He looks like a cool drink of water, but he’s candy-coated misery…“

To look at him, you’d say butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He was a fellow with the most angelic of faces. He knew it too and played on it all the time.

But beyond that lay a demon.

An indulged child and adult he was used to getting and having his own way. People in his mind were there to be used, and as he grew up, he left in his wake a trail of the broken and shattered.

He knew he had the looks to attract women and he did.

It didn’t take him long to develop a reputation as a womanising bastard. “Use ‘em and dump ‘em,” he’d say to his friends.

His friends, of course, were a bunch of sycophantic males who saw him as a free ticket and the constant source of entertainment in a world they were too frightened to indulge in.

Using and abusing he saw as his right. He believed he was immune from any sort of legal responsibility.

So, when he befriended Sally a young lady working at the bakery to help pay her way through University he saw her as another of his life’s conquests. It wasn’t hard for him to lure her in, lavished her with gifts and take her to expensive restaurants.

But Sally sensed the falseness within him. She challenged him in his beliefs, she asked him questions about himself which he was only too happy to supply the answers he wanted to give but when pressed further grew irritated by her.

He saw her more and more as a conquest and wasn’t going to allow any young woman to show him up in any way.

That was when the violence began. A shove gave way to a push, then he hit her then one night punched her so badly she needed surgery to correct her broken nose.

She was finished with him, but he wasn’t with her. The papers were filled with his relationship news. When interviewed he spoke of her clumsiness, falling down stairs, bumping into door frames and of his concern and care for her when in the hospital. Photographs appeared of her hospital room adorned with flowers all of which he provided.

But to his surprise and confusing she pressed charges against him. The police made a very public arrest. He denied all charges saying she was just after his money. Secretly he did offer her large amounts of money to shut up and go away.

But she stood up in court and told her story, never flinched when cross-examined, stuck to her story and laughed when confronted with the images of her hospital room and the evidence of expensive jewellery being lavished upon her.

Soon other women came forward and told their story, it wasn’t long before the truth came out, and a truth that was believed.

He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Written for: https://marquessamatthews.com/2017/12/28/marquessachallenge-cowboy-casanova-fictionfriday-music-prompt/