I Knew You Were Trouble (The Ever After Agency #5)

Chapter 1

1

KATE

I’ve just pulled on my oversized Gilmore Girls T-shirt – a relic from my teens and my go-to for maximum comfort – when the buzzer to my flat bleats.

It’s either a delivery driver who’s got the wrong flat or Mrs Winterbottom, who lives below me, has locked herself out again. If it’s the latter, that makes twice this week. I’ve told her I’m happy to take her rubbish out, but she insists that ninety is the new eighty and she’s entirely capable of doing it herself. Only, she needs to remember her keys.

I cross the lounge and press the intercom button. ‘Hello?’

‘ Hallo , is this Kate Whitaker?’ asks a deep, husky, slightly accented voice.

‘Yes,’ I reply instinctually. Maybe I did order something and I’ve forgotten.

‘My name is Willem de Vries,’ he says, and I pinpoint the accent – Dutch. Though it’s unclear why a delivery driver is introducing himself.

‘Okay. Do you have a parcel for me? You can leave it by the door and I’ll come down to collect it later,’ I reply.

‘Er… No, it’s not a par— I have something to tell you – something important. Can I please come inside?’

Intriguing. But no matter how much he’s piqued my curiosity, I’m a single woman who lives alone. I’m also trouser-less. I am not inviting a stranger into my flat, no matter how sexy his voice is.

‘What’s this concerning?’ I ask, but there’s no reply. ‘Bugger,’ I mutter – the intercom must have timed out. I wait, poised to answer if Willem de Vries buzzes again. He does.

‘ Hallo? ’

‘Hi,’ I reply. ‘Can you tell me what this is about? Please,’ I add, remembering my manners.

But rather than answering, he sighs so loudly I can hear him over the intercom. ‘It’s important , Kate. Please, I need to speak to you. I understand if you don’t want me to come inside, but— Look, I passed a pub on the corner. How about meeting me there?’

‘When?’

‘Now.’

‘Oh, uh…’

I hadn’t expected to be going anywhere. It’s been an intense week at work, and I’d planned on a lazy Friday night on the sofa, watching something mindless and eating the rest of the curry I ordered in last night but didn’t finish.

I could just tell Willem de Vries to sod off. If it’s that important, why won’t he tell me over the intercom?

Then again, he has me intrigued and I suppose that a crowded pub, one where I’m known by the staff and some of the local patrons, will offer some security.

‘Fine, I’ll be there in five minutes,’ I say. ‘Actually, make it ten,’ I add, giving me an extra few minutes to make myself presentable – and to conduct a swift internet search on Mr de Vries.

Before he can respond, I release the button on the intercom and start googling ‘Willem de Vries con man’.

* * *

As expected for 6p.m. on a Friday, the pub is teeming – mostly with locals, and I say hello to the ones I know. There are also a handful of tourists, who stand out with their daypacks and weary, slightly sunburnt faces.

I scan the dark interior, sending a wave to Dave behind the bar, who smiles back, but don’t see anyone who might be Willem de Vries. All the men are here with at least one other person.

‘ Hallo , Kate.’

I turn towards the voice, coming face to (formidable) chest with Willem, even though I’m five-eight. I take half a step back, craning my neck to meet his eyes.

Thor – the man looks like Thor. Well, the Hemsworth’s version – and from the third film, after those signature golden locks had been shorn off. Strong jaw, high cheekbones, intense blue eyes under sexily arched dark brows, lips the colour of the last lip stain I bought (grossly unfair when men’s lips are naturally that colour), and a five o’clock shadow. And he’s built like a god , I note as my eyes drift to his biceps.

It’s ridiculous how handsome he is – Willem, that is, not Hemsworth – although he is too, I suppose.

He extends his enormous hand for me to shake, and I do, mine instantly swallowed by his.

‘Hi,’ I say, so distracted by his eyes, all my other words have dried up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that exact shade of blue before.

I will myself to break eye contact and scout for a table. There aren’t any free inside, so I signal towards the door. ‘Shall we look for a table outside?’ I ask and, not waiting for an answer, I head out.

I snag the end of a picnic table where we can sit opposite each other and Willem slides onto the bench, then rests his muscular forearms on the table.

‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘I should have asked if you wanted something to drink.’

‘That’s okay. As soon as you tell me whatever it is, I’m going back to my flat.’

A frown mars his perfect features, and his lips disappear between his teeth. A few moments pass with him studying me intensely, which is beyond disconcerting.

Whatever he has to tell me – and I’ve been wracking my brain since he buzzed my flat – I can tell it’s not good. It’s obvious I haven’t inherited a cupcake shop by the sea from a long-lost aunt. Or a bookshop.

‘Just tell me,’ I say, impatient for him to spit it out.

He nods, releasing his lips from between his teeth. ‘You’re engaged to Jon Dunn, yes?’

Oh god, I’ve been so thrown by a strange man showing up out of nowhere, I never imagined this might be about Jon. What a rubbish fiancée I am!

‘Is he all right?’ I ask, suddenly panicked. ‘And how do you know Jon?’

Willem takes a deep breath as if he’s steeling himself, which is even more unsettling – if that’s possible. Unease lands heavily in my chest and my breath catches.

‘ Willem , is Jon okay?’

‘As far as I’m aware, yes.’

I breathe out a sigh of relief, but I’m still confused. ‘So, how are you connected to Jon? Do you work together?’ It’s plausible. There must be commercial pilots who look like Hollywood actors. Right?

‘No. We don’t work together. I know of Dunn through my sister.’

‘Oh-kay.’

God, I wish he’d get to the point – he’s really dragging this out. And why is he referring to Jon by his last name?

‘Dunn is her fiancé.’

The words seem to float in the air between us.

But they don’t make any sense. They can’t make sense, because Jon is engaged to me. He has been for three months. He proposed to me on the observation deck of The Shard, and after I said yes, he took me to dinner at Oblix.

Dunn is her fiancé.

I stare down at the enormous solitaire affixed to the platinum band encircling my ring finger. Jon chose it – I would have chosen something smaller, less ostentatious, but he said he wanted everyone in the world to know that I was engaged.

Engaged to him .

‘I don’t understand,’ I say eventually, my voice strangled. I look up from the ring, meeting Willem’s eyes. Then something occurs to me. ‘Wait, do you mean he was engaged to your sister – as in, past tense?’

‘No. Dunn is engaged to both of you. Present tense,’ he adds to drive the point home.

‘But he can’t be…’ I say with a dry laugh. ‘You’re having me on, right? Wait, did Margot put you up to this? Because if she did, I will throttle h?—’

He places one of his enormous hands on my forearm, silencing me instantly. When I’m quiet, he takes it away.

‘I don’t know anyone named Margot,’ he says steadily. I fix my eyes on his, drawing strength from his calm demeanour. Because despite wishful thinking that this is a sick prank perpetrated by Margot, my cousin and closest friend, deep down, I believe he’s telling the truth.

‘What I do know,’ he continues, ‘is that my sister – her name’s Adriana – recently got engaged to a man she barely knows, a man I’ve never met. So, I looked into him.’

I latch on to the detail with the least power to derail my entire life. ‘You looked into him? You mean, you investigated him?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’ I ask, imagining Willem engaging a private investigator, an old-school one with a cluttered office, a sassy receptionist, and nicotine-stained fingers.

‘I’m a cyber security consultant. I have access to information, and I know what I’m looking for – mostly.’ It sounds simple when he puts it like that; though plainly it isn’t.

‘Which is how you found me?’ I ask quietly.

‘Yes.’

I drag my eyes from his tractor-beam gaze, dropping them to the table where someone has roughly carved ‘S + B’ into one of the slats. My mind starts vomiting up vignettes of me and Jon, which appear then vanish in quick succession.

Michelin-star dinners at Le Gavroche… Watching the world’s greats play at Wimbledon… Champagne brunches at Duck & Waffle on a Sunday morning… Wandering through Hyde Park with takeaway coffees, and stopping to pet other people’s dogs…

‘I’m really sorry, Kate,’ says Willem gently. ‘It must be a shock. That’s why I wanted to tell you in person.’

I jostle my head to dislodge the romantic snapshots. Because there are other memories lurking, more sinister ones, and they skulk into view, mocking me.

Jon excusing himself to take a hushed phone call in the other room… Jon suddenly leaving at 11p.m. because the airline needed him to fly to Cairo at late notice… Jon not introducing me to his only family member, an aged mother who’s in a care facility in Harrow, despite me asking numerous times… Jon dismissing my questions about his life before me with, ‘Oh, you don’t want me to bore you with all that.’

Were these instances of Jon’s double life intruding on ours?

Something else occurs to me. Jon rarely wanted to stay in, always insisting that I ‘put on something nice’ and we go out. A sickening feeling washes over me. Is everything I feel for Jon one-sided? Am I simply someone to wear on his arm?

‘Wait,’ I say, my head snapping up, ‘are you positive they’re the same person? There must be dozens of Jon Dunns. What proof do you have that my Jon is the same man who’s engaged to your sister?’

These are the desperate questions of a woman who knows better, but grasping at straws is far more palatable than admitting I’ve been deceived, that Jon is cheating on me. It’s also easier than questioning the very nature of our relationship.

Willem presses his lips together, his jaw pulsing, then he reaches into the messenger bag by his side and takes out a document-sized envelope. He sets it on the table between us, his fingertips resting on it lightly. ‘This is a summary of the evidence I’ve collected to date, but I suspect there is more to uncover.’

‘More to…?’ I look at the envelope, my heart pounding and my stomach lurching. I lift my gaze. ‘I think I’m going to need that drink after all.’

* * *

‘Kate, seriously, what the actual eff?’

Margot is sitting cross-legged on the floor of my lounge, surrounded by the evidence Willem gave me at the pub. It’s obvious she’s shocked – and it takes a lot to shock someone like Margot. She’s usually the one doing the shocking.

‘I mean, this…’ she continues, holding up the page she’s been reading. ‘This is irrefutable.’

‘I know,’ I squeak from the sofa where I’m curled up in the corner, legs tucked beneath me.

Her eyes soften, bathing me in her unique brand of love, as dozens of thoughts play behind her intelligent brown eyes.

Margot is my only cousin on my dad’s side. She’s eighteen months older than me and because her mum died suddenly when she was a baby and her dad worked away a lot, picking up odd jobs wherever he could, she mostly lived with me and my parents. Essentially, we grew up as sisters – even though we look nothing alike. She’s petite and wiry with olive skin, a round face, and large brown eyes – almost pixie-esque, especially now that she’s dyed her close-cropped hair bright pink. Then there’s me: tall and willowy with wavy, dark-blonde hair, a pale complexion, green eyes, and attractive but otherwise non-descript features. Total opposites.

Regardless, Margot is my closest friend and fiercest ally. And as soon as I called with my news, she abandoned her Friday-night plans – a feminist poetry reading at a bookshop in Soho – and came straight here.

She picks up another page and continues reading, intermittently murmuring and tutting, her face set in a scowl.

As she reads, I eye the slew of papers littering the rug. Ostensibly, I’ve read every page – twice – but only some of the details have stuck. After a while, the revelations were so extreme, the words began swimming on the page, and an odd sort of numbness came over me.

Regardless, it didn’t take long to get the gist. Jon lied – about pretty much everything – and he’s currently engaged to both me and Adriana de Vries.

Memories of us start popping up again, only now they have the word ‘LIES’ stamped over them in fat red letters.

Was anything he told me true? Was any aspect of our relationship real?

‘Bastard,’ Margot hisses, snapping me back to the present. She haphazardly gathers up the pages and shoves them into the envelope. ‘So, what do we do now?’ she asks.

‘What do you mean?’

She gets up and joins me on the sofa, sitting sideways and giving me a pointed look. ‘I mean, how are we going to get back at the prick?’

‘Wait, we ?’ I ask, struggling to form a coherent thought.

‘Yes, we . I’m hardly letting you handle this alone. Bastard ,’ she says again. ‘I never liked him.’

‘Wait, really?’ I ask, sitting up straighter.

‘Really. Too cagey. He would never answer a direct question – it was always a convoluted response. Major red flag.’

‘Hmm,’ I mutter, more pieces of the puzzle slotting into place. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘I am. Anyway , setting aside that he was never right for you?—’

‘I’m not really in the mood for “I told you so” right now,’ I interject.

‘Exactly, so setting that aside…’ she says, missing my point entirely, ‘we need a way to get back at him.’

‘I don’t know, Margot. This is all so fresh. I’ve barely got my mind around things. I’m not ready to start plotting revenge.’

I don’t mention that I’m not really a revenge sort of person – that’s more Margot’s domain. And if I don’t immediately quash her enthusiasm, she’ll have me logged on to the dark web looking for mercenaries before bedtime.

‘Besides,’ I say, ‘there’s something else that takes precedence over dealing with Jon.’

She blinks at me, confused. ‘What could possibly take precedence over chopping Jon’s bollocks off?’

Margot has always had a rather graphic turn of phrase – more so since her divorce, a nasty, drawn-out affair that consolidated her hatred of (almost) all men. My dad is one of the few exceptions.

‘I’ve been asked to go to Amsterdam,’ I reply.

‘Amsterdam? For what?’

‘To help Willem. His sister – the other fiancée – she doesn’t believe I exist. She thinks Willem made me up to prise her away from Jon.’

‘You’re not serious,’ she says with a scoffing laugh.

‘I am serious. He’s asked me if I can go next weekend.’

‘ If you can go? Of course you can , Kate, but you need to consider if you should .’ She slowly shakes her head disbelievingly. ‘God, this is like something out of one of those books you’re always reading – the ones with the black covers.’

She means the domestic noirs I like to escape into – and she’s not entirely wrong. This is like the plot of a novel.

‘ My Fiancé’s Fiancée coming soon to a bookshop near you,’ she says in a deep voice. She chuckles at her own joke.

‘If you’re going to make fun, you can leave.’

Her laughter dies. ‘Sorry. But you have to admit, it’s…’ I glare at her and she abandons her point, reaching over and patting my arm instead. ‘I really am sorry, Kate. It’s a shitty, shitty thing he’s done, and I’m here for you no matter what, all right?’

It’s rare Margot shows her serious side, but of everyone in my life, she’s the person I can count on the most.

‘Thanks.’

‘Now, tell me more about the fit brother. Does he really look like Thor?’

My cheeks instantly flame and I try my best to stifle the smile, but it appears anyway.

‘Ah-hah!’ she says, wagging a finger at me. ‘You fancy him.’

‘I… Well, yes, he’s a very handsome man, but a little perspective, please? I’ve just found out my fiancé is a fake. It’s hardly the time to indulge in sexy thoughts about another man.’

‘Au contraire, dear cousin, this is exactly the time for that – and not only thinking about him…’ She shimmies her shoulders and raises her brows suggestively.

Laughter erupts out of me, a much-needed release after the evening’s revelations. My love life may be in tatters, but at least my sense of humour is intact.

For now, anyway.