Chapter 6: My Dark Prince: Chapter 5

Present.

“Hey, can you be my fake date next week?” Franklin Townsend slid into the passenger seat of my Ferrari Purosangue, shimmying her mini skirt down her thighs. “There’s a house party on the beach that I really want to go to, but it’s in the Hamptons and I’d rather not get hit on every five seconds.”

She adjusted her scalloped triangle top until it covered just enough to avoid another arrest. One – I didn’t know why she took a stab at modesty. Her outfit consisted of less fabric than a napkin. Party girl was her entire personality. And two – I had no clue what the Hamptons had to do with the frequency at which people hit on her, but I didn’t care enough to ask.

I revved the engine loud enough to piss off Romeo, whose home Frankie currently squatted in. “Tempting, but I’d rather eat my own spleen.”

“Why not?” She popped her pink gum, unperturbed. “I’m a hot commodity.”

“You know I don’t show up in public with the same woman more than once. People will get the wrong idea and think I’m considering monogamy, Franklin. I’m a fuckboy, not a con artist.”

“Technically, you’re a fuck-man.” Frankie giggled. “The whole bachelor schtick gets old once you hit your thirties.”

I peeled out of our neighborhood as she wrestled free a compact mirror from her Birkin – a gift from her sister, courtesy of a revenge shopping spree. “It’s not that I’m old … it’s that you’re barely born.”

She swiped on an extra coat of lip gloss. “I thought men like young women?”

“My rule of thumb is, I’m only willing to potty train someone who came out of my nuts.” What I didn’t add was that I’d never be a father, so that wasn’t a problem.

“Oh, come on. We’ve never even hooked up.”

I would never touch Franklin. Not like that. The kid thought BDSM stood for Bad Decisions and Spending Money.

“People don’t know that.” I slung my wrist over the steering wheel, eyes dead on the road. “For all they know, you were a conquest. I chased you hard enough.”

“And then I said yes.” She clicked her small mirror shut, throwing her hands in the air with a frustrated groan. “And you said no. Why is that?”

“Spared you the broken heart.”

Frankie snorted. “Please. If one of us were to get their heart broken, it would be you.”

Impossible, of course. My heart was all the way across the pond, in Europe, with a girl I hadn’t seen since I was nineteen. Time didn’t dull that fact. Neither did the stream of women who came in and out of my bedroom along the years.

But Franklin Townsend – the young, doe-eyed sister of Romeo’s wife – would never be on the menu for me. Chasing her benefitted me for the same reason pretending to be a dumbass did – it threw people off my scent. It made them believe I was a shallow, perverted creature of zero scruples. The oldest trick in the book.

“Come on, Ollie. You strung me along. The least you can do is be my date for one night.” She sprawled in her seat, eyeing me with a pout, very clearly unused to rejection. “You can dump me publicly afterwards.” She winked. “I’ve always wanted my name on a Times Square billboard.”

Frankie, like her sister Dallas, was certifiably unhinged. It didn’t take a fortune teller to guess that Franklin Townsend was destined to end up accidentally burning a zip code or two. In the last year alone, Dallas had to quietly release her younger sister on bail for indecent exposure, possession of weed in a holy place (church), and (allegedly accidental) theft of a box of dildos, which she’d repainted and sold on Etsy as jewelry bars. Frankie was unintentionally hilarious and as high maintenance as a five-star hotel. She was also mentally five and chronologically twenty. Too young to be taken seriously.

I changed lanes, inwardly cursing the traffic. “The answer is still no.”

“How has no one realized what a buzzkill you are?”

Because I’m a master at secrets.

When Frankie had asked me for a ride to The Grand Regent, I couldn’t refuse. First, because my family owned the hotel. One of many in our chain of six-thousand-plus properties across the world. Since I couldn’t stop the walking disaster that was Franklin Townsend from entering my hotel without suffering Romeo’s wrath, it would be negligent of me to not personally escort her there and ensure she didn’t burn down a sauna or two.

And secondly, because I’d just announced in our group chat that I was headed there to golf. Turning her down would be rude. I also enjoyed the welcome side effect of pissing Romeo and Dallas off by pretending that spending time with the southern bombshell delighted me. They treated her like one would a delicate flower without realizing she devoured more victims than a Venus Flytrap.

“What brings you to The Grand Regent today, anyway?” I drawled, trying to avert the conversation from the date Frankie wanted.

By the time we made it off Dark Prince Road, Rom and Dal must’ve already imagined me ravaging her in five different ways. In reality, I had a team management meeting in half an hour. I did all the hiring and firing at our flagship branch in the DMV. I liked to have my finger on the pulse.

“I’m meeting a Tinder date in the presidential suite.” Frankie curled a lock of hair around her finger. “He’s married and thirty years older, so we have to do it somewhere discreet.”

“Put a towel over the linens, please. Those sheets are seamless silk.”

“He wants to do it in the shower.”

“Wear some slippers, then. I don’t want any lawsuits.”

“Christ.” She threw her head back and laughed. “You really don’t give a shit about me hooking up with other people, do you?”

“What you do with your time and your body is none of my business. Radical sentiment, I know.”

She tilted her head, frowning at me. “I thought you wanted to hook up with me.”

Everyone did. I made a whole stink about hitting on Frankie the minute I caught her shoving miniature bottles of vodka into her clutch at a debutante ball years ago.

“Truth is, I did it mostly to piss Romeo and Zach off.” I put a hand to my heart. “As lovely as you are – and make no mistake, you are one of the loveliest creatures to grace this godforsaken planet – even I have limits. Besides …” I shot her a quick glance. “You’re not really headed for a hookup. Tell me what you’re up to. And assure me that it will not ruin next year’s disaster insurance policy.”

“If you must know, I got myself a gig at your hotel.”

I shot her a glare. “Sexual solicitation is prohibited in—”

“Holy shit, Ollie, not that.” She slapped my shoulder hard enough to dislocate it. “I’m interning for Hollywood’s most coveted intimacy coordinator.” Frankie practically beamed.

“A what?”

“Intimacy coordinator.”

“Intimacy doesn’t need a coordinator. I can tell you what goes where. It’s an all-of-the-above answer, but you don’t need an expert to point out the pros and cons of each hole.”

“An intimacy coordinator is a member of the film crew that ensures the well-being of actors and actresses who participate in sex scenes.” She licked her lips, picking at the seam of her skirt. “This is actually a huge opportunity for me. The film is produced by this three-time Oscar winner. And two of my favorite actors star in it.”

I’d never seen Frankie taking anything but her hair care routine seriously, so I very much doubted this would pan out as something more than a catastrophe once she realized what hard work actually entailed. Then again, maybe Frankie was like me. Maybe she only pretended to be a ditzy woman with nothing but boys and designer clothes on her brain. Maybe she had dimension. Wants, and needs, and desires. Desires I wouldn’t fulfill but desires, nonetheless.

I saluted security guards and two porters as we cruised from the back entrance toward the main hotel, passing rows of sculptured fountains and white dogwood trees. “They’re filming in the hotel?”

Now that she mentioned it, I remembered signing off the fine print and insurance documentation. It was a major film. We’d agreed to close off an entire wing for it.

“Yes.” Frankie swung her purse onto the crook of her elbow. “I can’t guarantee the survival of your seamless silk sheets.”

The Ferrari slid past rows of long-term lease bungalows, two highly acclaimed golf courses, four outdoor pools, eight tennis courts, and the arena, home to some of the biggest annual medical and technology conferences in the universe. Frankie took it all in with the typical boredom of a jaded rich girl who had already tasted all things decadent the world had to offer.

I turned into the underground staff parking, dipping into the darkness, my favorite place.

She stared out the window, unusually quiet. “You’re not truly dumb, are you?”

“Excuse me?”

Sometimes – not often – my mask fell off. Sometimes I wasn’t fun-loving, skirt-chasing Oliver von Bismarck: billionaire, playboy, and world-class knucklehead. Sometimes I let myself just be … me.

“I already figured out you’re not as erratic and depraved as people think you are.” She whipped her head to look at me. “You’re just pretending. You want people to think the worst of you. You actually want people to dislike you. I’ve never seen anything like that. Why?”

I had the answer, of course. But I never shared it with anyone. Not even Romeo and Zach, my best friends. She wouldn’t understand. No one did.

The truth was, I didn’t deserve any love, remorse, or sympathy from anyone. I deserved hate. And because I couldn’t tell people why they needed to send it my way, I sought it through other means.

I reversed into my designated parking spot and killed the engine, throwing her a blank stare. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Frankie. Now get out. I’m late for my golf match.”