The Last Eligible Billionaire(13)
I’m duck-walking around the room, gathering more of my belongings and writing the inscription for my tombstone in my head—here lies Begonia Fairchild, who had only just begun to find herself when her dog inadvertently destroyed her childhood idol’s brother’s prized and priceless wooden carving of his grandfather—when Hayes Rutherford, whom to this point I had assumed to be a completely sane, if not slightly out-of-touch-with-the-common-people kind of guy, returns to the living room after a short phone call that he was speaking too softly for me to overhear, and announces, “Congratulations, Begonia. You’re now my girlfriend.”
I blink at him, rub my ears—are they full of wax?—and then blink at him again as his words filter from my ears to every other part of my body, some of which should not be listening to this. “I’m sorry, what?”
He points to the carving, which makes me cringe.
I studied Maurice Bellitano in college. I spent three semesters re-taking a class on carving because I wanted to be Maurice Bellitano, but my talents lie elsewhere.
My soul aches with the knowledge that my dog has just chewed up a priceless piece of art. I lift the surprisingly light carving. “Was that from Maurice’s early years? It has some inconsistencies from—”
“It’s a Bellitano original, and yes, I can prove it. Even if I couldn’t, who would the courts believe?”
“Do you know that you have a choice every day to not be the kind of guy who thinks everything is a personal insult? It’s okay to let things go. Research says it actually makes us happier to assume everyone around us has good intentions and sometimes screw-ups happen.”
Hayes Rutherford is unswayed. At this point, I’m pretty certain a twenty-foot ocean wave couldn’t budge him. He’s laser-focused on me, and whatever he’s about to say next, it can’t be good.
“I can bill you for the damages to that statue, among the rest of the damages you’ve caused to this house and the grounds, or we can come to an alternate arrangement whereby you present yourself to my mother and the world as my girlfriend, and I don’t financially ruin you for life.”
That is not what I expected him to say, and it takes me a minute to find an appropriate response. “You live in a very strange world.”
“Two weeks, you said you paid for? That’s plenty of time for us to get engaged as well.”
“Excuse you?”
“We won’t get married. The very idea of it is beyond comprehension, and the legalities would be a larger headache than it would be worth. But I have no desire to be inundated with family trying to save me from my bachelorhood now that the entire world is watching me, and you have very few options for enjoying the rest of your vacation, much less your entire life, if you don’t sign here.”
He presents me with a small stack of papers as I lean back on my heels. I’m still on the floor, which is good, because my legs probably wouldn’t support me right now. Absorbing weird news is best done as close to the ground as possible. Marshmallow tilts his head, clearly thinking that Hayes has lost use of his better sense too.
“What is this?” My skin flushes hot and cold as I skim the first page of the document, but it’s so full of legalese that the only thing that truly leaps out at me is that it has my full name and address on it. “Oh my god, is this a set-up? Did Hyacinth win some kind of win a date with your favorite celebrity game, and give the prize to me instead, and then Jonas couldn’t make it? You knew I was here. Is Jonas coming? Oh my god. I haven’t watched his movies in at least eight years. They all got to be the same after a while, you know? Don’t tell him I said that. And then Chad didn’t like anything with actors who were more handsome than he was, because Chad was a douchewaffle, and I can call him that because my therapist says I shouldn’t feel bad for not liking people on occasion, and people I’m willing to divorce fall under the umbrella of people I’m allowed to not like. I haven’t even watched the reruns of Hollybrook and Mistletoe that used to run each December. Do you still play that every year? Has it aged okay? I can’t remember all the specifics now, but I—”
“This is not a set-up, and you will not be meeting my brother. You’ll be staying here, playing the part of my girlfriend, and distracting my mother and the rest of my family when they try to introduce me to women, and I’ll be either working in the study or disappearing to New York for meetings.” His face wrinkles again, his nose doing that is there a fly on me? twitch again. “If I absolutely must.”
Stay here. With this man who’s making me extremely uncomfortable for a variety of reasons I shouldn’t even be thinking about, considering I barely know him and he clearly dislikes me. You have a type, don’t you, Begonia? “You have lost your ever-loving mind.”
“Quite the contrary. It’s the most efficient plan. I have no desire to have my family parade me around like the last eligible duke in some nineteenth-century historical novel, and the only thing that will stop them is a belief that I’m already involved with someone, and the further belief that if they don’t back off, I will finally snap and marry someone so completely wrong for the role of my wife. You’re here. I don’t have to go search in town for anyone else, and you’re clearly unsuitable. You’ve passed an initial background check, you have nowhere to be until school begins again in late August, and I demand compensation for both damages and the inconvenience of not being fucking asleep right now.”