The Pretend Husband: Romance In the City, Book 1 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Epilogue - Liam

  Complete Game - The League Book 1

  A Second Glance - The League Book 2

  Always Waiting - The League Book 3

  Uneasy Pieces - The League Book 4

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Liam

  Alex

  Share Your Thoughts

  Also by Declan Rhodes

  About the Author

  The Pretend Husband

  Declan Rhodes

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. Liam

  2. Alex

  3. Liam

  4. Alex

  5. Liam

  6. Alex

  7. Liam

  8. Alex

  9. Liam

  10. Alex

  11. Liam

  12. Alex

  13. Liam

  14. Alex

  15. Liam

  16. Alex

  17. Liam

  18. Alex

  19. Liam

  20. Alex

  21. Liam

  22. Alex

  23. Liam

  24. Alex

  25. Liam

  26. Alex

  27. Liam

  28. Alex

  29. Liam

  30. Alex

  Epilogue - Liam

  Share Your Thoughts

  Also by Declan Rhodes

  Complete Game - The League Book 1

  A Second Glance - The League Book 2

  Always Waiting - The League Book 3

  Uneasy Pieces - The League Book 4

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2017 by Declan Rhodes.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover Designer - Aria Tan - Resplendent Media

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  For LJV

  1

  Liam

  Jack, everyone’s idea of a favorite neighborhood bartender, slid the foaming pint of IPA across the bar to me. I picked it up, dropped an extra bill on the counter to pad my tip, and settled myself onto a stool at a small, round, black-lacquered table near the rear of the bar. I was doing my best to unwind after a long, vexing day at work that ran two hours past the customary end of my workday. Unusually, for me, I didn’t even stop for a bite to eat before hitting the bar.

  I was too frustrated to eat. My only stop was a five minute home visit to take Chester, my black Labrador retriever, out and let him navigate a lap around the perimeter of the backyard. I needed the beer, and I needed the friendly noise of Yesterday’s, a gay bar in my home neighborhood. It was one of the few in the city not clustered down in the noisy row on Second Street.

  I could already hear the voice of Sarah, my best friend, asking me, “How tough can it be, Liam? A rich guy offers the museum a whole shitload of money, and you take it. You buy some great works of art, slap his name at the bottom of the card on the wall, and everybody wins.” I wished it was that easy.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t. It was remarkably hard to make it that easy when the rich guy in question had dragged the art museum’s name into newspaper headlines just three years ago over his disgust with works of art he didn’t like and didn’t understand finding them personally offensive. He rattled off comments in the press about outsider art being childish and uneducated. The entire piece was intensely derogatory and set off a firestorm of questions about the museum’s acquisition policies. At age twenty-seven, I held a position of significant responsibility within the museum’s curatorial department, but white-haired wealthy men with an ax to grind and influence to buy were intimidating.

  I took a long, slow sip of the IPA. I loved that bitter, hoppy finish. Jack kept pushing new, less caustic IPAs to me, but I stuck with my bracing favorite. I enjoyed it as a reminder that the good things in life didn’t always taste sweet.

  Raising my head, I scanned the rest of Yesterday’s clientele. It was still early, and the bar was half empty. If the evening followed a usual pattern, the crowd would slowly grow over the next three hours and crest about 11:00 p.m. before dropping sharply only an hour later.

  I saw some familiar faces, but none that I would count as any more than infrequent acquaintances. I was ready to lift the pint again when my eyes settled on a specific man at the bar. He had just turned around and was leaning nonchalantly back against the stained wood of the counter scanning the crowd just like me. I’d never seen him before, and my gut told me he was worth a second look.

  Inevitably, our eyes met. I was certain there was simple curiosity in my gaze, but there was something that burned a little brighter in his eyes. He was handsome with sculpted cheekbones and a square jaw, but there was more than that.

  Dressed the way he was, he looked like the kind of guy that would stumble into a saloon on the dusty prairie instead of a neighborhood bar on the East Side. He was wearing snug, worn blue jeans and a scruffy denim jacket over a dark gray T-shirt. The jacket was unbuttoned and hung just wide enough to show off a muscled chest stretching the shirt beneath.

  I expected him to look away as soon as he saw me gazing back, but he didn’t. We both stared intently for a few seconds, and then he began to walk in my direction. I wasn’t looking for a hookup, but I was eager to see him close up. I found myself reflexively listening for the jangle of a spur like the cowboys in cheesy westerns.

  He smiled at me as he drew closer. It wasn’t the half-sneer that I expected. Instead, it was a big wide toothy grin which melted my entire range rider image. Seconds earlier, he could have been mistaken for a rugged cowboy, but with the smile showing perfect white teeth amid carefully trimmed facial stubble, I knew that he spent as much time cultivating his appearance in the mirror in the morning as me.

  He asked, “Are you alone?” when he stepped up next to the table.

  I gestured to the chair opposite me and said, “Not anymore. Have a seat.”

  He turned a chair around and flung his long right leg over so that he sat facing the back of the chair. He held a bottle of beer in his right hand. It was a local microbrew. When he sat, he placed the beer on the table, and a deep, resonant voice said, “Nice to meet a friendly guy. One, in particular, doesn’t consider me such a welcome presence.”

  The comment instantly elicited a raised eyebrow from me. I asked, “Does that mean I should watch out for you? Is there a reason for their wariness?” I couldn’t help but feel like we were playing out the opening scene in a low-budget straight-to-video movie.

  Then he shattered my perceptions once again. He laughed and shook his head saying, “Why don’t we step back for a minute?” He held out his right hand over the table and said, “I’m Alex, and I didn’t mean to butt in. I’ve just had a frustrating day, and I would love to spend some time with a friendly face and a welcoming voice. Your face looked approachable enough from the bar.”

  I took his hand. It was rougher than mine, and he gave me a stronger grip. I didn’t expect the gentle caress of his fingertips across my palm as we pulled our hands apart. The gesture sent a brief electric pulse racing up my spine. Quickly gathering my senses, I said
, “I’m Liam. I’ve kind of had a rough day, too. Why don’t you start first, though, and tell me about yours.”

  “I just joined the ranks of the homeless.”

  My jaw dropped. It wasn’t what I expected to hear from Alex at all. I thought he might tell me about a rough day working construction on the new arena, or maybe tell me a tale about a boyfriend who sent him into a tailspin, but homelessness was not one of the responses that I expected. I tried to think of an appropriate comment. After five blinks of my eyes, I said, “That sucks.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, it does, and I guess it’s not fair to say I’m homeless in the way a lot of other much more unfortunate guys are. In fact, I’m thinking of going back to nestle under the wings of Mama and Papa Bird while I get back on my feet, but it feels a little like going back home with my tail tucked between my legs. ”

  His words broke the ice between us. Alex needed someone to try and help cheer him up. Sarah claims there are few guys better than me for spreading cheer when I want to do it. I said, “At least you do have somewhere to go. I’m curious what happened, but you don’t need to tell me, of course. I try to make it a personal policy to avoid being too nosy.”

  Alex appeared remarkably calm for having just landed on the street. His hair was neatly cut and styled. It draped down on his forehead giving him a rakish appearance. His clothes were stylishly tattered - not the result of being worn too many times between laundering. He was clean and good-looking. I was very curious to hear his tale of woe.

  “It’s okay. There are no big secrets. The boyfriend kicked me out. I found out he cheated, and I told him I was willing to work things out, but then he blew up. Within five minutes, he branded me as the one screwing up the relationship. I was the bad guy. He insisted I was telling him that he’s an awful person, and he said that he couldn’t bear to look me in the eye. That part doesn’t surprise me. I would be embarrassed as hell, too. Anyway, it was his house, and his full-time job was funding us.”

  “You don’t work?” I asked. I could feel my gut begin to tense. Maybe the boyfriend didn’t like a freeloader either.

  “I know I sound like a mess. I’ve only been working part-time. I do parcel deliveries. I like the work, but I don’t have anything saved up. I know that’s stupid, but it is what it is. I would love having the time to look for something full-time, but this was an unpleasant surprise. I had to find a hotel room when he kicked me out. Otherwise, I would have had to look for a free cot in a shelter.”

  Struggling with a gut feeling that Alex was just lazy, I stared back into his eyes. Then I saw it. His eyes were a deep green with tiny flecks of brown. The first boy I kissed in high school had the same color of eyes. They made me swoon every time we got close enough for me to see them. Wrenching my attention back to the conversation, I asked, “What about friends?”

  “I haven’t made any good friends in Milwaukee yet. We moved together from St. Paul, Minnesota just a month ago. That’s where my parents are. Back in the frozen north.”

  I laughed and said, “It’s not exactly warm here in Milwaukee when the storms blow in off Lake Michigan.”

  He caressed the beer bottle with his rough-hewn fingers slowly running the hand in a slightly circular motion as it wound from the broad bottom of the bottle to the narrow neck. Whether he meant it that way or not, it was a gesture easy to take sexually. I swallowed reflexively thinking about the grip of the hand while Alex said, “The end goal is maybe New Mexico or Arizona. I’ve made a lot of progress south by moving to Milwaukee. Going back to St. Paul is starting all over again, but I think that’s what I’ll have to do.”

  I pulled my attention away from the bottle and his hand to ask, “Do you have any leads for jobs?”

  “I thought of looking for an expansion of the delivery job, but I don’t have time before the money runs out. I have a teaching certificate, too. It was just a bad idea to follow Eric. That’s the louse that kicked me out. It was one of the last of a string of bad decisions that seemed like good ones at the time. I had no clue that he would turn into such a bastard. I’m guessing the cheating was going on for awhile. Catching him this time was just the first time I had proof.”

  The reasoning part of my brain told me to walk away and wish Alex luck. He needed to sort things out, and a sounding board could be helpful, but he was hardly in a truly desperate situation. Unfortunately, each time he spoke, that resonant, slightly resigned, deep voice riveted my attention. I wanted him to keep talking. I wasn’t ready to send him away.

  My softer side was starting to tickle my spine. I could feel it teasing at the small of my back. It was the part of me that stopped the car to move turtles to the side of the road up in the Northwoods, and the part of me that brought Chester home from the Humane Association’s booth when Sarah convinced me to accompany her to a local dog show. I probed a little further and asked, “How long do you think it would take you to find something?”

  Alex stroked his stubbled chin. “Looking at it positively, I would guess not much more than a week. Of course, you aren’t always able to start right away with a new job, so I guess maybe three weeks to build a new foundation for myself. It sucks that I have to go home when I’m so close to standing on my own two feet. I like Milwaukee. I love being so close to the lake.” He gripped the neck of the bottle again.

  I finished my pint, raised a napkin, and dabbed at my lips. I knew that I might hate myself for it, and I had no real way to know that Alex wasn’t a criminal in disguise, but he was already able to distract my attention from my work frustrations. I followed my gut when I asked, “What if I offered you a place to crash for a few weeks? We could make a deal. If you don’t find something in the next, say, three weeks, then it is time to go back to St. Paul.”

  Alex tilted his head to the right. He looked genuinely confused and said, “Damn, would you do something like that for me? I didn’t mean to beg for your help. My parents are wiring money for the next couple of nights.”

  I scanned his shoulders for any signs of tension. I thought that might give him away if he had any evil plans up his sleeve. I didn’t detect anything. It was a moment when I wished that I was an expert in human body language, but I skipped that elective course in college. I said, “It would make me feel good to help.”

  Alex said, “I’ve always heard that people in Wisconsin are friendly, but that’s asking a bit much of somebody. I’m not sure I can take you up on it, but thank you, Liam. Seriously, thank you so much. You are a good man.”

  The human warmth had me captivated and curious. Whether Alex knew it or not, his “good man” comment was a real hook. I was feeling a little helpless to resist offering anything that I could. I tried thinking about my safety and decided to ask for a little more verification of his identity.

  Alex showed me his driver’s license, and I asked for him to prove his identity in another way online. He opened up his Facebook page on his phone, and I saw a cluster of photos of Alex and the boyfriend Eric together. Alex wiped a tear from his left eye and growled, “Those are coming down tonight before I sleep. Fuck, I can’t even stand to see his face. Doesn’t he look like a self-righteous ass?”

  I didn’t give a verbal response. Instead, I placed my hand on Alex’s forearm. He began to pull away, but then he stopped and looked me in the eye. I saw pain there.

  He was right. I couldn’t detect any attraction in the photos of Alex and Eric together. Every snapshot was staged and stiff. Despite his current difficult situation, I was sure that Alex leaving would be proven the right choice in the long run.

  I decided to not take “no” for an answer, but I moderated my initial offer. “I insist on not just putting you out on the street, but let’s do this. You hang out at my place, but I’ll keep your driver’s license with me as sort of a safety thing for the first couple of days. If you think that’s a little too paranoid, just tell me, and you can go back to mom and dad. I live in a house just a few blocks from here, and I have an empty guest room. I do have a dog,
so that is a problem if you don’t like pets or if you are allergic.”

  Alex’s eyes suddenly brightened, and he leaned across the table. “A dog? Seriously? I love pooches. Hey, maybe that could be a way for me to start paying you back for your awesome generosity. I’ll take the pup for walks. What breed is he?”

  “Chester’s a black Labrador retriever. I have a cousin who breeds them. Chester was the last of the litter, and she gave him to me. He’s a good dog and very social. He’s one of the rock stars of the dog park. Chester loves people and other dogs.” I grinned. I was nearly as proud of Chester as my work at the museum.

  “He sounds perfect,” said Alex. “Are you sure I wouldn’t be imposing? I mean, do you have a boyfriend? A handsome guy like you should have a boyfriend. Something is wrong with the world if you’re single.”

  Flattery always strikes close to my heart. I smirked and responded honestly saying, “Maybe I shouldn’t be single, but I am, and I’m okay with that for now. I love my job, and I have good friends. It’s nice missing out on the drama of dating.”

  “You’re telling me. Eric was a whole lot of drama even before I caught him cheating. I already knew a lot of the problems in our relationship back in St. Paul, but I wanted to give him a real chance. I wanted to give us a chance. The cheating was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. I think I could have handled catching him if he wanted to talk it through, but he didn’t even want to try.”

  “So where is all your stuff, Alex? Is it still at Eric’s place?”

  He grinned. “I travel light. Two suitcases and a laptop bag at the hotel. That’s all I’ve got. My mom has some more boxes in St. Paul of what she calls the ‘Memory Trove,’ but what’s in the room is all I need for now. I don’t even have a car. I took a city bus to get here.”

  I shook my head and said, “I can’t believe I’m doing this, but if Chester thinks it’s okay, you can have the guest room. Let’s aim for three weeks to get you back on your feet. While you’re at my place, you give Chester two walks a day. Is it a deal?”