The Last Eligible Billionaire(63)

“Truth,” Fran?oise 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.”

Fran?oise’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?”