: Chapter 23

Headache? Check.

Mouth that tastes like my grandmother’s wedding dress freshly out of storage with the mothballs? Check.

Stomach angrier than an arena full of Copper Valley Thrusters fans when that ref made that terribly wrong slashing call against Ares Berger and nearly cost the team the championship? Check.

Missing fake boyfriend who wants to do paperwork to extend our agreement to include a fake engagement after I interrupted him eating me out by setting a tablecloth on fire? Check.

His distrustful mother sitting across from me at the formal dining room table first thing on a Tuesday morning after he also left me a note that we’re committed to a charity gala in New York City later this week and I have to go shopping for a dress that will involve Slimzies, borrowed jewels that I will hopefully not lose, and plastering my face with more makeup than The Blue Man Group require in a week? Check, check, and check.

“You don’t look well, dear,” Giovanna says, as if I didn’t attempt to burn the house down last night while her son was going down on me. “Perhaps the country air isn’t to your liking?”

“I’m the world’s lightest lightweight, and I had three glasses of wine last night.”

“Poor dear. Would you like me to ask the chef to make you an omelet? Perhaps some yogurt and granola?”

I will never again believe any interviews that paint Giovanna Rutherford as a saint of a mother.

Yogurt on a hangover stomach?

Gross.

“No, thank you. I’m sure visiting Hayes at work today will make me feel better.” Oof. I’m catty. Not a good sign. I force a smile and continue. “Or maybe a pickle juice smoothie. Wasn’t the moon gorgeous last night? I know you’re supposed to wish on a star, but sometimes I wish on the moon when she’s that pretty.”

“You’re quite unique, aren’t you, Begonia?”

“Oh, I’m just me. You must meet a ton of unique people who make me look normal.”

She doesn’t take the bait. Out loud, anyway. Her smile behind her coffee cup says the no, I don’t, because there aren’t many people odder than you that she’s stifling.

Or possibly I’m reading too much into this because I’m tired and my head hurts and I could really, really use a spill-my-guts visit with Hyacinth.

Or a Big Mac.

Definitely a Big Mac.

I do my best to smile at Hayes’s mother like I mean it, and not like I’m hoping Liliane Sussex-Williams is gone and Uncle Antonio and his family are gone and that Giovanna is heading somewhere else today so Marshmallow and I can run around the grounds—or so he can while I flop in the grass and bake in the sunshine—and contemplate where I should go next week when my contract with Hayes is up if he comes to his senses and doesn’t continue asking me to extend it.

And maybe also contemplate how I’ll try to not be sad when I have to go, and how maybe we’ll stay friends and I can text him now and again, even though I know he’ll be too busy for me.

I can’t stay here.

That much is clear.

And not because Giovanna Rutherford doesn’t like me, but because I like Hayes.

I like him entirely too much.

“I’m so sorry to abandon you,” I say to her, knowing full well she won’t be sorry to see me go, “but I think I need to go lie down.”

“Of course, dear. I hope you feel better.”

I look down to tell Marshmallow to come along, but he’s not there.

Giovanna makes a strangled noise.

And there he is, walking into the formal dining room with a colander on his head and a tall salt shaker clenched in his jaw, tipping it so that he leaves a trail of salt behind him.

I cringe. “My house is Marshmallow-proofed,” I say apologetically. “I’ll clean that up.”

“The housekeeper will take care of it.”

I give my dog the stink-eye.

He gives it right back. I think he’ll miss Hayes too.

“C’mon, Marshmallow. Time to return your booty.”

We head to the kitchen, which is easy to find—you just follow the trail of salt—and when I get there, I’m hesitant to walk in.

It’s massive. And fancy. The kitchen has an arched ceiling. At least two ovens. Three sinks. A backsplash that was probably hand-painted by one of the Italian greats who was re-animated with some of the Rutherford fortune. Money can buy anything, right?

It takes me a minute to spot the refrigerator because the facing blends in with the cabinets. The island is the size of a continent. The kitchen itself is larger than my entire apartment. And the chef is slicing and dicing things on a cutting board and doesn’t look happy at the interruption.

You only live once though, right?

“Hi.” I smile and wave like we’re not standing ten feet apart. Actually, it might be twenty. This is a massive kitchen. “I’m Begonia. Hayes’s, um, girlfriend. Did you make that amazing picanha last night? And oh my god, the cheese rolls?”

She snorts. “Child’s play,” she says in a thick French accent.

“They were my first, and they were amazing.” I smile again, which makes my temple throb.

She doesn’t.

Maybe her temple’s throbbing too.

“I accidentally knocked a candle over and set off the smoke alarms and the in-room sprinklers last night, stood outside in my robe with the entire Rutherford clan while the fire department came, and then my ex-husband called and was on speakerphone when he said Hayes is playing with me and I only get one more chance to take him back. I drowned the complications in a bottle of wine, and I feel basically like ass this morning, and I need to clean up this salt that my dog spilled all over the first floor here. Do you have a favorite hangover cure before I go find the vacuum and make my head split in two with the noise? Because otherwise I’m going to find someone to take me to the nearest McDonald’s, and that seems like one more thing that I might do wrong, and I’m trying very hard to not do things wrong today, and I miss my sister, and I wish my ex-husband had this headache instead of me, but he doesn’t, at least as far as I’m aware, so I’m just doing the best I can here.”

She finishes with six carrots, sets her knife down, and gives me a look that would probably put Giovanna Rutherford herself in her place. “Why did you divorce him?”

“His mother said some not-nice things about me and he didn’t defend me.”

“Men have no honor. Too afraid of their mothers.” She snorts, and I swear she’s snorting in a French accent too. Then she points to the other side of her work island, where six stools are lined beneath the countertop. “Sit. I will make you cassoulet, if you don’t expire first.”

“Hayes defended me to his mother,” I whisper.

“Wise man. I will not put too much chili powder in his croissants.”

“He likes chili powder in his croissants?”

“No. No one likes chili powder in croissants.” She smiles. Not gonna lie—I’m fairly certain it’s a smile meant to terrify.

“Do you like your job here?”

“Best job. Mr. Rutherford—he’s a good boss.” She winks. “And absent so much. I watch home improvement shows on the TV in his office when he is gone. You like coffee?”

“Oh, yes, I adore coffee.”

She points to a large stainless steel machine on a counter along one stone wall. “You do your coffee. I will do your cassoulet.”

I almost tear up. “Thank you.”

“No coffee for the dog.”

I laugh, thoroughly enjoying the sound of her voice. It’s like taking a trip without having to go anywhere. “Agreed.”

“I will clean the salt. I gave it to him, I clean it. Good dog. Very funny. And his noise annoys Ms. Sussex-Williams.”

“You cheeky devil,” I whisper. “Can we be friends? What’s your name?”

“This is Françoise, Begonia,” Keisha says. Her hair is wild, like she had a very good night. She’s in a bright pink kimono, which is gaping open to her belly button and matches the silk pants that are threatening to fall off her tiny frame. She pauses halfway to the coffee maker and dusts off her bare feet with a frown. “Stay on her good side or she’ll put olives in your Frosted Flakes.”

“Or salt on your feet,” Françoise murmurs.

Keisha grins. “I’m gonna call Liliane and tell her Hayes thinks it’s sexy when women race barefoot through the front hall. And then I’m going to tell her it’s the latest craze—exfoliating your feet just by walking around your own house. What happened? The dog get into the salt?”

I nod.

“Wicked. He’s the coolest dog. Can I take him on tour?”

“No!”

She laughs. “Ah, man, you didn’t sleep well, did you? C’mon. I’ll fix your coffee. Françoise has your hangover cure coming, I see. Let’s go hide in the gazebo and you can tell me all of your secrets before Millie wakes up and realizes I’m wreaking havoc on the world.”

“But the salt—”

“B, the housekeeper vacuums here every day, whether Hayes is in residence or not, so don’t sweat it.”

“Truth,” Françoise agrees. “Annoying as the fuck.”

“I’m going to start using that,” Keisha says. She affects a French accent herself. “Liliane is annoying as the fuck too.”

Françoise’s nose twitches, and I don’t know if she’s amused or if she’s plotting Keisha’s demise. “Go,” she orders. “Have coffee. Spill the kidneys.”

“She means beans,” Keisha stage-whispers.

“I prefer the kidneys.”

I don’t know if she’s making a joke about wanting to take people’s kidneys, and I don’t stick around to find out. Instead, I follow Keisha through making coffee and then out to the gazebo at the edge of the courtyard, overlooking the rolling green hills of the Hudson Valley. I can just glimpse the river tucked in down below too.

“So are you real, or are you the shield?” Keisha asks as soon as we’re comfortable.

I frown and don’t answer.

And then I sip my coffee and my entire world gets a little brighter. “Oh my god. What is this?”

“Properly fresh-roasted and fresh-ground Guatemalan beans, though you might’ve ruined it with all that sugar and cream and cinnamon.”

“That machine literally fresh-roasts and fresh-grinds the beans?”

“That’s what all the noise was, B.”

I sip again. Savor, I tell myself.

Screw that, there’s more where this came from, at least for today, I tell myself back, though it sounds like Hyacinth instead of like me.

But she’s not wrong.

“You didn’t answer the question. Real or a shield?”

I hate lying. So I don’t. “Do any of us ever know what’s going on in a man’s mind?”

She laughs. “Excellent avoidance tactic.”

“I like him.” Also the truth, and more than I wanted to admit to anyone. “But he’s so…guarded.”

“You would be too if the love of your life married your nemesis.”

I pause before gulping more coffee. “Hayes has a nemesis?”

“Brock Sturgis.”

I wait.

She waits.

Marshmallow strolls between us, looking back and forth, tongue hanging out, like he’s watching a tennis match.

“You don’t know who Brock Sturgis is,” Keisha finally says. A statement. Not a question, though she’s clearly having trouble believing it.

“I don’t read the tabloids, and Hayes and I met online.” My tongue trips, and I swear she sees through the lie, no matter how much I try to convince myself that I rented his house online without knowing it wasn’t mine to rent isn’t a lie, and is technically the reason we met. So I push ahead. “I didn’t know anything about his real life until we met in Maine.”

Her nose wrinkles like she’s calling me out, but she doesn’t say anything out loud. About my lie, anyway. “Brock isn’t tabloid bait. Not outside the city. He’s old Wall Street money. The Fifth Avenue equivalent of an ambulance chaser now. I was too young when it all went down to really know the nuances, but I know he and Hayes were besties in grade school, then had a major falling out in high school when Hayes realized Brock was copying his homework and spreading rumors about him behind his back. And once Hayes put his foot down, the bullying started. Kids are shits. That’s as much of that part of the story as you’re getting from me. And then after college, Hayes started dating Trixie Melhoff, and he fell in luuuuuuuurrve. Not just normal love. Like, even I remember how he could basically talk about nothing but Trixie this and Trixie that and he was shopping for rings and had already basically proposed when he found out she was sleeping with Brock behind his back.”

I gasp.

“Yeah. The guy who almost got Hayes kicked out of fancy high school prep school by claiming Hayes was copying him, then saying Hayes had mental health issues and he needed to be institutionalized, like mental health issues are something to be ashamed of, and then sliding the tabloids lies about Hayes doing drugs to cope with his weird sexual fetishes all through college, and I am not saying any more. I’m really not.”

“Your family’s reputation,” I whisper.

She nods emphatically. “Right? Uncle Greg and Aunt Gio were beside themselves. I mean, they believed Hayes when he said it was all lies, but the lengths they had to go to for damage control? They were lucky Hayes is the weird one is the worst that ever took hold in public. And you know what? I don’t like to call women bitches. I think we should support each other, and I think we all have more to give than just chasing billionaires for their money, but that bitch Trixie? She can rot in hell. Most normal women who want to use Hayes would’ve cozied up to him to get close to Jonas instead, and believe me, plenty did, but no. She accepted his proposal while sleeping with his mortal enemy. His former best friend who bullied him all through school. That’s like—that’s the worst kind of betrayal. And that’s all I’m saying.”

My heart hurts. “Why are people cruel?”

“I don’t know. But he hasn’t had another serious girlfriend since. I think he tried once or twice, but you know how it is when you’re rich and famous. Everyone has an angle. And all of them had angles. So everyone in the family’s trying to find someone he could marry without loving so that he doesn’t have to go through all of this ridiculous press and publicity with being the last eligible billionaire on the planet. And he’s not, for the record. There are like, three single women billionaires who are in their thirties and forties, and is anyone talking about them? No. Fucking two-faced twats. So. What’s your angle? What do I have to murder you for?”

A tear slips down my cheek. I try to swipe it away fast, so she won’t see, but another follows.

“Okay, I won’t really murder you,” Keisha says. “Stop crying. I hate crying. Crying makes me bleeeaaaaaa, you know?” She sticks her tongue out and shudders.

“I wish he’d been born to a normal, middle-class family outside of the spotlight,” I whisper.

Her face freezes mid-shudder, and when it moves again, she stares at me in horror. “Fuck, B. That’s like, the worst thing you could’ve ever said.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what I wish for him too.”