The Last Eligible Billionaire(33)

Not exactly the experience I was hoping for, but I’ll roll with it.

That’s what this trip is about.

Time to get back to my purpose. I’ll live this up and find myself again if it kills me.





13





Hayes



My mother has not left. Amelia has not left. Charlotte has not left.

All three of them, plus the dog, are accompanying Begonia and me to the pier, where I’ve chartered a private boat for a lobster dinner at sunset.

It takes three golf carts to get here, thanks to the extra security detail, and the only reason Begonia isn’t on a bike is that skin-tight mermaid dress she’s wearing.

She may as well also have a mermaid’s tail for as fast as her feet are carrying her from the cart down the wooden plankway to the small yacht.

Her dog’s stuck to her as if it’s afraid I’ll throw her overboard.

And the worst of all?

I made exactly zero progress on digging into Razzle Dazzle’s financials while sequestered away in my office, because Begonia’s voice was on repeat inside my head the entire day.

And that discrepancy that’s bothering me?

It’s less than a thousandth of a percent of the company’s operating budget. The FTC wouldn’t blink. The board won’t blink. Yet I’m incapable of thinking about anything else while I’m supposed to be acquainting myself with my new role, which is big-picture strategy rather than staying buried in the minutiae that I’ve enjoyed so much since joining the Razzle Dazzle payroll.

Or possibly it’s a difficult enough problem that it’s keeping me from the other thing I can’t stop thinking about.

I want you to have sex with me, Hayes. Be my new first. It’s not personal. Any dick would do, and yours is convenient.

“Evenin’, Mr. Rutherford,” a white-bearded sailor calls as we make our way toward the boat at the end of the pier. “Sea’s a little choppy tonight, but don’t you worry. You’re in good hands.”

Begonia slips her arm through mine and squeezes hard.

Death-grip hard.

Her new dress this evening was courtesy of my mother’s insistence—which is not to say my mother approves, for the record, but rather that my mother is willing to play dating chicken with me, and see which one of us blinks first.

It will not be me.

She should know this by now.

Regardless, the end result is that Begonia is wrapped in a sparkly green crepe fabric, showing off an obscene amount of cleavage that she’s attempted to cover with a silk shawl, but that I can still picture in my mind and will probably still be picturing the day I die as an old, crotchety, lonely man. I’m reasonably certain the strappy heels are new too, and that she’s never had the pleasure of having her hair done by anyone like Charlotte before either.

The Begonia of earlier today would’ve been like one of the many Razzle Dazzle film leading ladies being swept away with excitement over undergoing a magical transition from frumpy to fairy princess for the symbolic ball, with sparkling eyes and a pounding heart and romantic sighs and twirling dance moves. But the Begonia of right now, who’s swaying into me and slowing her steps, either has a severe issue with one of her undergarments and can’t breathe, or she’s terrified of the boat. Or, possibly, something worse.

“Are you ill?” I murmur.

“I’m great,” she squeaks.

“Is that dress cutting off circulation?”

“Breathing great. Veins and arteries running in tip-top shape.”

The dog growls low in its throat. It’s not a threatening sound. More like it’s calling her a liar.

“Begonia.”

My mother and Amelia both turn and peer at me.

“Problems in paradise?” Amelia asks lightly.

I’d be irritated with her, except I know what she wants, and it’s not to cause another woman harm.

It’s a marriage of convenience that would make her family happy.

We’d be well-suited for marriage if I weren’t so opposed to the institution in general.

And also if I weren’t allergic to a third thing I failed to mention to Begonia: being manipulated.

I am very much allergic to being manipulated.

“Can I talk to you for a second?” Begonia whispers.

“Of course, darling.”

“I won’t make us late, I swear.”

“The captain won’t leave without us, even if we take two hours.”

She makes a noise that I’d call a whimper on any other woman.

On Begonia, it could mean anything from oh, look, there’s a pretty flower that would be so much prettier in the daylight! to we can’t get on the boat because the sea monsters will eat us.

Thirty-six hours of knowing the woman, and I’m already well aware of her extremes.

“Spit it out, bluebell,” I murmur.

“The last time I got on a sailboat on the ocean, it tipped over, and I almost drowned. I mean, I didn’t actually, but I felt like I might for a minute, and I haven’t been able to get on a boat since. My intentions aren’t bigger than my fears in this case.”

“If you don’t want to go—”

“I do! I do. I was supposed to go sailing this mor—while I’m here—because I want to get over it, but—”