The Pretend Boyfriend (The Pretend Boyfriend #3)(4)
Author: Artemis Hunt

Still, he lets go of her. He has no claim on her. He has to keep telling himself that.

“Call me when you get back,” he says. She didn’t even say she was going out. He just assumes she is.

“OK.” She gives him a bright, too-quick smile, and exits the door, still very naked.

He watches her retreating back as she closes the door tightly shut on him, and spends the next ten minutes trying to suppress the dark thoughts that stir within his brain.

3

Sam sees the missed call number on her cellphone display. Her heart skips a beat. She quickly dresses without toweling off, and uck! – she’s wet everywhere. Brian’s delicious se**n is still leaking from her pu**y, staining the insides of her thighs. Pity, but she really, really has to take this.

Finally!

After almost two and a half months of trying, this is the first call she has received from Delilah Faulkner. She almost trips in her haste as she rushes through the gym into her office. She shuts the door, her pulse beating wildly.

She presses ‘dial’.

Since her ‘chance’ encounter with Delilah at the manicurist’s, the woman has proven largely elusive. Sam engineered another chance encounter at a grocer’s she knew Delilah patronized. After that, they promised to catch up and exchanged numbers. But Delilah backed off at the last minute from something Sam had planned, citing ‘family problems’.

Sam found herself wondering many times throughout those two months if Delilah had had her followed. After all, two could play at the same game of private detective. And yet, if Delilah knew that Sam was Brian Morton’s lover, why didn’t she blow the whistle? Or is she playing Sam along, waiting for the right moment to strike?

No, no, no, perish the thought. Delilah Faulkner wouldn’t do anything illegal now that her court case date has been set. She wanted justice, and she would be getting it through legitimate means, even if it meant bringing down an innocent man whose greatest crime was promiscuity, and who was so psychologically traumatized by the whole thing that he didn’t even dare to revisit the possibility that he might have been framed.

And thus, Sam has to do it for him.

But now, Delilah is calling, and Sam is returning her call. The thump-thump-thump of her heart against her ribcage vibrates her hand, and therefore her cellphone. Her clothes cling to her sticky skin.

Come on, come on . . . answer.

Delilah picks up at the fifth ring. “Hello?”

“Delilah? It’s Samantha. Samantha Adamston here.” Sam doesn’t quite trust her voice not to squeak. She did not use her real name, but her mother’s. She didn’t want to be that easy to track down. “I saw your missed call on my display.”

“Yes.” The voice on the other end is tentative, hesitant. “I was wondering . . . if we could go to a movie. There’s this new one with Emma Stone I wanted to see.”

Sam holds her breath. “Why . . . yes. Sure. I’ve wanted to watch that one too.”

“OK. Meet me at the AMC North Michigan box office tonight at eight.”

“Great. Um, do you want to catch dinner first? There’s a Creole restaurant of sorts on the second floor of the cineplex. I’ve always wanted to try that.”

“Can’t. I’ve got stuff to do before that. I’ll see you at eight. Upstairs.”

“OK. See you.”

Sam rings off, the blood thundering in her ears.

She sees a shadow standing outside the frosted glass of her office door. She hastily puts her cellphone into her back pocket and strides to the door. She opens it.

Brian stands outside, still naked. He’s toweling his hair, and his body still wears some residual wetness from some areas he has forgotten to wipe off.

“Problems with the gym?” he says mildly.

“Nothing important. I’ve got an . . . appointment tonight, so I can’t do dinner.”

He’s silent for a moment, and then he smiles. She wishes he doesn’t look so eminently f**kable, but he does.

“Have a good time then,” he says, with a hint of undertones. He doesn’t ask with whom she has an appointment with, but she knows him too well. He suspects she’s hiding something.

“Thanks.” She kisses him on the lips. “I have to go now. See you tomorrow? Opening day?”

“You betcha.”

She gropes his flaccid cock, and in her palm, it becomes semi-turgid once again. Damn, she wishes she can stay, but there’s so much to do and so little time.

The court case is in a month’s time, and the public has already hung Brian Morton. She has exactly four weeks to prove them – and Brian’s guilty subconscious – wrong.

4

Ten blocks away from their gym, Brian drives past Fitness Worx and sees the giant banner strung above their wide door. The place is huge, of course, with three floors of gym equipment and even a pool. He had checked them out before, and found the recruiters greedy and impersonal – too involved in securing your signature on the dotted line and less in finding out your needs and gym goals.

But the place is impressive, nonetheless.

‘50% off recruitment fees,’ the banner proclaims in bold, black letters. The parking lot at Fitness Worx is packed to the brim with cars.

No wonder Shape is having problems with recruitment. He wonders if they had made a mistake opening so close to Fitness Worx, and but it was the only place large enough that was available, and besides . . . it was Sam’s dream. He isn’t going to stand in the way of it.

They’d make it work, dammit.

He steps on the gas pedal to move the car faster. He hasn’t given up his black Ferrari. He doesn’t think he will get a good resale value on it.

He drives another ten blocks and valet parks at Crisco’s, a chophouse he sometimes frequents for lunch. He likes the Porterhouse there. He walks in, feeling just a little self-conscious as the waiter eyes him up and down.

“Would it be a table for one, sir?”

“Yes.”

He has to get over this irrational feeling that everyone knows who he is and what he has done. It has gotten worse as the trial date approaches, even though the newspapers have long since dropped the speculations. He’s not enough of a celebrity to keep the gossip mill going.

The waiter picks up one menu. “This way, please.”

The chophouse is crowded. The low murmurs of talking patrons at every table fill the atmosphere, which is scented with the tangy aroma of barbecued beef ribs and sizzling steaks. Is it his imagination or is everyone surreptitiously sizing him up?