You make me smile :)

CHAPTER-9: False Pretences

"Good morning sleepyhead! Common, get dressed. We're getting you discharged!!" squeaked Anna, filled with excitement.

"What? Why? I don't feel fine. Not after all that happened yesterday" said Sam, feeling ashamed of how she'd smashed her own shot at success by insulting her clients' son.

"What happened yesterday? Is everything alright Sam?" asked Anna. The concern in her voice was so prominent that Sam thought it to be best to keep it from Anna.

Sam knew that Anna would have surely approached Alex and tried to sort it all out, but that wasn't what was really required right now. She felt terrible for lying to her best friend, but she recovered from the guilt-stroke that she just had to answer Annas' question.

"No. I'm fine, just a bit thirsty. Can you get me some water please?" asked Sam, trying to pretend that everything was fine.

"Sure honey! I'll be back in a sec." smiled Anna as she left the room.

As soon as Anna left to get some water, Sam took out her cellphone to dig about Alex to get herself out of the water in which she was stuck knee-deep!

"Oh? You're all dressed up already?" said Anna, surprised to see Sam in her business suit.

"Yeah. I thought you said we were leaving" replied Sam.

"And I thought you weren't feeling alright." said Anna.

"I am now." smiled Sam as she hung the bag with all her things over her shoulder and held Annas' hand while leaving the hospital room, which was her home for a fairly long period!

Anna dropped Sam at her house, and left for work. But Sam wasn't one of those people who would just sit idle and wait for things to fall in place. So she took out her cellphone and called her assistant Shelly, who was more than just scared to get a call from her boss at this point of time.

"Hello? Ms. Samantha? How are you now? Are you feeling alright madam?" asked Shelly, politely.

"Oh? I'm fine sweetheart! Please spare me all the niceties and find whatever you can about Alex Krause, the son of Mr. David Krause!" replied Sam, her voice getting harsher by the end of the sentence.

A sudden chill circulated through Shelly's spine as she sprung to start working on her next assignment. But she was delighted to have Sam back on her two feet, flogging and scolding everyone who worked under her. Sam had a unique style of scolding those inferior to her. She would not spare them, but would also be the first one to come to their rescue when they needed help. So all her staff loved and adored her.

Sam was busy making notes, trying to set things right with her most influential clients' son, when she heard footsteps in the doorway.

"Damn! I forgot to latch the door!" she thought, and went to see if it was Anna who had just entered. As soon as she got up, her cellphone began to vibrate in her pocket.

"Hello? Who is this?" she asked, picking up the phone.

"It's me! So tell me how are you feeling now? Better?." asked Anna gently.

"Anna? Please tell me that you just entered my house!" pleaded Sam, whispering in her cell.

"What are you saying Sammy? I can't hear a word! What? No! I'm in my office. Why? What happened?" asked Anna.

"I'll call you later" said Sam, curtly and then hung up.

She tiptoed to the hallway and got hold of the nearest sharp object she could find, which in this case was a broom!

She walked quietly towards the door to find someone standing there and fiddleing with the lock. She felt as if she'd seen him before, but it wasn't worth risking her life by sparing him his! After all, he had broken into her house, and she couldn't see his face, which was facing the door. He had his back towards Sam, but she still felt that she recognised that frame - tall, dark hair, thin but sturdy and muscular too!

It wasn't a time to trust her instincts, so she attacked him with full force. But as she was about to hit him with the broom, something unexpected happened. The man turned into some martial arts expert, held the broom from the other end and pulled it towards him - all without looking back even once! All of it was so sudden that Sam, even before she could blink, found herself and the broom that she was holding on to, in his arms!

"You forgot to lock up your home!" said the not-so-stranger.

She looked up to see that she was lying in the arms of Alex Krause, who was staring at her with so much amazement that she could have puked if she continued to see a guy stare at her like that for even a minute more!

"Eww!" she thought. But then she realised that the opportunity to set things right with her clients' son had fallen right in her lap! So she tried to play along.

"Oh! My bad. I was so engrossed in the painting that a stranger gave me this morning that it must have slipped my mind to lock up!" exclaimed Sam. That was the cheesiest line she had said in a lifetime of hers!

"So you finally realised that you are a beautiful piece of art?" asked Alex, setting Sam straight on her own two feet again. 

"Yes! Absolutely! We all are! God created us and bestowed all this beauty in and around us! Don't you think so?" asked Sam, though she didn't give a damn about such stuff as she was an 'almost-atheist'.

"You have such high thoughts Samantha! By the way, I'm Alex, your new neighbour." replied Alex in his charming voice.

"Oh? Wow! That's great!" exclaimed Sam, though she was just thinking about how to put up a show all day, with Alex around. But she was forced to be nice to him and pretend like she was interested in all that he said.

"Why don't you come in Alex? Sit with me, have some coffee, maybe?" asked Sam, expecting 'no' for an answer.

"Maybe some other time. Thanks a lot for your hospitality, though." smiled Alex as he headed for the door and said "Actually I saw the door open and I thought I'd inform whoever lived here that he hadn't locked up properly. But then as soon as entered and shut the door, it got locked automatically and I didn't know the password...."

"So now you're stuck up here with me!" joked Sam.

"Here, I'll show you. Actually it's automated and the password is an easy number, so you just type it and......" Sam kept on explainig Alex about the mechanism of the door, but it wasn't the door that Alex was really interested to know more about - it was her! So she kept on explaining for a minute or two, and he continued to pretend that he wanted to learn more about the door lock and not her.

Then he finally went home and pretended to be totally cool about the fact that an overwhelmingly beautiful girl, whom he had been secretly stalking since months and whom he had made a portrait of, lived just next door. And she pretended to be totally cool with the fact that the 'billionnaire-boy' was her neighbour and now she had a chance to forward her career by befriending him.

Both of them thought that they were one step closer to achieving their goals based on a relationship of false pretences.......BUT WAS ALL OF IT JUST A LIE??? LET US FIND OUT!!