The Pretend Boyfriend 2 (Inhumanly Handsome, Humanly Flawed Alpha Male Erotic Romance) (4 page)

Oh Brian, Brian, Brian.

As she comes to, she finds her mouth enveloped in his as he shudders and gasps out her name in his own climax. Are her ears ringing or does she imagine that she hears him whisper,
I love you
?

You can never count on a man to mean what he says during an orgasm.

5

Sam sits at her desk in her narrow office, furiously researching Henry Moody. Piles of papers lie on her desk.

Outside in the corridor, Kathy Angleston passes by in her mile high heels, wearing a smug expression on her over-rouged face. She glances at Sam, but does not poke her head in to make small talk. Honestly, that woman is covered under an inch of makeup. By all accounts, she has probably wormed her way into Henry Moody’s pants already.

Sam grimaces. She picks up the phone and punches a few numbers. She holds while the phone on the other side rings.

The connection clicks.

“Henry Moody’s office,” says a voice.

Sam puts on her brightest affectation. “Hello, Ms. Stetson. I am told that you are Mr. Moody’s personal assistant. May I please make an appointment with him?”

“What is it about?”

Sam launches into a well-rehearsed mini sales pitch. An elevator speech, to be exact.

Ms. Stetson interrupts, “Excuse me, Ms. Fox, but Mr. Moody does not take unsolicited sales pitches. We already have a long-standing contract with McConnaughey Supplies. We will call you if we’re interested.”

“I understand, but when Mr. Moody hears what I have to offer, which far surpasses anything McConnaughey Supplies can do, he will be saving hundreds of thousands of dollars – ”

But there is already a click on the other line.

Sam stares at the receiver.

How the hell is she going to pitch to Henry Moody?

6

Brian sits at his desk in his wide office. His walls are a vista of clear glass, looking out into the skyscraper-filled city of Chicago. If you were to spy on him with a telescopic lens from an adjacent building, you would think him hard at work, tapping furiously at his keyboard.

The truth is that Brian is Googling.

To be more precise, he is Googling Henry Moody.

He finds articles, press releases, images. He reads them thoroughly. Moody isn’t a bad account for his ad firm to land either, he muses.

A line in an article catches his eye. Henry Moody is a patron of the opera.

Opera?

Brian wrinkles his nose. He could never stomach opera music. He always thought it sounds like cats being tortured.

. . . And he can be found frequenting the Galois every Saturday night with his wife,
the article says.

Brian picks up the phone.

“Sammie sweetheart? Yeah, I’m calling because I’m thinking about you.”

Pause.

“No . . . I’m seriously thinking about you in a non-romantic, non-commitment, spur of the moment, hanging out kind of way. Yeah, there is more than one way to skin a cat.”

Pause.

“Uh huh. Speaking of cats, what are you doing Saturday night?”

7

“It’s great to go out on a double date,” Cassie says.

She’s dressed in a little retro black dress and her style is done up in a sixties Audrey Hepburn do. She looks amazing, though Brian would rather eat thumbtacks than to ever tell her that. The downside about having Caleb date Cassie is that he’s forced to put up with her now and again – as in every fortnight. Which is far more than Brian can take of Cassie in a lifetime.

Take tonight, for example. He’s sorry he ever dropped the subject of opera to Caleb.

“Hey, I like opera,” Caleb chimed up brightly.

“Since when? I’ve known you since the eighth grade, and you’ve never, ever shown the slightest inclination towards the deviant arts.”

“Like, duh. Opera isn’t deviant, last time I checked.”

“Matter of opinion. Back in the Inquisition, it was a legalized method of torture alongside the rack and anal probes.”

“They didn’t have anal probes during the Inquisition.”

“Speak for yourself. I remember the history books differently. If you were a fornicator, they probed your prostate with matchsticks before they fucked your ears with La Traviata.”

“Hey, I know my history. La Travalina . . . whatever wasn’t written during the Inquisition. It was written sometime in . . . uh . . . ” Caleb scrunches his forehead.

“How can you like opera when you can’t even pronounce half the Italian names? Now, why do you want to go to something that’s going to trip your tongue up and bore you out of your skull when you can do the same with a power drill?”

“Why the fuck are you going then? Oh, I get it. You’re taking Samantha out on a date.” Caleb grinned. “I think it’s totally cool you’re dating her, though I hadn’t pegged you for the dating type, Mr. ‘I don’t do romance, I only fuck.”

“I believe my exact words are ‘I don’t believe in love, I believe in fucking’. And I’m not dating Samantha. We’re just hanging out, the way you and I hang out. When you do make the time to hang out with your old, lonesome friend who happens to be single, of course.”

Caleb had the decency to look abashed. “Well, Brian, I know I haven’t been around as much as I used to lately – ”

“Hah.”

“ – but it happens when you start dating someone. You want to see them as much as you can to see where you’re going with the relationship. Not that you’d know. Or care.”

“Not that I’d want to know.”

“But it’s a temporary phase. I’m sorry I’ve neglected you – ”

“Oh baby, you haven’t neglected me.” Brian mimicked a woman’s voice. “I’ve just been waiting by the telephone and you haven’t called in days.” He slaps the back of his best friend’s head. “You twat. Of course you don’t have to feel guilty for doing what comes naturally.”

“I just assumed you’ve been hanging out with Sam. So this Saturday is a chance for us to double date.” He spied Brian’s deadpan look. “OK, to hang out. It’s a chance for us to be together again. Cassie has been saying she’d like to take in a little culture.”

Brian was going to open his mouth to protest, and then he thought:
What the fuck?

So here they are in a roundabout, pseudo-double dating turn of events. Because it’s the opera and it’s the Galois, they are all dressed to the nines. They are perched on the grand sweeping staircase that leads to the Galois’s plush interior – all red velvet and glorious golden light and liveried ushers and white marble stairways.

Brian is wearing a tuxedo.

“You look very, very handsome,” Sam says warmly.

“Et tu,” he says, lifting the hem of her beaded white shawl. It’s true. She is dressed in a stunning red gown underneath that shawl. Her earlobes are clasped with diamond earrings.

He tenderly brushes away a tendril of her curly hair from her face.

“Thank you for the dress . . . and the earrings,” she says shyly.

“Don’t get too attached to the earrings. They’re on loan from Tiffany’s.” He would have bought them for her, but she would have read all kinds of meaning into his gesture, and it would be easier to just tell her he loaned them for the night.

In truth, he had bought them. For her, to be precise. Once she’s done with them, they can go back into his safe. He hasn’t figured out if he’s going to gift them for her birthday or some other special ‘friendly’ occasion.

“So this is a business meeting,” she says, looking around at all the gorgeously dressed patrons, totally clueless about what he’s going to sic onto her.

“Yeah, you’ll never know who you might meet at these events. I for one am hoping to catch Senator Adair. She can use a new ad campaign for her re-election. Her current one sucks balls.”

Cassie comes up and grabs Sam’s arm.

“You look absolutely fabulous,” she says in envy.

“Thanks to Brian.”

“Oh.” Cassie eyes him up and down as she would an insect. “Buying gifts now to assuage your guilt?”

“Guilt isn’t in my vocabulary.” He smirks.

“User.”

“Touche.”

“Now, now, guys,” Sam interrupts, without seeming too concerned. She is used to their public tiffs by now. “This is one of the few evenings we get to spend together, and I’d like to do so without having to blow my referee whistle every two seconds.”

Brian leans over to Caleb and says in a very loud voice. “That’s why you should have left your girlfriend back in the psych ward with her meds.”

Several people turn.

Cassie says to Sam in equally as loud a voice, “Is he still fucking around on you? I hope the penicillin did the trick on clearing up his syphilis.”

More people turn. They wear amazed and mildly disgusted glances.

Sam says, “Now, Cassie, Brian is not fucking around on me. We’re not a couple.”

“Absolutely,” Brian echoes.

“We’re just hanging out.”

“We practically have clothes hangers sticking on our backs.”

Cassie regards Brian with a murderous stare. She says to Sam out of the corner of her mouth, “It’s just that you deserve so much better than this . . . this . . . ”

“Ah, words fail you to describe me,” Brian remarks. “It must be my considerable charm.”

“. . . prick,” Cassie finishes. “He doesn’t even have the decency to set you free instead of manipulating your emotions. That way, you can be rid of him and find a nice, decent guy of your own. Right now, he’s just a millstone around your neck.”

“I’m an independent woman with a mind of my own, and this is not the time and place to be discussing this.” Sam glances meaningfully at the gathering people around them.

“We’d better be going in,” Caleb says. “What are we watching tonight again?”

“Aida, you opera buff.” Cassie digs a finger into his side.

“Ooof. Great. Is that the one set in China?”

“That’s Turandot. Aida is set in ancient Egypt.”

“Cool. I love mummies.”

They all troop in before they can embarrass themselves any further. Brian buys them four programs. Sam hangs on to his arm. She’s practically goggle-eyed, staring at everything and anyone.

“I feel like I’m at an Oscar party,” she whispers.

He whispers back, “I feel like I’m at a colonoscopy.”

“Be nice. Where’s the senator? Do you see her?” She cranes her neck to peer over the heads of the shiny, dressy people.

He knows full well the senator isn’t here. “If we see her, we see her. You can’t miss her. She has a head shaped like a marshmallow.”

They go in for the first act. Brian has gotten them balcony seats, right in the middle – in full view of the stage and the Sensurround caterwauling. In the box seat right across from them on the left, he spies his prey. He allows himself a congratulatory pat. Henry Moody and his wife are seated in their usual box, chatting to each other as the violins begin their concerted screeching.

Brian nudges Sam. “Look over there.”

She looks. “Is that who I think it is?”

“Old Man Moody himself. What a coincidence.” He can see the permutations running in her head.

She swivels to him, her face glowing. “Why . . . you . . . ”

“I didn’t do anything. He’s all yours.”

“Do you think he would let me . . . approach him?”

“There’s only one intermission to find out.”

The opera starts. He can sense Sam’s mounting excitement. She grasps his hand, and he grasps it back.

Their handholding is not lost on Cassie, seated beside Sam. She grimaces. He sticks his tongue out at her.

Who said opera was boring?

*

If Brian didn’t have the program in front of him, he wouldn’t be able to make head or tail out of what’s happening. What he gathers is that Aida is some slave woman who just happens to be an Ethiopian princess, and she is being played by someone really fat. Despite the obvious obesity, she is loved by a really hot, really slim Egyptian commander. Who in turn is loved by the Pharaoh’s nubile daughter, who is thankfully played by someone weighing less than a metric ton.

Seriously, he fears for the stage.

But by Act Two, he is completely absorbed.

Not that he understands the words they are singing, of course, but the drama that unfolds before them is quite compelling. The characters are equally compelling. He doesn’t care much for the lovelorn, passive Aida, but he finds the Pharaoh’s jealous and vengeful daughter, Amneris, who would do anything to get Aida’s hot beau, majorly fascinating.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned indeed.

The lights dim, the audience applauds, and it’s intermission.

“I have never approached a potential client before during an opera,” Sam confesses.

He squeezes her fingers. “He’s getting out of his box. You can do it.”