“You make friends easily, Cru. Yes, I would love a drink. Any kind of wine is fine. Or vodka.”
“What’s your preference?”
“If you have lime juice, I’ll take the vodka. Otherwise, a merlot would be great.”
He leads me into another room and gestures inside. “Have a seat and I’ll bring that drink right to you.”
Looking around, I notice a small camera eye embedded into the crown molding. It’s the same color as the wall and very inconspicuous but it’s there. It makes me wonder why. Don’t security cameras generally go outside the house? Am I being watched right now? Judging by the little I know, Creed seems fond of spying on unsuspecting people.
Tentatively I perch on the edge of a chair, placing my handbag at my feet. My eyes don’t know where to go first. This place is like a museum. Not because it’s stiff and formal—not at all. Just because it’s beautiful and everything is in brand-new, pristine condition. It doesn’t look like anyone actually lives here. Dark gleaming wood floors, soft pale rugs, walls painted and papered in contrasting neutral shades, sofas and chairs upholstered in light gray flannel with warm wood accents and a charcoal velvet ottoman. Around the room are floating shelves that each hold an object of art—either a vase or sculpture. On a high table near the window, a light-blue glass vase holds fresh flowers. One expansive wall has four paintings grouped together. I’m no art expert, but one looks like an original Picasso.
I cross my leg, lean back, uncross my leg, and sit up again. Standing, I go to peer out between the slats of the shutters. The street is quiet. Making a circuit around the room, I pause to study the art on the wall and the few pieces on the bookshelves. It is a Picasso. Damn. Another one is by an artist named Rothko. The other two by Cecily Brown. Between two bookshelves is a small portrait of Fletcher by a painter named Chuck Close. Upon close examination I can see the whole painting is done with points. Wow. I really do feel as if I’m in a museum.
Looking around again, I wonder where that guy is with my drink. I could really use some alcoholic support.
Sitting down again, this time on the sofa, I take out my ear buds and plug them into my phone. Music will help me center myself—it always does. I scroll through my library to find a good song and then crank up the volume. Ah, perfect, I think, as the angelic voice of the singer immerses me in the music.
After a never-ending wait, Cru finally returns with my drink in hand. I turn the volume of the music all the way down. “Thank you.”
He hands me the glass. “You’re welcome. Mr. Creed asked me to let you know he’s within five minutes of arrival.”
“Oh. Okay, thanks.”
“If you’ll excuse me…”
“Sure.”
After he leaves the room I start to think about him. He doesn’t look like a butler or house manager. He’s stocky and heavily muscled, dressed in all black. His sandy brown hair is slicked back. He has tattoos on his forearms—not full sleeves. Just one on each arm and all in blue ink. I’m curious as to what his job here is. Maybe a little suspicious even. I know you’re not supposed to judge people by their looks, but when you don’t know anything about them, what else can you use? And he does look a little sketchy. And let’s face it, everyone is always judging others. You almost have to… at least until you get to know someone. It’s the safer way to be
Turning up the volume on the music once again, I chug the drink. He brought me a vodka and though strong, it tastes good. I figure if I down it right away, I should be much calmer by the time Creed arrives.
So that’s what I do. I turn off the music to find another song I feel like hearing, and during the few moments of silence, I hear a car pull up outside. Popping up to my feet, I go to the window and peer through a shutter slat to check and sure enough, a black sedan is idling right in front of the house.
Must be the man I’m waiting for.
My husband to be.
13
Fletcher Creed
The Maybach rolls to a stop as Rick pulls up to the townhouse. “Don’t bother getting out, Rick. Park the car, and then you can take off for the night.” I pat my pockets to double-check that I gave him the keycard. “I did give you the new access card for the garage?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Upon entering the house, I take a moment to take a few deep breaths. I have no idea what her answer will be to my proposal—literally a proposal—and for some reason, I’m a little nervous. Generally speaking, I’m expert at reading people, but this woman puzzles me. I can’t decide if she’s a schemer or not. Common sense would tell me that she is based on her profession. But today in my office, she seemed so vulnerable and… I don’t know. Was it nervousness?
Cru tells me she’s waiting in the parlor, so I head directly there. I find her sitting on the edge of a sofa, clutching a mostly empty drink. In her casual clothes she looks even more beautiful than she did earlier today.
“Hello, Ms. Jacobs. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”
“Oh, that’s fine. And please, call me Marley.”
“Marley, then. I suppose I should extend the same courtesy to you, seeing as how we will be getting to know each other intimately.”
Did I just say that? I quickly add, “Because of our proposed arrangement, of course. I wasn’t implying anything else.”
She lets loose a nervous giggle. “Of course.”
“I thought we could get to know one another a little and then discuss the contract—” The ding of a text message interrupts me and I check my phone as I continue to speak. “As I was saying… we could discuss the contract over dinner.” I glance up at her and hold up my phone. “The chef wants to know if you have any dietary restrictions?”
“Uh… no, I don’t. I’ll pretty much eat anything.”
Instantly, her face turns bright red. Now what thought just traipsed through her head? I’d love to know. Maybe I led her into the gutter with my inadvertent comment. “Well, good. If you enjoy good food, then you’re in for a treat. My chef is among the finest in the country. His presence here is one of my indulgences.”
Her eyes track around the room. “One of many, it seems.”
Is she judging me? I don’t consider myself extravagant. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to grab a drink.” I eye the empty glass in her hand. “Would you care for another?”
“Um, I guess I’ll have one more.” She hands me the glass. “Vodka with lime.”
While fetching the drinks, I consider the best way to approach the situation. I don’t want to scare her off by being too forceful or coercive. I have to use finesse to convince her to agree and to do it fast.
I return to the room my decorator insists on calling the salon—a living room, in other words—with the drinks and hand one to her while sitting down across from her. I take a moment to admire her true looks: impossibly blue eyes, long blond hair, flawless skin. Marley Jacobs is a true beauty and the whole package without a doubt. I could do far worse in a wife.
“So…” I lean forward, taste my drink, and place the glass on the coffee table between us. “Tell me about yourself, Ms. Jacobs—Marley. Tell me the whole story—who you are, how you got here, everything.”
Her eyes drop to her lap where her hands are folded. Her manicure—just clear polish on relatively short nails—suddenly becomes her sole focus. I’m not sure what is going through her head.
“Why do you need to know all of that?”
“I have a public reputation to maintain. I’m here and now proposing we begin a public relationship—obviously I can’t have any surprises.”
Rolling her eyes to the ceiling, she begins her spiel. “Twenty-four years old, some college, from New Mexico. Father’s an accountant, mother’s an artist. Um, I live in a loft that I sublet from the owner who lives out of the country at the moment. I’ve lived in Chicago almost six years.” She turns her free hand palm up. “That’s about it.”
My family has a house in New Mexico and we use
d to go yearly when we were kids. “New Mexico? Whereabouts?”
“We started out just outside of Santa Fe, but when I was about two years old we moved to Albuquerque. So I grew up there. I got out first chance.”
“My family has a house in Tesuque, which is also just outside Santa Fe. I had fun there as a child. You don’t like Albuquerque?”
She hitches her shoulder. “Not particularly. I wanted a bigger city. I also wanted to be near water, preferably an ocean, but I settled for a big lake instead.” She looks me in the eye, and I begin to have a grudging respect for her. Not many people do that—look at me directly. “Is that enough of a bio?”
“It’s not enough, no. I want to know how you came to be doing what you’re doing.”
She closes her eyes for a brief moment before opening them to begin. It’s clear that Marley Jacobs does not like to talk about herself. That can only be considered an asset in my opinion. Nothing’s more boring than a person who never shuts up about him- or herself.
“I came to Chicago to dance,” she says. Her gaze keeps dropping to her lap, but she seems to make a conscious effort to correct that. “I didn’t have extensive training, but there was a teacher here who’d been recommended to me who agreed to take me on. I got a cheap apartment with my friend, found a job waiting tables, and started taking dance classes.”
“What happened with your dancing career?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Right. That was the problem. After two years of struggling, I couldn’t get anywhere.” She shrugs casually as if it doesn’t matter. But of course, it does. It has to be soul-crushing if she really loves to dance. “I auditioned so many times and never got the job. I finally had to read the writing on the wall and gave up… decided to go back to New Mexico for a while. You know, regroup. Pfft. I had my bus ticket in my bag, and I was working my second-to-last shift at the restaurant. My friend had already found a new roommate. I was all set to go. And then…”
“Then?”
“This man came in to dine. Alone. He kept staring at me. Honestly, I thought he was a creep. When I gave him his check, he asked me if I was interested in making some good money. Ha.” She smiles, her eyes unfocused. “I almost poured ice water over his head. I guess he saw the death glare I was giving him, and he laughed. ‘It’s not like that,’ he said. ‘Can you take a break and sit with me for a moment?’
“I was about to finish my shift so I sat down with him as soon as I was done with my last table. He was my first client. He needed someone to pretend to be his wife. Apparently, he’d told some clients of his from Japan that he was married—he thought since they were conservative, it would play better if he seemed settled and he wanted their business. They were here in Chicago, and they wanted to meet his wife. He’d already put them off the last two trips, and he knew if he did it again, it would appear suspicious. I guess I fit the general description of some random woman he’d shown them a photo of, so he hired me to do it. Paid me very well.”
“So you ditched your plans to leave for this new career option?”
“Mmm.” She finishes her drink. “Not right away.”
I click my tongue. “Do I have to prod you to continue after every sentence?”
“Sorry,” she says in a tone that’s anything but. “First, I only postponed my leaving. He hired me again after that to attend a prayer breakfast with some evangelical clients and then recommended me to a friend who hired me soon after for a class reunion.
“It was just that…” she sighs. “In a few weeks I made more money than in the previous nine months combined—all by word of mouth recommendation. I still had the bus ticket home, but when the jobs kept coming, one right after another, and I started making real money, yeah, I reevaluated my plans. The immediate issue was that I had to find a new place to live, but I also didn’t know if it would work out long term. I left a lot to chance. Long story short, I found the loft almost immediately—which I took as a sign that I should stay and give it another go. End of story.”
“Tell me something, I’m curious. Have you ever turned down any jobs?”
“Yes. Two, actually.”
“They were…?”
“One man wanted me to pretend to be his young son’s estranged mother, but I couldn’t do that to an innocent kid. I wouldn’t be party to tricking and possibly traumatizing the child.”
“And the second?”
“A dominatrix. Some guy wanted me to dress up like a dominatrix and abuse him verbally—and physically.” She laughs, her cheeks pink now. “That wasn’t going to happen.”
“No? How much did he offer?”
Her eyes widen. “A lot. It could’ve been a very lucrative gig.”
I laugh as a mental image of her in black leather holding a whip flashes through my brain. I wouldn’t cop to it, but I did feel my dick stand up and take notice. “Did you ask him what you’d have to do?”
“I heard enough of what he wanted to know I would never do it. So…”
“Hmm. All right, so no skeletons in your closet other than this little pretender business you got going?”
Although she thrusts her chin up and snaps her reply, I detect hesitation. “No skeletons. How ‘bout you?”
That little hesitation gnaws at me, and I wonder if she’s telling me the truth. Nor do I respond to her question—this little Q&A session isn’t about me. Instead, I sip my drink. If you want someone to talk, keep quiet. Oldest trick in the book.
“By the way…” She flips back her gold hair, and I’m mesmerized by how the light catches the highlights. “…is that guy your butler? The one who answered the door?”
“My butler?” I spurt out a laugh, thinking of Cru as a butler. He’s one of the toughest guys I’ve ever met. He’d make a hilarious butler. “No, just one of my staff who manages things and runs security. As for my bio? Pfft.” My hand slices the air. “All a matter of public record. By now it’s old news.”
“Not to me.”
A tinkling sound chimes somewhere above our heads, and I can’t help but smirk. “Saved by the bell. Dinner.”
I stand and extend my hand to her. Hesitating for only a second, she places hers inside, and her hand feels warm and slender inside my much larger one. Almost fragile. I lead her from the room down a hall into the formal dining room. At one end of the table, I pull out a chair and gesture for her to sit, and I take the seat at the opposite end. There are no other place settings on the table but the two on opposite poles.
She looks over at me and smiles, her startlingly blue eyes twinkling. “A nice informal negotiation across ten feet of table? This should go well.”
“Twelve feet actually. But who said it would be informal? No… no, this is going to be a formal contract, I assure you.”
“All right then, lay your cards on the table.”
“Do you play poker?”
Before she can respond my chef, Gerard, appears and places two large platters on the table and begins to plate the food. Grilled salmon, potato medallions, asparagus spears, and a green salad with wafer-thin slices of pear and crumbled blue cheese.
After Gerard expertly serves the food and pours the wine, he exits the room. I raise my glass, and she joins me. “To a successful arrangement.”
Sipping the white wine, she hums in appreciation. Then she tries a bite of the salmon, closing her eyes to savor the taste. The sublime pleasure on her face makes my dick twitch again. I’d like to see that look on her face while I’m buried inside her finding my own bliss.
I clear my throat and push the erotic image out of my mind. “I take it you approve?”
She nods shyly and gives me a small smile. “I love good food.” She sighs and puts her fork down. “So… why? What’s the reason for the charade?”
I place my glass back on the table and pick up my knife and fork. Slicing and spearing a morsel, I raise it to my lips. We’ve arrived at the moment of truth. “It’s really very simple. I need to be married to
get complete control over my company. If I marry, my grandfather’s shares revert to me and my grandmother will not be able to interfere as much as she can now.”
“What?” She almost chokes on the bite of potato she’d just taken.
I think she just figured it all out.
“Don’t you need to be actually married for that to happen? Like genuinely, legally married? You do know that what I do is only pretend, right?”
“I know what you normally do is pretend.” I wink before I deliver the punch line. “But not this time.”
14
Marley Jacobs
Say what??? My jaw literally drops open, leaving me gaping like an idiot. Before I can filter the words, they break out of my mouth like desperate prisoners. “Are you out of your mind? There’s no way I’m doing that.”
Both his hands slap on the table and he leans forward, eyes blazing. “Oh, but you are, Ms. Jacobs. It’s in your best interests, trust me.”
His aggressive reaction makes me cringe. I’m not sure if he’s blackmailing me or not. How can he? I did nothing illegal… but he’s influential enough to easily ruin my life. Can he really expect me to do this? “I-I… I don’t know what to say. What you’re asking is...” I stop there, at a serious loss for a word that fits.
“Simple is the word,” he says slowly and clearly. “You and I get married, we stay in the marriage for two years, and then we amicably divorce. I get what I want, and you walk away with a sizable divorce settlement. Consider it a job with a two-year contract. No harm, no foul.”
Yes, simple. As in simply crazy. “Huge is a better word, not simple. Tell me why this is so important. Is your grandmother forcing you into poor decisions?”
That question seems to stop him cold. Frowning, he rubs his chin, eyes doubtful, as if he’s trying to decide whether or not to divulge. After a long minute, he nods his head. “Did my assistant have you sign the NDA before our meeting this morning?”
Faker: A Fake Relationship Romance Page 8
