Perfect Strangers

‘A businessman. Of sorts.’

‘Of sorts?’

He sat down on a crate and puffed out his cheeks.

‘He was a grifter, Sophie, a confidence trickster. You’d call him a con man.’

She looked at him wide-eyed.

‘A con man? Who did he con?’

‘People like you.’

‘Me?’ she squeaked.

‘Keep your bloody voice down,’ he snapped. ‘We don’t know if our trigger-happy friends have really gone.’

‘But what did he want from me?’ she pressed.

Josh paused for a moment and gave her a sympathetic look.

‘Money,’ he replied flatly.

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Sophie, but deep down she knew that what Josh was saying could be true. Of course Nick thought she had money. They’d met at a £10,000-a-plate dinner, she’d let him believe she was some sort of health industry entrepreneur, and he had walked her back to ‘her’ £15 million home.

‘Oh God,’ she said.

‘What?’ He looked at her. ‘Tell me, Sophie. We were shot at earlier, or had you forgotten? I think you owe it to me to tell me everything.’

So slowly, haltingly, Sophie told Josh about house-sitting at Lana’s house, about the party invitations on the mantelpiece, the borrowed wardrobe and her nearly week-long act of playing the millionaire.

‘I have no money, Josh,’ she said, feeling wretched. ‘It was an illusion. I didn’t tell him I was a broke personal trainer because I knew he’d think I was a gold-digger.’

Josh gave a mirthless laugh.

‘Instead it turns out you were both playing the same game.’

She wished he would be compassionate, but then what did she expect from a man like Josh McCormack?

‘What was he going to do to me, Josh?’ she asked quietly.

‘At a guess, the Spanish Prisoner,’ he said finally.

‘The Spanish what?’

‘It’s one of the oldest cons in the book. Basically, he would convice you he was rich, pay for everything, shower you with presents, until you completely trusted him. Then he would suddenly need money: some investment gone bad, a bridging loan on a building development – it doesn’t really matter. In the old days, the con would need a ransom for a wealthy nobleman captured by the Spanish, hence the name. Anyway, you would offer the money, he would reluctantly accept – and then he’d disappear.’

‘So everything he said to me was a lie?’ she croaked.

Josh gave her that sympathetic look again, and Sophie began to hate him for it.

‘Sophie, you’re a beautiful woman.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe what you two had together wasn’t just work, I can’t say. But that was what Nick did; he used rich women, conned them, lived off them. You asked me what his business was. That’s what he did.’

For a few moments Sophie couldn’t speak.

‘But how come . . .’ she began, but Josh held up a hand.

‘Later, Sophie. If you don’t get some clothes on soon, you’re going to do that hit man’s job for him.’