My mother has not left. Amelia has not left. Charlotte has not left.
All three of them, plus the dog, are accompanying Begonia and me to the pier, where I’ve chartered a private boat for a lobster dinner at sunset.
It takes three golf carts to get here, thanks to the extra security detail, and the only reason Begonia isn’t on a bike is that skin-tight mermaid dress she’s wearing.
She may as well also have a mermaid’s tail for as fast as her feet are carrying her from the cart down the wooden plankway to the small yacht.
Her dog’s stuck to her as if it’s afraid I’ll throw her overboard.
And the worst of all?
I made exactly zero progress on digging into Razzle Dazzle’s financials while sequestered away in my office, because Begonia’s voice was on repeat inside my head the entire day.
And that discrepancy that’s bothering me?
It’s less than a thousandth of a percent of the company’s operating budget. The FTC wouldn’t blink. The board won’t blink. Yet I’m incapable of thinking about anything else while I’m supposed to be acquainting myself with my new role, which is big-picture strategy rather than staying buried in the minutiae that I’ve enjoyed so much since joining the Razzle Dazzle payroll.
Or possibly it’s a difficult enough problem that it’s keeping me from the other thing I can’t stop thinking about.
I want you to have sex with me, Hayes. Be my new first. It’s not personal. Any dick would do, and yours is convenient.
“Evenin’, Mr. Rutherford,” a white-bearded sailor calls as we make our way toward the boat at the end of the pier. “Sea’s a little choppy tonight, but don’t you worry. You’re in good hands.”
Begonia slips her arm through mine and squeezes hard.
Death-grip hard.
Her new dress this evening was courtesy of my mother’s insistence—which is not to say my mother approves, for the record, but rather that my mother is willing to play dating chicken with me, and see which one of us blinks first.
It will not be me.
She should know this by now.
Regardless, the end result is that Begonia is wrapped in a sparkly green crepe fabric, showing off an obscene amount of cleavage that she’s attempted to cover with a silk shawl, but that I can still picture in my mind and will probably still be picturing the day I die as an old, crotchety, lonely man. I’m reasonably certain the strappy heels are new too, and that she’s never had the pleasure of having her hair done by anyone like Charlotte before either.
The Begonia of earlier today would’ve been like one of the many Razzle Dazzle film leading ladies being swept away with excitement over undergoing a magical transition from frumpy to fairy princess for the symbolic ball, with sparkling eyes and a pounding heart and romantic sighs and twirling dance moves. But the Begonia of right now, who’s swaying into me and slowing her steps, either has a severe issue with one of her undergarments and can’t breathe, or she’s terrified of the boat. Or, possibly, something worse.
“Are you ill?” I murmur.
“I’m great,” she squeaks.
“Is that dress cutting off circulation?”
“Breathing great. Veins and arteries running in tip-top shape.”
The dog growls low in its throat. It’s not a threatening sound. More like it’s calling her a liar.
“Begonia.”
My mother and Amelia both turn and peer at me.
“Problems in paradise?” Amelia asks lightly.
I’d be irritated with her, except I know what she wants, and it’s not to cause another woman harm.
It’s a marriage of convenience that would make her family happy.
We’d be well-suited for marriage if I weren’t so opposed to the institution in general.
And also if I weren’t allergic to a third thing I failed to mention to Begonia: being manipulated.
I am very much allergic to being manipulated.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” Begonia whispers.
“Of course, darling.”
“I won’t make us late, I swear.”
“The captain won’t leave without us, even if we take two hours.”
She makes a noise that I’d call a whimper on any other woman.
On Begonia, it could mean anything from oh, look, there’s a pretty flower that would be so much prettier in the daylight! to we can’t get on the boat because the sea monsters will eat us.
Thirty-six hours of knowing the woman, and I’m already well aware of her extremes.
“Spit it out, bluebell,” I murmur.
“The last time I got on a sailboat on the ocean, it tipped over, and I almost drowned. I mean, I didn’t actually, but I felt like I might for a minute, and I haven’t been able to get on a boat since. My intentions aren’t bigger than my fears in this case.”
“If you don’t want to go—”
“I do! I do. I was supposed to go sailing this mor—while I’m here—because I want to get over it, but—”
“This morning,” I interrupt. I was supposed to go sailing this morning is what she was about to say, I’m positive.
Her face flushes again. “It’s not important.”
Of course she had plans. She’s Begonia. She probably has a massive itinerary of various adventures she was intending to try out all along the coast while vacationing here. “How many excursions and side trips had you booked that you’ve now changed?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Begonia.”
“Shh. Your name-saying privileges have been revoked. Actually, your talking privileges have been revoked, period. I’m trying to tell you that I’m going to get on that boat, but I’m a little nervous because the last time, Hyacinth saved me, and she’s not here, so if I fall off the boat and once again come face-to-face with a killer manatee who decides I need to be his lover, I won’t have her twinstinct to save me.”
“There are no manatees in Maine, and even if there were—”
“But there are other sea creatures, and they’re like Marshmallow. They’re not normal when I’m around. Manatees aren’t killer, I know, but I swear to you, that manatee had a look in his eyes that either meant, you’re the girl I’ve been waiting for, Begonia, which is totally creepy, by the way, or you are the prey I’ve been waiting for, Begonia. I’m a very good swimmer, but if I fall off this boat, there’s no telling what might happen.”
I’m doing my utmost best to not stare at her like she’s three bananas short of a fruit basket, but I’m apparently not succeeding, because her face twists up and she glares at me.
“Fine. Fine. I’ll get on the boat. It’s an adventure, and I wanted an adventure, and I know that you’re so big and powerful that you’ll order the seas to quit chopping and they’ll calm down and rainbows will appear and three whales will serenade us with a blowhole symphony, from a safe distance, of course, and everyone in town will talk about how talented you are for decades to come.”
She’s talking with her hands again. I lean back a little to stay out of the way while she keeps rambling.
“And it wasn’t a horny manatee. I lied. I made up the lie, and Hyacinth told it so many times I started to believe it, but the truth is, I actually get seasick, and I hate that I get seasick, because I want to go cruise around the world but the one time Chad and I took a cruise, I puked on the first day and got put in quarantine in the ship’s hospital because they were afraid I had norovirus, and being in an enclosed space on a cruise ship meant that I was ill the entire trip, so I didn’t enjoy it at all, and I really, really want to learn to enjoy it, but I don’t want to puke in front of your mom and your second-grade ex-wife and your mom’s Hayes-hungry assistant, and if I’m puking, and I do fall overboard, I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to swim, because you can’t swim while you’re puking. I can kayak. I can canoe. But I can’t freaking sail.”
“Is everything okay?” my mother calls.
“I’m failing to have the proper appreciation for the horror of the run in Begonia’s hose,” I call back.
“Apologies, Begonia,” she replies. “God knows I’ve tried, but his understanding of pantyhose falls into the same bucket with his ego. They’re both completely hopeless.”
“The boat won’t tip,” I tell Begonia quietly, “nor will you fall off, nor will you throw up, but if any or all of the above happen, I swear on my firm belief in the magic of the world, Marshmallow will save you.”
She squeezes her eyes shut. “I spent the past year getting divorced after four years of being married to a complete stick in the mud, and two years before that dating him, and I’m trying so hard to remember who I was before him, but there are still a few things that scare me or make me super uncomfortable.”
Once again, I’m ordering myself to keep my mouth shut, and once again, I’m failing. “And those other things would be…?”
“Paragliding, being squeezed to death by an anaconda, and lightning bugs.”
“Lightning bugs?”
“One flew up my nose and got caught in my sinus cavity when I was at a party I wasn’t supposed to be at in high school, and you do not want to know what it took to get it out, which is really sad, because I have such great memories of chasing lightning bugs with Hyacinth at Dad’s summer camp, but now…” She blows out a breath, then looks beyond me, lifting a hand. “Excuse me, Captain. Have you ever lost anyone on a dinner cruise?”
“Only Boone Decker.”
My heart nearly stops in my chest as I turn and look at him. My mother’s gaping. Amelia too. And Charlotte looks like she’s about to pass out.
The old captain cackles. “Just yankin’ your chain, Mr. Rutherford. Ain’t ever lost anybody. Come on aboard. We’re aiming for some fun with your dinner tonight.”
“Who’s Boone Decker?” Begonia whispers. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“Founder of Rhythm Airlines,” I murmur to her. “Disappeared off the coast of France ten years ago with the authorities on his tail for insider trading.”
“Oh! He was making a joke.”
“Yes, Begonia, he was attempting to make a joke.”
“You naughty man,” my mother says to him as she accepts his help onto the gangplank to the yacht. “I sincerely hope the rest of your entertainment is less morbid.”
“I’m a sailor, ma’am, but I’ll do my best. Evening, Ms. Shawcross. Lovely dress. Color of lobsters. Gonna have to watch out for mermen jumping up into the boat tonight, won’t we? Charlotte, my dear. Glad to see you get to eat tonight too, for once.”
“We always make sure Charlotte gets what she needs, Captain Hollingsworth,” my mother says stiffly.
“Except you,” Begonia says softly to me. “Have you ever looked at Charlotte like that? Because I’m pretty sure she’s in love with you.”
“No.”
“No, you haven’t thought of her as a potential girlfriend, or no, you don’t think she’s in love with you?”
“Is this conversation helping you to get on the boat?”
She eyes the captain and the vessel.
Then she glances up at me with what I’d call a devious smile on any other woman.
On Begonia, it’s so out of place, it could be indigestion or a heart attack.
“I have a twenty stuffed into my cleavage,” she whispers. “Do you think if I slipped it to him, he’d close up the boat and leave with your mom and Amelia and Charlotte before we can get on it? We could have a picnic on the beach.”
“With what food? All the shops are closed for the evening.”
She clucks her tongue. “Such little imagination.”
When she reaches into her cleavage, I cover her hand with my own, refusing to think about my fingers brushing the swell of her breast.
She freezes.
I freeze.
Except for my cock.
My cock is most definitely not frozen.
And the way her lips have parted—not helping.
Not helping at all.
I clear my throat and snatch my hand away from her firm flesh. “It will require something larger than a twenty-dollar bill.”
“Nonsense. Captain Hollingsworth seems like a reasonable man.”
I sigh heavily. “Stay here.” I point to the dog. “You too.”
And then I stroll the rest of the way up the gangplank to the boat, about to do something I’m positive I’ll regret.
