Page 36 of Fool Me

She stretched her long neck in an unhurried motion. “Oh, I will, I will. I just need to make sure you get the full picture. For example, why do you think she made you go to a skanky mud wrestling venue next?”

“I have no idea, but?—”

“And why do you think she arrived at the beach dressed up like a homeless grandmother and then kept trying to get you to gawk at other women?”

“She didn’t…” Grant started to say but fell silent. She pretty much had done that.

“And all this makes me wonder,” Julia said next. “Did other scantily clad women approach you on the beach for no apparent reason?”

She had Grant’s full attention now. “A couple of times, yes. They were flirting with me, and I had no idea who they were. Three of them tried to drag me away. I had to physically pull them off.”

Julia rested her hand on Grant’s knee and gave it a slow squeeze as she asked, “And where was Sadie when all these strange happenings were occurring?”

“She was—she was right there.”

“Did she comment on how strange it was?” Julia said, changing from squeezing his knee to tapping it with an index finger to accentuate each syllable of ‘strange it was.’

“It…it didn’t seem to surprise her. She was sort of encouraging me to flirt back.”

Julia pulled her shoulders back slightly and looked him in the face. “Well, that’s the strangest thing of all, don't you think?”

Grant said nothing. It was strange.

“Grant,” Julia said, the words coming out as if she were speaking to a child. “Don’t you see the pattern here?”

“No. Is there a pattern?” His miserable night and his miserable morning, and now Julia’s questions—more like riddles—were combining to fill Grant’s skull with pudding. There probably was a pattern, but it was all a jumble to him. Clenching his fists, he stood and faced her, hoping to clear his head. “What’s the pattern?”

Julia blinked slower than the Zen master of blinking. Her speech came out in slow motion too. “She’s been trying to sabotage you and your career this whole time. Since the very first date.”

Grant jolted backwards as if pushed. “No! She wouldn’t do that. She’s not like that.”

“Oh, but she is. You didn’t ask me how I knew there were women behaving strangely on the beach.”

A dark tangle began to build in his stomach. “You must have seen photos, or maybe you were there somewhere.”

“I was getting these gorgeous nails done yesterday afternoon.” She showed them off to him, waggling their tips. “And I sent those photographers home. I’ve searched social media. There’s not a single shot of that part of your day, and yet…I knew.”

Grant’s voice came out like the last breath from a deflating balloon. “How?”

“Like I told you, I suspected. I suspected from the minute she noticed you in Ronny’s office. There was a history between you. It was easy to find it online. You went to college together. Why didn’t you mention that at the time, or when I called you?”

“I don’t know. It didn’t seem important. It had nothing to do with the reason we were going on fake dates.”

“But it had a lot to do with whyshewas going on fake dates, or at least why she was choosing the dates she chose.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it. She knows an awful lot about you. Why take the sheltered farm boy to an Indian temple festival and immediately leave him to fend for himself? Why give a fastidious guy the impression he’s going out to a nice dinner, only to throw him and his best suit in the mud?”

“That’s not?—”

“And why,” she pressed, her hazel eyes flashing fire and her voice gaining steadily in speed, “when I finally confronted her, did she ask if she could take you to Be-Seen Beach, a place where there’d be plenty of gorgeous women to catch the eye of someone she sees as a womanizer? Do you think those women randomly showed up and interrupted your date? Or do you think maybe, just maybe, someone tossed them a few bucks to make sure you’d have opportunities to look like a cad while she pretended to be hurt and upset?”

“She wouldn’t do that, Julia. I know her,” Grant practically yelled, but he wished he could be more certain of that. Sadiehadcalled him a player to his face.

Julia’s lips drew down at the corners as her eyes widened in pity. “And that’s the tragedy of it. You’re so trusting. You’ve convinced yourself of her goodness. But answer me one final question—how is it possible that I know you dated and dumped all three of her roommates, one by one?”

The floor of Grant’s apartment seemed to roll underneath him. He slammed his forehead with a fist in a bid to hold onto reality. “Howdoyou know that?”

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