Page 24 of No Knight (My Kind of Hero #3)

“Since when have you two become gossiping auld women? Ah, that’s right,” I mutter, folding my arms across my chest. “Since the pair of you got married. Slippers and pipe by the fire and stickin’ your noses in other people’s lives.”

“ Oooh! ” Fin intones. “Someone’s got his panties in a wad. Green panties, to boot.”

I can’t help but smile. He means jealous , but I’m thinking of green gossamer lace and the treasures beneath. All that loveliness. “Look, we spent the night together, and she left while I was sleeping.”

“A perfect ending.” A pause. “What?” Oliver glances between us. “At least in my experience. My previous experience.”

Fin looks momentarily confused. “Do you not know how to use that thing?”

“Eh?” But I follow his drift as his eyes drop to the table. I make a noise of disgust.

“Being hung doesn’t mean you don’t have to put in the work.”

“ Jaysus ,” I mutter. “It was nothing like that.”

“If she didn’t stick around, then maybe she thought it wasn’t worth repeating.”

“He might have a point,” Oliver puts in. “Back in my single days, I was usually the first to leave. After morning sex. It was quite convenient living in a hotel.”

“Would the pair of youse just shut the hell up for a second?” I demand, slipping into the vernacular. “She didn’t leave because she didn’t enjoy herself. She left because she thought I was a fucking escort!”

Again, the pair says nothing, maybe because my retort seems to echo rudely in the room. Oliver gives a sudden nod, one that’s preceded by an indignant huff and the violent shuffle of a newspaper from a nearby table.

“Good evening, Viscount Radler,” Oliver offers, biting back a grin. “You’ll have me blackballed,” he murmurs, turning my way.

“He’d be doing you a favor,” mutters Fin.

“Thrown out of my own club for entertaining undesirable sorts?”

“I thought he was asleep,” Fin says.

“I thought he was dead.” The two of them glance sharply my way. “What? He’s got feckin’ muttonchops—men haven’t worn muttonchops for more than a hundred years.” And he’s always there in the same position, hiding behind a copy of The Times . “I thought maybe he’d been stuffed or something.”

“Unlike your girl,” Fin retorts as quick as a flash.

I slide him a look that very eloquently says, Get. Fucked.

“What do you mean she thought you were an escort?” Oliver leans in, all discreet drawl and disdain. He slides his fingers over the base of a glass of wine, which is probably something unpronounceable and ridiculously expensive. To be fair, my taste in whiskey runs the same way.

“Just what I said.” I adjust the cuffs of my shirt under my jacket, the thing suddenly no longer fitting right. “She even left me an envelope stuffed with cash. My fee or my tip or—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Fin holds up a hand. “You charged her?”

“Fuck, no!” I retort. At checkout, my heart leapt when the receptionist mentioned there was a message for me. Maybe she’d left me her number after all? No such fucking luck. Though there were looks. Weird ones as I opened the envelope and a good chunk of cash almost spilled from it.

“That’s not what it sounds like.” Oliver remains impassive; meanwhile, glee dawns slowly on Fin’s face.

“You American gigolo, you.” The bastard enunciates each word slowly, delightedly.

“Isn’t that an old movie?” Oliver looks mildly confused.

“Yeah, with Richard Gere. Though he’s more like Richard’s gear ,” Fin adds, pretending to grab his junk under the table.

“I don’t understand why you’d do such a thing.”

“It’s not like I set out to,” I complain.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” Fin says, reaching for his glass. “Not usually envelopes stuffed with cash. Seems I’ve been missing a trick.”

“Literally,” Oliver adds dryly.

“Hilarious. Fuckin’ comedians.” I fold my arms across my chest. “Go on—don’t let me stop you. Yuck it the fuck up.” This is why I didn’t want to tell them. It’s not like either of them is a paragon of virtue, but I’m not in the mood to waste my breath.

“Sorry,” Fin offers. “It’s quite a tale. Kind of hard to resist.”

“I honestly thought I was doing the right thing. At least initially. I didn’t want to encourage her—pretty and pretty crazy can go hand in hand. And she had this wild story from the minute we met. I wasn’t sure she was serious. Or right in the head.”

“The crazy ones do have their attractions.” Fin nods sagely. He would know.

I glance between the two of them and their frowns, and as succinctly as possible, I tell them what went down.

I touch on how we met, my sympathy for Ryan’s plight, and my reluctance to go to another wedding.

I explain how she misunderstood me, and how I just played along with her assumption—I was so feckin’ sure I wouldn’t be going to another wedding.

I tell them about her ex and the sickening company culture she worked in.

Describe her fucknut colleagues and how their misogynistic bullshit culminated in that despicable bet.

And I tell them how all this swayed me. How I played the part of a doting boyfriend and how, as that boyfriend, I dealt with the ringleader.

Then I admit our mutual attraction carried us to a hotel suite.

From there, the tale is a closed door.

“Sunk cost fallacy,” Oliver says out of nowhere.

“What about it?” Fin asks.

“Matt’s lie. I can see he was trying to protect himself, but his mistake was investing so heavily in that lie that he couldn’t give it up. Even when it became apparent that the truth would’ve been the more favorable strategy.”

“Not true,” Fin interjects. “The truth would’ve meant the evening ending with nothing but angry words. Not amazing sex.” He glances my way. “Or the potential for more.”

“But he’d have a clear conscience.”

“My conscience is just fine,” I snap. “And I am actually sitting here, so stop fucking talking about me as though I’m not.”

“His conscience is just fine too,” Fin says, glancing at his watch. “I expect she’s a couple of cocktails deep with my wife.” His conscience named Evie.

“Sex wasn’t the reason I didn’t tell her.” But I silently admit it was less about her in that moment than I told myself.

“Sex was definitely part of the reason.” There’s no bite or teasing to Fin’s response. “I think it’s more the case that you’ve been hoisted by your own petard. If you’d admitted the truth, you wouldn’t have gotten to spend the night with Ryan. And you wouldn’t be filled with what-ifs right now.”

“Dreyland Capital,” Oliver puts in, cutting off my retort.

“Yeah. You know the outfit?”

“I know the company. Heard of them, at least.”

“Good or bad news?” Fin glances Oliver’s way.

“There have been some ... less than complimentary reports, as I recall. Not that I’d hold that against them.”

“Yeah, well, I hold it against their fuckin’ throats.”

“I’m not defending them. I’m merely pointing out that we, the three of us, can be as ruthless as the next cutthroat in business.”

“But you’d no more sexually harass a woman than you would your wife’s fluffy dog.”

“Fluffy demon dog,” Oliver corrects, brushing his hand over his thigh as though it’s covered in dog hair. It’s not.

“Bo is more likely to sexually harass Oliver,” Fin adds merrily. “In fact, he has.”

“Don’t remind me.” Oliver’s tone turns icy.

“I know the industry is ... old school,” Fin continues, “but it’s hard to believe there’s still shit going on like that. At least you knew where to find her, right?”

I rub my jaw. “She doesn’t work there anymore.” A fact that is obviously good for her but was pretty shit for me when I went looking. “I haven’t been able to track her down.”

A look passes between the two.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Oliver says. “You tried to track her down because you wanted to ... offer her a job or return her envelope of money?”

“Because I want to see her again.” Desperately.

“To tell her the truth. To explain that ...” I just can’t stop thinking about her.

“Look, that night was the weirdest night of my life. But it was also the best. I couldn’t bring myself to walk away from her.

I had to help. And I just thought the safest bet was to play up to her assumption. ”

Fin reaches for his glass. “I’m kind of curious how she reached that assumption.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I thought I was making myself unobtainable. Undesirable, or something. And after the afternoon I’d had, there was no way I was interested in a casual fuck.”

“Said no single man ever.” Fin slices me a look I choose to ignore.

“But there was nothing casual about that night, and things just haven’t felt right since.”

“Is that why you stepped in for me?” Fin sits forward, steepling his fingers over the tabletop. “To keep yourself busy?” He glances Oliver’s way. “I’m pretty much obsolete as far as client relations go.”

“Hardly,” I answer uncomfortably. “It was just a few dinners here and there.”

I stepped in ostensibly to allow Fin more time with his new wife. So much of his job is spent entertaining and schmoozing our wealthy business partners that it takes up a lot of his personal time, which wasn’t an issue before Mila. But the man is newly wed and in love. So I said I’d help him out.

But I had an ulterior motive. While I introduced Chinese moneymen to the best Irish whiskey in London and arranged a private couture show in Milan for a bunch of Qatari investors’ wives, I was also networking.

These past months I’ve spent time and effort building relationships, when before I was only interested in building sites and building wealth.

And now I’m on first-name terms with the kinds of financial big hitters that have fingers in lots of international pies.

Including the States. These rich feckers love me—they love my common touch and my earthy (or sweary) craic —so, of course, should I decide to drop a few hints their way about mismanagement of a certain hedge fund, I’m sure they’d be all ears.