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None of that.
I take the elevator down and step out into the lobby, where the bar is set along one wall. The Depot Hotel is like the sound stage for a Western movie—log beams and columns, a wagon-wheel chandelier, wood paneling, lots of well-worn leather furniture—the kind where once you sit down, you’ll never get up.
Ivy stands at the end of the bar, waiting for me. There’s a quiet stillness to her, a watchfulness. Her eyes are on me as I approach, and I like it, being the object of her attention. Until I get close and see that her lush mouth has lost its wryness. It’s set, hard. She’s upset.
“Hey,” I say. “Hey. You okay?”
“I’ll marry you.”
Great. So the expression on her face, the this sucks one, goes along with the thought of marrying me.
You don’t care, I remind myself. Or you shouldn’t care anyway. All that matters is making this wedding happen so you can save Hott Springs Eternal—and she just said yes.
I square my shoulders. “Excellent. What changed your mind?”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I regret them—the last thing I want is to make her second-guess her decision.
She hesitates, then says, “I can’t find anywhere to house the theater for the next four to six months. Summer’s a big time for us—we’ve got camps and performances almost every week the whole summer…and I can’t disappoint these kids.”
So it’s that. The kids.
I mean, of course it is. What did I think? That she’d pondered it overnight and decided that the world’s shittiest proposal from one of Hollywood’s most infamous playboys was an offer she couldn’t refuse?
Hardly.
She twists her hands together. “I tried the high school auditorium, but they rented themselves out for the whole summer to Five Rivers Community College, because FRCC’s auditorium building burned down—so those are obviously both out. I tried to sublease some high school auditorium time from FRCC, and they just flat out turned me down. Too many scheduling issues still pending. I said, What if I come back in a couple weeks? And they said, Don’t hold your breath.”
She pours that out in a rush, and I want to tell her to slow down, that it’s going to be okay. I suddenly want to say she can have the barn for free, for as long as she wants—she doesn’t have to marry a guy who doesn’t have anything to give her.
But I can’t tell her that.
I need this. More to the point, Hanna absolutely, positively needs this—and I will not let my sister down again.
“If I do this…” Ivy trails off. “You said I wouldn’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.”
“Some affectionate contact in public. Holding hands, arms around each other. The occasional hug. Kissing only if we absolutely have to—which might happen because of the publicity piece.”
She touches a finger to her lower lip, and my eyes are drawn there, the lushness of her mouth, the sight of her fingertip against the pink of her flesh. Need knots at the base of my spine, and my cock gets heavy.
Quit it, Hott. This is a fraught situation. Keep it simple.
“No sex, obviously. We live apart till the marriage, then together but different bedrooms. We divorce once everything is set with the will and the land and Weggers has backed off. I take all the blame for being the asshole—I realized I couldn’t do commitment after all, I was my dick self?—”
Her face creases. “That doesn’t seem exactly fair…”
I shrug. “It’s not like we’d be making it any worse for me. My reputation precedes me. And this way you get all the fan sympathy.”
She thinks about that. “Okay. I guess that’s better than the alternative. Although sometimes fan love is worse than fan hate.”
I laugh because it’s true: I’ve seen fans do some pretty scary things in the name of adoration.
I watched the first couple of episodes of Ivy’s show after we met at Hott Springs Eternal. It’s a great show—well written, phenomenally well acted. I get why it was a cult hit and why people are nuts about Oriana, Ivy’s sexy engineer character. The glow that Ivy gives off—it comes through on the screen. So does the girl-next-door charm.
What I don’t get is why she would have walked away from it all. The show, television, fame.
But it’s none of my business. I don’t need to understand her to make this work.
“Okay, here’s the shitty part,” I say. “You have to pretend to be in love with me. Like, really. Like this is a movie we’re making.” I explain about the exact terms of the letter, how we have to convince Weggers we’re in love.
