The car pulls away from the curb, and I start to ask Nikolay if we can get some alcohol for me too, but then my mom’s talking again.
“Your father had some very exclusive clients at his summer camp a time or two. There was a Norwegian prince one year, and the son of an oil baron another year. We should’ve made sure you spent more time with them to learn rich people manners.”
“Wasn’t that before Hyacinth and I were born?”
“Don’t bother me with details, Begonia. The point is, you have a very rare opportunity, and you need to not waste it.”
“Marshmallow! Oh, no! Silly doggy! How could you spill that strawberry daiquiri all over the inside of this priceless limo! Mom, I have to go. Marshmallow and I are in trouble with the billionaires again.”
My dog stares at me in horror, like he can’t believe I just threw him under the bus, while I hang up on my mother.
“I’m so sorry, baby.” I hug him tight, holding my phone up on the other side of him to change my mother’s ringtone so that I won’t make the mistake of answering without thinking again. “I promise I’ll buy you six new chew toys and a big fluffy bed with my next paycheck. You know she’ll forgive you, but I would’ve never heard the end of it if I told her I was the one who stained the inside of a limo.”
Nikolay stares at me.
I sigh. “She wanted me to stay married to a man I didn’t love because she doesn’t think I can take care of myself. She means well, she just…wants different things for me than I want for myself.”
“What do you want?”
Dammit. That’s not supposed to make me cry. “For someone to love me just for me.”
He nods once. “I hope a penis grows out of your mother’s forehead.”
“She means well,” I insist again.
“If she meant well for you, she’d pay attention to what you want. Not what she wants for you.”
I ponder that on the rest of the drive to the Razzle Dazzle corporate offices, but the minute the complex comes into view, everything else fades out of my mind. “It looks like a little village! Like from one of the movies!”
Nikolay nods. “Mr. Rutherford believes people work best when they feel at home.”
“Mr. Rutherford—Hayes?”
“No, ma’am—his father. Mr. Gregory Rutherford.”
“Why does Hayes hate it? He told me it was dull and boring.”
“What one learns to appreciate depends on what one is surrounded with, ma’am.”
The limo turns a corner, passing an adorable little bookshop and a tea house that both remind me of the streets of shops at Razzle Dazzle Village. All the buildings are three or four stories tall, so I assume the offices are above.
I hope they’re just as quaint on the inside.
We turn another corner, and a stately gray brick building comes into view. “City Hall?” I guess.
Nikolay nods. “And the executive offices.”
“Hayes way undersold this.”
The limo glides to a stop at the steps to the fake City Hall building, and Hayes himself pushes through the glass doors to greet us.
His hair is disheveled, like he’s been running his fingers through it, and his square jaw is tight.
So are his eyes.
When I was little, I used to think Hyacinth and I would take over running the summer camp for Dad one day. But then the divorce happened, he declared bankruptcy, and he died, and the summer camp is no more.
But I’ve never wondered if I would’ve realized it wasn’t what I was supposed to do if Dad hadn’t had to sell it.
I’ve always assumed I would’ve happily taken over running the summer camp, but that it wasn’t in the cards from the universe.
And now I’m wondering if Hayes was born to do great things not related to Razzle Dazzle Studios.
Is he trapped? Does he feel obligated? Is he misreading the signs from the universe about other opportunities he has, or is he ignoring them, or is he just having a normal rough day because of upheaval in his family?
What would he do if he’d been born like me, to ordinary parents in an average family just outside the suburbs, instead of into a world-famous family with ridiculously high standards set by the world around them?
He reaches the limo and pulls my door open before Nikolay makes his way around the car to do it, and then he’s offering me a hand. “Begonia.”
“Hayes.”
Our palms connect, and my stomach drops.
In the good way, for the record.
As soon as I’m all the way out of the limo, he pulls me close, our bodies lining up while he presses his face into my hair. “Everyone will be watching us closely, so be on your best behavior,” he murmurs.