Begonia talks in her sleep.
While I’m lying in bed, tossing and turning and accidentally brushing her leg with my knee time and again after waiting until she was asleep to even come to bed, she’s having an entire conversation with herself about goats in trees being painted wrong on the side of the banana boat.
Have sex with me, Hayes.
It’s all I can think about.
It’s all I thought about through dinner. All I thought about while kissing her for the cameras. All I thought about while walking back to the estate, her swaying slightly as she told me hilarious stories about getting caught swapping places with her twin sister during their teenage years or the trouble they got up to at summer camp—clearly, her favorite place in the universe—chattering away with her strappy heels dangling from her fingers, all of her together making for the very epitome of a Razzle Dazzle romantic comedy heroine.
And yet, a naked Begonia writhing beneath me and moaning my name is all I can think about.
And it shouldn’t be.
Fake dating her was a terrible idea, and now, thanks to myself, I’m stuck with her as my pretend girlfriend for as long as the tabloids milk the story.
This should be a good thing.
And it would be a good thing.
Everyone knows a Rutherford would never cheat on his partner, so I don’t even have to be kind in turning down advances, which will still come, because the world is still convinced I’ll never get married, so this is clearly temporary.
Dammit.
I will have to propose. Or possibly blackmail her into an actual marriage.
And that thought doesn’t shrivel my testicles as much as it should.
Begonia Fairchild is a beguiling minx who shouldn’t be allowed in public with all of that sunshine and kindness and naïveté that’s either an exceptional act or proof positive that my world will destroy her.
My conscience is suddenly betraying me. Possibly because on top of knowing just how poorly this relationship could end for her, I’m genuinely beginning to like her.
I don’t like liking her.
Liking her leads to trusting her, and trusting her leads to her betraying me, and her betraying me leads to me being publicly single, and then my mother or my aunt or my grandmother or my father’s assistant’s mailman’s financial advisor will know the perfect woman who would fit into my world as though she was born there—which she most likely will have been—and I’ll finally cave and marry a woman simply to be done with this ridiculous notion of being the world’s most sought-after billionaire bachelor.
Don’t mistake me. I appreciate the luxuries my life provides.
But there are two sides to every coin, and money comes with a price.
And this is why I’m prowling around the kitchen at three AM, looking for something to eat that will soothe an unsootheable ache that’s only made worse every time Begonia shifts closer to my side of the bed in her sleep.
“Insomnia?” my mother says from behind me, startling me so badly that I drop a jar of local honey that Begonia picked up at a small stand after she left the market this morning, which was another story that also involved nearly being attacked by bees after sampling every flavor.
The woman does nothing small. She throws herself all the way into everything.
The jar cracks on the tile floor and splits, much like I feel my brain is about to do. The sticky brown substance creeps out from the splintered jar as I try to mitigate the damage. “Don’t come in here,” I mutter.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to startle you. Did you not get enough dinner? The lobster was delicious. We missed you.”
Here we go. “Don’t start.”
“Hayes. We both know what you’re doing here.”
“Removing myself from the public eye to mourn my cousin in private while I acclimate to my new position at Razzle Dazzle and take solace in the company of someone willing to let me be my own cranky self in the meantime?”
“Is that what this is?” She slides onto the stool across the high counter, one eyebrow raised in that mom look that always came with inquisitions when Jonas and I were younger. And did you try your best at school today, or were you taking the easy way out because learning about conjunctions didn’t sound fun? What did we tell you about playing with the spa in the solarium while adults aren’t around, and now look at this mess. Someone better grab a towel. Did you think about the fact that your grandmother’s vase was on the fireplace mantle before you started tossing that basketball at each other? Accidents happen, but I trust you’ll make better decisions next time.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been a kid.
Still have to squash the feelings of guilt though. “Do I get a say in my life?”
“Hayes. Of course you do. But…”
“I’m nearly forty years old. You don’t get a but here.”
“You’re dragging that girl—”
I send her a sharp glare as I continue attempting to mop up the honey. “Woman.”
“You’re dragging that woman into your life just to annoy everyone around you, when you know you could have your pick of so many more appropriate women.”
“You’re treading on dangerous ground, Mother.”
“She stopped and danced to the street performer music this afternoon, Hayes, and someone tipped her. Her dog attempted to steal a man’s walker. She stopped at a tourist stand to ask for brochures about skydiving. Skydiving. She’s flighty and unpredictable and completely ignorant of the ways of our world. Turn her loose with a reporter and god knows what she’d say, and that egg thing this morning was horrific. Don’t pretend it wasn’t. The longer you string her along like this—”
I cut her off with a growl.
Of course Begonia danced in the street to random music, asked about skydiving, and of course she can’t cook but will give it her all anyway. As for her dog— “Did the dog return the walker?”
“Yes, but Hayes. You know that’s not the point.”
“Isn’t it?”
“The point is that she’s just as terrible of a choice as your last rebellion girlfriend, and we all know how this ends.”
My last rebellion girlfriend was nothing like Begonia.
Nor did we have a contract.
I learned my lesson.
But Begonia—she’s an even more excellent choice than I could’ve imagined, and it’s causing me heartburn.
She knocked on four doors in an evening gown, asking if anyone had any leftover food they could share with her and her billionaire boyfriend, since we didn’t get to the shops before they closed and we wanted to have an impromptu picnic on the beach. And she would’ve knocked on more, but those four were all it took to activate the phone tree for the whole damn town to show up with a feast for three dozen.
I’ve been on this earth nearly forty years, and I’ve never had a private meal on a beach catered by strangers and their leftovers, with music provided by random townspeople unexpectedly and exquisitely talented with violins, while my date and I watched the half-moon rise over the ocean and talked about nothing consequential at all, but still had a more pleasant conversation than I’ve ever gotten from small talk at charity galas and movie premieres.
I’ve been around the damn world, and tonight was the first date I’ve had in my entire life that didn’t center around how much opulence my money could buy, but on how very real and charming the world could be all on its own.
And that—that is my biggest problem with Begonia Fairchild.
She takes more pleasure in there being oxygen available on this earth for us to breathe than I take in a garage full of Rolls Royces, vacation homes on nearly every continent, more money than I could spend in twenty lifetimes, and all of the other little luxuries that that money affords me.
She’s the best-worst fake girlfriend.
And I’m growling at my mother, because that’s what you do for the woman you’re pretending is your world. “You have two options, Mother. You can accept that I love Begonia and welcome her as one of the family, treat her with the same dignity and respect you’d honor any other woman with, and stop attempting to sabotage our relationship behind her back, or you can leave. Now. I choose her. I realize you think you have my best intentions at heart, and I have no doubt you mean no harm, but I get to decide what I want. Not you. Not society. Not some arcane system of rules. And if you can’t respect that, then perhaps you aren’t what’s best for me either.”
There’s a flash in the living room just behind my mother.
A glowing, neon fuchsia flash.
Begonia.
Fuck.
My mother spins, and her eyes go wide. “Oh, dear,” she whispers.
She’s not the completely perfect housewife she lets the media paint her to be, but she’s never intentionally cruel either.
I’m still glaring at her as I leave the honey mess on the floor and stalk out of the kitchen, playing the part of the doting boyfriend because I have to, ignoring the whisper in the back of my mind that if I couldn’t sleep before Begonia overheard this, there’ll be no sleeping for an eternity if I don’t make sure she’s okay.
Despite my best intentions, I think I might like the woman and her spirit.
“Gone,” I tell my mother. “All of you. Before Begonia’s out of bed in the morning. Understood?”
“Hayes—”
“Understood?”
The house alarms blare to life, honking and shrieking and leaving no doubt that Begonia’s attempting to remove herself from the situation instead of standing up for herself.
“And handle that first,” I yell over the noise. Security will undoubtedly be rolling into the house in moments.
The door off the study is open, and I pause long enough to enter my code and kill the alarm before stepping out into the night. “Begonia?”
She doesn’t answer in the darkness, but her dog bounds toward me, skitters to a stop inches from my bare feet, and plops into a sit, tongue lolling, eyes reflecting the interior lights. I hear Amelia or Charlotte inside—the entire household is apparently awake now—but I leave the questions to my mother and pull the door shut behind me.
“Where’s Begonia?” I ask the dog.
He leaps to his feet and jerks his head, like he’s saying follow me, which he probably is.
I caught the damn animal trying to pull toothpaste out of a vanity drawer in the bathroom earlier this evening, and I surreptitiously listened in from the study while everyone was making breakfast, and the dog very clearly growled when Begonia said she was adding a little mint for spice to the egg catastrophe that everyone pretended was delicious.
I could like the dog if he didn’t make my eyes water and my nose plug.
He disappears into the gardens, and I switch on my phone’s flashlight app to follow his progress, until he leads me to Begonia sitting on the porch swing overlooking the sea, her knees tucked up under her nightgown as the swing sways slightly in the breeze.
“You sh-sh-should g-g-go b-b-back in-inside.” Her teeth are chattering.
Naturally.
Summer evenings on the coast here tend toward the chilly side. It’s usually a comfortable chilly, but not for a woman in a thin, spaghetti-strapped nightie.
I pull my own T-shirt over my head and plunk it over her, trapping her arms and all, then settle onto the bench swing beside her. “Apologies. My mother—”
She sniffles.
I freeze.
“Thank you for the sh-shirt.” Her voice is small, as though it’s shrinking with her personality, and thick too, like her throat is full of unshed tears. “But you’re c-cold too. You should—”
“I prefer the chilly weather. It matches my cold, dead heart.”
I’m reasonably certain she’ll tell me my heart isn’t cold or dead, but that’s not what comes out of her mouth.
What she says instead may be infinitely worse.
“I divorced Chad because he didn’t defend me to his mother when she called me stupid and a waste of his intellect.”
I study her profile while her words fully sink in. “Seems her accusations were misplaced.”
“We were trying to have a baby, and she blamed me for us not getting pregnant too. The doctors said I was perfectly fine and healthy, but his sperm had motility issues, and she managed to twist that so that it was also my fault for not feeding him enough fruits and vegetables, and for nagging him until his swimmers went into hiding. He didn’t argue with her when she said that either.”
I know the line I’m supposed to say.
I’ve heard it come out of my brother’s mouth at least a dozen times in various different Razzle Dazzle films.
But telling Begonia her ex-husband and former mother-in-law don’t deserve her isn’t my place.
I’m not her hero. I’m the man trapping her into pretending to be my girlfriend so that my mother can insult and degrade her.
“I apologize for my mother.” My hands are lying in my lap. I don’t have the right to hug this woman, to offer her physical comfort. It’s my fault she’s here, if only because I didn’t make sure this property was being cared for as well as I assumed it was. It’s my fault she’s reliving the reasons she got divorced. It’s my fault this odd little ray of sunshine is hiding in the dark. “Regardless of what she suspects we are, she was wrong to speak ill of you.”
“For two years, I waited for my husband to do what my fake boyfriend did in under two days. The man who’s supposed to love me couldn’t do for me what the man only pretending to love me would do to keep up the ruse. That’s really pathetic, isn’t it?”
“Love isn’t rational, but it’s not pathetic either.” Christ, I hate how many Razzle Dazzle films have all the cheesy lines. It’s hard to be real when you feel like you’re reciting a movie script. How the devil does Jonas have relationships in real life without feeling like he’s faking all of it?
“Do you know the worst part?” She’s whispering so softly now that I have to crane to hear her.
“It bothers me that your story can get worse.”
“My mom didn’t understand. Doesn’t understand. She thinks I shouldn’t have divorced him and that I should ask him to take me back because Begonia, he didn’t hit you, he provided for you, and he let you spend time with your friends. That’s what my mom thinks a good relationship is.”
I don’t have any idea what an angry rhinoceros sounds like, but if I were to guess, I’d say it sounds remarkably like the rage welling up inside me right now. “And my mother wonders why I don’t want to fall in love,” I mutter.
“You would be good at it.”
“I grew up watching my family get richer and richer off of fantastical and over-romanticized depictions of relationships while every woman I was ever attracted to ultimately proved to want nothing more than my money, my connections, or my family name. I would not be good at love, because I have no idea what real love, in the real world, looks like.”
She tilts her head in my direction, rubbing her nose on my shirt, then pausing as if she’s inhaling the scent of it, and my damn cock goes hard.
Not the time, Woody-boy. Not. The. Time.
“Real love looks a lot like changing your plans at the last minute to humor someone having an irrational panic attack, and then defending said flake to your mother, because you know no one’s perfect, but you’re willing to accept them just as they are, flaws and all, knowing that they’re doing their very best, every day, and wanting to help them along that journey every day for the rest of your life.”
Heat prickles over the back of my neck, belying the derisive snort coming out of my mouth.
“I know you won’t ever love me,” Begonia whispers. “I know this is pretend and temporary and just one more adventure for me, and something convenient for you. But I just want you to know, you know the right things to do to love someone. It’s not your fault if all of the women in the world aren’t willing to do the same for you. It’s actually a damn shame, because you would be quite a catch for any woman willing to see you for the man hiding under all those walls.”
Of all the women in the world that I could’ve found naked in my bathroom and bullied into pretending to be my girlfriend so that the world would back the fuck off, it had to be this one.
Her dog sets his head in my lap, sniffs my aching cock, and harumphs back at me when I shove his snout away.
“You don’t know who I truly am,” I say gruffly.
“I don’t. You’re right. But I know enough. And I don’t blame you for not believing me. I probably wouldn’t believe me either if I were you.”
I’m simultaneously furious and horny and in desperate need of wrapping my arms around this woman, and I don’t know how that happened.
But I know I feel better when I give in to the urge to pull her against my body and press a kiss into her hair, inhaling not the scent of my luxury shampoo, picked and stocked by my mother’s staff, but of something soft and flowery and innately Begonia.
She’ll never be the woman I love.
But for the first time in a long time, I believe I’ve found someone I could call friend.
