The Last Eligible Billionaire(93)

“Don’t you have something else to do?” I mutter.

Keisha wiggles her eyebrows. “Like your wife?”

“Not until her plane touches down from LA tonight.”

“I do not need you to play bodyguard. I need—”

“Begonia,” the two of them answer for me.

Fuck.

I woke up this morning to the realization that it’s been ten days since I couldn’t tell her I love her back.

Ten.

Days.

Double-digits.

I fell for Begonia in four days. Spent another eight days with her feeling like the very center of her world, and now, we’ve been apart almost as long, and it’s ridiculous to think that I could’ve found the love of my life in under two weeks, yet the acceptance that it’s over won’t come.

The conviction that she wanted me for my money, for my family, for my connections, for my friends—it hasn’t come.

Even with the details of our arrangement leaking to the press, I cannot stay angry with the woman.

I merely have this overwhelming fear that if I go find her, if I tell her how I feel, she will have moved on.

And I’ll have let the fear that’s ruled my private life for fifteen years destroy the best thing to have ever happened to me.

I glower at my brother and my cousin. “She told the tabloids that we were fake.”

Keisha’s still lounging upside down like a four-year-old. “I bet Millie six million dollars that Marshmallow had more to do with that than Begonia did.”

“Did she seriously take that bet?” Jonas asks.

“No, because she’s not a sucker. Also, she called up someone she used to know—don’t ask—and they went out riding last night—again, don’t ask—and apparently found the ‘reporter’ who broke the story, and he swore up and down that he was lurking at the edges of Sagewood House’s property when a miracle dog appeared and handed him the contract.”

“Stop making shit up.”

“I’m not making it up. That’s what Millie told me.”

Jonas makes his I’m thinking face. “Do you think Begonia would let us borrow Marshmallow on-set? That would be horrific for filming, but can you imagine the end result?”

I leave them in my office, shutting the door behind me and telling my assistants to lock them inside. When I hit the ground floor of the City Hall office building, three women look at me wrong, I realize the odds of the dog being the source for the tabloids is unnaturally high, given who the dog is, and I turn around and get right back in the elevator.

I cannot go on like this.

I don’t want to work for Razzle Dazzle.

I don’t want to be miserable.

I don’t want to be alone.

I want—

I want to fucking live.

Exactly like Begonia said she was trying to do in Maine.

I stroll back into my office foyer and look between my assistants.

The two of them exchange their own knowing glances, and then everything turns into a flurry of motion.

Winnie leaps up and shoves a chair under the door handle to block the door of my private office from opening, where I can still hear Jonas and Keisha’s muted, unintelligible voices coming through.

Merriweather moves to the small coffee station.

“I don’t need coffee,” I tell her.

“This is for me.”

“What on earth do you—” I start.

Winnie makes an impatient noise. “Mr. Rutherford, you’re walking around like a kicked puppy, and it doesn’t take geniuses to figure out why. We’re having an intervention, or we’re both quitting. I probably need a coffee for this too. And I don’t drink coffee.”

“An intervention?” I repeat.

Merriweather nods. “An intervention. You need your head removed from your nether regions, and we have nothing else left to lose.”

“Excuse you—” I start, but once again, Winnie steamrolls me.

“You miss Begonia, because she’s Begonia, but you won’t do anything about it, because you’re you, which is literally the only thing standing between you and Begonia being happy together.”

I bristle. “You have not known me nearly long enough to—”

“Do you honestly think Begonia would reject you?” Merriweather follows the question by downing a shot of espresso like a champ, then peers at me as if she has nothing better to do than badger me about my personal life.

And I have nothing better to do than answer her, because I fucking miss Begonia. “No, but she wouldn’t reject anyone.”

Winnie snorts. “She divorced her husband. I’d say the woman knows what she doesn’t want.”

“And what she does,” Merriweather agrees.

The door to my office jiggles. “Hey! Are you having an intervention without us?” Keisha calls.

Winnie leans back in her chair and props her feet on her desk. She’s not wearing shoes, and I should say something, but instead, I’m hanging on her every word. “Did it ever occur to you, Mr. Rutherford, that Begonia is just as afraid of not being loved as you are of not being loved enough by her? Do you realize, to even the smallest degree, how unfair that is to her? And how much she’s probably hurting right now?”

“Love’s a leap.” Merriweather pulls a second espresso shot off the coffee maker and lifts it, offering it to me.