The Pretend Fiancé (26 page)

“Yes, maybe,” Gwen said.

“I can assist you back to your room...” the man said.

“Thanks, but no. I’m okay now, really. The water helped. I feel fine,” Gwen said, illustrating the fact by swinging her legs off the couch and standing up. She nearly fell right back down again as her equilibrium shifted, but she saved herself, refusing an offered hand, “Sorry about all the noise. I really need to find him.”

“It is all right. Should you need any further assistance, please don’t hesitate to call down to the desk. It is manned at all hours,” the auditor said. They both still looked a little concerned at letting her go by herself, but they couldn’t force her to any course of action.

She thanked them and made her way unsteadily to the elevators. One was already at the ground floor, so she entered it and hit the button for her floor. Then she leaned against the corner and held herself, the rail pressing into the small of her back as the trembles started again.

Alone in that cramped, air-conditioned space, her mind tortured her with a replay of Judith’s recorded message. She thought back to the real conversation, about the way Ben shoved his hands into his pockets despite it still being warm enough out that even Gwen hadn’t been cold.

He’d been turning whatever he used to record their conversation on, she knew. And then when he’d walked away, he’d turned it off. He’d manipulated her into saying things that, when taken out of context and shifted around as they’d been, Judith could use against her.

Had he been working for Judith the entire time? Quite possibly, she knew. The anger she felt towards him went a long way toward smothering some of the other feelings wracking her.

However, they wouldn’t help her find Aiden, so she put the anger aside for now. The elevator chimed when it reached her level, and she slipped out through the door before it had even finished opening. The carpeted floor muffled the sound of her running feet.

She nearly fell over when she started going through the clutch she’d brought with her to the ball room. And then even after getting the keycard out, it took a couple attempts to slot it into the reader.

The little green light blinked, accepting the card, and the lock shot back. Gwen worked the latch and put her shoulder to the door.

The lights were on in the sitting area. Had they left the lights on when they left? Gwen couldn’t remember. “Aiden? Are you here? Please answer me!” She stopped to listen, annoyed at the loudness of her own breathing, of the noise of the blood pounding past her ears.

Ten seconds went by with no answer. Twenty. Thirty.

He’s not here
, she knew. Despite that, she called out for him again and once more waited for a response. Any response at all. No one answered, though.

She leaned back against the door and then slid down its polished surface until she sat, drawing her knees up to her chest and then leaning her forehead against them. He wasn’t in the suite. He wasn’t in the lobby. Was he still even in the hotel, or did he at that moment wander around the darkened city streets all by himself?

Gwen didn’t know her way around at all. She’d have no chance of finding him out there.

Another burst of energy filling her, she grabbed her clutch and then upended it, emptying the contents out beside her. She swatted away all the detritus of her daily life, the pack of gum, and tissues, the lip balm and lip stick and lip gloss, until she found what she wanted.

Her phone. She unlocked it and called Aiden, putting the phone to her ear. It went straight to voicemail. She left a message pleading with him to call her as soon as he heard it. Then she held the phone a few inches in front of her face, urging him to call, waiting to hear the ring and see his name pop up on the screen.

He didn’t. So she called again and left another message. Then she sent him a flurry of texts, trying and failing to explain what had happened. She just couldn’t get her thoughts in order long enough before the panic set in again to set everything down in words.

She checked and re-checked to make sure her ringer was on and at maximum volume. Then she checked the service. Full bars. All the texts had been successfully delivered.

Gwen had no way to know if he had read them or not.

A knock at the door sent a spike of shock through her chest, and she pushed herself to her feet.

“Gwen, baby, let me in so we can talk,” David said.

“Go away!” Gwen said.

David quieted long enough that Gwen thought he’d left. Then he said, “Those things Judith played, they’re not true, right? Tell me they’re not true.”

Gwen spun towards the door and slammed her fist against it, her rage flaring again, “How can you even ask me that?”

“It’s just that it sounded like you, and that picture looked real. I didn’t believe. I don’t believe it. Tell me I’m right.”

“You’re right. Now, unless you can tell me where Aiden is, go away and leave me alone.”

“Gwen...”

“Go
away
!” she said, hitting the door again and again. She stopped when the pain in her hand made her. Then she leaned against the door and peered out the peephole. She saw nothing but the door across the hall.

Not sure what else she could do, she huddled by the door again, her phone on the floor beside her. If Aiden came back here, she didn’t want to miss him. If she somehow fell asleep, he’d wake her up when he tried pushing the door open. And she had her phone at full blast.

He has to come here sooner or later, right?
Gwen asked herself. She didn’t know the answer. She hugged her knees to her chest more tightly and watched the phone, her eyes stinging when she refused to blink.

A
iden couldn’t be in that place any longer. In that ballroom, or even in that hotel. He couldn’t shake the pitying looks people had given him as he’d forced his way through the crowds to the exits.

Stan and Barb had been standing nearby, and Barb had called out to him. Aiden had shunned her, ripping his arm out of her grasp when she tried to stop him.

The anger and frustration unleashed within him raged in every fiber and nerve. He slammed his heels down with every step he took through the dark and empty street, the noise ricocheting off the closed storefronts. His hands kept balling into fists, his fingers digging into his palms, until he forced them to relax.

Everything he’d been bottling up since the whole thing started had chosen that moment to burst out, the inner vault in which he kept all his feelings safely tucked away exploding spectacularly.

Would you feel the same way about him?
He remembered the recorded voice asking.
No, of course I wouldn’t
, Gwen had replied.
Of course I wouldn’t. Of course...
Aiden couldn’t turn it off.

Nor could he turn off the images flicking in rapid succession through his mind’s eye. The picture of Ben kissing her hand. The way she stood there in the ballroom, shaking her head. The look of utter satisfaction on Judith’s pinched old face at the whole scene.

He thought of Ben, that sleazy reporter, and his fists clenched again in anticipation of pummeling that face until it was no longer so charming.
It takes two to cheat, remember
, he reminded himself as he again recalled that image Judith had projected.

His phone started buzzing in his pocket and he thumbed the button for the privacy mode that would automatically route all calls to voicemail.

It was Gwen calling. Of course it was Gwen, he knew even before the picture of her smiling face appeared on the fingerprint-smudged screen.

He wanted to doubt what he’d heard, what he’d seen. But the smallest part of him didn’t. A small, vocal part of him that sounded suspiciously like Judith. She had managed to get under his skin, he knew. And he couldn’t dig her back out.

Aiden hated himself for thinking that way about his fiancé, but he also couldn’t deny it. It was a nightmare he’d had all his life, that he’d think he’d found the love of his life, the woman who wanted him for who he was and not what he was worth, only for the ugly, greedy truth to finally reveal itself.

That had actually been one of the myriad of reasons for the original girlfriend contract he’d concocted after meeting her. An easy way out of the relationship if he ever at all suspected that she was just in it only for the money.

Had she fooled him all this time? Could Judith be right, and that he simply couldn’t see Gwen for what she really was?

His phone started buzzing again. He glanced at it. A whirlwind of text messages appeared on his screen, all from Gwen, all incoherent. Autocorrect had wrought havoc with most of them in a manner that he might have found amusing under different circumstances.

He locked the phone again and stuffed it back into his pocket, intent on ignoring all efforts to contact him, at least for a while.

He fought against the idea that she would do that to him. It went against every feeling, every intuition, that he’d ever had about her. Yet he also couldn’t forget what Judith had told him when she’d said that you always thought you knew a person until they did something you didn’t expect. Her meaning, of course, was that you could never truly know another person as you knew yourself.

It hurt Aiden all the more in that Gwen felt like a part of him, an extension of his soul. And maybe that was why he couldn’t control his anger, that even entertaining the very thought that she might be capable of doing this to him was repugnant to what made him who he was.

It started getting colder and colder out as the night wore on. The marching pace Aiden pushed for soon took its toll. His legs burned, his lungs pleaded with him to pause and catch his breath. His back ached.

He fought through it and walked faster. The pain kept his mind focused on the present and away from the deeper hurts. He walked and took random turns. He had no idea where he was and he didn’t care.

He kept going until he reached a small, paved circular space with a fountain in the center of it. The fountain was turned off for the night, the still pool of water in its moat reflecting the pinprick stars above.

And there was also a wooden bench set so that passersby could take a seat for a few minutes and watch the fountain. Without guidance from the rest of him, Aiden’s feet took him to that bench.

He sat and looked at the unfamiliar buildings around him. Stopped like that, the chill to the air began getting to him and he stuffed his hands into his pockets. His fingers brushed against his phone, and he entertained the thought of looking at it before rejecting the notion.

The soles of his feet ached. The shoes he’d pulled on weren’t meant to be subjected to so much walking.

Aiden then thought of returning to the hotel. If he could even find it, that was. However, he rejected that idea, too. Gwen would be waiting back in their suite, he knew. He also knew he could probably just rent another room. But what if someone else came and tried to talk to him?

What if Judith or her butler came searching him out, demanding another audience?

His body also made a compelling argument against even standing up from the bench. He was exhausted in every way a person could be exhausted.

So he lay down on the bench, the wooden boards an unkind pillow. He couldn’t even straighten out, having to keep his legs at an angle in order to prevent his feet from dangling over the ledge.

Despite the cold, the anger, and the discomfort, Aiden passed out within moments of allowing his eyes to shut. The stars twinkling above were his last sight, and the image of Ben kissing Gwen’s hand his final memory.

***

A
n unkind hand shook his shoulder. A voice barked at him in a language he didn’t immediately comprehend.

He opened his eyes and regretted it, the harshness of the sun constricting his pupils painfully.

The hand shook him again, the voice growing more irritated with his lack of cooperation. “Yes, just give me a moment,” Aiden said, his voice cracking up through his dry throat.

Trying to guard against some of that light, he put a hand over his eyes as he grabbed the back of the bench to pull himself up into a sitting position.

That was a mistake, too. Muscles tensed and cramped from spending the night on the hard, uncomfortable boards stretched and pulled. He sucked in a breath when his spine began popping.

“
Englisch?
” the unkind and commanding voice said.

“Yes, English. American, rather,” Aiden said, rubbing at his eyes, trying to rid them of the bruised afterimage the sun had burned into them so quickly.

“You cannot sleep here.”

“Sorry... officer,” Aiden said, blinking rapidly seemed to help. He made out the outline of a tall man in a dark uniform which quickly resolved into the image of a Swiss police officer standing over him, his hands on his hips in a most disapproving fashion.

The officer gave him a once over, clearly confused why a man wearing an obviously expensive suit would have to sleep on a bench. The badge on his cap glinted in the morning sunlight.

The cop watched Aiden impassively as he stood up from the bench, Aiden grimacing at the various aches and pains that accompanied such a procedure. Aiden tugged at his jacket, which now had several creases in it from being slept on. His slacks were the same way.

His hand strayed to the pockets where he kept his phone and wallet, and he experienced a momentary relief when he discovered that neither had been stolen from him during the night.

“Am I getting a fine?” Aiden asked.

“Did you have a good reason for sleeping on that most uncomfortable appearing bench?” the officer asked.

Aiden sighed and nodded as all the memories from the previous night, no longer held at bay by sleep, charged back into his thoughts.

“Then perhaps a warning will suffice,” the officer said. “I will, however, insist that you leave the area as well.”

“Of course, yeah. Thanks,” Aiden said. He started off, going back down the way he thought he’d come. He quickly realized that he had no clue where he was, and hadn’t any idea how to get back to the hotel.