Fooled: The Cartwright Brothers Boxset by Lilliana Anderson

Author:Lilliana Anderson [Anderson, Lilliana]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2020-01-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

A Completely Fucked-Up Kind Of Right

“Your family is insane,” I said to Kristian as I leaned on his chest and played with the smattering of hair across his pecs. “In a good way. I’ve never been involved in something like this before.”

“A bit bigger than nicking cars and shoplifting, hey?”

I nodded. “Way bigger. It makes me nervous. And excited. But I guess this is all normal for you.”

He shrugged. “In a way. I remember the first jobs we pulled. They were exhilarating because it was a new feeling. But, I still get nervous. I even still get a buzz of excitement out of it. But that crazy high I had in the beginning has calmed right down. There’s nothing like your first score.”

“What was your first score?”

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.” He grinned.

“OK. Mine is pretty lame. When I was thirteen, I went into the department store and changed the tags on this really expensive dress. I got it for five dollars then sold it for five hundred. I thought I was so badarse because of it.”

He chuckled, his eyes shining. “Why didn’t you just take it in the first place?”

“Because it had one of those anti theft tags on it and I needed them to take it off.”

“Makes sense.”

“Not long after that, though, I did manage to grab one of the magnets to remove them myself. That made the whole scam a lot easier.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Now tell me yours. Put my first time to shame.”

“Mine is way lamer than yours. Abbot and I went around with those card readers that allow you to duplicate credit cards. It was real easy. We’d go to a busy shopping centre, stand too close to people on the escalators. Boom. We could capture an easy fifty cards on a good day.” He shrugged like it was no big deal.

“That’s actually way cooler than mine. You had tech. I just had a greedy mind.”

Running his fingers lightly along the edge of my jaw, he pressed his teeth into his bottom lip. “Nah. I’ve read your file, I don’t reckon you were greedy back then at all. Just stuck.” That was an interesting way to look at it, although, it felt strange having someone know things about me I hadn’t told them. This was all stuff I kept hidden from people. Only a select few knew a little about my past, none knew it all, and the Cartwrights had pieced together more than most.

“What excuse do I have now?”

“I don’t know. Do you still feel stuck?”

Stuck. Many would feel that in the position I was in, taken by a man, told I couldn’t leave, tied by the promise of marriage. But no, I didn’t feel stuck at all. I felt…afraid. Not of them, not of what they wanted me to do. Afraid that this would all go away. It felt like a timer ticking in my mind, waiting for the moment I wouldn’t be seen as useful anymore.

“I don’t feel stuck,” I whispered, just as he ran his thumb over my bottom lip.

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