The Perfect Con (A Bad Boy Romance Novel) (Bad Boy Confessions Book 1) (3 page)

Madeline crossed her arms in front of her chest and grimaced. “How fun,” she mused. “Business dancing.”

“There’s a foam bar on the strip,” I told them excitedly. “I haven’t been dancing once since I got here.” When I glanced to Leo, expecting that stern expression of his to be steadfast, I was surprised by a fleeting kind of wonderment in his eyes. As soon as our gazes met, it vanished, and it seemed as if he made sure to immediately frown at me.

“We’ve only been here for a few days,” Madeline was reminding me. While Leo and I had been looking at each other, her voice had become little more than a vague honking near my ear. “I could go without dancing for a few more.”

“Oh, come on!” I cried.

“I’m game,” Gabe chimed in. “Dinner, and then dancing. How about it, Maddy? Dare to match my tango? Something in your eyes just sings of roses between your teeth and skirts slashed to mid-thigh.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

“Let’s meet at Belly of the Whale in half an hour,” I suggested. Belly of the Whale was a kitschy diner that was structured like a sperm whale. The walls even had ribs. It was adorable; it was my favorite place to eat in Aurora Beach, and had been since I was a kid. There was a bar, but it was really still a place for people of all ages. “That place is really fun.”

“No,” Leo replied flatly. “Garrison’s or nothing.”

Argh. Garrison’s. I’d been there before, and it was completely dull. The people eating there spoke in pointedly low tones, the wait staff wore suits, and it was so quiet, you could hear the clink of individual knives and forks.

“Who do you think you are, my father?” I asked.

“I know I’m not your father,” Leo replied, growing another two inches again. “If you were calling me daddy, you’d have learned how to show respect a long time ago.”

My head and my panties went up in flames simultaneously. “WHAT?”

Gabe chuckled. “Yeah,” he agreed, “what?”

Leo stepped closer, and I felt a heat crackle in the space between us. What the hell? Did my nipples just pull tighter at the sensation of the warmth of his body? “Look,” he said, “Miss Castillo—with all due respect—this is not a date. This is a business meeting.”

“With dancing,” Gabe added. Leo shot him a look.

“With dancing,” Leo agreed. “And that business meeting must take place at Garrison’s—for business, not personal, reasons.” God, he was so—firm. In every respect. “Now, do you have business, not personal, reasons to hold the meeting at Belly of the Whale instead?”

I pouted and said “No,” but there was a greater part of me that just wanted him to drive that shovel of a hand into my curls and clench and pull. A part of me that dripped when he said,
“If you were calling me Daddy”…

“Then we’re in accord?” Leo asked. “Garrison’s?”

“Garrison’s,” I muttered. It didn’t really matter, and I was curious about Leo—and about his proposal—and this pseudo date wasn’t about any particular menu or ambiance. It was about discussing business in private, which had been my suggestion in the first place. I grimaced. “Garrison’s at four. And then Rainbow Disco. Deal?”

Gabe and Leo shared a look. “Deal,” they agreed, traipsing off toward their vehicle. Leo’s eyes glimpsed me once more before our moment was cut short by the wall of a building cropping up between us.

Madeline looked at me incisively. “I guess you’re going to get the well dressed one,” she muttered.

I blinked, making a conscious effort to clear him from my head, and turned to focus on Madeline. God, she was a grim specter by comparison. I feigned shock and confusion, placing a hand to my chest and a furrow on my brown. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I breathed. “You didn’t find Mr. T-Shirt to be arousing?”

“He was all right,” she allowed. “He wasn’t 6’4” with a no-nonsense Ivy League haircut, though.”

“No, but he was 6’3”, wasn’t he? This isn’t a date, anyway,” I rebutted, leading her back toward my car in Lot D. “This is a business dinner.”

“And business dancing,” Madeline added. “It’s fine. If you want to relive the horror that was Anthony, it’s your problem.”

I whirled on Madeline with a scoff. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m not blind, and I’m not deaf,” Madeline told me plainly. “Saw your face when you saw Ivy League, and yet I heard you saying you were converting to lesbianism right before we left for Aurora Beach. But, again, whatever, Sofi.”

“I was converting to lesbianism because I’d been seriously wounded by a player,” I reminded her acidly. “Ivy League—I mean, Leo—is…well—okay—I don’t know him that well. But—I’m not in love, am I? No. I’m on vacation. He’s sexy, and he’s mysterious, and he wants to go dancing.”

“Relatively speaking,” Madeline murmured.

“He wants to talk business, and I want to go dancing,” I corrected myself hotly. “We’re already showing how well we can compromise together.”

“I know you, Sofi,” Madeline went on. “That’s all I’m saying. You’re going to build yourself a trap, swear it isn’t there, fall right into it, and then comfort yourself by building a whole other trap in someone else’s name. It’s kind of depressing.”

“Yeah, well, you’re wrong,” I insisted—though I quickened my pace and refused to look over at her. “Like I said. I’m on vacation. It’s not like I’m in love with the guy!”

“
S
o
, Garrison’s,” Gabe mused in the passenger seat of my Porsche 911. “Where hot girls go to become bored and leave.”

“This isn’t a fucking date,” I reminded him for the third time. I laid on the horn as a low rider swept in front of me. “Hey, douche-bag, is wherever you need to go worth dying for?” I yelled out the window, then shifted my attention to the other douche-bag in my immediate vicinity.

So maybe I was a little more tense than usual. I swallowed at the vivid memory of the boho chic crime daughter, her rich auburn curls and haughty, laughing eyes, then consciously stifled the flow of blood to my groin—pretty ineffectively. She was just a girl. The world was full of them. Still—damn it—I almost liked the way she made fun of me. Was that weird? To me, it showed strength. Confidence. Not enough women are built with such hardy exteriors.

I shunted the thoughts back down into my subconscious.
This is not a date!

“It’s a campaign,” I reminded Gabe tensely. “Don’t ruin it with your mouth.” Gabe scoffed and reached for the dial on the radio, which was currently playing a slow symphonic version of an old Jane’s Addiction song. “And don’t change my stations.”

“I’m not trying to change the station, I’m trying to change the input,” Gabe replied. “Who still listens to the radio? Seriously, what decade are you living in?”

I glowered. “1963, the year this model was manufactured,” I reminded him staunchly. “It doesn’t have a fucking USB port, you newb.”

Gabe sighed and sank back into his seat. “So, then, this campaign.”

“Yes. Its aim is not to fuck Castillo’s niece,” I reminded him.

“Obviously,” Gabe smilingly chimed.

“Its aim is in finally putting Cyrus to use. Besides—he’s been a good boy. Perhaps it’s time to give him something for all his wasted effort. Someone to bring home to his department.” Cyrus had been on my operation for years without success. I was pretty sure I knew more about him than he knew about me. “He takes long, boozy lunches at Garrison’s.”

“You’re really going to take down that little ballerina?”

A pang of grief sang through me, immediately stifled. I didn’t even know the girl. And her problems—well—they weren’t my problems. “Collateral,” I explained, “for the two million and all those weeks Castillo took from us. I think it’s fair. Besides—it’ll be her first offense, and she’s a national sweetheart with a moneyed uncle. Press coverage will be insane. I give it less than three years before she’s out again. With a face like that? She might just get a suspended sentence.”

“And a hit on you,” Gabe suggested idly.

“You saw it too?” I asked, forgetting myself. “I thought that maybe she’s just one of those girls who always has that look in her eye.”

“A hit,” Gabe clarified. “The kind of thing that puts a club to your skull, not a club in your boxers.”

“Right, well.” I swallowed. It had been a while since I’d messed with any woman, in business or in my private life, and I knew I was running the risk of getting foggy-headed with it. I had too much testosterone and no outlet. I shook my head lightly, as if shaking off a punch. “I’ll put an alert on your phone for the day she gets out. You don’t need to worry about me. Trust me, bro.”

* * *

T
he interior
of Garrison’s was cozy and muted, its candles unlit and its tables mostly vacant. As our waiter led us stiffly toward a table—“Near the bar, if you could,” I requested—I identified Cyrus de Silva by his low shoulders and shabby toupee. I brandished sunglasses from the inside pocket of my suit jacket and slid them on. Now Cyrus wouldn’t be able to tell when I was watching him or the girls, and neither would they.

We took our seats, and I ordered two gin and tonics by sheer force of habit. “I’d rather have a beer,” Gabe said.

“Then order one,” I replied. “The gin and tonics are for me.”

We retained our silence until the waiter sauntered back to the table and set the two dry gin and tonics down with a click at my elbow.

“Thank you.” I nodded, and the waiter departed swiftly. Good man.

“So.” Gabe ducked his head and glanced about. He was doing a marvelous job of drawing attention to our table. “You really think she’s going to go for it?”

I half-shrugged and took a long draw from the first glass. This had to be quick; I wanted to look professional for the ladies, but I needed a little alcohol in my veins to loosen me up. My rigid demeanor made me a trusted leader, but a terrible salesman. “If she’s Ronaldo Castillo’s niece, she’s got to be Arturo Castillo’s daughter.” Gabe just stared at me, probably still hung-over from he night before, and my eyebrows lowered like those of a severely disappointed boss. “Mom and Dad only drilled his name into our heads a thousand times. He was only our template of a poorly executed business model.” I leaned forward over the table and banged my pointer finger down with each bullet. “An untrustworthy partner. Paper trails. Mixed business and personal accounts. Bad temper, big mouth. Worst of all—secret hidden life from the princess.”

Gabe rolled his eyes. “Huh?”

“She’s the daughter of a historically inept criminal,” I summarized hotly, swiping up the second gin and tonic. Deceit always made me nervous; this was Gabe’s game, not mine, but I didn’t trust him to do it right. I loosened my tie and opened my collar to air out a little. Bad time to have quit smoking. “We met her being apprehended by a security guard at The Godforsaken Fountains, jamming some cheap merch into her purse. Of course she’s going to go for it, because her dad did everything wrong. Probably treated her differently because she’s a girl, tried to protect her instead of educate her, and now she’s curious about this whole underworld with no hope of understanding what’s happening to her.”

“You’re a bad man, Leonardo Battista,” Gabe chided gently. “A bad, bad man. Here’s your girl.” He nodded toward the front of Garrison’s and I followed his gesture. I swallowed without conscious thought. Since we’d last seen her, in a t-shirt, skinny jeans, and flip-flops, she had changed, the clever minx. Now she was wearing a long, slinky dress in a vibrant green mosaic pattern, along with high-heeled leather sandals. Both trendy and classic. Her hair was still down—it was much redder than I’d anticipated—but was now capped by a broad straw-brimmed hat. She was beautiful, if you were into that loose-limbed, fanciful bohemian type—but lots of women are beautiful. That didn’t make her special or anything.

I took the opportunity to drink her in before she spotted us and was shown to our table, my eyes trailing through her hair like fingers—it was full and gathered around her strong cheekbones in a cluster of both wispy and defined curls—and down her neck, velvety and golden, to the soft round breasts, curve of stomach, and billowing skirt, hiding those thighs that were reportedly the perfect combination of softness and strength. For a moment, she shifted and the slinky fabric fell just so across her lower belly, fleetingly revealing to me that tantalizing valley between her legs. Saliva flooded my mouth and I forced my eyes away.

So what. I’m sure there are poems to be written about her belly button and her nipples and her—her eyes. But not by me. Wrong guy. You’re thinking of my brother.

Just then, the waiter sauntered back to our table and asked if I needed refills. I said no, and he took the glasses away.

“Oh, good evening, ladies,” he greeted the new arrivals, bowing slightly. “My name is Luis, and I’ll be your waiter. Could I get you started with some beverages, please?”

“Coffee, black,” Sofi commanded firmly. My eyebrows raised slightly, and I felt my blood pressure tick upward a few more degrees. It must have been the gin. Normally, two are fine, but they had been on an empty stomach.

“Water with lots of lemons on the side,” Madeline ordered, surprising no one.

They took their seats, and my gaze shifted to Cyrus. He’d unfurled a newspaper and was peering over it at us. Good man. Utter imbecile.

My eyes flashed back to our table as Sofi took her seat across from me. She took her hat off and her hair was suddenly spilling everywhere, somehow smelling like sunshine itself, distracting me, and I accidentally caught a brief glimpse of the top of two plush, firm breasts as she leaned forward and then back. Blood rushed in an unbidden tsunami toward my crotch and I shifted, inhaling, but the damn air still smelled like her damn hair, and I shifted again. Shit. What was wrong with me?

“Do you have any kind of pale ales?” Gabe was asking off in some foggy, thunderous distance.

“We’ve got an APA on the tap tonight,” Luis answered. Sofi looked at me with wide, cat-like eyes—a smoky chestnut. My heart pounded like a drum in the jungle—and I asked myself if she could feel that we were making eye contact the way I could.

“That sounds great,” Gabe murmured.

I shifted in my seat a third time and looked away. Hopefully she wouldn’t glance under the table for any reason—out of nowhere, I had achieved a monstrous erection.

“Very well.” Luis doled out menus and bowed. The gin was supposed to loosen me up, make me the salesman, but I felt shakier than before, somehow. I cursed myself.

“So,” Sofi said, resting her chin in the palm of her hand and gazing at me with an uncomfortable intimacy. Did she just look at everyone like that? As if they shared some sort of secret from everyone else? “You said you had business?”

I cleared my throat and looked down, panning my hand forward. “Let’s wait for Luis to finish.”

“Oh. Sure.” Sofi smiled, seeming to be unflappably cheerful, which I was sure had to be a ruse. “So, what brings you two to me, if not Uncle Ronaldo? Not every day two brothers swoop in to the rescue.”

“We’re partners in crime,” Gabe answered too quickly for me to squelch. I jammed my foot down on his and he grumbled, smiling painfully. “Just kidding. Ahem. Brothers. We’re brothers looking for a little help from a friend.”

“And you two,” I said, “are both dancers?”

Madeline smirked joylessly and crossed her arms over her tiny polo shirt. “No.”

“We went to college together,” Sofi answered, much warmer. “Both psychology majors.”

“I bet you’ve been doing a lot with that,” I said, mostly serious. The two girls looked at each other and snorted.

“Yeah,” Madeline agreed. “Tons. You should see my office.”

“I dropped out,” Sofi explained. “Well—relatively speaking. Now I’m just a bookkeeper for my uncle.”

“Ah. I didn’t go to college. But. I’ve found that it has not hindered my earning capacity.”

“English Lit,” Gabe volunteered. “I went to university for English Lit.”

“Bet you’ve been doing a lot with that,” Madeline murmured. Luis reappeared with a frosty dark orange beer, a water with a saucer of sliced lemon wedges, and a steaming black coffee in a little porcelain cup. I yearned for Sofi’s drink, but the round of dinner orders had begun. Naturally, model-thin Madeline wanted a cranberry apple salad, with both cranberries and apples on a side. Classless Gabe requested a bacon cheeseburger, and Sofi insisted that her only desire was a slice of cheesecake. Feeling as though that strange, heady rush at Sofi’s arrival may have passed, I declined to order.

As soon as Luis departed, that chin dropped right back into the palm of her hand. “So,” she repeated, “what help do you two need?”

I looked at Cyrus. He was pretending to talk on his phone now, though he didn’t appear to be speaking at all. And his eyes were glued to our table, the putz.

I leaned forward slightly, as if to shield Cyrus from our conversation, but failed to lower my voice. “Aurora Beach Museum of Art and History. Ever heard of it?”

“Of course,” Sofi scoffed warmly. “Practically lived on the third floor when I would visit here in the summers. I used to fancy myself a jewel thief, you know.” My eyes bulged. Not only was that a stroke of good luck—but I, too, had spent much of my childhood vacations in Aurora Beach, few and far between, mired in awe on the third floor. I wondered if we had passed each other before without even knowing it. I wondered if her eyes had roved over me thoughtfully after I’d passed.

“You couldn’t even rip off Miss Behavior a tube of lip gloss,” Gabe laughed.

“That was just for the rush,” Sofi told him lazily. “Anyway, sometimes a woman will do things that she knows are a bad idea.” Her eyes panned to me and I stiffened, telling myself again that she was just one of those girls. Just one of those girls who always looked like they were ready to be bent over. “Just to pass the time,” she added with a hint of mystery.

Luis arrived with the salad for Madeline and the cheesecake for Sofi. It did look very moist and fluffy. I could only imagine how perfectly the stark boldness of the coffee would contrast with the rich and soft palette of creams in the cheesecake.

I licked my lips.

Meanwhile, Madeline suckled at a lemon wedge; even she had to glower at the flavor. “It’s good for your complexion,” she informed us defensively, depositing a rind onto her saucer and snatching up another wedge.

I lifted a finger. “You know, that cheesecake does look awfully good,” I noted to Luis. “Could I trouble you for another piece?”