The Last Eligible Billionaire(3)

“What,” I breathe in her green-goop-covered face, “are you doing in my house?”

She flips her wrist, ducks, and escapes my grasp, diving for the closet. “This isn’t your house!”

Is she playing technicality games? Christ on a crumpet, I hate talking to people almost as much as I hate that I’m still having to shout over this infernal music. “It’s sure as fuck not your house.” Whoops. There I go with the fucks. Apologies, Mother. “What are you doing here?”

“Marshmallow!” she bellows. She’s spinning in a circle, muttering about too many damn doors, the towel on her head tilting, robe flapping open and giving me more of a view than I want of any woman today, and I finally catch on.

Fear.

She’s afraid.

Slow on the uptake, Hayes?

I grunt to myself, fist my hands in my pockets, and lean in the closet doorway, forcing myself to calm down and look at her like a math problem instead of as a fleshy ball of emotions who’s latched on to a hair dryer and is aiming it at me like she can blow me out of the doorway.

“Who are you?” For the record, it’s damn hard to keep my voice steady. I used up every last drop of my peopling skills five minutes into my brother’s wedding reception last night and had to fake it for another six hours. I have nothing left to employ for patience with this woman today, but she’s between me and overdue alone time.

She shifts back and forth on the balls of her feet, towel drooping, robe swaying, hair dryer still aimed at me. The green goop coating her face is getting spots, like she’s sweating through her face mask.

“I rented this house fair and square, and you need to leave.”

“I own this house, and I didn’t rent it to anyone.”

“Prove it.”

Prove it? “You have no idea who I am, do you?”

“Are you kidding me?” she mutters. “Another one? Marshmallow!”

“Stop yelling marshmallow. What the hell—”

It’s the last syllable I utter before I realize what a marshmallow is.

It’s a dog.

A large, black-and-brown, long-snouted, pointy-eared, teeth-baring, snarling attack dog.

I have a feeling I’m about to be its breakfast.

This day truly can’t get any worse.





2





Begonia Fairchild, aka a woman who would like to stop regretting every last decision in her life. Any day now. Really…



Go on a post-divorce retreat and spoil yourself in a place without internet or cell signal so your mother can’t reach you for a couple weeks, I told myself. Look, there’s a lovely beach mansion rental miraculously in your budget that just came available. It must be fate, I told myself.

And it was.

For two glorious days.

Now?

Now, I’m interrogating an intruder while my dog holds him against a closet wall, with no cell service to call the police, and the full knowledge that my dog will most likely stop growling any second now because he is truly the world’s worst guard dog, and the last bit of leverage I have against this mansion-invading murderer will be gone.

“Who are you? And don’t pull any of that arrogant you should know who I am because I’m so important baloney,” I order the man currently held hostage by my dog between clothing racks in a corner of the massive closet.

What kind of a bathroom has four different doors?

This one.

That’s what kind of bathroom.

And it was cool yesterday, when I was renting a beach mansion with a bathroom so large it has two closets and a private hidden sitting room, but today, when I needed to make a spur of the moment decision about which of the four doors to lunge toward, I went the wrong way, and now I’m trapped in a closet with an intruder who’s glaring at me like I’m in the wrong.

I have two weapons at my disposal.

One’s the hair dryer, which is only scary if you’ve ever had one short-circuit and almost catch your hair on fire while using it, and the other is my phone, which gets no signal in this house—thank you, obscure wireless plan—and which I’m finally able to silence inside the pocket of this robe, killing Ariana Grande’s voice probably as surely as this man is about to murder me.

“My name is Hayes Rutherford, and this is my house.” His voice is quiet and controlled, and he has a commanding air about him that might be the tux—side note, who breaks into an island mansion in a tux?—or it might be that anyone named Hayes Rutherford innately carries around an air of importance.

Why does that name sound familiar?

And why does the fact that he claims that’s his name immediately assure me that he’s not going to kill me?

Probably because if he were planning on killing me, he’d tell me his name was Freddy Krueger or Mr. Death or Chad, because god knows I’ve had enough Chads in my life. The universe would definitely send a Chad to murder me.

But this man—Hayes Rutherford—is staring at me expectantly as though he’s just answered every last one of my questions, and while the tic in his jaw suggests he’d like to strangle me with the cord on this hair dryer, the rest of his expression says I am entirely over this bullshit.

He’s not old. Maybe upper thirties, early forties at most, based on the lines at the edges of his eyes and the strands of silver dotting his dark hair rather than overtaking it. He’s clearly in good shape. No fluff hanging over his belt, his rolled-up shirtsleeves showing off what I’d call forearm porn in any other circumstances, posture straight, tendons straining in his neck.