“I’m gonna need a minute,” she squeaks.
“It’s a house, Begonia.”
“Chad’s company had a holiday party at the fanciest hotel in Richmond one year, and there were passing servers with cocktail weenies on trays, and he got so mad at me when I called them cocktail weenies, and said he didn’t want to take me places when the hired help outclassed me.”
My first assignment for my new assistants will be to find Chad’s address so that I can personally go beat the shit out of him.
I’m a damn Rutherford. We don’t beat the shit out of anyone. We watch a fucking Razzle Dazzle film and hug.
But I will beat the ever-loving shit out of Chad Douchecanoe Dixon for making Begonia feel inferior for merely being who she is.
“Begonia.”
She doesn’t look at me.
“Begonia.”
I get a squinty-eyed cringe. “Yes?”
“It would be the highlight of my life if you were to ask my mother to serve you cocktail weenies while we’re at Sagewood House.”
She flaps a hand about. “Sorry. I’m being ridiculous. It’s because I’m tired. If I wasn’t—”
“I would rather be back in Maine too.”
Her eyes finally connect with mine, and it’s like watching a puzzle click into place. She nods, and she probably has no idea just how regal that simple action is on her. “Okay. One more adventure.”
“Sagewood House is a home. Feel free to treat it as such, regardless of how it looks.”
I’ve said many, many things to Begonia that I never would’ve said to another girlfriend. And I don’t think it’s the non-disclosure agreement and the fraudulent nature of our relationship insulating me from having to mean it, though I do mean it.
I think it’s that she’s Begonia.
20
Begonia
My fake boyfriend’s house has a helipad and looks like a museum from the outside—and I assume on the inside too—and I’m trying to embrace someday, I’ll tell my great-nieces and nephews about the time I had an adventure pretending to date a billionaire and sleeping in his mansion, but I might be hitting overwhelm for one day.
So when Nikolay opens the sixteen-foot-tall front door and gestures us into the marble-floored, crystal-chandeliered entryway after our short limo drive from the helipad to the circle drive and portico, and voices well up somewhere deeper in the house, beyond the curved staircase, I whimper.
Hayes looks as exhausted as I feel. There are bags under his eyes that I won’t be pointing out, and his shoulders are drooping, which I also won’t be pointing out. But he pulls them back, glances in the direction of the voices, and then nods to Nikolay. “Take Begonia to my quarters, please.”
“This is all your house?” I whisper to Hayes.
“I needed someplace large enough to breathe whenever my mother decided to drop by.”
I snicker-snort. It echoes in the massive foyer, and the sound of my own snicker-snort echoing makes me involuntarily do it again, until I’m at risk of laughing until I’m crying.
Have I ever been this tired in my life?
If Hyacinth were here, she’d tell me I’d hit the dangerous side of slap-happy and needed a cheeseburger, a vodka chaser, and bed immediately.
But Hyacinth isn’t here, which means I’m leaning on Hayes’s arm and trying to telegraph to him that that’s exactly what I need when there’s a squeal, then a flash of sparkly red, and the next thing I know, a literal rock star is shoving me out of the way and leaping on him.
“Hayes! You’re back!”
Keisha Kourtney is decked out in a red sequin bodysuit and cape, her platform red sequin boots hooked behind Hayes’s back as she presses a resounding kiss to his cheek, which he tolerates with a level of affection that quite honestly pisses me off. Her short, jet-black hair is shaved on one side and dangles to her chin on the other, and sparkly diamond earrings lined with ruby chips dangle from her ears.
“Quit being a showboat,” he tells her as he pulls her off of him and sets her back on her feet. “What are you wearing? Can you be a little more ridiculous?”
She grins widely and turns to me, instantly smothering me in a massive hug. In her platform boots, she barely comes up to my chin. There’s more superstar per square inch in this woman than should be possible, and I want to adore her for it, but I can’t quite get there, because she just jumped my boyfriend.
An actual damn rock star. Molesting my boyfriend in front of me.
My fake boyfriend, but she doesn’t know that.