Page 16 of Catching a Con Man

Holden rubbed his eyes. “You know the reason I moved up into the most remote location in the world was to stop people knocking on my door asking for a bag of sugar?”

“Well, if you ever answered your phone, I wouldn’t have to drop in by surprise,” I said.

“Touché.” Holden looked down at his wrist, which was bare. “Oh, would you look at the time. I’m sure you know your way to the guest suites. We’ll talk in the morning. And if I do have a secret grandson, I’d like you to bring me the vial of sperm from which he came so I can have it destroyed.”

And then he was shuffling up the stairs again without a look backward. “He’s not exactly a social animal,” I said, hoping to break the tension. Tyler was still silent.

I turned to look at him. His hands were no longer balled at his sides. Instead, they hung limply, and his anger seemed to have dissipated. Instead, he was letting the tears fall. “I…I wanted to just tell you…” he muttered through quiet sobs. “…why couldn’t you just let me tell you? Do I…deserve…this?”

All sense of fun I’d had in my little prank vanished, and I crossed the distance between us to pull him into my arms. “I’m sorry, love,” I said. After a second, his arms wrapped around me and I kissed the wavy hair at the top of his head. “Come with me.”

I led him up the stairs with my hand on his back. Holden had left the floor lights running but otherwise the place was pitch black, so I followed the LED strips in the corridor to a room I’d stayed in when I was a kid.

“Lights?” I asked the room at large, and the lights switched on low. I couldn’t see through the glass, just our reflections looking back at us. I looked so big next to Tyler, and I felt even worse for having deceived him.

There was a big bed in the room, pushed up against the dark stone-hewn wall. I guided Tyler to it and sat him down gingerly, unsure what to do now we were here. “I’ll…go stay in another room,” I said to Tyler. “I can come and get you in the morning, and we can talk.” I turned away and had reached the door before he spoke.

“No.”

I turned to face him. “No?”

“No,” he repeated. His voice was low, toneless. “You don’t leave. Not until this is all out in the open. Not until I know I’ve said what I need to say, and you listen and decide what you do next. I want…I don’t want to lie to you. I need this mask off.”

Tyler stood and faced me as the door clicked closed behind me. He shed his jacket and held it up in front of me. “Ten pounds. Cancer Research UK charity shop,” he said and dropped it to the floor. “Your turn.”

I pulled off my suit jacket. “One thousand pounds…or thereabouts. Armani.”

Tyler slowly unbuttoned his shirt, and I followed the movement of those slim fingers as he did. I didn’t want to stare at him with lust in his fragile emotional state, but it was hard to avoid looking as he exposed the smooth plane of his chest.

When he had his shirt in hand and I had to refocus from his tight body to the item of clothing in question, he spoke again. “Free. I nabbed it from a friend after a night out.”

I unbuttoned my own shirt, feeling more self conscious and exposed than I ever had in my life. Tyler’s eyes tracked my hands greedily as I exposed myself.

“Three hundred pounds. Gucci.” I took the little cufflinks from the shirt and dropped them too. “Those were a gift from my father when I paid back my investment. Eighteen carat gold, two carat sapphires.”

“How much?” I thought I saw Tyler’s mouth pull up into a smirk when I couldn’t answer. He unclasped his expensive watch. “Rolex. No idea how much it’s worth. Stole it from some posh prick’s coat after he spilled a drink on me and then tried getting me kicked out of a club.” He dropped it into the growing pile of clothes with a thud.

I undid my watch and dropped it too, keeping eye contact with Tyler. He wasn’t even looking at what I was dropping any more. “Omega Speedmaster… a hundred grand.”

Tyler choked. “Fuckingwhat?!”

“It was…a rough impulse buy.”

“Well, that explains everything.” Tyler removed his shoes and then pulled down his trousers. He was wearing simple black boxer briefs. I looked upward and locked my eyes on his face. “Both free. From a charity shop,” he said.

I kicked off my brogues and pulled down my trousers. “Three hundred, three hundred.”

Tyler hooked a finger in the waistband of his boxer-briefs and I thought he might be about to rip those off too, but he justpingedit against his waist. “Three for a fiver. Primark.”

“Chanel.” I replied, though I had no idea how much I’d paid for my underwear of all things.

For a second we just stood there, looking at each other. And then Tyler spoke again. “You see me now, right? All this, what this is?” He gestured down at the pile of clothes.

“I…see you,” I said, unsure what I was meant to be seeing. He was almost naked, just in his boxers and socks, and looked so beautiful but so vulnerable in this room.

“Do we understand each other?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I admitted.

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