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“Finley,” said the Drug Lord. “How did a nice girl like you meet this charlatan?”
She stifled a flinch at the insult. “I’m not a very nice girl.”
The Drug Lord made a preening gesture, straightening his already straight collar. “That can’t be true.”
She let her purse slither off her shoulder and drop to the floor at his feet. The Drug Lord immediately bent to pick it up. He might be morally bankrupt, but he had manners.
“Ah, thank you,” she said, and Cal put his hand to her mid-back and tapped twice. You’re doing fine. She was on a roll, and the Drug Lord was going to be her newest donor and eventually, despite his scorn, one of Cal’s investors.
They worked the same routine, complete with purse drop, on Room Service, the Dirty Dean, and the Polluter. Room Service was condescending with Cal but flirted with Fin. Cal flirted with the idea of circling her wrist and sending her to their room, but he held her hand instead, and Fin talked Room Service into a generous donation to D4D.
The Polluter was a nervous man with a host of uneasy twitches. He scratched, flared his nostrils, and smacked his lips together. He was difficult to talk to because his eye contact wasn’t steady. When she dropped her purse, he looked at it. She picked it up herself. He wasn’t like the others. “It’s the strap,” he said.
Turns out he was an engineer and a major mansplainer. He had ideas about how the strap of a woman’s purse should be made and explained it in great detail. Fin had her favor—it was letting him talk on about materials and tension and surface area. She didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t a construction problem and walked away having made a new gold class donor.
Cal talked business in all of these encounters, but he talked to her as well in their private language of specific touches. His touch told her stay, she was doing fine. He constantly checked to see if she was okay, and when he wasn’t signaling by fingertip, he was touching her for the comfort of it, taking her hand, squeezing her shoulder, brushing against her.
When she was slightly dizzy from the easy money she was making, he steered them into a big sitting room populated by older guests who’d staked out the comfortable furniture. They kept to the edge of the room, taking a moment to be alone.
“How do you know all these rich people?” she whispered. At first, it’d seemed like Cal was born into this, but after they’d attended a few events together, she’d realized he wasn’t, and that this was the world’s most exclusive club.
He put a hand on the archway behind her to shelter their conversation. “I made it my business to know them, and I only get to belong when I’m selling something they want.”
Fin was building her own network, but she wasn’t selling anything anyone needed. They all had their own private charitable interests, so she’d never be on the guest list alone.
She reached up and smoothed the lapel of his coat. It didn’t need smoothing, but it put her hand near his heart. “And what is it you sell? I know it’s stock in companies. I know it’s investments. You help people make even more money, but secretly, I think you’re selling something else entirely.”
He smiled. Not the poised smile he used for working a room; a shyer, gentler twist to his lips. He lifted her hand off his jacket and held it. “And what would that be?”
“I think you sell them their own egos.”
He laughed—it was sudden, and the smile that came with it was brilliant.
“I think you find out what a person is missing deep in their souls and you wrap it up in pats on the back, and you put a bright red bow on it, and they can’t wait to buy it from you.”
He brought his face closer. “Is that really what you think is going on?”
She might go blind from staring at the gleam in his eyes. “I think you could make them believe you owned the moon and buying a piece of it from you was the only thing that would make their lives complete.”
He kissed her forehead. “Ah, Fin.” His breath against her cheek, a brush of his hair against her temple. She flushed all over. “Every person who ever underestimated you—your parents, your superior sister, those agents and directors, that fuck-awful boyfriend, even Lenny—should see you now.”
She tipped her chin up. It was a staggering thing to say. She needed him to—
“For the love of God, stop teasing us old folk and kiss that girl properly, sonny.”
Whoever that was had the right idea. Cal cupped her cheek. “Do you want to be kissed properly?”
“You so want to kiss me.” If only because of everything he’d said in the bedroom and how he had her pressed up against the archway. She draped her hands over his shoulders and pressed her hips to his.
“Hmm, I’m taking that as a yes.” He tilted his head and kissed her. Light, fleeting, not nearly properly. She went to her toes to chase his lips as he pulled back.
“Seriously, Sherwood, you can do better than that.”
Something in the heckler’s words galvanized Cal. He took his hand off the wall behind her and wrapped it around her waist, keeping her on her toes. She angled her face, and he kissed her again. This time, he didn’t pull away. This time, he didn’t break the connection; he deepened it, moving his lips over hers firmly, pressing her mouth open and claiming more.
He kissed her with the right amount of greed and the right amount of anxious longing. She gripped his neck so he’d keep taking, keep demanding; and she kissed him back with a flicker of tongue and her heart fit to burst. When they broke apart to wonder, to breathe, there was clapping.
“That’s how you do it. Knew you had it in you, son.”
