Prologue
He watched them as he’d been asked to, snapping photograph after photograph. They looked happy and in love. This was one assignment that made him satisfied. She was a good girl: sweet, innocent, smart, and real. She wasn’t a gold digger like all the others, and that made him happy.
His phone rang and he answered it eagerly; he was always excited when one of his sons called.
“Dad, I wanted to know if you wanted to come to dinner tonight? We’re going to try out the new Italian place on Amsterdam.”
“Sure, I’ll be finished with work in about an hour.” He turned the ignition in his car as he watched the couple leave the restaurant. “But I gotta go now. I’ll see you later, Matt.”
He hung up before his son could answer and put his camera on the seat. He couldn’t afford to lose them tonight. Mr. Hastings had been very clear in his instructions. He smiled to himself as he thought about the money he was going to receive for the assignment. He looked down at the passenger seat to make sure that the envelope was still there. He would drop it off before going to dinner. Mr. Hastings would have the information to read in the morning. And then he could make his own decisions about what to do.
Chapter 1
Katie
I stepped back into the corridor with my heart pounding. Why was Matt calling Brandon? He didn’t know Brandon. Brandon didn’t know him. It just didn’t make sense to me. What was going on here? I knew I had two choices: I could go and confront Matt and ask him what was going on, or I could pretend I didn’t know anything and try to find out the information another way. I stood in the corridor and thought for a moment. Clearly, Brandon knew Matt and Matt knew Brandon. Which meant that Brandon had been playing me from the beginning of my trip to San Francisco. He had used Matt to gain information on me. I didn’t know when he had found out about Matt, but I did know that all his questions about my boyfriend were false. Which meant that he was playing me. He had deliberately tried to hurt me. The man I loved had used me. And I didn’t know why.
I walked back to the front door and exited quickly. If Matt had kept it a secret from me, it meant that he didn’t want me to know. I knew that asking him what was going on wasn’t going to result in any real answers either. I was sure he had a lie prepared and ready to go if I ever asked him too many questions. I bit my lip as I walked down the empty streets. It was starting to make sense—well, a bit of it was. I’d always been surprised that Matt had never really tried to touch me. He’d never made love to me, and even his kisses had seemed lackluster at times. I thought it was because he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to control himself if we got too passionate. Now I wondered if he had been holding back for another reason. What if Brandon had recently started tracking me like I had been tracking him? What if he realized I was dating Matt and had offered him a large sum of money to not sleep with me and to keep tabs on me? He was trying to dictate my love life even though he had a fiancée and didn’t want to be with me himself. Other than sexually—of course he wanted me sexually. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. But that meant nothing special. What was sex, really, at the end of the day?
I didn’t want to go right home. I didn’t want to involve Meg and worry her. I knew that she was stressed as it was. I mean, who wanted to go from being a lawyer to a bartender?
I decided to slip into a bar to have a drink and think. It would stop me from pulling my hair out and crying.
“Vodka on the rocks, please.” I slid onto a barstool and smiled at the bartender. He was cute, with an ‘I just arrived in the big city’ look.
“No chaser?” He smiled.
“Do I look like I need a chaser?” I shook my head and ran my hands through my hair.
“Long day?”
“More like a long seven years.” I sighed.
“Want to talk about it?” He gave me a slow, wide smile and I shook my head.
“You don’t have all night.”
“I could have all night, if you wanted me to.” He stared back at me and looked me up and down. I realized that he was flirting with me, and a rush of warmness fled to my skin. I smiled back at him—a lazy, not-interested-but-thank-you smile—and he leaned forward and grabbed my hands. “Don’t decide yet. The night is still young.” He handed me a glass and I sipped at the vodka. It went smoothly down my throat, warming me up from the inside, and I started to feel a little more relaxed.
“Sex is about power for men. Why is that?” I spoke to the bartender, who had stopped in front of me.
“I don’t know. Because women let it be about that?” He shrugged. “So you’re mad about a guy? Let me guess, you and your long-term boyfriend recently broke up because you caught him cheating?”
I laughed as he stared at me, looking so confident and sure of himself. He had an arrogant yet sincere vibe about him. I stared at his face clinically. On second glance, he was a lot more handsome than I had first realized.
“So am I right?”
“Does it matter?” I handed him my glass. “Another vodka on the rocks, please. Make it a double.”
“Drinking away your sorrows?”
“More like drinking away the questions in my head.”
“Why don’t you do what we guys do? Just f**k someone else. It’s the quickest and easiest way to get over someone.”
“I wish it was that easy.” I stared at the counter. I hadn’t had sex with anyone other than Brandon. I didn’t even know what it would feel like to be with another man. I guess I knew why Matt hadn’t been interested now. Though I wish I knew the full story.
Beep beep.
I picked up my cell phone and saw a text message from Brandon. I glared at the phone and put it back in my pocket without reading the message. I didn’t care what he wanted. I grabbed the new glass that the bartender handed me and downed the vodka in two gulps. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and read the message. I couldn’t resist checking it.
“Call me. Now.”
I stared at the message for a few minutes before deleting it and putting my phone into my pocket. Who did he think he was? Call him now? Why? Had Maria stepped out to go the gym or something? I was done with being used and abused by him. I was not his plaything.
“Another double, please.” I smiled at the bartender and played with my hair.
“Do you want to wait a bit?” He frowned as he looked at me. “You’re too pretty to get drunk and make bad mistakes tonight.”
“What if you’re the bad mistake?” I flirted with him and he paused as he stared at me. He shook his head and poured some more vodka into a new glass.
“Here.” He handed me the glass and his fingers grabbed mine. “But this is the last one. If we go home together, I want to know it’s because you wanted to be with me and not because you’re drunk.”
“You’re pretty full of yourself.” I raised an eyebrow at him, leaned forward, and slowly licked my lips. “If I want another drink, I expect another drink.”
“And if you want to f**k me tonight, you need to slow down,” he whispered against my lips lightly and his tongue licked my lower lip slowly. I sat back and looked at him in a daze.
“You kissed me.” I stared at him in shock, rubbing my fingers against my lips.
“That wasn’t a kiss.” He winked at me.
“Your lips touched mine.”“Come here.” He leaned toward me and I stared up into his bright green eyes in wonder. He bent down and grabbed the back of my head, and his lips pressed against mine firmly as he kissed me properly this time. I felt his tongue trying to work its way into my mouth, but even though I enjoyed the kiss, I wasn’t ready to make it more intimate. I pulled away from him, dazed. “Now that was a kiss.” He grinned and walked to the other side of the bar to help another customer.
Beep beep.
My phone vibrated and buzzed again. I grabbed it from my pocket and checked my messages. It was Brandon again.
“Katie, you need to call me now.”
“Whatever,” I mumbled under my breath. “So you can f**k me and leave again?” I was about to put my phone back in my pocket but decided to text back instead. “Fuck off.” I pressed send.
Within seconds he had replied. “I can’t without you.” I stared at the words, confused.
“That makes no sense,” I texted back quickly, wanting to stop responding, but not knowing how.
He texted back immediately again, and for a second, my heart soared that he was thinking of me. “Call me, Katie. I want to hear your voice.” I stared at his words and wanted to throw the phone to the ground and stomp on it, and then I wanted to stomp on myself. Why was I so happy at his words? Why did I feel like I was flying just because he had texted me a bunch of crap? I wanted to delete his messages and him from my life. I rubbed my lips again, thinking about what the bartender had said. Maybe I did need to have sex with someone else. Maybe that would be the easiest way to get over Brandon. I didn’t want him to have this hold over me anymore.
Beep beep.
The phone vibrated again and I stared at the latest message. “Are you there? Call me, now.” I stared at the phone, feeling tired. My brain was overwhelmed by everything that had happened in the last couple of weeks. And then the phone started ringing. I answered it without thinking.
“Hello?”
“I told you to call me.” Brandon’s voice was angry.
“So?”
“I want to see you.”
“I don’t want to see you.” I glared into the phone. “What’s the problem?” I hissed.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I mumbled. I didn’t want him to know that I knew that he knew Matt. Not yet. Not until I decided what I was going to do.
“I miss you, Katie.”
“Where’s Maria?”
“Does it matter?”
“What do you think?” My voice rose. “You’re an asshole.”
“I don’t love Maria.” His words were firm.
“Piss off!” I shouted into the phone, though my heart leaped with joy at his words. My brain screamed at me to stop feeling excited.
“I want to hold you,” he drawled. “I’ve missed hearing your voice.”
“I’ve got to go,” I mumbled, not really wanting to hang up.
“Don’t go. Not yet.” His voice was urgent. “Where are you? Let me come and take you home.”
“How do you know I’m not home?”
“Where are you, Katie?” His voice was harsh.
“What do you care?” I went to have another gulp of vodka, but it was all gone. “Hey, bartender, come here,” I called out. He walked over to me slowly with a wicked grin on his face.
“How can I help you, beautiful? Want another kiss?” He laughed and I shook my head.
“Another vodka, please. We can talk about the kiss later.” I giggled at him, wanting Brandon to hear the conversation.
“Where the f**k are you, Katie?” Brandon’s voice was angrier than I had ever heard before.
“Sorry, I have to go now. Tell Maria I said hello.” And then I hung up and turned the phone off so that I wouldn’t have to hear it beeping or ringing anymore.
“Who was that?” The bartender handed me a new glass, and I sipped eagerly.
“This tastes like water,” I groaned, annoyed and ignoring his question.
“That’s because it is.” He stared at me. “I don’t get involved with girls who have issues or relationship problems, but I’m going to make an exception for you. The only thing is, I don’t want you to be passed out when we hook up.”
“That’s assuming a lot.”
“You want to get over your ex, right?” He shrugged. “Trust me, when I’m done with you, you won’t even remember his name.”
I sat back, sipped the water, and tried to stop the rush of tears that came to my eyes. I couldn’t look at the bartender. It didn’t matter how hot he was. I couldn’t sleep with him, not when all I wanted was Brandon. The bartender stood in front of me, licking his lips sensually, and I jumped off of the barstool and ran out of the bar, not even remembering to pay. I ran down the street, crying and thinking about what the bartender had said so casually. He’d said that by the time he was finished with me, I wouldn’t even remember Brandon’s name, and my heart broke. I didn’t even want to think of a possibility where I couldn’t remember Brandon. I loved him with all my heart. And even though my heart was breaking, I didn’t want to move on with some casual sex. Not yet. Not now. Not when every part of me was crying out to be with the man I loved. The man I had spent the last seven years thinking about. I loved him as much as I hated him, and I wanted to make him pay. But I needed to do it on my terms. And I needed to plan it out. That was the only way I could be sure that I could finally move on.
I sat on a bench in Central Park for about two hours before some policemen moved me on. I saw the concern in their eyes as they looked at my tear-streaked face, but they didn’t ask me what was wrong. I suppose they knew better than to ask a crying lady what was wrong unless she was walking up to them with an issue. I was tired when I finally got to my apartment complex. I was standing at the main door, searching for my keys when I felt someone grab me. I tried to scream, but my voice was hoarse and nothing came out.
“Where have you been?” Brandon’s nostrils flared as he stared down at me with darkened eyes.
“Out.” I pulled away from him, my heart beating faster.