budge. This didn’t make sense. “We’re sorry for the misunderstanding. You can see, I’m sure, how all our evidence placed you directly into the spotlight, but—we were apparently mistaken.”

“Y-you were?”

“It happens. Come on.” The bailiff gently plucked my elbow up in his hand and pulled me toward the front. “It was a set-up. Seems obvious now. The mastermind came forward a few hours ago.”

The mastermind. The mastermind.

My eyes widened. “N-no,” I whispered, shaking my head. The bailiff seemed to fade away—or maybe I was just losing my peripheral vision. I might have been on the verge of passing out. Everything was happening too fast. My brain needed to shut down. Install some updates. “No…” Madeline had gone to Aurora Beach after all. She had found Leo. She’d told him—and he’d turned himself in. The father of my child was going to prison. For me. Even after I’d told him that I didn’t trust him—even after I’d left him on the side of the road in the rain—

My knees folded, and frankly? I was grateful for the break.

* * *

B
etween early and late afternoon
, a lot of things can change. For instance, my clothes had changed. Oh, and I’d taken a shower, hallelujah. And I was in Aurora Beach. But I was still at the county jail, this time waiting to visit Leonardo Battista.

Now my hair was fresh and loose and I was wearing the same wrap maxi dress with the shimmering emerald mosaic that I had been wearing at our first date—well—at our first business dinner.

I wondered if he’d remember.

“Miss Castillo,” the bailiff called. I stood and smoothed a hand over my wild curls, like it would make any difference at all. They sprang back into place as soon as my fingers left.

“Here,” I announced, clearing my throat. “Here.”

The Aurora Beach County bailiff nodded and ushered me forward. “He’s waiting for you.”

We walked down a corridor and to a small room with a large mirror erected in one corner, a table dominating at the center. And Leo. Leo sitting. God, he was—perfect. His hair was strangely ruffled and askew, a style I had never seen it, as if it had been washed by the rain and whipped dry by the wind. His cheeks were ruddy with a little sunburn. He was wearing a white collared shirt, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and black dress shorts. It was the most casual I think I’d ever seen him in, and he was imprisoned, and he still looked ready to attend a seaside funeral.

He looked at me with those deep, moody gray eyes, and I flowed toward him like water breaking from a dam. “Leo,” I breathed.

He stood and absorbed the impact of my embrace, enfolding me with an unexpected mixture of tenderness and strength. As if he wasn’t afraid at all.

“Leo,” I breathed again, my lips tingling as they roved over his strong neck. I had never wanted him more; my fingertips were burning.

“Hey, you two, no contact,” the bailiff reminded us gruffly.

Leo removed himself from me immediately, but my skin groaned and ached at the separation. I wrapped my arms around myself and pursed my lips. It was so cold without his arms. I felt diminished. Like a half. Trying to breathe with only one lung. Trying to think with only part of a brain.

“No contact, and no exchange of items,” the bailiff barked from the doorway. “If I see it again, I’m going to have to ask you to leave, Miss Castillo.”

“Yes, sir.” I gave him a sickened glare and he raised his eyebrows at me and shrugged before turning and sauntering away.

“I have to admit, the last time I heard you say ‘Sir,’” Leo muttered, “I liked it a whole hell of a lot more.”

I turned back to Leo and softened. I reached out a hand to touch him by pure instinct, then pursed my lips, pulled it back, and took my damn seat across from him. No contact. Ridiculous. “Are you okay?” I whispered.

Leo’s eyes lit across me, fluctuating with pain. “Yes,” he said. “I’m fine. And you? Are you—” He tilted his head back and forth, watching me closely. “—nauseated at all?”

Blush flowered on my cheeks. “She told you,” I said.

“Told me?” A small smile twisted at the corner of Leo’s mouth. “She brought the test with her.”

“Argh, gross.” But my eyes twinkled at him. “Listen. I want—I want to talk to you about the other night.” I nipped at my lower lip. “On the highway.”

“You mean when you left me on that road.” Leo cleared his throat and examined his nails pointedly. “In the rain.”

“It had stopped raining,” I corrected him breathlessly. “And I was hurt. I thought you didn’t really care about me.”

Leo indicated himself with a flick of his hand. “Yet it was me you called when you got arrested, not good old Ronaldo. But me.”

“It was just some kind of instinct.” I tilted my head and smiled at him. “And you came in and confessed…after thinking about it for a night.”

“I didn’t have anything left to think about,” Leo assured me. He slid his hand across the tabletop, but didn’t touch my interlaced fingers. Instead, he drifted his hands in the air, less than an inch from mine, and my flesh sizzled as if it had met his. I sat up a little straighter, made alert and energized by his closeness. “I came immediately, Sofi. I was two hundred miles out at sea, and Gabe had to come and get me at the reef. My radio was out.”

“What?” I spluttered. “Two hundred miles out at sea, and your radio was out.”

It wasn’t really a funny situation, but his eyes—normally so hard, normally so somber—shattered with light, like the sun breaking through a storm. “Well, it was off,” he corrected himself. “Sorry to be overdramatic. I turned it off.” A smile ticked at his lips. “What, you didn’t think I was going to stand by the side of the road for the rest of the weekend, did you?”

“Why are you so…?” He was about to go to jail. Not this holding area, but—federal prison. I couldn’t imagine why, after he had busted his knuckles on so many things since we’d met, he was kind of calm now. “Why are you smiling?”

His smile widened. “Because you’re pregnant,” he whispered.

His hands descended on mine, and a grin to match his broke across my lips. “No contact!” the bailiff yelled from somewhere outside the room—maybe behind the mirror. The door burst open and he marched in on us, jaw grim and set, eyes joyless. We sprang apart, but it was too late, and the bailiff gripped my arm and pulled me through the door.

“Hey!” Leo belted, lunging after us. “Get your hands off her!”

But it was too late. The corridor was swimming with officers, happy to further separate us. My eyes connected with his, and only three words slipped from his mouth before I was pulled backwards through the door and it closed on us.

“Wait for me,” he said.
Wait for me.

“This is goddamn ridiculous,” I seethed at the bailiff, jerking my arm from his hand. “The man can’t even touch my hand for a second? What do you think, that I was going to pass him a goddamn nail file? A spoon?”

“Miss Castillo,” the bailiff said, but I was already departing through the doors. I took long, fast strides toward my car, climbed inside, braced the steering wheel, and didn’t go anywhere. I had to think. Think.

I wasn’t going to wait for Leo.

I had his baby brewing in my body, and when he touched the mere air near me, my skin came to life, and I had made him smile.
Because you’re pregnant.

There was no way in hell my body could stand to wait for Leonardo Battista.

I was going to have to just get him out of there.