The Last Eligible Billionaire(88)

I twist my head to stare up at her for a brief moment, then squeeze my eyes shut.

She loves him.

She doesn’t think she settled.

And that’s what’s important. Especially since neither one of us can have a guy like Hayes.

Or who he pretended he was.

“I thought he loved me,” I whisper to my sister. “Underneath it all, I thought he was falling in love with me.”

Someone else knocks at my door, making Marshmallow growl low in his throat.

I wince. “And now Mom’s here.”

“If she says the Chad word, I’ll threaten to never let her see her grandbabies again, and I swear on my loyalty to you above everyone else, I’ll mean it.”

Marshmallow growls again.

“Begonia?” Mom calls. “Sweetie, open the door. Mommy’s here to fix it all.”

I whimper.

Hyacinth growls louder than Marshmallow.

The lock clicks, the hinges squeak, and more than one set of footsteps makes my small entryway floor creak. “Honey, don’t worry,” Mom calls. “I brought Chad, and he forgives you. Let’s put this all behind us now, shall we?”

Hyacinth and I lock eyes.

I dive for Marshmallow, and I get lightheaded all over again. Maybe skipping breakfast for the past two days wasn’t the greatest idea.

“I’m going to murder them both,” Hyacinth says.

I don’t dive for her.

The authorities won’t put her down if she bites one of them. And I’m pretty sure she won’t bite.

Or murder them for real.

And she has that no-fucks-left-to-give third pregnancy glow.

“Begon—erp.”

“Out,” Hy snarls. “Out, out, out. Mother, you’re dead to me. Chad, you’ll be dead for real if you don’t march your loser ass out of this apartment and stay the fuck away. You don’t get to realize what you lost after it’s gone. You get to wallow in misery for the rest of your freaking forever. No, Mother, dead to me. Go. Go. Before I call Keisha Kourtney and ask her to take Begonia somewhere safe where none of us can ever bother her again, and that means none of us will ever see her again too. Do you understand?”

Keisha.

I miss Keisha.

But I don’t have the right to call her anymore.

That part of my life? That adventure?

It’s over.

And I’m not up for any more right now.





34





Hayes



She fucking betrayed me.

I’m sitting at my desk, staring at the paper hand-delivered by my father this morning, gaping in utter shock.

Begonia exposed our agreement for the world.

My phone won’t stop ringing. Not my personal phone, nor my office phone, nor my office cell. Every line, lit up.

Merriweather brought coffee, doctored with sugar and cream and cinnamon, and I nearly threw up just sniffing it, which might’ve been the point.

Reasonably certain she’s on Team Begonia, that she’s sniffed out that we’re no longer together, and that I’m in the doghouse.

Winnie delivered today’s calendar and I wanted to crawl under my desk and hide like a five-year-old.

And then my father marched through my door, unannounced, with a tabloid in hand, and set off the biggest bomb of my Monday morning.

“While this has all the makings of a quality Razzle Dazzle film, I didn’t expect you’d do it in real life,” he says dryly, one ankle crossed over his knee as he sits across from me on my office couch as if this is a casual social visit and not a trip to tell me what a fuck-up I am for getting caught with my dick out in public before being exposed for Begonia being nothing more than a pretend date. “Maybe next time, use a digital document instead of paper. Especially if your fake girlfriend isn’t tech-savvy enough to forward it.”

She fucking betrayed me.

But what did I deserve?

She told me she loved me, and I told the pilot to turn the plane around.

“I’ll issue apologies.” My voice is hollow in my own ears. “If you need me to resign—”

“We’re held to a ridiculous standard, Hayes. If our family looks merely mortal in the press from time to time, we’ll weather the storm.”

“This isn’t mortal. This is embarrassing.” And it hurts.

It fucking hurts.

“It will blow over,” my father says.

As if this could possibly just blow over.

I glower at him.

I get a mild smile in return.

It makes my ears want to pop off the side of my head to let the pressure out. “For nearly forty damn years, I’ve bent over backwards to keep from smearing our family’s name, and now, with a photo of me getting a goddamn blow job on the front page of every tabloid, accompanied by a goddamn fake relationship contract, all you have to say is it’ll blow over?”

He tilts his head as if he’s contemplating the question. As if he didn’t hear the part where I said a photo of me getting a goddamn blow job. As if there’s actually any doubt that he’s not taking this seriously enough. “You don’t enjoy working here, do you?”

“Did you fucking set me up?” I’m on my feet, shouting at my father for the first time in my adult life. My head is pounding even harder, my fingers half-numb, half-twitching, my chest getting hammered so hard by my heart that my lungs are in danger of being collateral damage when it bursts. “Did you set me up so I’d have to step down?”