A Kept Man (21 page)

His smile never slipped. “That’s a shame. You don’t
know what you’re missing out on. I grill a mean steak.”

“I’m sure you do, but—”

He held up his hands. “It’s okay. I get it. No harm in
asking.” He reached into his pocket, the movement so sudden she
did start. When he withdrew his hand, it held a white card. “But
let me give you my number in case you change your mind, or if you
need anything. I’m just on the other side. It never hurts to
know your neighbors, am I right?”

He seemed so genuine she almost felt bad for being suspicious. Her
doubts seemed silly in the face of his sincerity. Then again, Trevor
had seemed genuine too.

She forced herself to shake off her doubts. This was what Trevor had
done to her, making her question what was probably a perfectly nice
man. She reached forward and accepted the card. “Thanks. That’s
very nice of you.”

“No problem.” He gave her a jaunty salute and started
jogging. “Enjoy your run.”

“You too,” she said. He took off in the opposite
direction from where she was headed. She watched until he disappeared
up the turn in the road. He didn’t look back.

Shaking her head, Jess shoved the card into her pocket and started
off down the road. She was going to have to learn to start trusting
people again. This was no way to live.

CALEB COULD FEEL JESS WATCHING HIM. He kept his eyes closed, feigning
sleep.

After a while, she moved away. He heard the bathroom door close a few
moments later.

He breathed a sigh of relief, but it did little to ease the tightness
in his chest. Opening his eyes, he stared up at the ceiling without
really seeing it.

It was a strange sensation, guilt. He wasn’t used to it. But
then, he was usually the good guy. The people he met, those that he
dealt with, were the guilty ones. Thieves. Crooks. They were in the
wrong, and they deserved everything that happened to them.

Except that Jess wasn’t one of them, and she didn’t
deserve it.

He liked it better the other way.

The bathroom door opened again. He braced himself for her return. She
didn’t come back though. He listened as her footsteps receded
down the hallway, then the sound of the front door closing downstairs
a minute later. She must be going for a run.

Suddenly that didn’t seem like such a bad idea. He needed to
get out of this house and away from all the lies. He had to think
about what he was going to do.

A drive should do the trick. His car was parked in the garage in
Charlie’s usual space. That was exactly what he needed.

WHEN SHE RETURNED FROM HER RUN, Jess headed to the kitchen for a
bottle of water. Part of her expected to find Charlie there waiting
for her, with another of his incredible meals prepared. She wouldn’t
have turned him down this time. After all the calories she’d
burned in a variety of ways the last few days, she could use the
energy boost.

But the kitchen was empty. She glanced through the glass doors to the
pool. He wasn’t there either. He also wasn’t upstairs in
the bedroom, the office or the shower.

She wasn’t overly concerned. Charlie was a big boy. He could
take care of himself. She made use of the shower herself, pulling on
a pair of shorts and a T-shirt before padding downstairs again.

She needed to get back to work on the book, especially now that she
was actually getting somewhere. But she wanted to see him first. How
sad was she? She couldn’t go more than an hour without seeing
him.

“No sex,” she reminded herself. “There’s no
time.” But at least she could get a good morning kiss.

The need propelled her across the pool area to the guesthouse on the
other side. She realized that she’d never been inside. They’d
made use of her bedroom, the kitchen, the office, the shower, but
she’d never entered his domain. It was kind of strange when she
considered how she’d shared every other part of him.

The front door was slightly ajar. She opened her mouth to call out
his name and announce her presence. The sounds of furtive scrambling,
drawers being slid open and shut again with overt care, drifted
outside. Something made her keep quiet. She carefully placed her hand
on the door and slowly pushed it open.

The first thing she saw was a man’s back. He was hunched over a
dresser on the other side of the room, shifting through the contents.
She didn’t need to look twice to know it wasn’t Charlie.

“Hey!”

The man stiffened. He straightened slowly and hesitated before
turning around.

She’d never seen him before. The first thought to cross her
mind was that he was an incredibly good-looking man. He had wavy, jet
black hair that tumbled over his brow and shockingly green eyes, the
color so deep she could see it from across the room. He looked like
he’d just stepped out of a magazine ad for men’s cologne.
If she hadn’t spent the last week with Charlie, she might have
found him attractive. Instead, she noted his looks in an academic
sense without being affected by them.

All that mattered was that he didn’t belong here.

“Who are you? What the hell are you doing?”

He opened and shut his mouth a few times, clearly flustered. “I
just came by to pick up a few things—”

“While no one was here? Where I come from that’s called
theft.” She started to turn from the doorway. “I’m
calling the police.”

“No, wait!”

He took a step forward, then must have seen something in her face,
because he stopped. He held out one hand in supplication. “Don’t
do that.”

She paused, her hand on the doorknob, ready to pull it shut and run
if he made another move. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because it’s not theft. It’s my stuff.”

Great, a thief and a nutjob. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s my stuff. I live here.” He swallowed hard,
his eyes beseeching. “My name’s Charlie Wells.”

Chapter
Fifteen

Jess turned to leave. “I’m not listening to this. You’re
out of your mind.”

“No!” he yelped with enough desperation to make her stop
again. “You gotta believe me, I really am Charlie Wells.”

“Nice try, pal. But I’ve met the real Charlie. You look
nothing like him.”

“
I’m
the real Charlie. That guy you met, he paid
me to leave. I guess so he could take my place.”

It sounded too outlandish to be true. But there was a note of
truthfulness in his voice that said it wasn’t a lie.

Everything inside of her went very still.

“What are you talking about?”

The man was visibly nervous now. He ran a hand over the back of his
neck, not meeting her eyes. “You’re the goddaughter,
right? Felicity’s goddaughter?” Jess felt herself nod.
“Look, I know I shouldn’t have done it, but he showed up
at the end of last week, and he offered me all this money to get out
of here.”

“So he could do what?”

“Meet you, I guess. I didn’t ask.”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Let me get
this straight. You just let a complete stranger pay you to let him
take your place here, knowing that I was coming and would be stuck
here with him?”

He shrugged weakly. “He seemed like a good guy.”

“A good guy—” Jess swallowed the string of
expletives that were about to erupt from her mouth like a geyser. She
stood there seething, wondering if the man knew how close he was to
being strangled to death. He had to be some kind of idiot to go along
with this.

Or maybe she was the stupid one. Could she really expect a man who
sold his body for a living to have any kind of scruples?

Besides, she was the one who’d slept with “Charlie.”

She was the one who’d fallen—

She shoved that thought away before it could form. Her fury
dissipated in a flash.

No doubt about it. She was the bigger idiot.

The real Charlie was watching her with open wariness. His twisted his
hands in front of him and his eyes shifted to the doorway behind her.
She could practically see him calculating the burst of speed required
to get him past her and out the door.

She inhaled deeply, keeping a tight hold on her temper before it was
unleashed wholesale on this pathetic excuse for a human being.
Someone else deserved far more of it than this brainless wonder.

She took a step into the room and out of the doorway.

“Get out. Now.”

He leapt toward the door without hesitation. Jess pulled her arm away
as he brushed by, not wanting any part of her to come into contact
with him. Once he was out the door, she had another thought.

“Charlie.”

She heard him stop behind her.

“I will be telling Felicity about this. You might want to start
looking for a new place to live. You will need it, if you’re
still alive once she’s through with you.”

That must have been enough of a threat. He mumbled an agreement and
scurried away, his footsteps loud on the walkway.

Jess didn’t move even after he was long gone. She couldn’t.
She’d gone numb, inside and out. It was like a bomb had blown
up in her face. She was just dazed, frozen with shock.

How had she not known? Her gut had told her from the start that there
was something off about Charlie, or whatever the hell his name was.
She’d known he was more than what he claimed to be. The real
Charlie, now
he
fit what she’d expected. Pretty, but
dumb. Her Charlie wasn’t, despite his efforts to seem so.

Yet she’d ignored her instincts. And she had no one to blame
but herself. After everything she’d been through with Trevor,
after the havoc one liar had brought to her life, to fall hook, line
and sinker for another fraud was inexcusable. She must not have any
survival instincts whatsoever.

Who was he really? The bottom dropped out of her stomach. She’d
done everything with him, shared every part of herself, all with a
man she knew absolutely nothing about.

Desperate need drove her to the dresser the real Charlie had been
searching mere minutes ago. She needed to know who he was. A name, an
address, a reason why. Anything. She had to know.

The dresser yielded nothing. There was nothing personal in it except
his clothes. A search of the closet and bedside table offered nothing
more.

The next thought that came to mind was that she had no reason to
believe the so-called Real Charlie. He hadn’t offered any proof
of his story. She clung to the fragile hope for all it was worth and
reached for the phone next to the bed.

She breathed a sigh of relief when Felicity picked up.

“Jessica, darling. How marvelous to hear from you!”

“Felicity, what color is Charlie’s hair?”

Felicity’s laughter trilled across the line. “Well, it
was black when I left, but I suppose he could have dyed it. Who knows
with actors—”

“Thank you,” Jess cut her off, not in the mood to listen
to Felicity’s prattle. She hung up the phone, then left the
receiver off the hook to keep her godmother from calling back. She
didn’t have time for Felicity now. She had what she needed to
know.

Felicity’s Charlie might have black hair, but Jess knew all too
well that her Charlie was a natural blond.

Which meant it was true. Her Charlie was a lie.

All the strength sapped out of her body. She sank onto the bed,
suddenly unable to even keep her head up. Not that she had any reason
to.

She’d trusted him.

Everything he’d told her was a lie.

She’d been an absolute idiot.

Again.

CALEB DROVE FOR HOURS. He would have been hopelessly lost if he’d
had a destination in mind. He didn’t. Instead he just drove,
letting the coupe eat up miles of highway while he tried to clear his
head and find answers that just wouldn’t come.

There was a never-ending supply of highways in California, but he’d
come to the end of the road in another sense. He was going to have to
tell Jess the truth, and risk losing the best thing he’d ever
found in his life. More likely, there was no risk involved at all. He
was going to lose her. After that business with Hastings in Brazil,
she wouldn’t forgive him for the lies. He’d have to be a
fool to think otherwise. He may have been exactly that the last few
days, but even he couldn’t sell himself that bill of goods.

He hadn’t found the jewel. The insurance company was just going
to have to swallow the loss, and his peerless record would come to an
end. The thief, whoever he was, would get away. That bothered him far
less than the woman he was about to lose, one he hadn’t had any
right to in the first place.

The horizon was already fading into a burnished orange, streaks of
yellow and pink lining the sky, when he turned the car around. The
sun dipped behind the mountains as he pulled through into the
driveway. There were no lights on that he could see. Jess must be
holed up in the office, which faced the other side of the house.

But when he flipped the light on in the entryway, he immediately
spotted her sitting in a chair in the living room. Her profile was to
him, her face pointed toward the view of the pool through the sliding
glass doors.

For a moment, she didn’t react to his presence. She didn’t
blink. Her gaze never wavered from the pool. That was when he knew
something was wrong.

“Jess?”

After a beat, she slowly turned her head to look at him. Her face was
a stony mask. Warning tingles began to crawl up the back of his neck.

“What are you doing sitting in the dark?”

“Waiting for you.” She lifted her hand and extended it to
him. “Come here.”

There was a note in her voice that told him to tread carefully. He
still accepted the gesture and moved across the room to join her.

“Don’t I get a kiss?” she said when he stood in
front of her. There was no affection in her tone, only cool
appraisal. She could have been asking him what the soup of the day
was.