Oh. My. God.
I’ve crashed a Rutherford family property, and I’m currently naked, in Jonas Rutherford’s older brother’s bathroom, with the door shut while I hold my breath and squeeze my eyes closed under the rain shower spout and pray that I didn’t leave the hair dye in too long.
Although, my bigger problem might be that I need to make an appointment to get my eyes checked.
How did I not connect the dots the minute Hayes identified himself? Oh, funny, your name is a backwards president, I said.
Your name is a backwards president.
Maybe it would’ve been better if I left my hair dye on long enough for it to soak through my scalp and burn off some of my slower brain cells.
In my defense, normal people don’t expect family members of celebrities to walk into the bathrooms where they’re waxing their pubic hair, so it’s not like my brain should’ve immediately picked up on that. And Hayes isn’t a clone of Jonas Rutherford, whose posters really were all over my wall when I was younger, but they’re similar enough in the eyes and mouth that I should’ve picked up on it.
Or maybe not.
There’s something so blunt and rough about Hayes’s features, whereas Jonas is the right amount of rugged to walk that line between boyish heartthrob and all-man lady-killer.
Not that blunt and rough are wrong on Hayes.
Under other circumstances, I’d call him attractive.
Okay, fine.
Under these circumstances, I would honestly call him hot. I know exactly what’s wrong with me that a broody, cranky man in a tousled tux is doing it for me—he’s commanding in a way that Chad could never master, and he just has this air about him. It’s mystery and danger and intrigue and adventure.
And goodness knows I’m here for the adventure, though I wouldn’t have minded if that adventure was the other Rutherford brother.
The one who feels significantly safer at the moment.
I used to tell my mom I was going to marry Jonas. Specifically, the version of him that starred in That Last Summer.
That was the only Razzle Dazzle Studios movie where he came out of the ocean in a wet T-shirt that clung to his pecs and abs. The movie where he raced across an entire island with his heroine in his arms because she stepped on a jellyfish and had an allergic reaction, and then he cried when he almost lost her. Of course he didn’t lose her—no one ever dies in a Razzle Dazzle film, unlike those awful Nicholas Sparks movies—but he cried.
It was the most romantic thing my fourteen-year-old heart had ever seen.
On top of the wet T-shirt being the raciest.
People picketed the studios over that film because it was too close to bare skin, which Razzle Dazzle never shows.
Hyacinth, my twin sister, preferred him in Inn the Know, a slightly older film with a younger Jonas starring as the teenage son of a single dad running a small inn. He had a romance with his teacher’s bookworm daughter while his dad fell in love with his principal.
The smolder, Hyacinth would always sigh. They should’ve picketed this one for that smolder.
But my point is—I’m very, very convinced at this point that I’m not supposed to be renting this house.
If Hayes himself doesn’t own it, his family does, and there’s no way in h-e-double hockey sticks, to quote the one and only time Jonas Rutherford ever came close to cussing on screen, that the Rutherford family would rent their coastal island mansion to random people for fifty dollars a night.
And here I am, not just staying here, but making an utter pigsty of the place.
For the record, yes, I would’ve picked up after myself before I checked out in two weeks. But I like the mess.
It’s the mess I need to make before I can put myself back together again, when I have to be organized for the school year.
This summer is supposed to be about me making all the messes and digging through them to find myself again. Trying new hobbies and getting reacquainted with old hobbies—like the watercolor kit I did yesterday and accidentally spilled all over the place in the kitchen—and reading for hours on the swing in the wildflower garden and riding the bike from the shed into town to buy flowers for myself and walking along the rocky shoreline and playing with Marshmallow.
Remembering who I am when I’m not Mrs. Chad Dixon. Analyzing how I ever got to be the woman who put up with being unhappy for so long because this is what marriage is, and you made a commitment, Begonia.
Getting a solid foundation back under myself so I never, ever, ever fall into those patterns again.
I wanted an adventure.
It appears I’m getting a different version, but it’ll still be an adventure.
As if it’ll matter, since Hayes apparently wants me to sign something agreeing to never talk about this. I’m assuming I won’t even be able to tell Hyacinth if I sign his non-disclosure agreement.
Is that weird?
Or is it a standard thing when the rich and famous find accidental guests in their homes?
How often do the rich and famous find accidental guests in their homes?
How did this even happen?
Three sharp knocks on the door pull me out of my head. “Yes?” I call.
“It’s been seventeen minutes,” Mr. Crankypants says.
“Can’t rush beauty,” I call back as I get a strange little rush in my heart at that bossy voice again. Then I wince as I process what I just said. “Or presentability, in some cases.”
“You have two minutes before I shut off the water and toss you off the balcony.”
I’d like to say I’m confident that he’s joking, but I don’t actually know if someone of his status would joke about that.
Money can buy anything, right? He could probably buy his way out of being guilty of murder.
“Almost done,” I call. “Are you ready to see the new and improved Begonia Fairchild? Gotta warn you, it’ll be surprising after what I looked like when we met.”
He doesn’t answer.
Apparently he doesn’t do small talk.
Or possibly that cold he seems to have is making him cranky.
I should definitely offer him a cup of my dad’s miracle tea, except I don’t have the ingredients with me, and I have a sneaking suspicion I wouldn’t be let back through the gate if I ran into town to pick things up.
I crank the water off, pop open the glass shower door, and reach for the towel.
My hand connects with the towel hook, but no towel.
It’s not on the ground.
It’s not on the heated towel rack across the bathroom.
In fact, all of the towels are gone.
So are my clothes.
“Marshmallow!”
My dog pokes his head through the doorway, tongue lolling happily like he’s not the reason the door’s gaping open.
“Where are the towels?” I ask him.
He plops his rear haunches down and keeps smiling that bright doggie grin at me.
“This is no time for hide and seek,” I tell him.
He leaps to his feet, barks once, and takes off out of the bathroom again.
“Dammit, dog, I put you outside,” Hayes snarls.
I shoot a glance at the mirrors. I can’t reach the closet to look for more towels without crossing in front of the door, and without my entire naked body reflecting into the bedroom, where my unexpected host is apparently waiting for me, and the idea of knowingly being naked in front of him makes me squirm. “He can open doors,” I call. “Do you mind waiting downstairs? And possibly tossing in a couple towels on your way out?”
No answer.
“Hayes?” I call.
Still no answer.
“Um, Mr. Rutherford?”
When he doesn’t answer once more, I decide he’s already gone.
If he’s not, it’s his own fault if he gets a show.
“I’m naked and walking to the closet for a towel,” I call just in case. He’s already gotten an eyeful of me. Not like this could get much worse.
Still, when I step out of the shower, the cool air around me making my skin pucker, I dart as quickly as I can toward the closet and the rack of extra towels.
“Good god,” that male voice yelps in the other room, startling me just enough that I turn, and that’s when I realize my mistake.
Porcelain tile floors and wet feet do not mix.
My right foot goes sliding one way. My left foot the opposite. I windmill my arms, bang one on a doorframe while the other catches the vanity countertop, and I manage to stop myself, legs spreadeagle, beaver still only half-waxed, hair dripping behind me, before I slowly slide the rest of the way to the ground.
Huh.
Look at that.
I can still get forty percent of the way into doing a split. And they said my body would betray me with age.
What did they know?
Definitely not that there’s an uncomfortable pull in my left hip joint and that my right knee doesn’t like this.
“Could you please, for the love of all that has ever been holy, put on some goddamn clothes?”
I twist so I’m covering as many bits as I can, and I catch a glimpse of him trying to turn in the bedroom so that he can’t see me.
It’s harder than you’d think, what with the mirror over the dresser facing the mirror for the bathroom, and the way he’s standing and I’m squatting, and while this maybe isn’t the most embarrassing situation I’ve ever found myself in, it’s high up there.
I wasn’t planning on being naked and vulnerable in front of a man this morning, yet here we are, and my body is betraying me over it.
It takes me a second to make my voice normal. “Relax, Mr. Rutherford. One, you’ve basically already seen it all. Two, I tried to warn you. And three, it’s not like your mother’s catching us in a compromising position. I’m positive this isn’t the worst thing to ever happen to you. It’s pretty high up there for me though, so if you don’t mind waiting downstairs for just a couple more minutes—”
“Will you be wearing your own damn clothes?” He’s shoving his fists into his eye sockets.
That can’t feel good.
And it’s bruising the part of my soul that knows that most people like me.
Most.
Awesome. He’s in the same category as my former mother-in-law.
Granted, these are unusual circumstances, but I’m trying to be nice here, and he’s all grump grump crank snarl grump.
“So long as Marshmallow didn’t distribute them all over the house, yes, I’ll be drying off and putting on my own clothes.”
“Your dog needs to go back outside.”
“He gets lonely if he’s outside alone for too long. Also, since he can open doors, if you didn’t lock them all, he’ll find a way back in.”
He mutters something while I regain my balance enough to carefully duckwalk the rest of the way to the closet, covering as much of myself as I can, but undoubtedly giving him a solid view of my ass the whole time, if he’s even looking, which I suspect he’s doing his best to not.
When I pop back out two minutes later completely wrapped in towels, he’s not in the bedroom anymore. And I understand why when I finally make it downstairs after getting dressed and tossing as much of my stuff as I can into my suitcase without taking too long.
He’s showered too, and he’s wearing a pair of the pajama pants that were in the dresser in the bedroom. The gray pair with the dancing hamster pattern all over them, to be specific.
That’s why he was in the bedroom.
He was getting clean clothes.
His dark hair is damp and unkempt, like he got bored in the middle of towel-drying it, and it’s dripping water onto his white T-shirt while he leans against the kitchen island and scowls at his phone.
If it weren’t for the scowl sharpening all the features in his angular face, I’d think he was a completely different man. He looks approachable in pajama pants and a white T-shirt.
Like a normal man, instead of a fancy rich man totally inconvenienced by my dog and me.
Like a man just out of the shower, getting ready for breakfast with the woman he ravaged the night before, unhappy that someone in his office is calling him in early when he’d rather eat his guest out on the kitchen counter.
Stop it, Begonia.
I force myself to focus on the pile of dishes on the island, which is a stark reminder that my dog and I are definitely an inconvenience.
Must you leave your dirty cereal bowl on the counter, Begonia? I have better things to do than pick up after you.
Chad was a financial advisor with one of the big firms in Richmond, always up before the sun checking the markets, falling asleep listening to financial podcasts every night, while I’m just a high school art teacher who doesn’t get to do art for fun nearly as often as you’d think I would, and who sometimes gets her head stuck in the clouds. I make the money, you do the dishes. I make the money, you do the laundry. I make the money…
You get the idea.
So, yes, I left my dirty dishes all over the kitchen yesterday.
And yes, Hayes is sliding me a death glare that suggests he, too, prefers life neat and orderly. And that’s before Marshmallow trots into the kitchen, flips the lights off with his snout, and opens the dishwasher.
Hayes slides a look at me, then at the fridge, which is also gaping wide open.
Dammit.
How long has that been open?
Oh, no.
Is my cheesecake ruined?
Here I go, wincing again. “He was raised from birth to be a service dog, but he flunked out of the program when he started doing all the things he’d learned because he wanted to, instead of only on command. I have things Marshmallow-proofed at home. We have a good system. He’s out of his element here.”
“Your dog called my mother.”
I don’t know what precisely that means to Hayes Rutherford, but I have a terrible feeling it’s not good, and that it’s making every bit of me being here even worse.
