The Pretend Boyfriend 3 (Inhumanly Handsome, Humanly Flawed Alpha Male) Read online

  They both cling to each other in a helpless embrace, aware of their own private, unspoken thoughts as the still thundering blood surges within their veins.

  10

  There seems to be no recourse for her but to take this step. The awaited invitation from Adele Jankovic/Delilah Faulkner to her apartment does not materialize, nor does Sam expect it to – if Delilah truly has something to hide.

  So she has to take matters in her own hands. She knew it would come to this. She knew it the day she made the key impression in wax.

  Now armed with a perfect set of newly cut keys, she stands before the door of Delilah Faulkner’s apartment. It’s ten o’ clock. Someone in the building ordered pizza delivery, and she slipped in through the main door as the delivery boy was buzzed in.

  Her heart is beating in her throat, and she tries to swallow it. Her palms are sweaty in their gloves.

  No one is around on the corridor. There are about five apartments on the floor, and no sounds are to be heard – no yelling, no shouting, not even the low hum of an activated TV. Steeling herself (you can do this, it’s for Brian), Sam inserts a key in the door lock of Apartment 501. It doesn’t fit. Damn it, you didn’t get it cut right. Her hand trembling badly, she tries another. It slides in – a perfect fit.

  Shit. Now she really has to go through with it.

  She twists the knob gently. The door opens without a sound. Her heart is hammering so hard against her ribs that she is sure the entire apartment block would wake up from whatever they are (soundlessly) doing and come out from their abodes to check.

  Of course you have to do it yourself. Mr. Hot Shot PI is not going to get his hands dirty. You can hire someone, but you daren’t take the risk in case he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. Brian has too much at stake.

  Well, Brian doesn’t know about this and she isn’t sure that she will find . . . well, something. Anything to suggest that Brian had been set up. Anything at all.

  What’s more, she doesn’t have much time. Delilah will be back from her yoga class by eleven.

  Shit.

  Sam closes the door behind her. A lighted lamp on a stand is the only light-giving source in the apartment. She reaches for the switches, and floods with the apartment with incandescent light.

  Shit. The windows are open. She’s such an amateur. Anyway, there are no apartment blocks facing this unit, so with any luck, no one would report the lights of Apartment 501 being on. Besides, Sam isn’t planning to steal anything. She’s merely having a look around. The camera strap cuts into the back of her neck.

  A soft whirring sound arrests her. She looks up in suspicion. Is it her imagination? There’s nothing mounted on the ceiling. No surveillance cameras.

  Gawd, how is she going to do this if she’s so easily spooked?

  She begins a search before she can lose her bladder control. She hopes she’s not going to have to need to use the toilet.

  There’s nothing in the simple living room. She rifles through some drawers, but there are only magazines and books stacked inside. The whole apartment is as neat as a neat freak’s paradise. Sam sees a laptop bag – probably one Delilah has brought back from her office – and unzips it.

  A Dell computer nests inside. Fat lot of good trying to hack into an office computer. There are several documents inside, but they are clinical trial protocols. Sam flips through them. Nothing about an experimental drug called CKZ2486. Unless, of course, it already has a name.

  Doesn’t matter. She photographs the front page abstracts with her mini-camera. The flash is jarring.

  A soft clicking sound somewhere beyond the lounge makes her look up. She stands absolutely still, the blood turbulent in her ears. Is someone in here?

  Leave now, Sam, leave! her instincts scream at her.

  I can’t. I have got to do this. It’s now or never.

  When the sound doesn’t repeat itself, she disentangles her stiff limbs and makes her shoes walk ahead.

  She explores the bedroom next. Delilah obviously lives alone. There are photos of herself everywhere. With two older people that Sam assumes are her parents. A younger woman who does not resemble Delilah in any way, but who is obviously quite close, as Delilah is snapped hugging her tightly. A sister maybe?

  Sam dives into the bedside table drawers. In one of them, she finds a photo of a woman hugging the same presumed sister in exactly the same manner. Delilah before her surgery? The real Adele Jankovic? She’s a brunette and fairly plain. Certainly not in the same league as Delilah. But not completely unattractive either. Just not the type guys usually go for.

  Sam takes a photo of the photo.

  She explores the apartment further. At the end of a passage is a room with a closed door. The hairs on her back prickling, Sam tries the knob, but it’s locked.

  Damn.

  But wait a minute. She takes out the second key, the one she has tried earlier. This one fits into the knob. With trepidation, Sam turns it.

  It hits her immediately like a punch to the stomach. A large corkboard fills the entire façade of one wall. It is pinned with dozens of photos of Brian. No. Not dozens. Hundreds, literally, in all shapes and sizes. And not only photos, but newspaper articles.

  Write-ups on the rape case.

  Sam is floored. Why would a rape victim have hundreds of Internet downloaded photographs of her rapist?

  Her gloved hands shaking, she starts to snap the montage from all angles, making sure she captures everything on her digital camera.

  *

  Back in her apartment, Sam prints out everything on her data card. The photos are sprawled across the expanse of her living room floor like a carpet of decorative art. Only it’s Brian, Brian everywhere. Brian in a Gucci suit at a fundraiser, looking extremely dapper and handsome. Brian at a benefit. Brian at the Clio Awards.

  And more sinister are the photos of Brian which are not downloaded from Google Images. Brian running in the park. Brian at the dry cleaners. Brian at a deli in a shot clearly taken from across the street. Brian at the supermarket.

  Sam sits back on her haunches, the blood thundering in her veins.

  God, she’s got it all planned.

  But is this evidence the proof the police need to drop the case?

  Several sharp knocks come at her door, startling her. She freezes. Brian doesn’t ever show up without calling first, and she hasn’t ordered any food delivery. Who can it be? Delilah? How did she get in without buzzing first?

  Same way you got into her apartment.

  “Open up,” says a stentorian male voice. “This is the police.”

  The police? But she didn’t call them. Not yet.

  The knocking comes again, loud and insistent. The neighbors are probably all roused by now. Oh, what a field day they will have with the rumors tomorrow.

  Her mind in a whirlwind, Sam makes herself pad to the door and unlatch it. The sight of two officers in their black garb outside stops her in her tracks.

  “Samantha Fox?” one of the officers says. “You are under arrest for breaking and entering.”

  As the rest of her Miranda rights are being read out to her, Sam’s brain drowns in a litany of Oh my God, oh my God, she knew I was going there . . . she set both of us up.

  Both Brian and she are so screwed.

  10

  Brian receives the call at three a.m. It is one of the rare nights he is not with Sam. She had taken a rain check, citing dinner with a friend. He had wanted to spend as much time with her as possible before the inevitable – his incarceration. But he hadn’t wanted to interrupt her routine either.

  What was he to her after all? A business partner. A friend. OK, a friend with benefits, but it isn’t as if they are engaged or anything.

  Anyhow, it is better that she spends as much time with her other ‘friends’ as possible. Her life has to go on while he is in prison. Maybe she’ll forget him and hook up with Thor.

  God forbid.

  When he hears her distraught voice on t
he other side, he immediately sits up in his bed.

  “What?”

  *

  Brian hightails it to the police station as fast as his second hand Jeep would allow him. Yes, he has enough money to mount bail, but it’s practically all he has left. Everything has been sunk into the gym and its creative advertising.

  What is it about the two of them and police stations?

  He barges in, only to be told that she is in an interrogation room with Officer Cutter. Yes, the black cop who questioned him.

  Brian nervously posts bail, and then says, “Can I see her?”

  The officer at the desk jerks his head back. “OK, I think they’re about finished now.”

  “Why is he with her? Did he arrest her?”

  “No. She asked for him, citing that it was urgent. She wanted to show him her photos. He came.”

  Oh yes, those photos. Brian had heard the gist of those photos over the phone. During the ride here, his mind had run over the different permutations those photos entail. He hasn’t seen them, of course. Not yet. But what woman would have a whole corkboard of his photos unless she was obsessed with him?

  Obsessed enough to want revenge.

  But what had he done to her? Was she someone he had fucked before, left high and dry, and forgotten? His thoughts tumbled over the various faces of the women he has been with, and to his dismay, he can’t even remember most of them. He hadn’t had any long-term relationships, that was for sure. No one he had made unrealistic promises to. No one he had sworn unending and undying devotion to. That wasn’t his style.

  But a clear realization beats like a pulse in the center of it all – a white beacon in the darkness.

  I am not a rapist!

  I am not my father’s son.

  Does he dare hope?

  His mind is still churning with the flotsam of his memories as he sits in the waiting hall – waiting for Sam to be released.

  After a while, she comes out, disheveled and bleary-eyed. He stands up, his stomach churning painfully to see her like this. She falls into his open arms immediately. He buries his nose in her hair and inhales, feeling his heart swell with unaccustomed emotion.

  “Oh Sam, Sam, Sam, what the hell did you do?” he murmurs.

  Officer Cutter comes out. Brian lets go of Sam.

  “Look,” Brian says, “she didn’t do anything wrong, OK? She did it for me. To try to save me.”

  “It’s no use,” Sam says dully.

  Brian swings to her. “What do you mean?”

  Officer Cutter clears his throat. “She’s right. All those photos she has taken in an apartment that she broke into and entered – ” he places an emphasis on the phrase “ – merely prove that Ms. Faulkner may indeed have an interest in you, Mr. Morton.”

  “An unhealthy interest,” Sam claims.

  “But it still doesn’t prove that you didn’t rape her,” Officer Cutter continues.

  Brian is stunned.

  Whaaat?

  “I didn’t rape her,” he says with conviction. The whole thing stinks of a setup, not that he has time to mull over the new evidence. He repeats, more sure of himself now, “I didn’t rape her.”

  “I would advise you to present everything you gathered to your lawyer,” Officer Cutter says. “Be forewarned that this new evidence to cast suspicions on Ms. Faulkner’s motives may not be viewed favorably by the court, as Ms. Fox obtained it unlawfully.”

  “But – ” Brian begins.

  “Ms. Fox has contravened Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which establishes the right to respect an individual’s private life, which includes her home and what she has on her walls.”

  “She was trying to find out the truth!”

  “Which still doesn’t prove anything.” Officer Cutter eyes Brian with a cutting stare. “Your semen was found in Ms. Faulkner’s vagina, Mr. Morton, along with signs of trauma. Whatever her motives may be, those are hard facts. Unless you have harder facts obtained by lawful means, the fact remains that she still accuses you of raping her, and she has the medical evidence to prove it.”

  Sam grips his arm and squeezes it, and Brian lets the awful truth seep in. He’s still as helpless as he was before to prevent this. And now, Sam’s innocence is at stake too.

  When Officer Cutter is out of earshot, Brian murmurs to Sam, “So how did the police find out about your little escapade?”

  “I didn’t take anything,” Sam says.

  “I know.”

  She looks down at her feet. “I suppose the ease of how I got into her apartment should have alerted me that it was a trap. I think I kind of knew it when I saw her photos of you. If she had tailed you all this time and taken those snapshots of you from a distance, she must know your comings and goings pretty well.” She takes a deep breath and adds, “Of course, she must have seen you with me plenty of times.”

  Of course, Brian thinks, but doesn’t say. Sammie, what the fuck were you thinking?

  She was just trying to help you, you hopeless bastard.

  Yeah, but what the fuck was she thinking of? Dressing up like a ninja in the middle of the night and committing a felony knowingly?

  Sam goes on, “She had a hidden camera trained on the door at all times, recording visitors – legal or otherwise. I think she was expecting me, even though I left no trace that anyone had been there. At eleven thirty, when she came home and played the video feed, she called the police on me.”

  Brian’s heart sinks as he hugs Sam again to his body. The whole thing was frighteningly and sickeningly premeditated.

  11

  In her apartment, Sam and Brian pore over the photographs in greater detail. They are hers to keep, even though they were obtained through unlawful means. They were taken by her camera, and therefore, they were her intellectual property. It is the ‘breaking and entering’ that is a chargeable offence.

  Sam is still shaken, but she’s trying not to show it. Brian has got enough on his plate.

  He seems to sense it though. He keeps glancing over at her.

  “You OK?” he says solicitously.

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t worry, we will get you out of this,” he says with feeling.

  She doesn’t know how, but she says “Yeah” anyway. She’s an adult. She knew what she was doing when she went into it with both eyes open. She just isn’t very good at subterfuge.

  Remind me never to become a private detective.

  “I mean it, Sam.” His brown eyes arrest hers.

  “I know.” A rush of warmth fills her chest every time she looks at this man, God help her. She quickly averts her face by focusing on the mélange of images before her. Oh shit, those images are all of him, and so she has to look at him anyway.

  He picks out a photo from the middle of the jigsaw. “This is the earliest she has taken of me. I think she started stalking me two years ago.”

  “Does the name Adele Jankovic ring a bell? She intimated that she might have known you in college.”

  He leans back, cross-legged, and frowns. After a long while, he says, “I really, really can’t remember.”

  She picks out a photo. It is the one she took of the plain woman. “You know this girl?”

  Brian takes the photo and peruses it, his brow furrowing. “Adele Jankovic . . . Adele Jankovic . . . college.”

  “It mightn’t have been in college,” Sam says helpfully. Delilah could have been talking about someone else. But now, thinking back to the strange, premeditated conversation, there were undertones and undercurrents that had been obvious. Delilah was speaking about Brian – and she had wanted Sam to know it. And to let it seep back to Brian as a clue.

  Brian’s handsome face suddenly goes very still. Sam’s heart leaps.

  He says hoarsely, “Fuck, I think I know who she is. And she has a reason to be mad at me. Very mad.”

  12

  It was his senior year in college.

  Brian was the most popular guy on campus. He had the looks, the pedigr
ee, the height, the smarts, and the casual athletic grace as he glides across the Ivy League grounds on his lanky legs. Most people think he coasted into college on his uncle’s money. But what they didn’t know was that he scored 2320 on his SATs. What’s more, he was good enough in soccer to get in on a scholarship.

  But he didn’t need a scholarship, and he didn’t want to use up a place that could have been given to a more unfortunate student – one who wasn’t blessed with his financial circumstances. Brian had only one caveat for choosing his college.

  He wanted to get as far away from home as possible.

  The scars were fading, but not completely gone. They will never be gone. Dr. Robertson had hooked him up with another shrink in town, but Brian hadn’t gone for the sessions. He had adjusted to being a high-functioning human being, and he didn’t think he needed psychoanalyzing anymore. In fact, the therapy he was indulging in more than anything else – besides cigarettes, pot and booze – was sex.

  He was addicted to sex.

  Girls flocked to him like bees to a male flower with a very prominent stamen. It wasn’t just that he was good in the sack. (Fuck that, he was superlatively great in the sack.) They were attracted to his devil-may-care attitude, the fact that he never seemed to be very interested in them . . . unless he was horny, of course; and the way his large bedroom eyes flitted over them in casual ‘I don’t give a damn if you find me attractive’ message in the cafeteria.

  He wasn’t usually nice to anyone outside his inner circle of friends either. And even within his friends, he tended to be snarky and so brutally honest that his words actually stung.

  He was a master at playing cool, and cool was what they liked. Even the girls who weren’t into guys like him were intrigued. He certainly wasn’t an Ivy League type. He wore Hugo Boss leather jackets and looked like he’d be more comfortable in a streetcar named Desire than poring over books in a brightly lit library with a pencil tucked neatly behind his ear.