Believing Her: An Enemies to Lovers Fake Fiancé Romance

by Annabelle Love

  “Why? Jamie said you loved the penthouse.”

  At her snort, his scowl darkened. He looked back at the doorway that led to the family room, and, lowering his voice, whispered, “Another lie?”

  “Another lie,” she repeated bluntly. “Jamie liked to keep tabs on me. One entrance and exit. Complete with a camera trained on it, twenty-four hours a day. Perfect for a possessive bully.”

  It shouldn’t have pleased her, but his white face, blank with astonishment, had a twisted kind of satisfaction flowing through her. She’d told no one about the kind of brutality she’d endured at Jamie’s hands. And though purposely shocking him might have been cruel of her, seeing the astonishment bewildering a man whose reputation was renowned for cool collectedness… Well, it felt like retribution.

  He licked his lips, slowly processing her words. She ignored him though. Deciding that, after her vindictive verbal maneuvering, the man needed a break.

  Moving about her new kitchen with a contentedness that had been long in the making, she started to make dinner. She’d loathed the apartment where Jamie had insisted they live. Sure, it had been trendy. The heart of Tribeca could be considered nothing else, though she was from a small town, and though the city lights had made her happy at one point, after Erin’s birth she’d changed. Mostly because that was when Jamie had changed the most. He’d always been aggressive, and that had grown worse when she had the baby to look after.

  The kitchen was the antithesis of the old one. There, glass and chrome and stainless steel had merged together into one minimalist nightmare. Here, it was more cozy than anything else.

  She guessed it needed new cabinets and the like; it certainly needed new white goods. But it reminded her of home, the home she’d had when she was a little girl, the home she’d left after meeting Jamie.

  Everything centered around the kitchen table. A large oak beast that seated six in matching chairs with spindly dowels at the back. An old-fashioned fanlight swirled desultory overhead. It might have seemed like an old fitting for a kitchen, but she was glad for it. She intended for the kitchen to be the center of this home. Envisaged a future where Erin did his homework in that spot.

  The thought pleased her, and sporting a smile, she headed for the fridge and took out the fixings for the burgers she’d promised her son.

  Because Josh had been quiet for so long, she decided to break the ice. “What is it about kids and McDonald’s?” she asked cheerfully. “Erin has never been, and he’s obsessed with them.” She held up the ground turkey patties and the sweet potatoes she had in her hand. “My compromise,” she told him, maintaining that cheerful tone.

  He blinked at her, and with a gentle headshake, murmured, “He’s happy.”

  That statement had her frowning. “Shouldn’t he be?”

  “He lost his father recently, has moved from the only house he’s ever known…” He lifted a hand, rubbed his forehead. “I expected him to be–”

  Understanding filled her. “Janice and Frank aren’t happy about it either. They noticed too,” she added when he stared at her blankly. “I kept it from him as best as I could. By the end, though, Erin was frightened. And I’m not sure what I could have done to change that. Jamie glowered. Used to shout a lot, even when he wasn’t railing at me. It used to unsettle Erin.” She shrugged. “There was nothing I could do.”

  When he didn’t reply, she shrugged again and got on with dinner.

  She couldn’t force him to see that she hadn’t done a damn thing to ruin Jamie’s image in Erin’s eyes. His father had done that for himself. Something that Frank and Janice just couldn’t seem to understand.

  Josh would either support her, help her, or he wouldn’t. It was down to him, and though before, she’d have begged him for his aid, not now. Not after she’d just revealed how big a bastard her husband and his best friend had been to her.

  She wanted to explore this feeling, needed to enjoy the self-righteous satisfaction in having tarnished Jamie’s image, when it deserved more than a simple tarnish. But completely obliterating.

  Chapter 4

  Josh

  He believed her.

  Dammit, he didn’t want to. Ever since she’d made the revelation back in his office, he’d been trying to reason what she was telling him, trying to justify and to make sense of it. But there was no sense, and no justification.

  The man who had been like a brother to him, had been a wife beater.

  Almost five years’ worth of memories swirled through his mind. Knowing what he did now, he wondered if he’d misjudged Samantha in other things, if he’d been unfair in his treatment of her. He’d always thought she was a gold digger. Yet here he was in her new house.

  It wasn’t big and brash, shiny and sparkly as he’d imagined.

  Jamie had told him that he himself had hated Tribeca, but because Sam loved it, he lived there to make her happy. Jamie had also said that her love of expensive cars and expensive decorations was almost bankrupting the family and yet here they were, in a dowdy house.

  The only thing he could say about it, was that it was in a decent, safe neighborhood. But that was it. It was old and worn, and in need of a hell of a lot of repair work. Most of it, well, to be kind, looked like it belonged on the set of the Goldbergs!

  As far as Josh was aware, and he was no follower of interior decoration trends, the 80s were not back in fashion.

  Taking a heavy seat at the kitchen table, he watched as Samantha bustled around.

  She moved with a grace, and an ease, that spoke of somebody who liked being in the kitchen. Yet another lie Josh had been fed by his best friend.

  Before his very eyes, Samantha seemed to have transformed herself. And it wasn’t for his benefit. Not even at his most cynical could Josh believe that.

  She was humming, for crying out loud. Humming! Gently, softly, under her breath. He doubted she knew he could even hear that much.

  Then, there was the fact that she was more relaxed than he’d ever seen her in his presence. Considering the reason for her visit to him, he knew she was dealing with the kind of stress he’d never be able to understand, that of a mother’s love for her child.

  And yet, there was a lightness to her, an ease that had never been there before. It was like being without Jamie had taken the weight of the world off her shoulders.

  Erin was different too. Almost like a different child from the one Josh had known for years. Sure, he never hung around the kid that much. Where Erin was, Samantha was always nearby, and Josh had always made it a point to avoid her. She’d always irritated him in ways he’d found hard to explain.

  But the truth was, Josh had always been sensitive to the tensions in the air.

  It was one of the reasons why he was so damn successful. He could read a situation really well and know which steps to take. That was damn useful in a business meeting, where he could use that talent to ascertain if the company he was in the middle of buying out, were bullshitting about how low the bottom line was.

  If, for all the time he’d known her, Samantha had been on edge, was it any wonder he’d judged her, and had found her wanting every single time?

  Had he misread her unease around him? Had believed it was a kind of guilt when it had actually been fear?

  Terror?

  Trying to acclimate to a world where Jamie wasn’t who the man Josh had always believed him to be was harder than he could ever have imagined. And though he wished he could deny it, he couldn’t. Not when the transformation in his best friend’s widow and son was so gigantic.

  Jamie was dead yet his family was happy without him.

  What did that say about the man?

  What did that say about Josh who had believed the lies, had only seen the mask Jamie wanted him to see?

  He sat there, still shell-shocked, watching as she did something with the sweet potatoes, roasting them in a contraption that made a whooshing sound when she turned it on. Then, came the patties and salad fixings. She further astonished hi
m by bringing out a bag of flour and swiftly preparing some flour tortillas that she prepared herself.

  Who was this woman?

  Had he ever known her?

  After having rolled out the last of the dough, he watched her place the tortillas on a plate, then after covering them with a clean towel she retrieved from a drawer, she set them aside on the counter. The contraption cooking the potatoes started to beep, and she made a happy sound under her breath before murmuring, more to herself than him, “Perfect timing!”

  She peered into the window of the machine, clucked her tongue with satisfaction, then retrieved the patties from under the grill. He watched as she moved around, getting dinner ready to plate up, and he knew he couldn’t withhold the words any longer. Knew that he had to put her mind at rest where this situation was concerned.

  “I’ll help.”

  He watched as tension invaded her, stiffening her muscles, making her movements jerky when they’d been smooth before. He couldn’t see her face, and she had her back to him, but it didn’t matter. He knew he’d interrupted, destroyed the happy place she’d found ever since she’d started cooking. Though he felt bad about that, he knew some of that tension was probably founded in relief.

  That belief was confirmed when she whispered, “Thank you.”

  Back in his office when she’d revealed Jamie’s parents had the mistaken belief they were having an affair, with the worst timing in the world, her babysitter had called and told her that they had a family emergency and that she had to leave. Like a flash, Samantha had been on her feet, telling the sitter to hold on for a few minutes while she arranged for one of their bodyguards to watch over Erin until she made it home.

  Josh could have let her go, let her deal with the situation. But, and, he didn’t know why, he’d felt compelled to follow her. Maybe he needed confirmation. Visual feedback, almost.

  And if that was what he wanted, he’d received it.

  Any hope he’d had that there was some kind of mistake where Jamie was concerned, had been washed away the minute he’d seen his best friend’s wife and son in their natural environment. Without the stress Jamie had brought them, they were like different people.

  Happier people.

  Saddened by the lies Jamie had told the world, and knowing that anger would soon be a part of the grief he felt, Josh focused on anything but that.

  He listened as Samantha called out, “Erin! Dinner is ready. Clean your hands, and come and sit at the table.”

  Josh immediately heard the pounding of tiny feet as the small boy complied with his mother’s request. He doubted he’d been as well-behaved at Erin’s age with a box full of toys to play with.

  “He didn’t even hesitate,” Josh remarked, amused by how swiftly Erin had obeyed.

  She sucked in a shaky breath, and the noise was one he’d grown to be wary of since the meeting had begun. But she didn’t say anything, remained silent, just kept her face turned away from him so he couldn’t see her expression.

  He knew he could have left it. Knew that by her silence she had no intention of saying another word on the subject, but like mosquito bites that he just couldn’t stop scratching, he had to know.

  “Why? What are you not saying, Samantha?”

  She half turned, then stopped. Tension invaded her limbs. She tilted her head so she could see him over her shoulder. The look in her eyes broke his heart. The sorrow buried within was enough to make his stomach clench.

  “Jamie didn’t like to be kept waiting.”

  Those seven words did more than make his stomach clench. “You said he never hit him.”

  She flinched at the accusatory tone. “He didn’t. Not physically, anyway. He was just very exacting.”

  Josh was becoming aware that Samantha had been desensitized to violence over the span of her marriage. Bearing that in mind, what did ‘very exacting’ actually mean?

  Before he could ponder it too much, happy giggles sounded down the hallway as Erin raced in. The sound was exactly what he needed to hear to quench the mountain of guilt bearing down on him.

  There was no way he couldn’t help Samantha. Not knowing what he did now. He didn’t care if Frank and Janice were upset by his intrusion into the situation, didn’t care if his presence confirmed the suspicions that he’d been having an affair all along with Samantha.

  The only thing that mattered was ensuring that that little boy carried on giggling.

  Chapter 5

  Samantha

  Were they really doing this?

  As Samantha stared at Elizabeth, Josh’s mother, the question kept ramming her in the frontal lobe. There had to be something wrong with the center for reasoning in her brain because when Josh had told her this was the only way to frighten her in-laws off, she hadn’t told him he was insane. Had just asked him, “how high?” in response to his command of, “Jump.”

  “You kept this all very hush-hush, didn’t you?” Elizabeth said, saccharine sweet.

  Josh, dressed in an expensive suit, settled deeper into the high-backed sofa in his mother’s very formal salon. Though he held a fragile teacup, sans saucer, in his hand, he surprised Samantha by placing the other on her knee.

  The gesture was surprisingly proprietary, and she felt herself flush when Elizabeth’s gimlet gaze focused on the innocuous as well as relatively innocent touch. From that look, however, Josh might as well have stuck his tongue down her throat.

  She refused to think about why that thought had her cheeks blooming bright red with heat.

  “Out of respect for Jamie’s memory,” Josh said simply.

  Elizabeth surprised Samantha by sniffing, and the sound was scornful. “If you’d respected his memory, you wouldn’t have gone anywhere near his widow.” She raked Samantha with a disapproving glare. “And you wouldn’t have gone anywhere near his best friend. God only knows what Frank and Janice are going to say about this. I hope you realize the position you’ve placed me in, Joshua.”

  “Because that’s all I ever consider, mother. How my life affects yours.”

  Elizabeth turned pink and cut Samantha a look. She felt the older woman’s mortification, and though she didn’t like her, Samantha wished there was a way she could smooth over troubled waters.

  But where women like her mother-in-law and Josh’s mother were concerned, there was no smoothing over.

  It was impossible, she knew.

  They were far too full of their own self-importance to appreciate being taken down a peg or two. Especially if that happened to occur in front of somebody they disliked, disapproved of, or thought was beneath them.

  And, no matter what Samantha did, she was well aware she would never be good enough for the likes of Elizabeth and Janice.

  Once upon a time she’d despaired over that. But then, having realized the kind of women they were, she figured as long as she was the direct opposite of them, she was doing a good job of living her life decently.

  Like he hadn’t just humiliated his parent, Josh murmured, “We’re thinking of a spring wedding.”

  Considering women like Elizabeth, who spent a fortune on facial fillers, did their level best not to frown, she’d done a lot of that since Josh and Samantha had arrived. At his words, though, her brow puckered in a way that would have distressed her cosmetic surgeon.

  “So soon?” she exploded, apparently aghast at the prospect.

  Josh snorted. “Hardly. It’s next year, after all.”

  Elizabeth’s gaze dropped down to Samantha's stomach. “Is there a reason for the speed?”

  Samantha felt her cheeks flame at the question. Even though she’d vowed to leave this in Josh’s hands, as thanks for him going to all this trouble on her behalf, she blurted out, “Of course not!”

  “There has to be some reason for this haste,” Elizabeth grumbled with a sniff.

  “We’re talking eight months away, mother. That’s hardly hasty in my opinion.” Josh managed to sound utterly unconcerned. How he did that, Samantha would never
know.

  The man’s poker face was beyond professional.

  Though she supposed he took advantage of that in a business setting, in a personal one?

  Fuck, was she destined to be surrounded by sociopaths?

  “You know how people talk.”

  “Of course I do. I saw you in action often enough as a child.”

  The older woman’s eyes flared wide. This time, in anger. But before she could say a word in either defense or retaliation, Josh held up the hand he rested on Samantha’s knee. “I’m not here to fight,” he said gruffly. “I’m here to tell my mother some happy news.”

  Considering the atmosphere was anything but happy, Samantha realized she’d found the answer to a lot of questions that had been bubbling away since Josh had come to pick her up this afternoon.

  He’d told her to dress smartly for this, the breaking of their news to his parent, and the first step in their grand plan. In response to his request, she’d dug out the wardrobe full of clothes in the style Jamie had insisted she wore. But, though she was dressed more formally than usual, she’d kept it quite casual with a silky sweater and linen pants.

  Yet, when he’d come to pick her up that afternoon, after she’d caught a glimpse of him, she’d found herself perplexed.

  They were going to visit his mother, not heading for a meeting with an accountant. And his suit had seemed to indicate the latter rather than the former. His suit was a thousand times more formal than her simple outfit. Apparently, they had different opinions on what semi-formal meant.

  The thrill of seeing him dressed like that, so smart, and she had to admit, so handsome, had been disconcerting. In all the time she’d known him, she’d recognized that he was an attractive man, but hadn’t been attracted to him because of the way he treated her, and, of course, Jamie.

  Ever since she’d informed him of Jamie’s true nature, however, he’d done an about-face, and she was still reeling from the aftereffects of that.