The Last Eligible Billionaire(38)

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to startle you. Did you not get enough dinner? The lobster was delicious. We missed you.”

Here we go. “Don’t start.”

“Hayes. We both know what you’re doing here.”

“Removing myself from the public eye to mourn my cousin in private while I acclimate to my new position at Razzle Dazzle and take solace in the company of someone willing to let me be my own cranky self in the meantime?”

“Is that what this is?” She slides onto the stool across the high counter, one eyebrow raised in that mom look that always came with inquisitions when Jonas and I were younger. And did you try your best at school today, or were you taking the easy way out because learning about conjunctions didn’t sound fun? What did we tell you about playing with the spa in the solarium while adults aren’t around, and now look at this mess. Someone better grab a towel. Did you think about the fact that your grandmother’s vase was on the fireplace mantle before you started tossing that basketball at each other? Accidents happen, but I trust you’ll make better decisions next time.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been a kid.

Still have to squash the feelings of guilt though. “Do I get a say in my life?”

“Hayes. Of course you do. But…”

“I’m nearly forty years old. You don’t get a but here.”

“You’re dragging that girl—”

I send her a sharp glare as I continue attempting to mop up the honey. “Woman.”

“You’re dragging that woman into your life just to annoy everyone around you, when you know you could have your pick of so many more appropriate women.”

“You’re treading on dangerous ground, Mother.”

“She stopped and danced to the street performer music this afternoon, Hayes, and someone tipped her. Her dog attempted to steal a man’s walker. She stopped at a tourist stand to ask for brochures about skydiving. Skydiving. She’s flighty and unpredictable and completely ignorant of the ways of our world. Turn her loose with a reporter and god knows what she’d say, and that egg thing this morning was horrific. Don’t pretend it wasn’t. The longer you string her along like this—”

I cut her off with a growl.

Of course Begonia danced in the street to random music, asked about skydiving, and of course she can’t cook but will give it her all anyway. As for her dog— “Did the dog return the walker?”

“Yes, but Hayes. You know that’s not the point.”

“Isn’t it?”

“The point is that she’s just as terrible of a choice as your last rebellion girlfriend, and we all know how this ends.”

My last rebellion girlfriend was nothing like Begonia.

Nor did we have a contract.

I learned my lesson.

But Begonia—she’s an even more excellent choice than I could’ve imagined, and it’s causing me heartburn.

She knocked on four doors in an evening gown, asking if anyone had any leftover food they could share with her and her billionaire boyfriend, since we didn’t get to the shops before they closed and we wanted to have an impromptu picnic on the beach. And she would’ve knocked on more, but those four were all it took to activate the phone tree for the whole damn town to show up with a feast for three dozen.

I’ve been on this earth nearly forty years, and I’ve never had a private meal on a beach catered by strangers and their leftovers, with music provided by random townspeople unexpectedly and exquisitely talented with violins, while my date and I watched the half-moon rise over the ocean and talked about nothing consequential at all, but still had a more pleasant conversation than I’ve ever gotten from small talk at charity galas and movie premieres.

I’ve been around the damn world, and tonight was the first date I’ve had in my entire life that didn’t center around how much opulence my money could buy, but on how very real and charming the world could be all on its own.

And that—that is my biggest problem with Begonia Fairchild.

She takes more pleasure in there being oxygen available on this earth for us to breathe than I take in a garage full of Rolls Royces, vacation homes on nearly every continent, more money than I could spend in twenty lifetimes, and all of the other little luxuries that that money affords me.

She’s the best-worst fake girlfriend.

And I’m growling at my mother, because that’s what you do for the woman you’re pretending is your world. “You have two options, Mother. You can accept that I love Begonia and welcome her as one of the family, treat her with the same dignity and respect you’d honor any other woman with, and stop attempting to sabotage our relationship behind her back, or you can leave. Now. I choose her. I realize you think you have my best intentions at heart, and I have no doubt you mean no harm, but I get to decide what I want. Not you. Not society. Not some arcane system of rules. And if you can’t respect that, then perhaps you aren’t what’s best for me either.”

There’s a flash in the living room just behind my mother.

A glowing, neon fuchsia flash.

Begonia.

Fuck.

My mother spins, and her eyes go wide. “Oh, dear,” she whispers.

She’s not the completely perfect housewife she lets the media paint her to be, but she’s never intentionally cruel either.