The last eligible billio.., p.26
The Last Eligible Billionaire, page 26
She nods and stares out the window. “Of course. That makes sense.”
“We should get married.”
The words leave my mouth and I can practically see them traveling the short distance in Jonas’s private plane—not mine, since it’s still delivering Hyacinth home—from my lips to her ears. I want to snag them back before they register inside her brain, but I can’t, and I know it.
I’m also completely, selfishly thrilled with this turn of events.
I marry Begonia so that even if rumors swirl about what we were doing in public and why we disappeared from the gala, the scandal will be outweighed by the news of our wedding.
We were overcome with emotion at my proposal and didn’t want to wait another minute to tie the knot.
My family’s reputation will take a hit, but not as much as it would if we didn’t get married. People tend to forgive you when you do the right thing, even if the standards my family are held to are ridiculous.
But tonight, I don’t care.
Once I marry Begonia, I’m free.
Free in the sense of not having women swarming every time I’m at an event, even with my girlfriend, because wife is so much more permanent.
Rutherfords do not cheat.
And we can socially ruin anyone who dares to suggest that we should.
I’ll no longer be the last eligible billionaire in the world. The damage to my family’s name will be minimal.
And I get to keep Begonia.
We’re friends.
Friends with benefits.
I’ll provide her with a comfortable life and request in return a wife of convenience, at least for a while.
Surely someone else will have joined the ranks of the world’s billionaires within a year or two. I’ll be written off as that Rutherford who couldn’t hold his marriage together, convince my family I’m utterly miserable at the idea of having to date, and never have to worry about this again.
With the exception of the horrified gonging in my heart at the thought of letting Begonia go.
She gapes at me from the wide executive chair across from me. “We should what?”
“My lawyer will draft a prenup before we land that will provide a comfortable stipend for you regardless of what happens next. I require at least two full years of marriage in exchange for supporting you in whatever endeavors would make you happiest, from teaching to making your own artwork to exploring anything else that would fill your heart with joy, and at the end of two years, if you’ve found someone else you would rather be with, I’ll grant you a quiet divorce with assistance for transition back to a normal life.”
She doesn’t answer.
She doesn’t have to.
Her agitated green eyes are doing all of the talking for her.
But I wanted my next marriage to be for love, Hayes.
What I wouldn’t give to wrap my arms around her and make her all the promises that terrify me to my core.
I’ll love you, Begonia. I don’t know how not to.
There will never be another woman who affects me the way you do.
You are my one. You are my only one, the one I’ve waited my whole life for.
But therein is the problem.
Loving her is easy.
Being loved back by her?
She adores everyone.
Who am I to think I could be the man she would love above all others, when a woman like Begonia could have her pick of any man in the world?
Any man in the world. Someone who can love her fully without reservation or fear. Someone who could stand by her side and enjoy peopling, as she calls it. Someone who has more to offer her than money.
“I’ll do my best to charm your mother, though of course, it’s in everyone’s best interest if she abhors me. That will make our eventual split easier on you. And I work long hours, as you’ve clearly realized, so if you wanted to live and work in Richmond as you’ve been doing, I could commute back to New York during the week, keep my own quarters near you on the weekend, and be as little of an inconvenience in your life as you’d like me to be.”
Her chin wobbles, and her eyes go shiny. “That’s what you want.”
“It’s what must happen, Begonia. I can’t be the cause of scandal to my family, especially given my new position in the company, and I don’t know if my influence alone will be enough for you to keep your teaching job if those photos appear anywhere.”
It’s the best plan.
She becomes mine, for a solid reason, without me having to put my heart on the line.
I can live with knowing I’m not her one greatest love, so long as I get to live with her.
“Take me home,” she says quietly.
I blink. “Begonia—”
“Take. Me. Home.”
“This is the only clear way to—”
“I love you, Hayes. I. Love. You. And I don’t want to. I didn’t want to. I just got divorced. I don’t fit in your world. I’m still finding myself again. And I could roll with it. I could. You’re supposed to love people. That’s what makes the world a better place. And you’ve been nothing but everything I always dreamed I wanted in a partner, except for one thing. You don’t love me back. I’ve spent too many years sacrificing what I deserve for what I thought should’ve been good enough. I won’t do good enough with you. I won’t do easy with you. Or anyone. I will not settle for anything less than all-consuming, no-holding-back, nothing-else-matters, we-are-in-this-together, I-love-you-so-much-it-hurts love.”
A tear slips down her cheek, and she swipes it away as if it’s what’s committed the most egregious error of this evening.
It has.
That tear is single-handedly splitting my heart in two. And I have a choice.
I can tell her I love her back, risk that Begonia’s love is fickle, that she’ll fall in love with someone else as easily as she falls in love with the sunrise each morning, with a funny design on her toast fresh out of the toaster, or with someone’s hairstyle at a formal event, and try to do all in my power to keep her, all while never knowing for sure that I’m truly what she wants.
If I’m merely convenient.
The first man to give her a glimpse of better, but not necessarily the man who would be best for her.
Or I can stay safe.
Let her go.
Weather the scandal alone.
And know that I wouldn’t have been able to keep her. That this bright, vibrant angel of life couldn’t have ever been mine.
Not fully.
She’s the sunshine, hurtling about the universe bringing light to all she touches, and I’m the tree.
Solid and dependable. Rooted. With a few broken branches.
But the fact remains—while the tree needs the sunshine, the sunshine will never depend on the tree.
“Do you love me, Hayes?” she whispers. “Could you love me?”
For fuck’s sake. How could I not? “Begonia, I know very few people in this world who could know you and not love you.”
“But do you love me?”
Three words.
Three of the most damn impossible words in the English language.
That’s what it would take to keep her.
For tonight.
But what happens tomorrow?
I asked her to pretend to be my girlfriend so that she’d be a shield between me and anyone with an opinion about my love life after I became the world’s most eligible billionaire. How ironic, when she’s the one who should have men lined up around the block for a chance at her hand.
She’s loyal to a fault.
She wouldn’t cheat.
But she’ll find someone new—possibly someone I know—and she’ll be miserable, and then she’ll leave me too.
I thought I hurt when Trixie left me.
That grief would be nothing compared to watching Begonia go after convincing myself I could make her happy.
“Hayes?” she whispers.
I rise. “I’ll instruct the pilot to change course.”
33
Begonia
Hyacinth won’t quit knocking on my door.
I know it’s her. She has a distinctive knock. It sounds like our mother asking if I took my vitamins.
And just like the last seventeen times she’s knocked on my door, I ignore it.
Marshmallow harumphs.
He and I got back to Richmond two nights ago, courtesy of Jonas Rutherford’s private jet, since Hyacinth was using Hayes’s at the time, and I’m running out of food in my little apartment, and I don’t care.
My only plans are to wither away into nothingness, because that will hurt less. Also, if I wither away into nothingness, I don’t have to pack my apartment and move back in with my mother, which is probably on the agenda since word got out that I was caught giving a man a blow job in public.
Not really what high school parents want in their kids’ art teacher.
My head and a platter are soon to be very intimately related.
I close my eyes and return to snooze-land.
Or try to. Snoozing is hard when you hear your dog unlocking your apartment door.
“Who’s a good boy?” Hyacinth says. “Marshmallow is such a good boy. Where’s the potty, Marshmallow? Where’s the potty before I pee on your mommy’s carpet?”
I grunt.
“Oh, B,” my sister sighs. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
She’s lying.
She’s not right back.
But eventually she joins me, which I know not because my eyes are open, but because she’s as quiet as a herd of rhinos trying to walk across a field of Legos.
“So it was all fake.”
I pry one eye open. “What?”
She waves a tabloid in my face. “You signed a contract to fake being his girlfriend. Why?”
Heat funnels from my chest, up my neck, into my brain, and makes me lightheaded. I’m lying down and I’m lightheaded.
“What?”
“That’s your signature. I know your signature. How did they get your signature if it was fake? And you were supposed to get engaged? What did you do? And talk fast, because I guarantee you, this is hitting the morning shows locally any minute, and Mom will be here like she can teleport the minute it does.”
I push to sitting, ignore the black dots dancing in my vision, and take the newspaper from her.
That’s me.
On my knees.
In the dark.
Giving Hayes a blow job behind a building near the sea lion exhibit.
With a giant blurry spot right in front of my face.
Oh my god.
I fling it away and throw myself back onto the couch. “No,” I whisper.
“Begonia. Ignore the picture. Also, anyone who comes after you for having sex in public will have to go through me first, because hello, that had to be hella fucking hot. But we need to talk about this headline. The Weird Rutherford Fakes A Girlfriend. And this contract that they printed. And how I’m going to murder everyone in the Rutherford family for using you like this.”
“No.”
“Begonia, they have the signed NDA printed in here too. Talk. Now. I knew something was up.”
“How?”
“Hello, twinstinct?”
“No, how do they have the contract?”
“So you’d take the fall for the BJ that’s threatening to destroy the Rutherford family’s reputation. Duh. I really hope he did a lot more than setting up the most gorgeous art room I’ve ever seen for you in that mansion of his, because otherwise, his death will be slow and painful instead of quick and merciful.”
“Hy, he wouldn’t—”
I cut myself off.
Wouldn’t he?
What do I really know about Hayes Rutherford beyond what I wanted to believe?
He stood up to his mother for me, but that was the whole point of the fake relationship. To sell it. To put me between him and her and every other woman in the world.
He treated me like a goddess and told me he liked me for who I was, but was it all pretend? Is he as good of an actor as his brother?
He couldn’t even tell me he loved me.
He preferred letting all of our secrets loose in the tabloids to actually caring about me.
I’d thought I’d cried every last tear I had inside me, but I haven’t.
Not by a long shot.
And they’re coming hot and hard and fast all over again as I tell Hyacinth everything. The mistake with the vacation rental. Him finding me waxing my bikini line in his bathroom. Marshmallow eating the Maurice Bellitano carving. His mother arriving with a more suitable girlfriend. Skipping the lobster dinner cruise for a picnic on the beach.
Asking him to pop my post-divorce cherry.
His panicked call for me to pick his executive assistants.
Our moonlit picnic when we made love.
Running into the woman who broke him and his former best friend at the gala.
Wanting to hug him and save him and protect him from people who only see him as the world’s last eligible billionaire.
But I suppose the joke’s on me.
I was never what he actually wanted, no matter how he made me feel.
Hyacinth’s cradling my head in her lap and stroking my hair by the time I finish.
“Jerry says he can get you a job at his company,” she says. “Just until all of this blows over. To keep you busy, I mean. Until you sue the ever-loving fuck out of that asshole billionaire who’s letting you take the fall for all of this.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Despite it all, Hy, I love him.”
“Begonia, you could fall in love with a turd-coated shape-shifting lemur. I realize Mr. Big Bucks was a little more handsome than that, and he gave us a good run of thinking he knew you and liked you, but sweetie, he betrayed you in the freaking gossip rags to save his family’s reputation, and you are going to be okay. C’mon, Ms. Things Happen For A Reason. You can do private art lessons now. Take advantage of the notoriety and get a page up on Etsy with some of your attempts at spin-art. Sign them, and they’ll be worth like, seven times as much.”
“I hate math, but even I know seven times zero is zero. And I don’t care, Hy. I don’t. I don’t care about anything.”
“You fed your dog today.”
“I fed him the whole bag when we got home.”
She looks at me, then over near where Marshmallow’s dog bowl sits. “Oh. I, ah, see. Does he need to go out?”
“Every freaking hour, but he takes care of it himself.”
He’s the best dog. Best best best.
“Begonia.”
“I’ve cleaned up seven thousand dog messes in the park from other dogs! If he makes a dozen messes that I don’t clean while I’m heartbroken and drowning my sorrows on my couch, then I don’t care. And if my dog is smart enough to take the elevator down to the parking lot to poop, then find his way back, then why shouldn’t he have his freedom to do that?”
“Okay. Okay. I’m texting Jerry. He’ll do the whole apartment parking lot. He doesn’t mind. He’s worried about you.”
“You settled.”
“What?”
“For Jerry. You settled. I don’t want to settle. I want love.”
“Oh my god, Begonia. I did not settle for Jerry.”
“But you complain about him all the time. And the last time he took you on a date was months ago, and it was popcorn and hotdogs in your basement while you hid from the kids.”
“Um, hello, that was a good date.” She rubs her belly, which I can feel behind my head. “Too good, unfortunately. And I’m sorry I complain about him too much. It’s not him. Exactly. It’s raising two and a half minions and being overwhelmed and settling into—no, not settling, not like that—but just having routines and being so busy and forgetting to appreciate all the reasons I fell in love with him in the first place. Like, he gives me foot rubs every night. And he takes the kids to the park every Saturday morning so I can have one morning of bingeing adult TV while I drink my coffee hot. And do you remember when the preschool moms all rose up last year to protest Dani saying fuck? Jerry was the first one to tell me that our kids will be just fine, because they won’t be afraid of profanity and they’ll understand how and when to use it and that people are different and see things differently, and he went to the preschool meeting for me and read a list of cuss words and their etymology and talked about how when you stigmatize something, that makes it worse than it is all on its own. And he doesn’t blink when I drink pickle smoothies or have ice cream dribble down my shirt, and he buys me tampons. I know he’s not, like, a billionaire who can take me to Europe on a moment’s notice—which I notice the billionaire who shall not be named didn’t do for you, by the way, despite teasing you incessantly about it—or get me tickets to a movie premiere or send me luxury chocolates every day, but he’s my prince charming, even when I forget how much he does.”
I twist my head to stare up at her for a brief moment, then squeeze my eyes shut.
She loves him.
She doesn’t think she settled.
And that’s what’s important. Especially since neither one of us can have a guy like Hayes.
Or who he pretended he was.
“I thought he loved me,” I whisper to my sister. “Underneath it all, I thought he was falling in love with me.”
Someone else knocks at my door, making Marshmallow growl low in his throat.
I wince. “And now Mom’s here.”
“If she says the Chad word, I’ll threaten to never let her see her grandbabies again, and I swear on my loyalty to you above everyone else, I’ll mean it.”
Marshmallow growls again.
“Begonia?” Mom calls. “Sweetie, open the door. Mommy’s here to fix it all.”
I whimper.
Hyacinth growls louder than Marshmallow.
The lock clicks, the hinges squeak, and more than one set of footsteps makes my small entryway floor creak. “Honey, don’t worry,” Mom calls. “I brought Chad, and he forgives you. Let’s put this all behind us now, shall we?”
Hyacinth and I lock eyes.
I dive for Marshmallow, and I get lightheaded all over again. Maybe skipping breakfast for the past two days wasn’t the greatest idea.
