Page 1 of Great Pretender
1
Piper
“You bastard,” I cry, balling my hands into fists at my sides.I hate looking weak in front of anybody, least of all Heath Montgomery, my asshole ex. “These are things we bought together.”
“With my money,” he points out with a mocking smirk.
“It wasn’t all your money.” He knows that; he’s just being a bastard to me because he knows I don’t have a leg to stand on.
“Well, if you can provide receipts for whatever you own, I’ll happily leave those items with you.” He assumes his legal face.Thatyou-can’t-fuck-with-me face he uses in court when he knows he has everybody right where he wants them, and he’s aboutto win a case.
I don’t have receipts for anything else in the house besides the groceries I brought earlier after Elodie, and I finished up at the hospital.It was while we were in the supermarket when my neighbor, Mrs. Turner, called me to let me know Heath was in my house and he’d brought men with him who were taking out the furniture.The news knocked me off my feet, and I was such a mess Elodie came back with me.
Heath looks at the men carrying the sofa out of the living room.“Hurry up. I have things to do,” he barks, and they move faster.
There are two more men in the kitchen and another two upstairs.All are carrying away furniture and packing various things Heath, and I put into this house during the four-year span of our relationship.
A man comes downstairs with my computer, and I rush over to him.“Please, no, I need that,” I blurt.“It has all my research.”
At least the man gives me a sympathetic stare, even though he continues down the steps with the computer I’ve been using since I started my residency.
“I’ll have the files downloaded and sent to you,” Heath states.
“That’s my computer. It was a gift.How can you be such an asshole?You gave that to me for my birthday.”
“Well, now I’m taking it back.” To be spiteful.What a fucking jerk. I can’t believe I was ever with him.
Another man comes down the stairs carrying my computer desk, and I hold my hand up to stop him.He, however, keeps going like the other man did, showing me quite clearly that he doesn’t answer to me.
“That’s mine,” I argue, looking back at Heath.
“I remember quite clearly giving you a substantial amount of money toward it because you couldn’t decide which desk you wanted when we were in the store.If you have the receipt for what you actually paid, I’ll reimburse the pittance you spent.”
“Prick, that was years ago.”
“Who keeps receipts for things they bought years ago?” Elodie cuts in as she walks into the living room with her hands on her hips.
“Me,” Heath replies.
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Stay out of this,” he sneers. “It has nothing to do with you.”
“Don’t talk to her like that,” I snap.No way am I going to have him talk down to a woman who’s come to be a great friend to me.
“Then you tell her to stay out of it.”
I look at Elodie, who’s shaking her head at Heath in disgust.
“It’s okay,” I assure her. I’ll be okay.”
“Things don’t sound okay to me,” she insists and glares at Heath, giving him the same dirty looks he’s casting her way.
Elodie LaCroix is a no nonsense kind of woman, so Heath’s tactics to intimidate her won’t work. They’ll all wash off her back like water and she won’t hesitate to put him in his place. Especially after all he’s done to me.
Like most of the people I know, she’s never liked Heath.It was just me who was blinded by love or whatever spell of shit that came over me the day we met.Everyone else saw him for the asshole he was.Not me, though. Not until it was too late.
“I’ll take care of it,” I tell her, and she heads back into the sitting room with obvious reluctance.
