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But instead I grasp the lifeline she’s just thrown me.
“Anthony,” I say as gently as I can. For the fans’ benefit. They would want me to let him down gently. “I can’t marry you.”
I turn back to look at Nia. She gives me a short, tight nod of approval.
I return my attention to Anthony.
“I’m already engaged.”
8
Shane
“Yeah,” I say into the phone. “Thanks. Well, let me know if you hear from anyone who’s thinking about getting married. Or getting engaged. Or pretending to get married. Or who wants to stage a really great fake publicity wedding. Or…” I’ve run out of possibilities. “Please.”
“I will,” says the two thousandth person I’ve made this speech to, before we hang up.
I set my phone down and indulge in a brief, quiet moment of despair, sitting on the hotel bed.
No one wants to get married.
I Googled it. Marriage is on the decline, down something like sixty percent in the last fifty years—even though you really wouldn’t know it from spending time in Rush Creek, where marriage is booming business. Oregon just needs to get rid of all waiting periods for marriage licenses, and Rush Creek would be the new Vegas.
Horrifying thought.
And yet even though Rush Creek is full of people getting married or who are just married or here to celebrate other people who are getting married…
I cannot find two celebrities.
After I asked Ivy to marry me?—
Okay, I admit it. That was the worst wedding proposal ever, actually. My face gets hot thinking about it. I should have at least gotten down on one knee. I just wasn’t thinking straight.
I don’t even know Ivy, but I know that she deserves better than that.
After I asked her to marry me and she turned me down, I spent a couple of days thinking that maybe I’d found at least part of the solution to my problem. I don’t need two celebrities who want to get married. I just need one celebrity who wants to marry me.
Except it turns out that’s not that easy to accomplish, either. Because contrary to how most people think about Hollywood, there isn’t just a pool of people desperately waiting to marry for public relations purposes. And if there are, they aren’t as easy to find as you’d think.
My hotel phone rings.
I’ve been staying at the Depot Hotel, Rush Creek’s premium Western-style inn, when I’ve been in town over the past year. It’s not up to my usual standards, but it’s better than camping out in Hanna and Easton’s place and dealing with Eloise’s iffy sleepy schedule and the large amount of moony-eyes my sister and her husband make at each other. I could stay at Quinn and Sonya’s temporary place, but it’s tiny, and there are even more moony eyes (and sex noises they think are subtle) over there. They’re supposed to buy a house together sometime soon, but I think they secretly like the fact that they still occupy the staff cabin where they lived together when they were strangers.
“Mr. Hott,” the woman at the hotel’s reception desk says brightly into my ear. “There’s someone down here to see you.”
“Oh, hi, Alice,” I say. “Hanna? Or Quinn?” Those are the two people who show up here. “Or—shit, it’s not media, is it?”
“None of the above,” she says. “It’s?—”
She stops.
“Do you prefer…?” The woman’s voice is fainter, as if she’s asking a question to someone else.
A woman’s voice answers in the background. Then Alice says, “It’s Ivy Scofield, Mr. Hott.”
My heart rate doubles. “I’ll be right down.”
I hang up and rise from the bed, trying to pretend I don’t feel tied in knots. That my whole body isn’t tight with anticipation. My mouth isn’t dry, my cock on twitchy high alert. Need me? Standing by.
