Deception: The Deception Trilogy, Book 1

by Fallon Hart

  The butler, a man who introduced himself as Xavier, had ushered Octavius and I into an elevator to the right of the large staircase. Using a keycard system he accessed the penthouse floor and the elevator let us out directly into the huge apartment. Apartment seemed like the wrong word entirely. We stepped out into an elegant, marble-floored hallway and Xavier referred to our left as the west wing and our right as the east wing.

  It had wings.

  From the little I’d seen so far Mandeville’s home was elegantly decorated with a masculine edge. In the drawing room we’d been delivered to, the sofas were designed like modern Chesterfields, square rather than round-edged. The tables were marble, the floor hardwood but covered with light-colored rugs. Usually I wasn’t a fan of traditional design aesthetic, preferring a cool contemporary style, but I understood whoever designed the interior of Mandeville’s penthouse was trying to stay sympathetic to the building. I thought they’d done an excellent job of marrying tradition with the twenty-first century.

  “Baby, settle,” Octavius said. He gestured to the sofa opposite his. “Sit.”

  Xavier had left us in a drawing room of sorts where a fire blazed in a beautiful fireplace. Even though it was damp outside, I could have done without the fire. I was already sweating with nerves and worried it would show on my dress.

  Anna had found the dress at Bvlgari. It was technically a green cocktail dress and although it had a more than modest hemline, hitting my calves, it fitted to my body like a second skin. The neckline cut low and slashed across as if the straps were going to be off-the-shoulder, but my upper chest was covered with a pleated chiffon that was sewn into the neckline and came down in little cap sleeves. You had to be looking closely to get an eyeful of cleavage. It was the prettiest, sexiest, classiest dress I’d ever worn in my life but I couldn’t really raise my arms in it.

  My shoes were amazing. It was difficult not to stare at them. But they also weren’t shoes I would have ever chosen for myself. They were René Caovilla T-Bar stilettos. They had a white leather four inch heel, the T-Bar leather strap was covered in rose-gold Swarovski crystal that swept down to the pointed toe to create a sparkling border between a patchwork of black suede, white leather, and another strip of rose-gold Swarovski along the side of the toe. They were unusual, sexy but somehow really classy. They also cost double my rent!

  “I can’t sit,” I huffed. “I’m afraid I’ll wrinkle.”

  And I wasn’t just dressed for my first meeting with Mandeville. Our first meeting was going to lead to our first public date. It was all so fast, so scary, but Griffin Mandeville apparently didn’t want to delay. And as far as he was aware we had already met twice.

  We heard the elevator door open out in the hall, and Octavius stood up from the couch, as my heart started pounding at the sound of footsteps striding toward the drawing room.

  My breath caught as an imposing figure of a man stopped inside the doorway.

  Holy…

  Was this…

  No.

  “Mandeville.” Octavius nodded to him.

  Shit, it was.

  My husband-to-be was not what I’d imagined. At all.

  For some reason, when Octavius told me Mandeville was the son of a British aristocrat I’d started picturing a fair-haired, Byronic figure of a man.

  He was not that.

  Instead he had dark brown hair and was as tall as Octavius, putting him at around six foot two, and he had a broad chest and shoulders that suggested he lifted weights. The broadness tapered to a trim waist, narrow hips and long legs. His three-piece suit was tailored to perfection but he wore no tie, his crisp white shirt open at the collar to reveal a tan, corded throat.

  Then there was his face.

  He took a couple more steps into the room and I found my gaze snagged in his dark, penetrating stare. He had brooding dark brown eyes matched by a petulant mouth. I tried not to look too long at his mouth but it was difficult. I’d never seen such sensual lips on a man before—full, pouting lips, the lower a little fuller than the top. He had a cut jaw-line, unshaven cheeks, and a severe, penetrating stare. The opposing harmony of all of that created an affect I couldn’t imagine didn’t dazzle every straight woman and gay man who came into contact with him.

  And I had to pretend to be his wife.

  Holy. Crap.

  His gaze dragged down my body and back up again, his expression almost clinical. “Anna did an excellent job.” His accent was divine—a crisp, cultured English accent that made my toes curl in pleasure.

  “Yeah, she looks the shit,” Octavius agreed, grinning boldly at me.

  I rolled my eyes at him which only made him grin harder.

  “You’re happy with the wardrobe?” Griffin asked, drawing my gaze back to him.

  I forced myself not to fidget or flush under his intense stare. “Everything is lovely. Thank you. I hope you’re aware, however, of how much money some of these items cost.” I stuck my right foot out. “It’s a little weird to be walking around in thirteen hundred dollar shoes.”

  The words came out in a nervous babble but I knew I’d made a mistake as soon as I said them. I was supposed to be a high-end escort, one who was used to designer labels.

  Octavius shook his head slightly at me.

  And Griffin… well, whatever attraction I felt toward him died in that moment. “Someone afraid of spending my money? How novel.”

  “Mandeville,” Octavius said looking very serious. “I need a word. In private.” He nodded at me to stay where I was and strode out of the room.

  Avoiding Griffin’s gaze, I waited until he’d left the room to creep across it to eavesdrop. Thankfully, Octavius didn’t take him too far from the room.

  “What’s the issue?” I heard Griffin ask.

  “I’m laying down the law now. You call her a prostitute, a whore, or any other synonyms of the those words and you’re going to answer to me. That goes for treating her like one too.”

  “Excuse me?” There was an ominous note in Griffin’s voice. So ominous it made me shiver. “I don’t like the assumption I would, Octavius. Moreover, have you forgotten this is a debt? Your debt.”

  “No. But I run an escort service. I’m not a two-bit pimp. I look out for my bitches and my bitches are treated well. And that bitch in there ain’t no ordinary bitch so you’re going to treat her with fucking respect or you answer to me.”

  I flushed, confused by Octavius’s defense of me, and I strained to hear Griffin’s response.

  “I don’t remember you being this propriety of Melanie last time we met.”

  Melanie.

  Right.

  “Life forced this gig on her—she’s doing what she has to do to survive. But underneath all this shit she’s a class piece and a good woman. She’s no prostitute and she’s not whoring for you. You remember that.”

  “You know I don’t pay for sex,” Griffin replied.

  “Yeah, you couldn’t afford her anyway. You get me?”

  “Message received.”

  I skittered back to my place by the couch just in time as Griffin and Octavius re-entered the room. Griffin’s expression was still cool and remote.

  “Baby, I gotta leave,” Octavius snapped but I knew it wasn’t at me. I had a suspicion that maybe he was worried about me. Which was weird to say the least. He pulled a cell out of the inner pocket of his suit and took my hand to rest it in my palm. “New cell. Got my number on it if you need me, yeah?”

  I nodded, my throat closing. He had scared me, had put me in this awful position because of his threat against my sister’s life, but for some stupid reason he also made me feel safe. I didn’t want him to leave. How messed up was that?

  He tugged me closer, bending his head toward me. “I mean that, yeah? I take care of my girls. You’ll call if you need me?”

  “Yes, I’ll call,” I replied softly.

  Something dark glinted in Octavius’s eyes, something I couldn’t quite read, but if I was feeling naïve I
might say it was remorse.

  He abruptly let me go and strode out of the room. Leaving me there.

  With him.

  Reminding myself I was supposed to be a confident escort like my sister, I forced myself to look at Griffin.

  His eyes narrowed. “Are you fucking your boss, sweetheart?”

  He had the kind of voice that shivered through a woman, so rumbling and deep and masculine, it was hard to believe it was real. Mixed with that accent… He definitely didn’t need to pay for a woman.

  I shook my head at the absurd question. “Why would you think that?”

  Griffin smirked. “Because he wants to fuck you.”

  Blood rushed to my cheeks and I couldn’t stop it, no matter how hard I tried. “No he doesn’t,” I huffed, extremely uncomfortable with the idea of Octavius thinking about me in that way.

  Griffin’s gaze sharpened on my face. “How is it possible to do what you do for a living and still blush like a schoolgirl?”

  There was something mocking underneath his seemingly bland tone that irked me. I straightened my shoulders and attempted to channel my sister. “I think if we’re going to pretend to be a couple, Griffin, that you should probably stop bringing that up. People will pick up on the fact that you don’t respect me.”

  And how much it hurt to not be respected. I’d never not been respected before… and suddenly I didn’t like getting a taste of how Mel must have felt on a regular basis.

  “It’s not that I don’t respect you. I respect anyone who does whatever it takes to survive. I just… I hate that I’ve been put in this position. I don’t mean to take it out on you.” He stepped toward me and I took a step back. His eyebrows rose. “Why so skittish of a sudden? Last we spoke you were flirting so hard it’s a wonder you didn’t drop to your knees and unzip my trousers.”

  I flushed again. That sounded like Mel.

  “There’s that blush again. I don’t remember that blush. You do know I’m going to have to hold and kiss you in public, Miss Jennings?”

  “You should call me Melanie,” I replied and foraged for an answer to his question. “I… uh… I’m not used to being with men who don’t like me. It’s easier to be comfortable around a man when you know he wants to be in your company.”

  That sounded logical, right?

  Suddenly he sighed, dragging a hand through his hair as he turned away from me. “I’m fucking this up. After all my lectures to you last time about you not fucking it up, I’m fucking it up.”

  Lectures?

  Octavius had filled me in on what he knew of my sister’s meeting with Griffin but he hadn’t mentioned the man had lectured her. Or that she had obviously tried to tempt him to make their relationship a little bit less fake.

  It was extremely disconcerting pretending to be someone else. In our youth Mel had often pretended to be me without my consent, causing mischief and sometimes mayhem. I, the well-behaved twin, had never willingly taken part in her games or pretended to be her before.

  “Maybe if you try to forget that I’m a…” It was hard for me to say the word since it was a lie, “And think of me as… well whoever it is I’m supposed to be…”

  He turned back to me, studied me thoughtfully for a second or two, and then gave a sharp nod. “Fine. I’ve left a folder in your room for you to read through with your new identity in it. Tonight we’re going for dinner and cocktails. I’ve paid one of the society pages photographers to trail us so we can start to be ‘seen’ out and about. If we bump into any of my associates we go with the story in the folder. The gist of it is that we met up in London while you were visiting friends and I was on business. You’re an independently wealthy orphan. That way no one will be crass enough to ask questions about your family.”

  Except for the wealthy part, it was pretty much true so that wouldn’t be hard to play.

  “We first met when you were studying English at the University of London. English is one of those generic majors that people rarely ask more involved questions about so you should get away with that even without a college education.”

  I couldn’t tell him that unlike my sister I actually was college educated and I had a degree in English and Library Information. I did not appreciate his pretentious tone regarding the degree. However, he wasn’t the first person to turn his nose up at my English degree. Assholes.

  “The timing wasn’t right for us then. We met in London again a few weeks ago and we decided to give it a go. It will make our quick engagement more believable if it’s thought we already have history. Got that?”

  “What if they ask more in-depth questions?”

  “They won’t immediately. It’s impolite. You can read everything in the folder after our date tonight so you’re not caught unawares later.”

  “Okay.” I’d just have to trust that he was right.

  “I’m going to change for dinner. I’ll show you to your suite first.”

  I followed him out of the drawing room and down the hallway. “Will your staff find it strange that I’m sleeping in a separate suite? Or do they know this is a fake arrangement?”

  “They don’t know it’s a fake arrangement but I pay my staff a highly competitive wage because I depend on them to guard my privacy. They know not to talk.”

  My suite was in the east wing of the penthouse and it was disconcertingly palatial. High ceilings allowed the presence of a massive four-poster bed in the center. At the bottom of the bed was an elegant pink velvet chaise longue. There was a sitting area with a large sideboard on which sat a television. There was a dressing table, armoire, and dresser. Everything was in the Louis XIV style in champagnes, rose golds and pinks. Beyond the sitting area was an open door and I could see clothes hanging up. Obviously it was a dressing room.

  The bedroom suite was beautiful.

  But so not me.

  The only aspect of cozy was the fireplace which wasn’t currently cozy because it wasn’t lit.

  “All of your new things have been put away for you,” Griffin said at my back. “There’s a bathroom adjacent from the bed, a dressing room beyond the sitting area where all your things from today’s spree have been put away. Tomorrow, Xavier will show you the rest of the apartment and I’ll give you a credit card so you can get whatever else you need. Peter Svenson, my club factotum, will show you around The Patrician if you’re interested.

  “I’ll meet you at the elevator in an hour. Oh and,” his tone drew my gaze, “We have to be straight with my father’s lawyer about who you really are because he will background check you to make sure we’re not lying, but here, among Boston Society, you’re Melanie Jennings, independently wealthy, wannabe socialite.”

  I nodded, feeling suddenly very cold and alone. “Where is your room?”

  His expression somehow managed to gain new heights of aloofness. “I have a suite in the west wing but you’ll refrain from ever entering my personal rooms.”

  Put in my place, I turned away to take in my new surroundings, listening as his footsteps faded back down the hallway.

  “I’m going to kill you myself, Mel,” I whispered.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Before meeting Griffin at the elevator, I freshened up in my opulent private bathroom, and then I started reading through the folder that had been left on my bed. A knot grew in my stomach as I realized how big this deception was going to be.

  I was going to be Melanie Olivia Jennings-Mandeville for eighteen months of my life until my sister could take my place once she got out of prison. After all she was the one legally going to be married to this guy. It would be her name on the marriage certificate.

  That suited me just fine.

  In fact it made me feel a whole lot better.

  According to Griffin’s folder, to everyone here in Boston, Melanie Jennings was from Charlottesville, Virginia but they didn’t know she hadn’t graduated high school with her GED and then gone on to lose crappy job after crappy job. She didn’t do time in a women’s penitentiary for a DUI tha
t caused danger to life. And she wasn’t a high-end escort getting paid to pretend to be some guy’s wife. It shouldn’t have surprised me that Griffin knew the truth about Melanie’s background. He knew about our parents and alarmingly he also knew about me, Scarlett, and that I was a librarian, although he had me down as living in Charlottesville and working at my old library there.

  Beyond the information we would provide to his lawyer (everything that was true about Mel except the escort work) was the info we’d shared with the people in his social circle. Now she (I) was Melanie Jennings from Charlottesville whose parents died when she was eighteen years old in a car accident, leaving her a small fortune in life insurance payout that she had shrewdly invested. She’d attended the University of London where she graduated as an English major. For the last few years she’d travelled the world and had decided to settle in Boston after rekindling a romance with Griffin.

  There was also a backstory on Griffin and that was the really interesting stuff.

  He was just about to turn twenty-nine years old, something I knew, but it surprised me after meeting him because he had the self-assurance of a more mature man.

  He was born in Kensington, London and split his time between there with his father and in Boston with his mother. His father, George Mandeville IV was a British earl and politician. Griffin’s mother, Emily Christie, was a Boston socialite. They divorced when Griffin was four years old. He was raised by nannies in London and by his mother in Boston, but his mother died of ovarian cancer when he was thirteen years old. His father sent him to Eton, a boarding college in England, where he remained until he graduated at eighteen. From there Griffin got into Wharton Business School. By the time he graduated he’d already created a business portfolio that allowed him to break free of his father’s money and influence. George Mandeville died when Griffin was twenty-five but the folder didn’t say how he died. Instead it relayed what I already knew. Griffin’s father had left a significant inheritance to his only living heir but he was required to have settled down and married by his thirtieth birthday in order to receive it. It seemed like such an odd request considering Griffin wasn’t some wayward son who had done very little with his life. I wanted to ask Griffin about the codicil in the will but knew it was too personal a question for now.