The Pretend Boyfriend novel Chapter 78

She looks up and freezes.

Brian holds up his palms. "No. Don't scream. Adie ... I remember who you are. I remember everything."

Delilah Faulkner, the former Adie Jankovic, takes a step back. "Come any closer and I will scream," she warns. She reaches inside her purse. Possibly for mace. Or to dial 911.

It pains him that she thinks of him in this way - as though he really is a rapist. But he knows better now.

"I'm not here to hurt you. I just want to talk," he says.

"I have nothing to say to you."

His heart is churning like a windmill. Careful, don't lose her. "Please, I'm here to bargain."

"Do that in front of the judge."

"Not for myself ... but for Samantha. She has done nothing wrong."

"The surveillance cameras beg to differ."

"What she did, she did for me. On my behalf. I asked her to do it." He knows it's a lie, but anything to protect Sam. "She's innocent. If you want to blame someone, blame me."

"I already did."

He can tell that she's softening her stance ... a little. He takes a step forward, and she doesn't move. "Please, Adie, I manipulated Sam into doing what she did. Just as ... "

It hurts him to say it.

" ... I manipulated you," he finishes. "I figured of all people ... you'd understand that."

He can see the wheels in Adie's head turning. God, he still can't think of this woman before him as sweet, shy Adie - who wore her precious heart on her sleeve, just waiting for someone like him to tear it into a million pieces. They don't even look alike, except for the height. And even that differed. Adie wore sensible shoes. This woman wears three-inch high pumps, and is every inch the confident barracuda.

I made her this way.

OK, maybe not totally, but I played a major part.

Somehow, conversely, he prefers the old Adie. The one who was shy and sweet and innocent, who looked up at him with loving eyes when he was fucking her. Not this beauteous, buxom, red-haired vixen who had seemed to step out, fully born, from Zeus's head.

"Let's talk," he says again when she didn't reply. "But not here. Let's go someplace else."

"You're wearing a wire," she accuses.

"No. I swear it." He holds up his hands to emphasize the point.

She says calculatedly, "I want you to prove it."

"And why would I want to do that in the midst of all the hard evidence?" Her eyes glint.

"Because I'll do anything you want." There, he said it, and the anchor dropped heavily from his chest. "I don't have much money right now ... you made sure of that ... but the gym is doing well, and I'll have more coming in."

He's aware that he's offering himself up on a silver platter to be blackmailed.

He continues, licking his lower lip, "And there's more. I have a new apartment right now, but I can sell that."

She listens to all this, contemplating.

"In short," she says, "you're giving me everything you own."

"Yes."

"What if that's not what I want?"

He swallows. "You want to see me humbled in court. You want to see me go to prison."

It was a fact.

Adie says harshly, her face white in the glare of the overhead lamps, "So that you'd be a piece of meat to be fucked repeatedly by all the hardcore prisoners? Fucked until you are nothing but a shell? You will be, you know, pretty boy."