The Pretend Boyfriend 2 (Inhumanly Handsome, Humanly Flawed Alpha Male Erotic Romance) by Artemis Hunt

hours.”
    The line on the other end goes off.
    Brian replaces the receiver onto its cradle slowly. He closes his eyes and palms his face.
    A knock on his door. Claudia knows he has put the phone down. She opens the door and peeks in when he doesn’t say ‘Enter’.
    “The mayor’s office is on the line. They are spooked. They want to pull out of doing business with Vanguard.”
    Brian sighs again.
    The morning panic has just begun.

18
     
    “And that’s all you have to go by?” says the private investigator. He is a tall, elegant man with grey eyes and a prominent nose.
    Funny, Sam had expected a Philip Marlowe type, but this man looks like he has stepped out from the cover of a GQ magazine for the middle-aged. Still, from his credentials, he is apparently an ex-CIA agent.
    “Yes.”
    “How soon do you need the information?”
    “As soon as possible.”
    The court case would not be so soon, but Sam reckons Brian can do with the break. She is supposed to meet him for drinks anyway, but he called to say he would be late.
    “The rats are leaving the ship, and the captain is about to be thrown to the sharks,” he says ruefully.
    “Hang on in there. Things will get better.”
    “They can’t get much worse, or I might as well tie a noose around my neck and spare them the cost of a public hanging.” He sounds so tired over the phone that a pang fleets into her chest. “You wouldn’t believe how many reporters have tried to get through Claudia today. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I’m morphing into Kim Kardashian.”
    “That bad, huh?”
    “I can see them lining up on the streets outside my window. They’re waiting for me to come out. I’ll give them the slip by wearing a wig and fat suit.”
    “There’s always the back door.”
    “Nope. Last time I checked, they’re camped out there too.”
    She has decided not to tell him about the PI. He would just stop her, or at least complicate matters.
    “Need some company tonight?” she asks.
    “I’d probably come home at midnight and tumble straight into bed. So unless you want a snoring sack for a bed partner, you’d probably get more sleep at home.”
    He doesn’t snore and she loves watching him sleep because he looks so beautiful and peaceful. But of course she’s not going to tell him that.
    Instead, she says, “OK, I’ll see you next time then. Any other updates?”
    “Yeah. My blood test results came back. A copy is with the police.”
    “What did they say?”
    “No traces of any drugs. Blood alcohol within the limits, so I can’t even claim drunken manslaughter.”
    “You didn’t kill anyone.”
    “The way everyone is treating me . . . like I’m dog turd scraped off a shoe, you’d think I did.”
    “So everything is normal.”
    “Nothing is normal.”
    “I mean your blood test.”
    “My serum Creatinine is high, although everything else within my kidney profile is apparently normal, according to the hospital. So is my potassium, but that could be an artifact, so they say. It apparently comes from eating too many bananas.”
    “Do you eat bananas?”
    “I can think of a whole lot of things to do with bananas.”
    She laughs. “But seriously . . . are your blood results really OK?”
    “They couldn’t find anything wrong with me physically during my checkup.”
    She tries to make her tone light, even though she’s worried as hell about him. “There’s nothing wrong with you physically.”
    “Yeah, before you pass judgment, check back with me tomorrow night and we’ll see if I can get the little pecker up.”
    “Last I remembered, it wasn’t that little.”
    She can visualize him smiling over the other side. “If all else fails, there’s always Viagra.”
    “You and Viagra in the same sentence? That’ll be the day.”
    They ring off. He’s still not at his usual brash peak, she notes, but at least he is attempting humor. That’s a good sign. But the fact that his clients are leaving him in droves when he