Conning For Keeps (An Agents of TRAIT Novella) (Entangled Flaunt) by Seleste deLaney Page B

let out a low chuckle. Whether it meant he found her cute or he was impressed she kept her mouth shut, she couldn’t be sure. He clicked on another tab. “So I followed the corrected name you gave and searched for Mari Jones and art. And there you were. All these shiny mentions of you on the Internet, including your resume. Art history major. Spent some time working at a gallery in Springfield. There was a cross-reference to your graduation records, too. Nice and legit. Very thorough.” He paused again, and Marissa made a show of rolling her eyes.
    Her heart pounded. If he dug too far, this could blow up in her face. Time to find out how much he already knew. “And very cursory of you. I’m surprised that’s as far as you went.”
    “Don’t worry. I was just getting started.” Apparently, that was where he’d stopped. She let out a slow breath.
    “How about I save you the trouble and point you in the exact right direction so we can get to the good stuff?” She gave him as saucy a wink as she could manage. Canalis raised a brow, but spun the laptop toward her. Heart lodged somewhere in her throat, Marissa typed and hit the search button.
    Thank you, Google, for the are-you-feeling-lucky button. Because, no, I’m really not.
    When the search finished, she clicked on the first article, verified it had a picture, and twisted the laptop back toward him. “This is what you want.”
    “That…I remember this.” He frowned at the screen. At the picture of her, along with her parents, when they were arrested. Juvie records might be sealed, but that didn’t mean her arrest wasn’t public knowledge.
    And in that instant, she’d provided him the only thing he needed to destroy the life she’d so carefully built. Because, if this went badly, if she made a mistake and had to run, there’d be no going back. And there’d be nowhere she could hide. The only thing that kept her from sheer panic was the expression on Canalis’s face.
    She could do this.
    It was a confidence game like any other.
    “Yeah. Twelve to fourteen were horribly awkward years for me. I was all gazelle-legged and pimple-faced. Horrible hair, too. I don’t know what my parents were thinking letting me wear it like that. So…if you don’t mind, quit staring. I’m a lot hotter now.” No fear. No hiding. Time to do what Jean Valjean did: stand up and proclaim her identity, no matter what it cost.
    Too bad the con itself was one she’d made up on the fly—a ghost for Trevor to chase while she did what she had to. Now that she’d reached this point, it was make it up as she went along in order to keep Trevor safe and get to the artwork.
    “Let’s start fresh, shall we?” She stuck out her hand. “Hello, Mr. Canalis, it’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Marissa Joens and, like I mentioned, I’m pretty sure you want me here. For more reasons than you imagined.”
    His brows knit together, but his smirk shifted into a curious smile as he wrapped her fingers in his. “The pleasure’s mine. But it does beg the question of what you’re doing here? And why the ruse?”
    “That’s easy.” Marissa uncrossed her legs, sliding one foot along his thigh. Hooking his knee with her toes, she turned his chair until they faced each other. She looked down on him and felt bolder, more certain. This was right. This was who she needed to be, not some programmed automaton. “The night my family was caught by the police, I’d wanted to steal Certain Laughter ; my parents vetoed me. They paid the heavier price for the decision, but I was still robbed of my teen years.”
    “And now that you confessed to attempting to steal my property once, you expect me to hand it over out of the goodness of my heart?” He raised a brow at her foot on his thigh, but she didn’t move.
    Instead, she leaned forward, propping an elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand. Their faces were only inches apart, and she tried not to think about the last time she’d been