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“Scarlett and Rhett.”
Fin sat on Lenny’s big old desk. “Oh, imagine Cal as Rhett in a frock coat, a cravat”—she drew a mustache on her upper lip with her finger—“and a cigar. But a big dress with a hoopskirt is a pain to wear.” She’d appeared in a college production of The Importance of Being Earnest,
so she’d had experience with something similar.
“Jamie and Claire.”
“Cal in a kilt. Och, lassie, that has promise. I’d time travel with him.”
“Ana and Christian.”
“He wears a suit. I’m naked but for panties, a ball gag, and cufflinks?”
Lenny laughed. “You both wear Venetian masks, and you have some rope dangling off you somewhere.”
Fin wrinkled her nose. “Weird. Too weird.”
“Robin Hood and Maid Marian.”
“I’d want to be Robin Hood, and it’s a bit hinky, given the whole Sherwood thing.” Fin crossed her legs and kicked her top one. Maybe she could talk Cal into Brad and Janet from Rocky Horror.
“Leia and Han.”
Cal had the swagger for Han. “What’s the bet there are a dozen of them.”
“Bonnie and Clyde.”
Cal as a young Warren Beatty, in a double-breasted, pinstripe suit and a fedora or maybe braces over a white tank, and she’d wear a pencil skirt and a tight little sweater with Mary Janes and a beret. “I think that’s it.”
“Bank robbers who died in a hail of bullets.”
“Yeah. But I get to carry a machine gun and have a cigar.”
“You want to be a gangster’s moll?”
“Uh-uh.” She swapped legs. “Badass gangster in my own right.”
Cal loved the idea. He wore an old-fashioned cut, brown pinstripe suit with braces. With his fedora pulled down low on his forehead, he looked more movie matinée idol than a thirties crime boss. Fin bobbed her hair, wore stockings with seams, and had a plastic cigar prop and a realistic-looking pistol in her garter belt.
The benefit was a legitimate work night for them both. Cal was talking up Brainstorm, and Fin was out to find new investors and remind her existing ones of what good work their money was doing. The problem was that with the costumes, everyone was unrecognizable.
“Is that Alex Astor as Fred Flintstone?” She pointed the caveman out to Cal from a balcony looking down on the main ballroom.
“That’s Wilma, over by the flower arrangement, and that’s not Paris.”
She adjusted the scarf she’d tied at her neck. “There could be two of them.”
“Alex lost a humiliating amount of money recently. They could’ve split up already.” He nudged her with his shoulder, once, twice till she moved, finding he’d backed her against a pillar. He put a hand to the wall over her shoulder. She brought her knee up as much as her skirt allowed, put her foot against the wall, and shoved her cigar in her mouth to stop him trying to kiss her.
“Oh honey, that’s just mean.”
She had to revert to Marilyn because there was no Bonnie and Clyde quote that fit, and she’d watched the Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway movie twice, once with Cal and once on her own. “If I’d observed all the rules, I’d never have got anywhere.”
Cal used a finger to tip his hat back. He’d let his stubble grow in, and smiling the way he did, he looked like he could rob you of everything you owned including your sanity. “One of the things I love most about you, Finley Cartwright.”
It wasn’t so easy to grin and suck on a cigar at the same time. He plucked it out of her mouth, lifted her chin, and kissed her, while snaking a hand around her hip and palming her ass.
What’s a gangster girl to do but hold on to her bad man’s shoulders and give it back to him as good as she got. When they broke apart, Cal said, “How about we hit it and quit it, and go home so I can see you in that garter belt?”
