Fraud

by J. L. Berg

  Her face scrunched to the side. “Well, I’ve seen my fair share of guys in suits tonight. Can you describe them?” she asked as she began fixing me another whiskey sour.

  “That’s the thing, gorgeous. I’m not looking for suits. I’m looking for two women.”

  “Oh.” Her voice deflated instantly, the distinct sound of jealousy replacing her flirting tone.

  I continued, in hopes of salvaging the situation. “I don’t really know much about them, but the one woman is a real ballbuster—or so I’ve heard. Maybe mid-twenties. New Yorker?”

  Her eyes lit up. “Carries a Birkin Bag?”

  “A what?”

  “A Birkin bag. It’s, like, one of the most expensive purses in the world. She came by the bar, asked for the manager, and had us put it in the restaurant safe. Can you believe that?”

  I really didn’t care what kind of purse it was, only that she was here.

  And identifiable.

  “Could you point her out?”

  “Sure,” she responded, placing my second drink next to me. “She’s on the dance floor. Or was. That’s why we locked up her precious bag. She and her friend—coworker maybe—they’ve been dancing for twenty minutes or so.”

  I leaned forward, grabbing her face. I planted a huge-ass kiss on her painted red lips. “Thank you.”

  She instantly blushed, licking her lips, as I pulled back.

  “Anytime,” she answered seductively.

  I had no idea what her name was, and I’d be lying if I said I cared to know. But, one thing I knew for sure, that bright red lipstick would be making an appearance all over my naked body tonight.

  After soaking up a bit more whiskey, I headed for the dance floor.

  Or, as I liked to call it, the seventh circle of hell.

  As a rule, I generally tried to avoid places that had any form of dancing involved.

  Fox-trot, waltz, krumping—I hated it all, and to top it off, I was bad at it. A deaf amputee would probably have better rhythm than me.

  It was better for all mankind if I just stayed away.

  Far, far away.

  But, sometimes, in journalism, one was forced to enter situations that were deemed dangerous, maybe even life-threatening.

  War zones, hostage situations…dance floors.

  I deserved a Pulitzer for this.

  The closer I got to the crowd, the louder things became. Catcalls, shouts, and whistling all flooded my ears as I circled, trying to find the dancing duo the bartender had told me about.

  I had little to go on, except for hair color and dress. She’d said the woman who was with the pushy New Yorker had long blonde hair and was wearing black.

  That narrowed it down to a couple dozen females.

  It didn’t take much time for me to realize something was going on in the center of the dance floor.

  A dance-off?

  No, this wasn’t high school.

  As I got closer, it appeared to be a couple entertaining the crowd with their dance moves, causing the cheering and ear-piercing whistling I’d heard earlier.

  Finding an empty spot, I decided to melt into the crowd and watch the pair for a while. It gave me time to scan everyone without awkwardly bumping into anyone by trying to move through everyone.

  “She’s amazing, huh?” a female voice said from my right.

  My eyes narrowed in on the two dancing in the middle of the circle. The guy was huge, obviously someone who spent a lot of time in the gym. His biceps were probably double the size of mine, and I wasn’t a scrawny guy by any means. He lifted his partner with ease, high above his head, making the women in the crowd all squeal with envy.

  I noticed the black dress almost immediately.

  And the mile-high legs.

  “She is,” I answered, not bothering to turn my head.

  “She’s always loved to dance. Ever since I can remember. The first time we went out dancing in college, she joked, saying she’d come out of the womb like this.”

  I was barely listening to the woman as she shouted her nonsense next to me. I was too busy checking out the hot blonde in front of me.

  She checked off every box. Long platinum-blonde hair, sexy black dress, and damn if she didn’t fit the personality of a woman who could write scorching-hot love scenes.

  She somehow had everyone around her mesmerized. There were still stragglers on the edge of the dance floor, doing their own thing, but almost every set of eyes was fixated on the couple dancing in the middle. The sexual tension between her and her partner was enough to ignite a match in a rainstorm.

  Wait, had that woman said something about knowing her?

  Looking to my left, I saw nothing but a short guy staring hungrily at the woman in black. Turning to my right, I found her.

  Dressed in a plain black business suit, she was pretty in an understated way—natural with hardly an ounce of makeup on, her long blonde hair pulled into a ponytail at the back of her neck. She smiled fondly rather than open-mouthed, like most of the people standing around.

  “So, you know her?” I asked, knowing it was now awkward to try to strike up a conversation, considering I’d all but ignored her before.

  Her eyes darted over to mine. “Um, yeah,” she replied, her voice a few degrees chillier than before.

  What did she say? What did she say?

  “College, huh? Did you attend locally?”

  “Yes.”

  Man, I’d screwed this up. My one in, and now, she was giving me the cold shoulder. I assumed this was the literary agent, keeping tabs on her crazy client and apparently friend.

  Now, wasn’t that an interesting twist?

  She turned away, her arms going squarely across her chest, effectively ending our short conversation.

  Damn, I needed a miracle to break through that armor.

  And, at that moment, as if God himself had heard my plea, my miracle was delivered—in the form of one large drunk guy.

  As the music ended and the crowd began breaking apart—some making a sprint toward the bar while others made space on the floor—a big, hairy man, holding a beer the size of my head, turned suddenly, looking for his girlfriend as he called out for her, and knocked the adorable literary agent off her heels.

  I leaped into action.

  With my arms stretched out, I managed to catch her just in the nick of time. Wide-eyed and panicked, she looked up at me with a mixture of fear and surprise.

  “You.”

  “Hey.” I smiled.

  “Oh my gosh, Kate!” the dancing queen in the sexy black number shouted. She was at our side in record time.

  “Kate?” I repeated, confusion bouncing around my alcohol-infused brain.

  As in Katelyn O’Malley?

  “I’m okay, Jane. Just a little stumble.”

  My head jumped from the woman in my arms to the one standing next to me.

  Oh, shit.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  That understated mouse of a female who had been standing next to me was Laura Stone.

  The Laura Stone.

  “Can we buy you a drink? I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name,” Jane said as I helped the still-frazzled Kate over to their table.

  Believe me, she wasn’t the only one.

  “Sure, that’d be great. Whiskey sour. And the name is Killian Townes,” I said, nearly stumbling over the false last name. How many lies did that make tonight?

  Jane, with expert efficiency, flagged down a waitress and had our drinks ordered within seconds. I was starting to understand the sophisticated, ballsy attitude the bartender had described of her.

  The moment her friend had fallen, she’d taken action, getting people out of the way and assessing Kate from head to toe.

  It was almost motherly.

  But my elusive author?

  The one I’d fantasized over while lying in bed at night.

  The one I’d imagined would be easy to charm.

  Wrong.

  So wrong.<
br />
  I’d never been so far off in my life.

  Since my chivalrous rescue on the dance floor, Kate hadn’t said a single word to me—or anyone else for that matter. While she was wearing black and did in fact have blonde hair, she was not the vision I’d pictured for a best-selling erotic author.

  Quite the opposite, in fact..

  But then what the hell did I know?

  Before, when Jane had been dancing the night away, she’d openly talked to me. She had been the one to approach me—even if it was sort of awkward. But, now, she was nervously picking at her fingernail, avoiding eye contact, as she asked me about myself.

  “What do you do for a living, Killian?” she asked after our drinks had arrived.

  “I’m a, uh…” Shit, what do I say? “An editor,” I finally blurted out.

  It was obviously the wrong choice by the looks on their faces. The light, carefree smile Jane had been sporting suddenly went rigid as her keen eyes scanned me, searching for deceit.

  “A technical editor,” I elaborated. “Mostly complex contracts, medical forms—that sort of thing. But I’m currently between jobs. Transplant from the East Coast.”

  A collective sigh of relief was felt across the table as they both relaxed back into the booth.

  “That sounds rather boring,” Kate announced.

  The sound of her voice surprised me. I wasn’t sure I’d heard it since my dashing display of heroics.

  “It does, doesn’t it?” I replied, wishing I’d picked any other profession. But, nope, it’d had to be technical editing, the most mundane job on the planet.

  Or at least, I assumed it was.

  I had a friend back in New York who was a highly successful technical writer. Those little manuals you’d find tucked inside the box with your new TV or phone? He actually wrote stuff like that. It was a harder job than it sounded, I was sure. Taking a tedious subject and making it…well, less tedious? It was probably why he drank.

  But I guess he had a job. Unlike me—the ex-journalist who now stalked mysterious authors in small town America.

  “It pays the bills, I guess,” I finally said, choosing the easy way out. No explanation needed. “So, what do you two do—to pay the bills, that is?”

  A nervous exchange happened between them, so brief that it was almost unrecognizable. But I saw it—that moment when the two friends looked at each other, maybe realizing they hadn’t sorted this part of the ruse out.

  “I’m in publishing,” Jane simply stated.

  “And I work at the college here in town,” Kate said.

  Nothing more was offered, but then again, I hadn’t given much to start with.

  That needed to change if I was going to leave here with more than an impending hangover.

  The trouble? I didn’t know how to interact with a woman like Kate.

  She was the opposite of everything I sought out in a woman. Shy, quiet, and with so much vulnerability, I could almost smell it on her.

  It wasn’t that she wasn’t attractive or interesting.

  I could see a raw beauty under those timid eyes, and it did spark a desire within me to see what lay beneath. Maybe a hidden secret or a disturbing past?

  This was definitely going to take longer than I’d anticipated—if I wanted a good story, and I did.

  No, I needed a good story—if I ever wanted my career back.

  “What do you do at the college, Kate? Are you a professor?” I asked, turning my full attention to her.

  She seemed slightly taken aback at first but quickly began laughing.

  Both of them did.

  I looked on, feeling clueless.

  “Sorry, inside joke,” Jane said.

  “Care to elaborate?”

  Jane turned to Kate, who was still smiling.

  I liked the way she looked when her face lit up. It was like a rose blooming. Unexpected, yet you couldn’t imagine it any other way.

  “It’s just that, whenever I’m asked what I do at the college, it’s followed up by that same exact question.”

  I nodded. “So, I take it, you don’t teach?”

  She shook her head. “No, I work in Student Services. Not nearly as exciting, is it?”

  “That sounds rather boring,” I said, repeating the words she’d spoken back to her.

  She laughed, feeling the tension between us finally break. “Yes, I guess it does.”

  It was fairly simple after that. A little flirting, a couple of drinks, and by the end of the night, I had Katelyn O’Malley’s phone number. Not nearly as hard as I’d imagined.

  And twice as fun.

  It wasn’t until I got back to the room and was celebrating my success with a late-night order of room service that I realized I hadn’t thought about the waitress since that timid little blonde fell into my arms.

  FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE Scandal had released, I awoke, thinking about something other than the ninety-five-thousand words that had irrevocably changed my life.

  I wish I could say it was a good feeling.

  But, the instant my eyelids rose and the vision of Killian and his baby blues came into my mind, so did the tequila shots.

  And the four other drinks I’d consumed.

  “Oh God!” I groaned.

  Bolting upright, I made a beeline from my tiny bedroom—bypassing the clothes I’d stripped off hours earlier when I stumbled into bed, delirious and happy—to the bathroom.

  I won’t elaborate on the next few minutes.

  It wasn’t pretty, but let’s just say, it was reminiscent of my early college days when morning classes could be skipped, and the topknot and two-day-old makeup was a perfectly acceptable look on any given Thursday.

  Today, in the real world—or at least, the one I lived in—I’d be skinned alive if I showed up to work in my current state.

  This is what I get for going out with Jane.

  Stomping around my room, I grabbed my phone, checking for messages.

  I had one. From Jane herself.

  Checking in on you before I catch my flight. Hope you’re not too bad off this morning. Love you.

  And there was even a selfie attached.

  Jane’s hair was flawlessly pulled back in a bun, her makeup expertly applied, as she waved to the camera at the security gate at Portland International Airport. I snarled, throwing the phone down onto the bed, wondering how I could possibly be friends with someone who could look that exquisite and put together after three hours of sleep.

  After a quick shower, where I tried to convince my stomach it was in fact completely healed and didn’t need to expel anything more, I attempted to get ready for work.

  I knew I was running late, so I opted for the first outfit I could find—a pair of black pants and a flattering blouse. It was something Jane had bought me several years ago when I flew out to visit her during summer break. It was pricey and had a designer label I didn’t recognize. I rarely wore it due to my proclivity for coffee spills.

  But, today, I wasn’t feeling especially nostalgic, and I guessed I could always replace it myself.

  I was loaded after all.

  I shook my head, ridding that crazy thought from my brain.

  It was something I tried to avoid thinking about—the idea of money.

  Jane had tried to bring it up on multiple occasions, asking me what I’d do. “Will you leave your job? Buy a house? Travel?”

  No, to all of the above.

  I just wanted things to stay the same.

  So, I kept putting one foot in front of the other. I went to work, I did my job, and I came home, like I had done every single day for the last six years.

  The moment I stopped? The moment I stepped out of this coveted routine?

  Well, that was when all of this—the money, the fame, and everything that came with the success of this book—would become a reality.

  And I wasn’t ready for that.

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready for that.

  Thankfully, when I rolled int
o work, I discovered our office had a busy day ahead of us, which meant no morning coffee talk. Everyone was already settling into work, the office so quiet, you could hear the steady sound of typing as progress was made.

  I snuck into my cubicle, the bags under my eyes from my evening out going completely unnoticed.

  Success!

  This morning, I’d risked a late arrival with a mad dash through Starbucks to pick up my own cup of coffee, reducing my need to walk around the office.

  This place was a chatty one. Normally, I loved the friendly vibe it gave off. But, today, I was going to do everything in my power to stay chained to my desk and remain as invisible as possible.

  At least until my brain decided to fully come on board with the rest of my body.

  “You look rough.”

  I glanced up to see my boss, Renee peering in on me with a smirk across her beautifully aged face.

  Busted.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” I lied.

  Her smirk widened into a grin.

  “Praying to the porcelain gods?” She snickered.

  I gave up, huffing, as my head fell to my palms on the desk. “No, that was this morning. Drinking is not for the faint of heart.”

  “No, it’s definitely for the young. Why don’t you take a day off? You’ve got plenty of time.”

  I firmly shook my head. “That doesn’t seem right at all.”

  She shrugged, her short blonde hair skimming the tops of her shoulders. “Who cares? I’m the boss. Shouldn’t I get to decide what’s right or wrong? You haven’t taken a day off since the beginning of this academic year. Go rest. All of this,” she said, pointing at the neat line of Post-it notes I’d left for myself the day before, “will be here for you tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” I conceded. I did feel like crap, and the idea of crawling back into bed sounded like heaven.

  She waited for me to collect my things, including my extra-large iced coffee, and walked with me toward the back door.

  “Thanks,” I finally said.

  She gave me a warm smile, patting me on the back, before asking, “Did you have a good time?”

  I thought back to the hours that had led up to my current state—the embarrassing tumble into Killian’s arms, those eyes, the way he’d laughed at my jokes.

  “Yeah, I did.”