The Pretend Boyfriend 2 (The Pretend Boyfriend #2)(17)
Author: Artemis Hunt

He hasn’t felt this way with anyone in, like . . . well . . . forever.

He swallows and wills it to go away.

“How did it go with Henry Moody?” he says lightly.

“I called his PA today and I have an appointment with him Friday.”

“Great.” He means it.

“Thanks to you.”

“I didn’t do anything. He just happened to be there.”

“And you just happened to suddenly be partial to opera. You’re such a bad liar.”

“I wish I was,” he says pensively, and she falls silent.

16

It is early morning. Sam knows that she has to haul her ass to the office, and she doesn’t have a clean change of clothes right now in Brian’s penthouse. But she’s glad she stayed. He needed her, as much as he doesn’t want to admit it. She hates to see him like this – a pale shell of himself.

He’s sleeping in his bed. After tossing and turning half the night, he finally drifted to sleep in the wee hours of the morning. She didn’t wake him when she crept out of his arms.

What he told her disturbed her more than she thought it would. Beautiful, brilliant, successful and sophisticated Brian. A sexually abused child. It didn’t matter if it only happened once. Brian had been physically abused for most of his childhood. And the worst scars that he retained had not been made on his beautiful body.

Over the years, he developed a caustic veneer – icy and impenetrable. He built a barbed wire fence around his own heart. He is unable to love and unable to be loved – pushing people away before they can get too close, unless he is really comfortable with them, like with Caleb.

Only he has the last part down wrong.

She loves him. More than any man she has ever loved.

She knows that now.

She watches him sleep for a while. Even in sleep, he is not at rest. His closed eyelids flit with the sleep of dreams, though in his case, they will more likely be nightmares.

Her heart wrenches.

She pads downstairs in his bathrobe before she can become fixated on watching him.

Downstairs, she surveys the carnage. The crime scene. The police have already combed the place, photographed whatever they needed to photograph, collected whatever evidence they needed to collect. She examines the broken table, trying to envision what happened. Was there a struggle? How badly were both parties hurt? Brian has the claw marks on his chest, but what happened here had to be more than just a catfight.

She treads carefully around the broken glass. Brian has no cuts on his body other than the ones on the soles of his feet. His blood smudges portions of the carpet, but that’s the only blood she can see.

She frowns. With this kind of struggle, the woman, Delilah, has to be hurt more than the police suggested. Surely the police would have picked up on that. But the police didn’t care about Brian. To them, he was just some rich schmuck who deserved to be taken down a peg or two.

Brian’s clothes are strewn on the floor. No doubt the police have gone through that, she notes in chagrin. She picks them up – a grey wife beater and a pair of crumpled jeans. They didn’t look torn. They look as if they have been slipped off deliberately. Brian said he didn’t remember taking off his clothes before he blanked out.

Sam sinks onto her haunches, trying to piece together the scene. Such a struggle. Someone had to be hurt real bad.

Maybe it was time she paid Delilah a visit.

A movement at the door arrests her. There are shadows beneath the lower edge. Several newspapers are shoved into Brian’s hallway. So he has his newspapers delivered this way in the morning.

Suspicion makes her climb to her feet to pick them up.

The headlines are about the elections. But on the front page of the Tribune, a news item immediately catches her eye.

‘PROMINENT BUSINESSMAN, BRIAN MORTON, BROUGHT ME TO HIS PENTHOUSE AND RAPED ME,’ CLAIMS VICTIM.

In it is a stock photo of Brian, probably taken some time ago at a businessman’s luncheon. He is in a business suit – well-groomed, impossibly handsome, and smiling smugly into the camera.

17

Brian walks into his office sometime around ten. He has tried to dress up as immaculately as possible. His hair is neatly combed and he is every inch the cool CEO as he strides with his briefcase into the reception area.

Everyone there immediately stops talking.

He has seen the headlines, of course. The Chicago Tribune lies face up on the receptionist’s desk, every sordid detail of what Delilah Faulkner has told to the police in print.

Brian’s pulse is racing, but he has made up his mind to act normal, as he would every other work day. This is his company after all, and to hell if he’s going to let his employees get to him.

If they dared.

“Good morning, Mr. Morton,” Alysha, the receptionist says quickly. She’s flushing a little, and she looks down, as though afraid to meet his eyes.

“Morning, Alysha.” He turns to the two copy editors who are openly gawking at him. “Don’t you have work to do? What would it take to get the proofs for the Meatgrinder account by evening? Salary cut? Bonus suspension?”

“Uh, yes, Mr. Morton.”

“Right away, Mr. Morton.”

They disappear. Brian rolls his eyes, even though he knows it’s no laughing matter. So it’s all out in the open. Guilty before proven innocent.

Now all he has to do is wait for the fallout.

Claudia, his personal assistant, comes up to him with a sheaf of papers. She stops short.

“You OK?”

“Why wouldn’t I be OK?” he says, striding into his office. “And good morning to you too.”

She has to totter on her heels to keep up with him. She has been his assistant for three years, and he likes her because she has a no nonsense attitude about her. Pretty much like Sam, actually.

“Everyone’s talking about it,” she says.

“Fuck them. I didn’t do it.”

“They are crucifying you anyway. We had a couple of calls this morning from some of our largest accounts. Burnett and Co. Addison Rouge. The mayor’s office.” She says this last meaningfully.

Hell, he’d expected this.

She says, “They are . . . concerned.”

Brian nods grimly. “And the lynch mob is all lining up with their pitchforks and flaming torches. What do you think, Claudia?”

“I think that this might be a problem for some of them.”

“I’m not talking about the clients.”

“Right.” She clutches the file, her knuckles white. “I think she’s a lying, no good schemer who is trying to get something out of you, I don’t know what. But I know you didn’t do it. What reason would you have to?”