Breaker - A Fake Boyfriend Romance (Criminal Passions Book 3) Read online

  I decided to drop the subject, and the two of us spent the rest of the lunch talking about all the amazing things going on in Maggie’s life. She seemed to have it all, while I had nothing.

  When we were done, we made plans to see each other again. We hugged and she was off.

  As soon as her back was turned, I checked my phone again. Still nothing. Maybe it was time for me to take the initiative?

  I started back to my apartment, thinking it over. Should I text him? Maybe he was uncertain and needed a little push.

  When I was back home at my apartment, I took a look around the place. It was a nice pad—Dad had spared no expensive in getting me one of the swankiest apartments in the area. And I knew it was going to be years before I’d be able to afford anything like that on my own.

  Nearly everything I had was in boxes, my whole life packed up. I spent a little time arranging things, Caleb on my mind all the while.

  Finally, I decided I was going to do it. I took out my phone and brought up his number. My thumbs flew over the keypad as I typed up a quick text.

  “Hey! Had fun the other night, wanted to see if you were down for doing it again soon. Let me know!”

  I hesitated for a long moment before finally hitting send. With a “whoosh” sound effect the text went off, and I waited in earnest for those three dots indicating a text in progress to appear on the screen.

  That was it. Nothing to do but hope.

  Chapter 10

  Caleb

  I was excited and apprehensive all at the same time. Seated at the bar of one of my local dives, I sipped my whiskey and thought about the conversation to come.

  Billy, my little brother, had just gotten out of prison.

  I was happy to be seeing him, no doubt about that. But the thing about Billy was that he was…well, a little unstable, and downright unpredictable.

  I was a criminal, sure. But that didn’t mean I didn’t like to keep my life at least somewhat in order. I had my cons, my money, my routine. The criminal business tended to attract the sorts of people who didn’t do all that well playing by the rules of normal society. So they broke them, lived wild, erratic lives of crime and chaos until they eventually ended up either in a prison cell or six feet under.

  I wasn’t one of those types. I treated my career like any other—kept a budget, kept my “clients” in order, and stayed as far away from the law as possible.

  Billy was totally different. The draw of the criminal life to him wasn’t the money or the freedom, but the thrill, the fun of flaunting the law and coming as close as you could to disaster and pulling away at the last second.

  Needless to say, he’d spent more time behind bars than I had. Really, other than a few scrapes here and there, my record was clean. I’d been lucky, and I knew it was only a matter of time before my luck ran out.

  I drained the last of my whiskey and ordered another. The conversation ahead wasn’t going to be an easy one, but it needed to happen. He had to know he was on a fast track to a quick end, and there wasn’t anything I wanted less than to see something like that happen to my brother. He was the only family I had left, after all.

  But through it all, I kept thinking about Sierra. It had been days since our time together, and I felt torn in two about it. On the one hand, I wanted to see her like crazy. On the other, I knew there was no way I could do that without bringing her too close to the life I wanted to keep hidden. What the hell would she do if she were to find out how I really made a living?

  Hell, there was no if about it. She’d find out sooner or later, and I’d be totally screwed.

  My simple life as a conman was becoming more complicated by the day. All the more reason to leave it behind.

  “Holy shit! My big brother!”

  I turned, spinning in my chair enough to see Billy strolling into the bar like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Billy looked like me, both of us taking after our dad. He was tall and lean, with broad shoulders and sharp features. His head was shaved, dark stubble dusting the top. His eyes were always eager and active, like he’d just thought of a killer plan that you just had to hear about. And a cocky smirk was a permanent fixture on his face.

  He was dressed in a white T-shirt and black jeans, a pair of heavy brown work boots on his feet. Tattoos covered his arms and hands, and I spotted a new one—flames, it looked like—crawling up the side of his neck. He was the sort of guy for who, even if you didn’t know a thing about him, you could guess “trouble” was his way of life.

  I was happy as hell to see him. He’d been locked up for the last year and a half, nothing but the occasional phone call to keep us connected. A broad smile on my face, I stood up from my chair and stepped over to him.

  “Glad you’re remembering who’s who on the pecking order,” I said, pulling him into a tight, back-slapping hug. He brought his hand down hard on my back, his aggressive energy always managing to come through.

  “And you always gotta remind me,” he said. He stepped out of the hug, putting his hands on my shoulders and standing back a bit, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

  “That’s the idea,” I said. “But I can’t say the same for you. I craned my neck a bit to get a look at his new tattoo. “What the hell is that?” I asked, pointing at it.

  He grinned, cocking his head to the side so I could get a better look. “Pretty badass, huh? Got it in lockup. My cellie was a tattoo artist on the outside—gave me a few more I got on under my shirt.”

  I had to admit the work was pretty good. But that wasn’t the point.

  “You trying to make yourself look as unemployable as possible?” I asked with a grin.

  He shrugged. “You know you and I ain’t cut out for the working world, bro. Might as well have some fun if we’re gonna be living on the outside of polite society.”

  “Guess you’ve got a point,” I said.

  He glanced over my shoulder at the rows and rows of booze behind the bar. “All right—I need some whiskey in me and I need it now. Haven’t had a drink in a year and a half.”

  “It’s on me,” I said, gesturing to my seat.

  “You’re damn right it is.” He grinned before taking his seat. “Not like I got any money to pay for it.”

  That wasn’t a good sign.

  “All right,” he said to the bartender, drumming his fingers on the bar and scanning the bottles. “Gimme two double shots of the top shelf shit. And then another round of doubles to wash ’em down with.”

  Another not-good sign.

  The bartender poured the drinks and pushed them in front of us.

  Billy didn’t waste any time scooping up his shot and raising it into the air. I took mine and did the same.

  “To freedom!” Billy said, still grinning.

  “To that, and not getting so plastered right out of jail that you end up back in a cell before the day’s even over.” I gave a little grin with this, but I was serious. It was a common thing with criminals fresh out of the pen to get a little too carried away with their first-day-out partying. You’d be surprised how many didn’t last even a day before being right back in front of a judge the next morning.

  He tapped his glass with mine and threw back the shot. I drank a bit of mine before setting it down.

  “Come on, man,” he said, glancing down at my shot. “Don’t be a pussy.”

  “Not being a pussy, bro. Just know that getting day-wasted and working aren’t exactly compatible.”

  “What happened to the Caleb I used to know, getting hammered with me all damn day?”

  “Just grew up a little, is all.”

  He shrugged before starting on his next drink. “Hope ‘growing up’ for you doesn’t mean being boring as shit.”

  “Just thinking more about the future is all. Hope you’re doing the same.”

  Another grin. “Hell yeah, I am. Been hoping you’ve been cooking up some scheme I could get in on the second I got out.”
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  “Where are you staying, anyway?” I asked. “You got a place lined up?”

  “Yeah, crashing on the couch of this guy I knew in lockup. Said he might even have some jobs for me.”

  “What kind of jobs?”

  “The kind that involve guns, people with money, and me using those guns to separate them from their money.”

  My gut tightened. “Armed robbery? Billy, come on. You know that’s the fastest way to end up back in jail.”

  He shrugged. “So what if I do? I’ve already got a couple of felonies—not like places are climbing over each other to hire people like me. In and out of jail’s what I got to look forward to for the rest of my life.”

  Billy drank some more of his whiskey, the almost manic glee vanishing from his face for the briefest of moments. It was typical talk from him, going on about how he was a criminal for life, how he didn’t give a damn about anything. But there was something else to his demeanor, like deep down he was…scared of what was to come.

  The fear disappeared as quickly as it came.

  “But if you’ve got something better, something that doesn’t involve a possible gunfight, I’m all ears.”

  Sierra. I didn’t want to tell him about her, wanting to keep that all hidden and to myself. But what if there was money to be made? Working over the rich was much easier—not to mention safer—way of earning money than demanding it at gunpoint.

  But maybe if he at least heard about what I’d had in mind, it would be enough to keep him from running out and getting arrested again.

  “Yeah, I might have something.”

  That got his attention. “Let’s hear it.”

  Now it was it time for my sip of whiskey. I threw some back and began.

  “Found some girl the other night at this restaurant I like to go to for scoping out potential marks. She’s young, pretty, and most importantly, loaded.”

  “I like where this is going.”

  “She’s some rich girl who’s trying to figure out what to do with her life. And she was there meeting her parents, letting them know she was dropping out of med school to do her own thing.”

  Billy said nothing, the expression on his face informing me he was more than ready to hear what was next.

  “So she ended up asking me to pretend to be her boyfriend.”

  “What?” asked Billy, nearly falling out of his seat. “How the hell did that happen?”

  “Don’t worry about it. What you need to know is that her parents are loaded as hell.”

  “Then she’s got daddy’s credit card at the ready, right?”

  “Not exactly. Dad told her that he was cutting her off.”

  “Then what’s the con? Usually seducing rich girls means they actually have to be, you know, rich.” He sat back, as if fond memories were flooding his mind. “God, I could go for one of those jobs right about now. Find some sugar mama with a black card, crash at her joint for a few months, let her pay for everything.”

  “But that’s not the situation here.”

  I also didn’t mention that part of the “situation” was that I actually liked the girl. Hell, I was having a hard time with that piece of information myself.

  Billy was confused. “Then I don’t get it. Say you get in good with daddy’s little girl. How does this help us? She’s got no money—what good is she?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but he beat me to it.

  “Oh! I get it. You talk her into going back to med school, and daddy hooks her up with the credit card again. Then you’ve got her paying for everything, and in the eyes of her parents, you look like the smart, older guy who put her back on the right track. Good confidence-building shit.”

  “That’s not it either.”

  “Then what? I’m not seeing the angle here, bro.”

  I’d always been a pro at thinking on my feet. But at that moment I was coming up short.

  There was no angle. I just…liked the girl. I wanted to get to know her better.

  Billy slammed his hand on the bar, as if having the realization to end all realizations.

  “I got it!”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah! She’s out on her own, trying to get under daddy’s thumb. So we kidnap her!”

  My eyes went wide.

  “We what?”

  “We kidnap her! You’re still in good with her, right?”

  “Yeah, we’re still good.”

  “And where’s she at now?”

  “Living at the apartment her dad rented for her. But she’s got to be out of there soon.”

  “Shit, this is going to be even easier than I thought. So, invite her to live at your place. And when she’s there, we get in touch with her dad and let him know that if he ever wants to see his precious little girl again, he’s got to pay up. Man, if he’s loaded, we could get a cool mill out of this, easy. Maybe even more than that.”

  “Billy, this is a bad fucking idea. This isn’t a con, this just straight-up kidnapping.”

  “So what? We’re not gonna hurt the girl or anything. We ransom her, get the money, and then we’ve got enough to last us years before needing to do another job. It’s fucking perfect, bro.”

  “Outside of the fact that getting caught would put us both behind bars for decades.”

  That, and something else. Despite only knowing Sierra for a short time, the idea of any harm ever coming to her was enough to make me see red. I wanted to keep her safe, keep her protected.

  “Then we won’t get caught. Easy as that.” He cocked his head to the side, as if trying to scan me for information. “Shit, I know what this is—you’re worried about putting a felony on that perfect, clean record of yours. Man, you need to rip that bandage off, bro. I was worried about my first felony too, but once I got it, I realized it wasn’t so bad. Means I won’t be working a nine-to-five anytime soon, but who the hell wants that?”

  “It’s not just about getting a felony. When I got into this game, one of my rules was ‘no violence.’ This pretty much flies in the face of that.”

  “We do this right and there won’t be any violence. I told you, we’re not gonna hurt the girl.”

  Right at that moment, my phone lit up. I glanced over and saw that it was a text from Sierra.

  “That her?” asked Billy. “Sierra…pretty name. Bet she’s a total babe.” He shook his head. “Man, you’ve got it so easy with these chicks.”

  “Yeah, that’s her,” I said. But instead of reading the text, I quickly slipped my phone back into my pocket. “Let me handle this, Billy. Don’t go getting involved.”

  “Fine, fine. But you know my idea’s solid.”

  It wasn’t, for a number of reasons. But I wasn’t about to get into it with him there at the bar. Instead, I changed tacks.

  “Bro, you ever think about putting this criminal shit behind us?”

  Billy’s eyebrows rose. “Are you serious? Going straight?”

  “Going straight.”

  “No way. I mean, sure, it’d be nice not to have to worry about ending up in jail again. But that kind of life isn’t for guys like us. It’s for all them.” He gestured to the world outside the bar. “Guys who came from good families, went to good colleges, are fine with working at offices and putting money into their 401ks or whatever the hell it is they do.”

  I said nothing, taking a slow sip of my drink.

  “Shit, man. Don’t say you’re getting soft on me.”

  “Not getting soft. Just thinking about how I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a cell because of a job going wrong.”

  “Then that’s easy—we just make sure the jobs never go wrong.” He threw back the rest of his drink. “All right, bro. I’m meeting a guy for some grub. Said he might have leads on some small-time jobs. Nothing amazing but should be good for some cash. You want to come?”

  “Nah. I’m going to think about this Sierra situation.”

  “Yeah, you do that. Man, the kind of money we could make if we pulled something li
ke that off.” He slapped me on the back. “Let’s stay in touch. Been missing working with my big bro.”

  “Yeah. Talk to you soon.”

  With that, he was off. The moment he was gone, I took my phone out of my pocket and checked the text. A small smile formed on my lips as I read it over.

  I’d been avoiding her, and seeing those words on the screen was enough to make me realize how much I wanted to see her again.

  But Billy…no way I’d let him pull some insane shit like ransoming her. I had no idea what was going to happen between Sierra and me, but I vowed to keep her out of harm’s way.

  After another sip of my whiskey, I fired off a quick text.

  “Yeah, let’s meet again. You busy tonight?”

  The reply was instant.

  “Not like I have a job or school to worry about. What’d you have in mind?”

  “Let’s meet at your place at around seven. We’ll have fun—let me worry about the details.”

  “Sounds great.” This was followed by her address.

  I was excited, the most excited I’d been in a long time. After finishing my drink, I stepped out into the sunny afternoon, feeling alive. It was strange.

  But strange felt good.

  Chapter 11

  Sierra

  As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I was thrilled about my date with Caleb.

  “Why shouldn’t you be excited?” Maggie’s voice came from the phone on my desk, Maggie on speakerphone as I stood in front of the mirror in the latest outfit I’d tried on.

  “Because…I don’t know. He didn’t get back to me in three days. And then he only responded when I reached out to him.”

  “Okay… What does that matter?”

  “I mean, shouldn’t I be kind of annoyed with him? What if I hadn’t said anything? Would he have just never talked to me again?”

  Maggie’s chiming laugh came from the other end. “I’m not sure if ‘looking a gift horse in the mouth’ exactly applies, but it’s not too far off.”