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It shouldn’t surprise him that Sophie’s the kind of dancer to run smoothly through a room like water around stones. And it doesn’t surprise him, not really.
Still, he doesn’t have to like it. Nate fingers Sophie’s engagement and wedding rings where they sit in his jacket pocket. They’ve been spending most of their retirement proudly watching the kids’ cons from the sidelines, but Parker’s latest grifter had laryngitis and their backup was booked, so she’d called in a favor. Sophie had been happy to help, Nate less so once he’d learned the nature of the con, but Sophie gets antsy when she goes too long without a grift and they were due for one soon anyway, so out to Portland they’d gone. Nate just hopes a few waltzes with an oil baron will be enough to get it out of her system for awhile.
“Here.” Eliot, in full Texas-new-money attire, appears beside him with a tumbler of something amber that he presses into Nate’s hand. “Relax, it’s apple juice. It’ll pass for liquor. You need something in your hands or that scowl’ll blow the con, and I ain’t dealing with Parker if that happens.”
“Man, you know I’m the one who always ends up dealing with her,” Hardison says in their ears. He’s safely parked in Lucille V a block away, right where Nate knows Eliot likes him, safely out of danger.
Eliot smirks. “Not my fault you always throw scissors,” he says, but Nate can hear the fondness in his voice. Nate can’t pretend to understand the relationship that’s blossomed between the three of them over the years, but he knows it makes them happy, and that they fit together better than he ever could have expected, and that’s more than he needs to support them.
“Here’s an idea,” Parker hisses over the comms, “Everybody do your jobs, and then I won’t have to be mad in the first place.”
“Yes, dear,” Eliot and Hardison chorus, and Nate hears Sophie’s soft laugh in his ear. She plays it off to the mark easily, and Nate help snickering into his drink. Some things, he thinks, will never change.
Still, some things do. It’s quite different, watching Sophie-his-wife rather than Sophie-his...whatever she had been to him back in those days. He still doesn’t like it--he probably never will--but he knows, now, that no matter how smooth the mark, how deep the con, that she’ll be coming home to him at the end of it, and he’ll slide her rings back onto her finger where they belong.
“Someone tell Nate to stop smirking like the cat who got the damn canary,” Hardison says. “Man, you ain’t even subtle.”
Sophie laughs again, light and musical, smoothing one hand through the mark’s thinning hair as he twirls her across the floor with remarkable agility for a man of his age. “Now, darling,” she murmurs, lips barely murmuring, “Be good.”
“Bait is set,” Parker says. “Sophie, security coming your way in fifteen seconds.”
Right on schedule, two men in identical blue suits and identical brown crew cuts slipdonto the dance floor, cutting in between Sophie and the mark. There’s a brief, hurried conversation, and then the mark makes Sophie a hasty, if apparently heartfelt, apology, kisses her hand, and follows his men off the floor.
“Hardison?” Parker says.
“You got it, mama,” he says. “Paparazzi are on the way. Look like someone sent them an anonymous tip.”
“ETA?”
“TMZ will be on the scene in ten.”
After that, it’s all smooth cues and sirens, and Nate sits back and watches, his heart swelling with pride. Parkers cons are like the works of art she steals, and they never cease to amaze Nate with the way they fit together. Tonight’s performance is no exception, and he’s grinning by the time the mark is led away in handcuffs.
“Well, aren’t you just a proud papa,” Sophie says, sliding into his space.
Nate smiles, slipping his hand around hers. “Can you blame me?”
“I can’t.” She’s fairly glowing with the self-satisfied pleasure of a bad job well done. “And I see you’ve finally taken off that silly jealous frown, as well.”
“And here I thought I was hiding it so well.”
Sophie laughs. “Never try to con your wife, darling.”
Nate chuckles, kissing her hand. “Good advice.”
“Mm. I learned from the best.”
They stand together quietly, enjoying the barely-controlled bedlam of the con’s aftermath and listening to the kids banter over the cons. “They turned out well, our kids,” he says. “Don’t you think?”
Sophie smiles and kisses his cheek. “The very best.”
The band, briefly thrown into chaos by the mark’s arrest, pulls itself together and gallantly strikes up a jazz standard. “Last song of the night,” Nate says, glancing at Sophie. He commits her profile, sparkling and flushed and bright, to memory. “Care to dance, Mrs. Ford?”
“I would love to, Mr. Devereaux,” Sophie says, and Nate laughs and leads his wife to the floor.