Chad never cooked, and he always expected me to find something edible, so we ate out a lot, and then he complained about the credit card bill.
You’re shocked.
I know.
“I’m calling my sister and I’m telling her you still have a few things to learn in bed,” I tell Hayes as I drift toward the back door.
“I’d expect nothing less.”
I smile.
He knows I’m lying. I couldn’t insult him if my life depended on it.
Other than the whole be my fake girlfriend or I’ll financially ruin you thing, and his perpetual case of the grumps, and the two of us pretending neither of us keep thinking about me asking him to have sex with me, he’s a decent guy. We’re in a weird situation, and he’s dealing the best way he knows how, especially considering he’s balancing his privacy and desire to not be the world’s current most famous bachelor with keeping his family’s name untarnished.
He can’t exactly tell the tabloids and his family and probably more than a small handful of women to go fuck off, not when he’s a Rutherford.
Well, he could.
But he cares about his family and their reputation too much to do it, and that says more about his character than his note that I found taped to the inside of my door yesterday morning informing me that if I attempted to cook eggs one more time, he’d personally murder all of the chickens on the island so that there were no more eggs for me to abuse.
He’s such a liar.
He’d re-home them before he’d murder them.
Although, that would take interfacing with the locals, and while most of the locals are kind and respectful of his boundaries—yes, even the ones I heard plotting to set him up with themselves or their personal favorite single women before they realized he was involved with someone—you can spot the tourists, and he’s definitely an object of lust among certain demographics in the tourist crowd.
I don’t usually notice until he starts touching my hand or my knee, or leaning in closer and making bedroom eyes at me when we’re out in public, but then, I don’t understand why people would chase a man just for his money.
So I get why he wants a fake girlfriend, and I get why he has trust issues, even if maybe I don’t understand all the nuances.
I probably won’t be sharing with him that his threat of bankrupting me wasn’t actually as terrifying as he thinks it is either.
Convenient? No.
But survivable? Yes.
My dad did it. I could do it too. And I took so very little in the divorce that the only thing I’d miss is if I had to sell off my great-grandma Eileen’s old dildo collection.
She painted them and sold them at traveling art fairs. The leftovers aren’t used.
Probably.
Before I can dial Hyacinth, my phone rings in my hand, and her face lights the screen. I head for the back door, check that the house alarm isn’t set, and then sneak out into the rapidly fading evening sunset.
“Hey,” I start as I answer the video call, but she barrels over me, her face a mirror of mine, but hers is brimming with the thrill of impending gossip.
“Oh my god, Begonia, you are a fucking ROCK STAR!” She glances away from the screen. “No, Jerry, I won’t watch my language in front of the kids when my sister is dating a fucking billionaire. This is appropriate usage of the word fuck, okay?”
“Hey, Jerry,” I say to Hyacinth.
“B says hey,” she calls. Then she’s back facing me. “Talk. Now. Fast. Before Mom figures out we’re talking and tries to beep in. She is losing her mind.”
“So this thing just kinda happened.” I have to be careful. She’ll know when I’m lying, and my face is very bad at lying, especially to Hyacinth. But there’s so much else to talk about. “And I met his mom. And we’re going to New York tomorrow. And you can’t tell the news that if they call, okay? It’s actually possibly scandalous that we’re dating so soon after my divorce? I don’t know that part for sure, but it’s like, the Rutherford family. Frowning wrong at a camera is scandalous, right? And apparently there are security considerations with travel plans, blah blah blah.”
“Gossip Minute just posted a picture of you from dinner tonight and it looks like you’re giving him the Heimlich. All I can say is, what?”
“I told him the clay giraffe story while he was eating clam chowder.”
Her face twists like she’s both horrified and amused, which is fair. The clay giraffe story is legendary. “Begonia. You can’t keep the world’s last billionaire bachelor interested if you’re trying to kill him!”