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Fool Me Forever
by Ainslie Paton

Copyright © 2018 by Ainslie Paton. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Chapter One

Halsey Sherwood stood outside the closed door of Dollars for Daughters, took a deep breath, and tugged at the cuffs of his shirt. The shouting from inside was disturbing. This qualified as fieldwork, and Halsey didn’t do fieldwork. He sat in his own temperate office and juggled numbers, shuffled spreadsheet calculations, created sexy charts, and sent emails with fake investment reports attached to them.

He worked out how to make money to save the planet from behind a silver and glass art deco desk by ripping off privileged, rich bastards. He used the phone when he had to. He saw clients when he had to. Under sufferance, he wore a tux, went to society events, and made hideous small talk, but he didn’t do fieldwork.

Standing outside Dollars for Daughters while someone inside shouted wasn’t his idea of a good time. He’d rather wear one of Mom’s ugly Christmas sweaters in public for a straight month in summer.

He’d tried to refuse when his eldest brother and the company CEO, Cal, asked him to check in with Lenny Bradshaw and Dollars for Daughters. She’d essentially thrown Cal out when he’d tried, and Cal was famous for getting what he wanted from anyone with a pulse and quite a few who were rumored to not have one.

Lenny was furious her charity had been used by her business partner, Fin, to launder money Fin had stolen from Cal. Which was fair enough. Fin hadn’t exactly been upfront with Lenny about the money being stolen, or that it was the cut, run, and go-into-hiding cash Cal had accumulated from being one of the world’s best cons. But since Cal was lying on a beach in an undisclosed location with his soon-to-be wife, Fin, for an unidentified amount of time, he’d made it Halsey’s problem to see that Lenny’s accounting didn’t raise any red flags.

So here he was, in the field, trying to make out what the angry male voice behind the closed door was shouting about and wishing he was anywhere else. All because a bunch of highly suspect transactions had to look legal, so no one went to jail.

He was considering a strategic retreat when the door flew open and a man said, “I’m not asking, Lenore. I need that money now, and you need to find a way to get it to me.”

Business casual, rude as fuck, the guy strode past, exiting without even an eye flicker to acknowledge Halsey’s presence.

Now there was no backing off, because what he’d heard was extortion, and no matter how much he didn’t want to be here, he couldn’t let smart, ambitious Lenny Bradshaw deal with that alone.

He stepped inside. There were two rooms. A kitchen-come-meeting area and an office. Lenny was standing in the kitchen by a beaten up, wooden table with a spiral notepad in her hands and an expression he read as fearsomely resigned.

He smiled. “Hello, Lenny.”

Resigned shifted to surprised, followed by annoyed in a kaleidoscope of expressions. Lenny Bradshaw’s life had hit a wall hard, and whatever just went down was one more crisis for her to deal with.

“I’m here to—”

She tapped the notepad on the edge of the table. “No, I don’t think so.”

“It will only take—”

“No, it won’t.”

“It’s—”

“Do you have a problem understanding the word ‘no?’” She touched a finger to the side of her head. “A hearing problem?”

He could see why Cal had crashed and burned.

“I’m having a really bad day and since you’re a Sherwood, that can only make it worse.”

Holy hell. Cal owed him one. “It’s for all of our security. Please let—”

She smacked the notepad on the table.

“Bad notepad, huh?”

She held the pad in front of her face and peered at him over the top of its edge. “What do you want? Whatever it is, now is not a good time. I’m busy.” She brought the pad down on the desk with another vengeful smack. “Since you’re a Sherwood, I’m always going to be busy.”

“You’ll break that.”

“Do I look like I care?” She smacked the table again. “You people break everything you touch, and you get away with it. I’m trying to run a respectable not-for-profit. I’m trying to help people, but now I’m tangled up in Sherwood confidence games because your brother romanced the smarts out of my partner.”

“You look distressed.” He chose that word carefully. It wasn’t like Fin hadn’t gotten her revenge. Cal was skint, but since his money had gone to fund families in distress he wasn’t complaining.

Before Halsey met Lenny, he’d thought her idea to create Dollars for Daughters to provide small loans to disadvantaged women was inspired. Once he’d faced her over the table in a diner, he discovered she was fatally attractive. He didn’t generally meet fatally attractive, inspiring women, so Lenny stood out.

Of course, back then, she didn’t know what he did for a living. She thought he ran a legitimate investment scheme. And she didn’t know her charity was in receipt of some not-so-legitimately raised funds, courtesy of the scam Cal was running, with Fin as his capable but kept-in-the-dark accomplice.

Now, Lenny stood in front of him with her fists clenched and her lovely face pressed into a furious scowl. It didn’t stop him wondering what it would be like to have her smile at him instead. He felt that wonder all the way to his gut in a rumble of desire.

“That was a rhetorical question,” she snapped.

Damn. Missed that clue. Too busy drinking her in. He didn’t do fieldwork because it meant doing people, and no matter how inspiring, attractive, fatal, or otherwise they happened to be, they were unpredictable.

He was good with concepts and big picture strategies and long stable cons that ran to plan and didn’t surprise. He couldn’t think on his feet like his siblings.

She pointed at the door. “Goodbye, Mr. Sherwood. I don’t have any need for anything you’re selling. Ever.”

It was almost quitting time on a Friday night. She was alone; there was no ringing phone. He raised a brow.

Steam might’ve come out of her ears. “That’s just what I need. Another freaking man telling me what to do.”

What? No. “I didn’t—”

“You gave me the eyebrow.” She gave him a double-barreled eyebrow lift back. “You told me I was going to break my notepad, and that I looked distressed. What’s not clear to me is what precise signal I gave that made you think I needed your entitled male opinion.”

“It’s not an op—”

“Halsey Sherwood, I didn’t know you were slow on the uptake as well as a thief.”

“I’m not a—”

“You steal money for a living. I’d say that’s a textbook definition, and since I’m the newly minted daughter of a thief, I think I’ve got that on lock.”

“You’re upset because of all the shouting.”

She made a sound of genuine surprise. “You heard?”

Tactical error.

Her jaw went tight, and she looked away.

“Difficult not to. Sounded intense.”

She flung the book and it slid across the table and fell off, slapping the floor. “You think?”

This was why he preferred the comfort of his own office. People were irrational. They beat up notepads and threw things. Of course, the fact that people were irrational was half the reason he could con them out of their fortunes. Double-edged sword, that. And if anyone needed to throw a few things to feel better it was Lenny.

He took a step toward her and opened his hands out, a gesture he hoped said he was safe and friendly. People just about fell into Cal’s arms and gave him all their money when he did that. They took all their clothes off and went to bed with his other brother Zeke when he did.

Lenny took a step back. Her cheeks were red. Her breathing was chopped into short, tight breaths she was trying not to let him see.

He should’ve left when it first occurred to him, before all the shouting, smacking, throwing, and arguing started. But for that small matter of the extortion. He’d only have to come back.

“What part about not wanting your help because you’re a Sherwood, which makes you a noxious poison and the absolute last complication I need in my life, didn’t you understand? Do you need me to repeat that part?”

If there was ever a person who could make her needs clear, Lenore Bradshaw was that woman. “I really am here to help,” he said.

“I can’t imagine what that might mean, unless it’s help yourself to something of mine because you’re a sneaking, cheating, lying Sherwood.”

“I came to check on your books.”

“Because your accounting as a con artist would be better than mine as an honest, upstanding, law-abiding citizen. My father is the Bradshaw family criminal, not me”—she sighed—“but I suppose, like the rest of the city, you can’t tell the difference.”

He had enormous sympathy for Lenny’s changed circumstances. She’d had a shitty year, even before Mr. Extortion showed up.

“One more time for the hard of hearing. I don’t want your help. I never want to see you again.”

Which would be fine as soon as he’d done what he came to do. “Here’s the thing—”

“There is no thing.”

If he asked about the extortion first, this would go from bad to broken things. He’d have to work up to it. “Several million dollars from a single source went through your charity’s books in one night. That doesn’t look good.”

Lenny jammed her hands on her hips. “Cal told me the money was ours. No return, no strings. Right before he and Fin ran off into the sunset to get a head start on their damn happy ever after.”

“The money is yours. I’m not here to take it back.”

“You’re just here to make my life more difficult. Typical Sherwood.”

He rubbed his brow. She was giving him a headache. “No. I’m here to make sure no one else does. I need thirty minutes and your accounting software.”

“And what, you’ll change my life?”

“Your father did that when he blew up his rogue pyramid investment scheme and ended up in jail. Your life has already been catastrophically messed with. I’ll make sure the transactions Fin made are going to hold up to examination by your auditor, so you don’t end up with orange as your new black.”

She frowned.

He kept his mouth closed because he was close, so close to asking if she wanted him to repeat that for the hard of hearing.

“I would strangle Fin for tangling D4D up with your family, but the money she stole from Cal provided thousands of loans, helped thousands of families.” Lenny exhaled hard and glared at him harder with squinty little liquid maple eyes. “I’ve already had advice on this. I don’t want anything to do with you after you check the accounting. Have you got that?”

“Loud and clear.”

She blinked. Her mouth twitched. It was almost a smile, until she squashed it.

The first time they met, it was over burgers at a place Cal and Fin loved, and Halsey thought was too noisy and the food wasn’t worth the hassle. Lenny had smiled a lot that night. He’d found himself smiling back. That was before she knew Sherwood Venture Capital was a front for a family business that reallocated money from people who didn’t deserve it to causes that did.

Dollars for Daughters was a microloan charity. It did a similar thing. The only difference between them was that Lenny was a legitimate businesswoman, and Halsey was all the insults she slung at him, except for lacking in comprehension, slow on the uptake, and hard of hearing. Also, noxious poison was taking things a bit far.

Lenny’s father had been a joke of a fraud, had gotten too greedy, and wrecked lives, including Lenny’s. Halsey was a con artist from a long line of master cons, but that didn’t make him a bad guy. Just a guy who didn’t like fieldwork and women yelling at him.

He’d make sure D4D’s accounts were squared away, and the charity was safe from suspicion. He’d question Lenny about the argument he’d heard, determine what needed to be done about the threat, and then he’d go back to his nice, safe, quiet desk in his comfortable, well-provisioned, efficient office and try to forget how much he admired Lenny even when she was tempted to throw things at him.

He was a Sherwood. He knew how to duck.