Faker: A Fake Relationship Romance Read online

  Contents

  Faker

  Faker

  Disclaimer

  1. Marley Jacobs

  2. Marley Jacobs

  3. Fletcher Creed

  4. Marley Jacobs

  5. Fletcher Creed

  6. Marley Jacobs

  7. Fletcher Creed

  8. Marley Jacobs

  9. Fletcher Creed

  10. Marley Jacobs

  11. Marley Jacobs

  12. Marley Jacobs

  13. Fletcher Creed

  14. Marley Jacobs

  15. Fletcher Creed

  16. Marley Jacobs

  17. Marley Jacobs

  18. Marley Jacobs

  19. Marley Jacobs

  20. Fletcher Creed

  21. Marley Jacobs

  22. Marley Jacobs

  23. Fletcher Creed

  24. Marley Jacobs

  25. Fletcher Creed

  26. Marley Jacobs

  27. Marley Jacobs

  28. Marley Jacobs

  29. Marley Jacobs

  30. Marley Jacobs

  31. Marley Jacobs

  32. Fletcher Creed

  33. Marley Jacobs

  34. Fletcher Creed

  35. Marley Jacobs

  36. Fletcher Creed

  37. Marley Jacobs

  38. Fletcher Creed

  39. Marley Jacobs

  40. Fletcher Creed

  41. Marley Jacobs

  42. Marley Jacobs

  43. Fletcher Creed

  44. Marley Jacobs

  45. Marley Jacobs

  46. Marley Jacobs

  47. Fletcher Creed

  48. Marley Jacobs

  49. Fletcher Creed

  Fletcher Creed

  “A mask tells us more than a face”

  ~ Oscar Wilde

  Copyright

  Faker. Copyright © 2020 by Christie Tegan. All rights reserved.

  This copy is intended only for the purchaser of this ebook. This ebook may not be resold or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author. Thank you for respecting the work of this author by purchasing and/or reading only authorized editions.

  ISBN: 978-1-5136-6124-7

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. References may be herein contained to historical events and/or authentic locations; however, the names, characters, incidents, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner.

  Cover by Indianboy Design

  Copyediting services by Printed Matter

  Formatting by Romig Works LLC

  Disclaimer

  Warning: This novel contains mature themes and sexual situations. Some explicit language is used. It is intended for adults over the age of eighteen.

  1

  Marley Jacobs

  SWEATING BULLETS AND wobbling on my red stilettos, I stand outside apartment 10J in the newest glass tower to go up in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago. My heart is galloping Kentucky Derby-style in my chest—to say I’m nervous is kind of like saying Dante’s ninth circle of hell is sort of tropical. Behind this crystalline-blue metal door and at this very minute is a woman in the throes of cheating on her husband. If my timing is right, she’s literally in the throes of it.

  How do I know?

  Her husband told me.

  Harold T. Bonelle—Harry T-bone to his friends—is my newest client. He’s a thirty-nine-year-old digital forensic accountant with a healthy trust fund that he got control of at age thirty. Huge coincidence, that was the same year he married Corinne O’Rourke, his wife of nine years. When Harold hired me yesterday afternoon, he told me specifically what to wear, right down to my undergarments. No, he’ll never see those to verify—he’ll just have to trust that I followed his instructions to the letter.

  I’m not a prostitute, call girl, or escort, by the way.

  No, I’m a faker.

  My name is Marley Jacobs—my real name, that is. Marley was the only name my parents could agree on—they rarely agreed on anything and when it came to me usually didn’t care enough to have an argument. It’s not that my parents are mean or abusive, but they just raised me with a kind of distracted affection in between ignoring each other, bickering when they happened to notice each other, and then at long last, divorcing. I guess some people might even call that a form of child abuse—benign neglect.

  Anyway, not too long ago, I found my way to an unusual employment opportunity—sort of like a game of pretense. Personally, I like to think of myself as an actress. It’s just that I play roles for a very narrow audience, sometimes of a single person but usually a few more. Clients, mostly men, hire me to be whatever it is they need me to be at a moment’s notice. I’ve played wives, girlfriends, divorce attorneys, personal assistants—one woman even had me play a contract killer.

  That one made me nervous as hell, I have to say, but the paycheck soothed my anxiety, and she assured me my life was at no time in any danger nor was her husband’s. I told her I would not be involved in any threat to anyone’s life, and she assured me that she just wanted to introduce me as a killer to him. Her soon-to-be ex-husband, she swore to me up and down, was a total wuss as well as a mean bastard—to use her vocabulary—and she just wanted to give him something to think about. Mission accomplished. I thought he was going to need a change of briefs for sure.

  Yesterday, my current client, Harold, gave me the key to his tenth-floor apartment along with explicit instructions. Go in and hopefully catch them in the act, in flagrante delicto, he called it. I don’t know Latin but I do know adultery when I see it. And at that point I’m to do my little speech and leave. All of which earns me a fee of almost three grand for less than two hours of my time, including travel time. Not too shabby and just like that, a month of my condo rent is paid.

  But at this particular moment, I’d rather be anywhere but here. “Oh my God, I so don’t want to do this,” I whisper to the door. The other part of me—the braver part—snaps back, “Just get it done. Now.”

  By nature, I’m a shy, self-doubting person. Walking in on people having sex is not something that appeals to me. Not something that would ever appeal to me. Yes, I project myself as a confident, assertive woman—it’s my job—but in reality, I’m shy, especially when it comes to things involving s-e-x. It was ingrained in me by Catholic school, strict nuns, and the whole shebang. But each job is different, and some are easier than others. For tough assignments like this one, I have to give myself a talking-to.

  Marley Jacobs, I say, just get through the next… and then fill in the blank. It could be fifteen minutes, an hour, two days, or a week. And then you’re home free with a stack of Benjamins to deposit in your bank account. And that is a great motivator because for so long I was desperately broke.

  Inserting the key into the lock, I pull in a deep breath. It’s the same with every job, that goosey moment I need to slide inside the skin of a make-believe person and force her to life. The tumbler on the lock flips and with it so does my stomach, and I twist the brushed-nickel handle. The door swings inward with a slight creak and I slip inside. Music is playing in an interior room, but it isn’t loud. Ariana Grande. I think Harold was spot-on when he said that I was almost sure to catch them now at one o’clock in the afternoon. Lunchtime.

  Brings new meaning to the term hot lunch.

  Ugh, and using that term—hot lunch—reminds me of that Catholic school and its mystery-meat-in-gravy-over-soggy-noodles lunches. I shake my head to rid myself of the memory.
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  Okay. I take a moment to wipe my brow with the back of my hand. Head down, I refocus on the job at hand, barely taking a moment to look around. The apartment is standard random luxury unit: marble flooring probably with neutral plush carpeting in the bedrooms. Kitchen, no doubt, has granite, stainless, and high-end wood features with state-of-the-art appliances. Bathrooms loaded up with Carrera marble straight from the quarries of central Italy. Lots of good light from the apartment’s location at the southwest corner of the building.

  My heels tap out a warning on the marble, but I doubt they hear me, judging from the moans and shrieks coming from what I assume is the master bedroom. Cheaters, I’ve learned, like to do the nasty in the marital bed. Somehow it makes it more exciting for them to pile on that extra indignity to their already-injured spouses. Even though I hate this part of this job, it’s important to Harold that I walk in on them. I didn’t ask him why.

  Poor guy.

  Okay, what’s my name for today? Oh, right, Lana Graham. Lana, I decided, is a girl who has made the decision to live on her good looks. She’s from Philadelphia and she came to Chicago the day she was supposed to start her freshman year at Kent State. She chucked it all to move to a big city to live a glamorous life. She’s much more at ease with men than women, and she likes to have a good time and doesn’t care who knows it.

  I’m not nuts. It’s just more fun to inhabit a character than to merely dress up and pretend. I even have a book to keep track of all my identities— names, hair and eye colors, and personalities to go with each job. Next to each one, I scribble out a short backstory for them, and after doing this work for nearly two years, I’ve compiled a binder of ten characters. I try not to reuse them too frequently, and I give repeat clients their own identity. It’s safer that way. Rule number one is that I never go as myself. Each woman has to be starkly different from me. And as my binder of women grows, it may just come in handy for something else. Who knows? Maybe I’ll write books or a screenplay one day and have ready-made characters who I know in-depth. Life is stranger than fiction, right?

  I also use television and movie roles as inspiration for my characters. For example, last month when I was playing a rival home buyer, I channeled Cirsei from Game of Thrones. I kicked ass. Since I adore Audrey Hepburn, I’m going to have to use Holly Golightly when the right job comes along.

  Okay, deep breath. You’re not Marley. You’re Lana, a confident, ballsy woman about to serve divorce papers on her new boyfriend’s cheating wife.

  The bedroom door lies ahead. It’s one of those dark-wood frame doors with the rest made of frosted glass. I have similar ones in my loft apartment. The door is slightly ajar. First, I peek in.

  And there they are in the flesh. Literally. OMG, this is so not what I want to be seeing—but at the same time it’s also impossible to drag my eyes away. You know, like a car wreck? The two of them are really going at it. The woman—Harold’s wife—is on top. She’s riding her lover, holding up her long red hair off her neck and giving him a great show of her breasts, judging from the extent to which his eyeballs are popping. I can’t see her face, but she’s making a lot of noise as she wiggles her hips and bobs up and down his dick, her thigh muscles and glutes straining to keep up and causing her timing to be a bit off. I don’t think women are as practiced at maintaining that ancient rhythm as men are.

  The man beneath her has graying hair, but it looks premature. From what I can see, his face is unlined and he has icy blue eyes. Nice looking guy. Better looking than Harold. Being that her back is to me, he is the first one to spot my intrusion. “What the fuck?”

  My cue. Enter stage left. I stride into the room with a confidence that I definitely am not feeling. “Hello, you two,” I purr in a syrupy voice while snapping a few quick photos with my phone—proof for my client. “So sorry I’m interrupting your afternoon delight.”

  “Ahhhhh. Who the fuck are you?” The wife, Corinne, twists her body while scrabbling for the bed cover. Unluckily for her, it is currently trapped underneath her lover’s body so she can only wrangle a corner of it, which does a piss-poor job of covering her double-D assets. Those ta-tas cost Harold a lot of coin, and I don’t mean for plastic surgery. I mean in the sense that they reeled him in like a chomping fish on a line.

  Who am I, she asked? I am a nervous wreck inside, but outside I’m calm and cool. Pretending is what my job as a faker requires of me. I’ve trained myself to hide my true self well underneath.

  “My name is Lana, and I’m Harold’s new woman,” I answer with a little smile. “He asked me to give you these, Corinne.” I toss the divorce papers I’m serving to her and spin on my heels. “Oh, I should mention,” I add over my shoulder, “that we have plenty of photographic evidence of your adultery, so you won’t be enjoying any more of my Harold’s money. All joint accounts are empty, dear. I do hope lover boy,” I say, pointing my chin at the man down under, “is a generous bloke. Keep calm and carry on.”

  “What the fuck?” I hear her screech as I make my exit, a nervous giggle escaping me.

  I hurry out of the apartment, so glad that it’s done. Why I had to wear stilettos and a skimpy thong I don’t know, but that’s what Harold requested. He was very specific about what he wanted me to wear: a tight red dress preferably showing cleavage, five-inch spike heels, false eyelashes, and sexy lingerie including said thong.

  I’m not a fan of anything that rides up my butt crack, to be honest. It’s a constant reminder that life can be a wedgie. But my client asked it of me. He deserved to have his way since it seemed not much else was going that direction.

  The truth is—and this is a big secret—I don’t really have the right personality for this job. As I said, I’m shy by nature. But I fell into it, and the money is too good to pass up. Since I turned eighteen and struck out on my own, I’ve suffered from chronic poverty, and this job lets me make more than enough coin to pay my bills and live like a human.

  I burst out from the lobby door like someone shot me out of a cannon, and I take a deep, cleansing breath. Today is a beautiful May afternoon, reminding me of the day Tara and I first arrived in Chicago almost six years ago—cobalt sky, a cool breeze that glides like gentle fingertips across your face, young but mighty green saplings bursting through the soil everywhere you look—and I would totally walk home if I weren’t in these skyscraper heels. This Gold Coast neighborhood has some stunning architecture going back to just after the Great Fire, and I like to study it, sneaking glimpses inside the homes when opportunity presents itself. Instead, I start to call for an Uber. With impeccable timing, a taxi whips around the corner, and I hail it. After giving the driver my address, I slide into the corner of the back seat, relieved to be off my feet. I’m staring into space when my phone pings.

  Tara: Where the hell are you? I’m at your place and I NEED to talk to you.

  I close my eyes, knowing I’m in for it. Tara always has emergencies. Or so she calls them.

  Me: On my way now. Be there in about ten.

  Tara: I’ll wait.

  Oh goody. Just what I need now—Tara on the edge. I slip the phone back into my handbag and sigh. I adore Tara, but she has an addictive habit of a major drama a week.

  Tara Clemmons and I have been friends since our sophomore year of high school when we both wore the same outfit—the same exact outfit right down to our Doc Martens—and we took one narrow-eyed glare at each other, broke into grins after an uncomfortable minute or two, and just had to become besties. How could we not? She moved with me to Chicago the week after our high school graduation.

  Then at a free outdoor concert in Lincoln Park two years later, we met our third wheel, Priscilla Vasquez, a person we’d probably never have met any other place since she comes from a wealthy family who doesn’t travel in the same circles as we paupers do. Priscilla—we call her Cilla because she hates Prissy—is tall, raven-haired, and model-thin. The three of us became great friends and even now, nearly six years later, we’re still close. Cil
la was away at university for some of those years, but she kept in touch and flew back whenever possible to help us stir up trouble.

  Tara, on the other hand, attended a local college, bartending and waiting tables to pay tuition, and whoa, did we celebrate her graduation last year with a trip to St. Bart’s. As for me, I took a few classes to learn about finance and marketing—two areas I needed to know for my new line of work.

  Both girls helped me find my feet again after a very bad relationship though I met Cilla afterward, and I love the fuck out of them. But I have to admit, Tara can be a handful.

  Now finding her sitting on my doorstep as the taxi pulls up, I’m feeling nostalgic for our third wheel, currently in France with her cousins. Cilla does have a pretty nice life. I slide my debit card through the card reader to pay my fare and exit the cab. Tara glances up as I cross the sidewalk to where she’s sitting on the steps to my building.

  Formerly a bread factory, the red-brick building had been converted into loft apartments four years ago, and all the units sold out in less than a month. I managed to snag one last year from a musician who was relocating to Germany, and I felt like I’d won the lottery. Granted, I could only rent, not buy, but I’m crossing my fingers and toes—and making Tara cross hers too—that he’ll decide to stay in Berlin and sell me the place.