Rosalind
This was a mess.
A gigantic fucking mess.
Leave it to me to find the one man in all of Vegas who wasn’t interested in getting his fifteen minutes of fame by being shotgun married to me. The fact that I even had to convince him does not bode well for this whole clusterfuck.
Luckily, my family’s PR people were able to feed the marriage story to the press to go along with the pictures from the club.
There was a lot we needed to talk about. I’d told him about how my parents had gotten sick of me showing up in the tabloids and had threatened to cut me off if I didn’t clean up my act. What I hadn’t told him, or at least not since he sobered up, was that I needed this marriage to last at least six months to avoid a scandal. If we got divorced in a week, it would be obvious what happened. My parents would likely cut me off anyway, and then what? I’d be a thirty-year-old divorcee with no trust fund?
No way; not happening.
I had toed the family line at enough boring gala events that I’d earned my share. Just because I wasn’t using mine to save the rainforest like my perfect sister Violetta didn’t mean I was willing to give up and walk away. I had no desire to waste my life adding to the family fortune.
I’d always wanted a creative career of my own. Sadly, as a Huxley, that wasn’t an option. Unless I could cause enough trouble to get my parents to give me my share in exchange for keeping our name out of the tabloids. I hadn’t expected them to double down and threaten to cut me off.
This was all fixable.
I needed to talk to my assistant, Meredith, and come up with a plan. Everything would be fine.
I glanced at the man in the next room. As far as drunk conquests went, he was a win. He had to be six feet five. He’d told me he was a contractor, and I could totally see it in the way his body moved. I was used to actors and models. Bodies honed in the gym and on the running trails around Vegas or LA. He was built from hard work. No waxed chest or fake tan. No manicured nails or veneers on his teeth. Just an honest-to-god hardworking man. He was way outside his comfort zone, and frankly, so was I. If he didn’t want to get famous off me, then what did I really have to offer to keep him in line?
He wandered into the kitchen where I sat, and just as he opened his mouth, the phone in his hand vibrated.
“Fuck sakes, it’s my sister,” he muttered. “Hey, Charlotte—”
There was what sounded like excited screaming coming through the speaker. Derek was only able to get in a word or two here and there, so it was impossible to follow the conversation. Based on the way he ran a hand over his short beard, then dropped his shoulders, it seemed I had an ally in the form of my new sister-in-law.
He finally managed to hang up the phone and turned his attention back to me. “So, you said we need to work on a few things? First, I need coffee and the greasiest breakfast Vegas has to offer.”
He turned and started rifling through my fridge. “Do you ever eat at home? All you have is bottled water in here. No bacon, no bread, no eggs, no butter.”
I perched on the edge of my dining room chair and pulled out my phone. “Hi, Meredith, can you please bring two large coffees and everything on the McDonald’s breakfast menu. Thank you.” I put my phone down and made atadagesture.
“I could have gone out and gotten my own food.”
I stood and pinned him with my gaze. “Look, you need to understand something really quickly. This house is surrounded by paparazzi right now. All of them are eager for a payday. More than willing to stalk us, to take pictures through windows, and to make up lies. I know you aren’t used to this, so I’m going to need you to trust me when I tell you we cannot leave this house. Not without a plan.”
He sat and ran a hand through his hair. “My flight home is tomorrow. How am I supposed to get to the airport?”
“For now, your home is here. They will have already figured out your flight information and will be waiting.”
“How would they know that? I’m nobody.”
I frowned. “Marriage licenses are public record, and we were caught on camera.”
He started pacing. “I can’t just stay here forever. I have a business to run. My sister’s wedding is in two weeks, and it’s two thousand kilometers away from here. I can’t miss it just because you need a cover story.”
I stood now, anger and panic making me want to lash out at the person I needed to be working with. “This isn’t all on me; one of the barely legible signatures on our marriage license is yours. It’s all there in black and white: Rosalind Huxley and Derek Rutherford. You are in the media’s crosshairs now, maybe even more so than I am. You can’t just walk out the front door and go back to your normal life in Canada.”
He’d told me a bit about his life last night, having to yell over the music at the club.
We both sat in silence until Meredith appeared and deposited food on the table.
She had originally been hired to work for my parents, but when I started causing trouble, she was assigned to me alone. She had become a good friend to me over the years, having to walk the line between keeping me out of trouble and being my friend.
“Meredith, this is Derek. Derek, this is Meredith. She’s going to help get us through this shit-show.”
