7. Sunny

On Friday morning,I had three jobs. By Friday afternoon, I only had two. And no idea what to do with myself until my graveyard shift started at the Tourmaline.

This was my life.

As I rode the bus home from the Benton, I hugely regretted selling my car in anticipation of relocating to New York. Not only was that big move no longer happening, but it meant I couldn"t even pick up extra hours as a rideshare driver.

Meanwhile, Pru was practically blowing up my phone. My home screen had become a wall of texts and missed call notifications.

11:42

Rick just let us off for lunch before the second part of rehearsal.What the hell was that??? How are you engaged out of the blue???!!! Call me right now!!!

MISSED CALL NOTIFICATION: PRUDENCE WASHINGTON

MISSED CALL NOTIFICATION: PRUDENCE WASHINGTON

11:45

Why aren"t you answering your phone? I mean, Cole TRIPLE ICE Benton??? He"s not even remotely your type.Did you have a stroke? Did he? Seriously, twin, what"s going on???

MISSED CALL NOTIFICATION: PRUDENCE WASHINGTON

MISSED CALL NOTIFICATION: PRUDENCE WASHINGTON

MISSED CALL NOTIFICATION: PRUDENCE WASHINGTON

11:50

OMG, is he gay? Are you like his beard? Is this you being way too nice again? Because we"ve talked about this.

MISSED CALL NOTIFICATION: PRUDENCE WASHINGTON

11:53

Okay, if he"s gay, does he have a boyfriend/lots of hot lovers? If so, do you get to watch? Is it, like, your new job, to watch and beard?

MISSED CALL NOTIFICATION: PRUDENCE WASHINGTON

MISSED CALL NOTIFICATION: PRUDENCE WASHINGTON

MISSED CALL NOTIFICATION: PRUDENCE WASHINGTON

11:57

If you get to watch, can a friend watch, too? Asking for a friend. The friend is ME. Cuz Cole Benton is FOINE!

MISSED CALL NOTIFICATION: PRUDENCE WASHINGTON

MISSED CALL NOTIFICATION: PRUDENCE WASHINGTON

MISSED CALL NOTIFICATION: PRUDENCE WASHINGTON

12:02

Damn, our break is over! Why aren't you answering me???

Because I didn"t have any good answers. For her. Or myself.

I stowed the phone back in my fanny pack with a sigh, then yanked on the bus cord to request that the driver pull over one stop early.

Fifteen minutes later, I emerged from the Cal-Mart closest to my apartment building with enough meal-replacement protein bars and rice and beans to get me through the weekend. Meat wasn"t happening like I"d hoped it might this weekend, before I forgot that rent was due. But at least I had enough of my tip money left over to buy a few rat traps.

The first thing I did when I got back to my studio apartment was give it a deep clean before setting a bunch of traps for the rat who"d stolen the last half of my last protein bar. There were no signs of him in the cabinets, thank goodness. However, I doubted I"d seen the last of him.

Let"s face it, my apartment was a dump, chosen shortly after Pru was forced to kick me out of the apartment we shared following her parents" death in a car accident. Of course, she would've loved to keep me on as a roommate. But she"d been left in charge as her younger brother"s only guardian, and there were only two bedrooms. So, sadly, I"d had to set out on my own since none of the other Benton Girls had rooms available.

The studio I"d found was cramped and in a questionable neighborhood, but it was also super-cheap and right on a major bus route, so I"d never had any trouble getting to work anywhere on the Strip.

When I moved in a little under a year ago, I'd thought it would be a temporary situation—good preparation for New York, where I"d be paying three times as much for the same apartment. And, after my life blew up, along with all my future plans, I"d actually been grateful for my choice. For a while, the apartment"s good outweighed its bad—until my furry roommate showed up.

Now I couldn"t even imagine taking a much-needed nap before my Tourmaline shift for fear of waking up to the sight of that rodent"s beady eyes.

After hours of cleaning and pinching my fingers while setting old-school traps with small cubes of protein bar, I finally allowed myself to sink down onto my lumpy couch/bed and take a break.

My phone offered zero respite, crowded as it was with even more messages from Pru, the last of which sounded downright menacing.

Let me not find a message from you before the evening performances, I will show up where you live and make you tell me what the hell is going on.

I had no doubt she"d follow up on that threat, which meant I had until 6:30 or so to come up with some kind of reasonable explanation that didn"t reveal Nora"s terminal diagnosis or make Pru yell at me for not accepting Cole Benton"s offer to pay off my debt with an allowance on top.

Pru was my best friend, and I loved her. But she hadn"t grown up like I did. She wouldn"t understand why I couldn"t let my pride down. Not even for a second. Especially with somebody like Cole Benton.

So, laptop it was. Tossing my phone back on the table, I opened up my ancient UNLV laptop to indulge in my favorite comfort food. Old episodes of Mello Medicine. At this point, the show was several years old and had ended after Nitra and Woods Mello decided to step out of the reality show spotlight.

But it remained a classic in my eyes, and it gave me strange comfort to watch Nitra Mello emerge on the other side of her little sister"s death with a successful career in medicine, a husband who adored her, and a sweet family that didn"t remotely resemble the outrageous one she grew up with as one of the kids on Rap Star Wives: LA.

Unwrapping one of the protein bars for an early dinner, I watched Nitra announce to her husband, Woods, that she was pregnant again. Her real husband. And I tried not to feel even more sorry for myself that the closest I"d come to getting proposed to was to fulfill a dying woman"s wish.

What would it be like to have someone propose to you for real? To want to be with you for real? And maybe even start a family.

An insistent knock sounded on the front door before I could even begin to ponder an answer to any of those questions.

And that was when I remembered I had forgotten to cash a check at Cal-Mart to pay for the rest of the rent.

Crap! Crap! Crap!

I rushed to the door to assure Vinny I"d get him his money ASAP, even though I wasn"t sure if my last paycheck had gone through, considering the circumstances under which I"d been fired.

But it wasn"t Vinny who"d knocked. I jolted when I saw the man standing on the other side of the door.

Not my landlord.

But my fake fiancé.

"Your confidentiality agreement," Cole Benton bit out before I could ask what he was doing there. Or say hello.He held up a black file folder with an annoyed look, even though he was the one who had shown up at my front door unannounced.

I blinked, trying to catch up. "You want me to sign a contract?"

"This is where you live?" Instead of answering my question, he pushed past me and barged into my apartment without invitation.

"Yes, please, come right on in," I said, closing the door behind him.

Cole either didn"t pick up on my sarcastic tone or didn"t care.

He just cast his eyes around the apartment with a heavy frown. Then turned back around to demand, "Are you on drugs?"

"What? No!" I exclaimed.

"Then what the hell did you do with that six figures you stole? It sure as hell wasn"t paying rent on this dump."

A little bit of the offended self-righteousness deflated out of me.

Excellent, valid question.

So, I cleared my throat and changed the subject back to the file folder in his hand. "You brought something you want me to sign?"

"Yeah..." To my relief, he took the new-subject bait. "We"ll be making our first official appearance as an engaged couple tomorrow night at this CEO of the Year event my grandmother will be attending, so you"ll need to sign a non-disclosure agreement."

He placed the black file folder on top of the half wall separating the rest of the studio from a teeny-tiny kitchen area.

"It"s pretty straightforward." He opened the file folder to reveal a sheaf of papers dense with legalese. "You"ll act your part, and you won"t say anything about our agreement to anyone, including Nora."

"You call your grandma by her first name?"

He glanced sideways at me. "What else would I call her?"

"I dunno. Grandma? Nan? Didn"t she, like, take care of you from a pretty young age?" I vaguely remember Nora mentioning that she and my own grandma had that in common, even though Cole had been shipped off to some boarding school by the time I came to live with mine.

A cold moment of silence. Then he pulled a heavy black fountain pen from his inside suit pocket and said, "Nora would appreciate it if you signed here, and here, then one more time on the last page."

Okay...

As I signed on the first line, I wondered if I"d ever get used to hearing him call his grandmother by her first name. I knew Glo Johnson wouldn"t have put up with that, even for a second. But I had the feeling Cole probably got away with a lot of behavior most people"s grandkids couldn"t.

Which was why I scrunched my forehead when I saw one of the items in the Conduct Section of the NDA. "Nora doesn"t know that I know about her being sick?"

"You"re aware of how proud she can be," Cole answered, his voice way steadier than mine. "I"m certain she would prefer for us not to go into too many details about how she magically got her dying wish. She"d like to believe we"ve gotten engaged because we actually fell in love, like she and my grandfather did."

Okay, that made sense. I signed on the line above my printed name. Then, I read through the rest of the straightforward contract and signed on the last line, no more questions asked—well, not until another one popped into my mind. "You couldn"t have just mailed this NDA to me?"

No answer.

And I turned around to see that Cole wasn"t listening because he was on his phone, speaking low to someone.

"What time do you think you can have the moving truck meet us here?"

"Wait, why is a moving truck coming here?" I demanded.

Cole kept talking, like I hadn"t said anything. "A couple of hours. Fine. We"ll take it. What"s that?"

Cole frowned at whatever the person on the other side of the phone was saying. "I don"t know. I"ll ask her."

He lowered the phone to inquire, "Do you want the movers to pack you up? Or do you want to do it yourself?"

I screwed up my face. "When did I agree to move at all?"

Cole put the phone back up to his ear. "She"s not sure. Just tell whoever you get to be ready for an either-or situation. I"ll touch base later. Yes, that"s all. Goodbye."

Then he ended the call, like it was all decided.

But it wasn"t!

"I"m not moving to…" I started to inform him, only to realize I had no idea where he was planning to relocate me. "Wherever you"re trying to make me move to."

Cole"s face hardened. "Then you"d be in violation of this clause."

He came back to the half wall and flipped the contract to the second page of the Conduct section.

"Read it," he commanded.

I did so with a frown. It was written in so much legalese, it was hard for me to know if I was translating it right. Something about me agreeing not to do or say anything that would cast him in a bad light?

"How is living in my own apartment casting you in a bad light?"

He pinned me with an aggravated look. "No man of my standing would ever let his fiancée live in a dump like this."

His fiancée. Why did the idea of belonging to Cole Benton send a warm shiver up my back?

Still, I argued, "It"s not that bad!" while trying to keep my eyes from straying to all the water stains on the walls.

"It"s a dump," he repeated. "And judging from the deal I saw going down in the stairwell on my way up here, probably not at all safe."

"I mean, Darren is super nice. He always says hi. And his attention to great customer service is probably why he has so many clients...."

I trailed off under the weight of Cole"s hard, cynical stare.

"You"ll move in with me until my assistant can set you up in a decent apartment."

A decent apartment? My heart nearly gave out at the thought of it. Some place nice and clean and free of friendly meth dealers. That sounded so nice!

But my pride wouldn"t let me give in to moving in with a man I was only supposed to be pretending to love.

"Why the hesitation?" Cole asked, glancing over his shoulder. "Afraid your roommate will miss you?"

"I don"t have a?—"

But then I followed his gaze to find the rat sitting on my couch, watching Mello Medicine and nibbling on a cube of the protein bar I"d used to bait the traps.

Son of a…

"Fine..." The last shred of my thinning pride gave out with a tired sigh."But I need to pay my landlord the rent before we go. And I don"t need a moving truck," I muttered. "Everything I have fits easily into a couple of trash bags. Maybe one."

I"d been getting rid of a bunch of things. First, because I wanted to go to New York City. Then, because I"d sold everything I had of value to replenish the depleted charity fund Nora set up in my grandma"s name.

Cole stared at me for several beats, his icy gaze sharp and assessing.

But then, he just said, "All right, I"ll have Agnes call off the moving truck. Pack up, and I"ll drive you back to my place."

"You don"t have to drive me?—"

He raised his hand to cut me off right there. "If your car is anything like your apartment, I think I do."

"The bus gets the job done," I insisted, feeling the need to defend Las Vegas"s transit system, which had served me well over the time I"d been living there. Okay, well-ish. Neon lights, shows, casinos, sin, sin, and more sin—that was what Vegas was known for. A robust and dependable public transportation system that could get you anywhere other than the Strip in a timely manner? Not so much.

Cole, who probably hadn"t ridden a single bus in his entire Benton life, brought his phone back out and started texting. "I"ll tell Agnes to pull out one of the cars from my garage. You can probably handle the Mercedes."

Aw, geez, how many favors will I end up owing this man?"Really, you don"t have to?—"

Cole arched an eyebrow at me over his phone. "So your plan is to keep me waiting instead of packing your bags quickly?"

I pursed my lips…. Then hung my head and quietly shuffled into the kitchen to grab a couple of trash bags.