Chapter 30
W alking hand in hand through the crowded streets of Key West, wearing Kaplan’s Red Sox hat to cover my slightly too-sun-kissed face, I can’t help the frown on my lips. I don’t want to go home today. I want to stay in our bubble of “everything is absolutely blissfully perfect.”
“I feel you frowning,” he whispers into my ear.
“You do not.”
“But you didn’t deny that you are.”
Busted .
“Just pouting like a spoiled little princess.” I peer up at him. “I don’t want to go home.”
His hand slips out of mine in favor of my shoulder so he can draw me against his side. “Me neither. But now that I know you can handle a sailboat and a shark, we’ll do something again when we can.”
For a moment, I let that ride, thinking.
Because I feel like we should talk. You know, considering we have a lot of things to talk about.
He’s my boss and sooner or later, the media will spot us together again and there will be talk.
So that must be addressed. We said we’re exclusive and all that, but we also said we’re just fucking, and no.
That’s a serious nope on the nope scale.
Because I wasn’t lying last night when I told him I was falling.
I am.
Totally. Completely. Irreversibly.
So even though he doesn’t want a relationship or any of that and I told him I wasn’t ready for one either, I’m not sure I can do just fuck buddies with him.
I like to imagine he’s there too, given all he’s done and said, but hey, you never know until you ask.
I don’t need or want him to put a ring on it and I don’t even require a fancy title.
I just need to know I’m not alone in this.
And if I am, then, well, what we’re doing has to end. My heart is already involved, and it’s not as if things get any easier or cleaner the longer this goes on.
But I don’t want to ruin the last few hours we have here. Talking can wait. Margaritas and tacos for lunch cannot.
“Hey, how about after lunch, I take you to a couple of art galleries? That seems like something you’d enjoy doing on your last day, right?”
“Kaplan—” My voice cuts off, freezing in my lungs as I stare into one of the open bars, straight at a mounted television.
“B? What is it? Are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Look.”
That’s all I’ve got as I read the headline. Again. As I watch the images flashing along the screen.
His gaze follows mine and locks in on the television, and immediately, he stiffens beside me. “Fuck.”
That’s all he says. And it’s a resigned fuck at that.
An angry fuck. But not a “What the fuck?” It’s not incredulous.
There is no shock in his voice. It’s not “How can there be pictures of Millie Van Der Heusen kissing my cheek. Smiling at the press while clinging to my side?” He’s not surprised to see scrawled in bold, “Kaplan Abbot-Fritz and Millie Van Der Heusen Engaged.”
“Kaplan?”
Again, that’s as far as I go. At least this time, it sounds like a question because I’m full of them. He tries to turn me away from the screen but I’m not budging.
“Bianca, we need to talk.”
Oh. He’s starting it off like that.
I read the subtext now. “Rumors have been circulating around Kaplan Abbot-Fritz, famous Boston billionaire doctor and Millie Van Der Heusen, daughter to Senator Van Der Heusen for weeks now. The couple has been spotted together on numerous occasions and a spokesperson for the Van Der Heusen family has confirmed the couple is very much in love and headed toward nuptials. The Fritz family has yet to respond to our requests, but we already can’t wait to talk all things Fritzheusen and their high-profile relationship. ”
Slowly, I turn and stare up at him. His eyes are all over me, green and turbulent, but there is no denial in them. “Are you engaged?”
“No.” That’s it. That’s his only response.
“Are you…” I lick my suddenly dry lips. “Are you with her?”
“It’s not like that.”
“What’s it like then?” I demand, my eyes and nose stinging from my unshed tears.
It’s like déjà vu. Once again, I’m this Bunny.
The one who everyone deceives and betrays because I’m too stupid and naive to know better.
“They already gave you a fucking love nickname.” I look back at the television.
“When were those pictures taken? Not the day I saw you with your mom outside the foundation building. No. This is from another day after that. Wasn’t it?
” I point at the screen. “It’s pouring rain there.
She’s in a different dress. You’re in scrubs. ”
An agitated hand through his hair. “Bianca, can we please go somewhere private to have this conversation?”
“Because you’re afraid I’m going to make a public stink? Run into traffic and throw myself on a passing car?”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“I am not,” I seethe. “Don’t you dare fucking patronize me.”
He grabs my arm, jerking me away from the television and getting right up in my face.
“I’m not patronizing you. Not even a little.
But I can’t have this conversation with you out here.
You trusted me as of five minutes ago. Please hold onto that for a little longer and let me take you somewhere so we can talk. ”
Without waiting for my reply, he drags me along, searching left and right but we’re in the middle of Duval Street in Key West. There is no private or quiet.
It’s all loud bars and drinking and shops.
He cuts up another street and then down half of one and finally, he finds an alley and shoves me in it, right up against the side of a house.
“When I agreed to be CEO of the foundation, my mother started pressing upon me the importance of marriage. They always wanted us to find love, but I never had, and frankly, I’m not a kid anymore.
More than that, I was always resistant to the prospect.
So, her pushing harder for marriage wasn’t a shock.
Hell, I fucking expected it. But not just any marriage.
A certain kind of marriage. A marriage that would grow our family wealth and power and station if it wasn’t going to be for love. ”
I shake my head. “I realize I don’t know your mother or your family all that well, but she never struck me as the type who cared about any of those pretenses. And your siblings are not with people who fit that bill.”
His hands are in his hair and he’s pacing now. “I’m the eldest. I’m the heir. My parents’ marriage was arranged, as was their parents’. It’s how things are done.”
“So, you’re in an arranged situation with Millie Van Der Heusen.
” It’s not a question. After what I just saw and what he’s describing and seeing his mother and her mother and them together that day, it all fits.
I lean back against the building, sweating in the blistering heat and humidity and heartbreak.
My insides feel like they’re being ripped out of my chest, and I can’t help but want to flip off the small touch of irony that comes with that.
I was set to marry Tod and when I found out about his betrayal, I felt nothing even remotely similar to this.
I didn’t love Tod, but I sure as hell love Kaplan Fritz, and wow, how bad does that suck right now.
“I never agreed to it,” he barks as he paces a small path in front of me. “To any of it. My parents mentioned it, but nothing had ever been arranged or even discussed beyond suggestion.”
“And yet it’s all over the fucking news, Kaplan.” My hands fly through the air. “You knew there was a possibility of venturing into an arranged marriage, and you started fucking me. Not just fucking me but knowingly stealing my heart. How could you do that to me?”
A growl slices the air, and then he’s all over me, pressing against me.
“I met with Millie the day after I found out who you were. After you and I got together. She asked me to lunch, and the timing was perfect. I went there to tell her to back off. Since that first lunch, she had been calling and texting a lot. I went there that day to tell her I had met someone, thinking that would be enough, and she’d just move on.
But she started talking about how we were a perfect match and how our mothers were putting things together for us.
She was adamant that we’d be the perfect power married couple.
I told her I wasn’t going to do that. That it wasn’t going to happen.
She went a little crazy and basically said too fucking bad.
We walked out of there and the press was everywhere because she had her people call them as a setup.
That’s what you just saw. A setup. But none of that mattered.
Not really. I wasn’t going to do it and I told my mother that. ”
“And what did your mother say when you told her that?”
A grunt this time. “She said she understood my position on it, but that we’d talk about it later.”
“And did you?”
“No. Not yet.”
“And you didn’t think to mention to me the fact that you were in negotiations with another woman to potentially be married?”
His fist slams into the wood beside my head, but I don’t so much as move or jump or flinch.
I just continue to glare up into his stormy eyes.
“I was never going to do it!” he yells. “That was never going to be my life. I had sworn it years ago. That’s why I’m a loner.
That’s why they call me untouchable. Women like Millie Fucking Van Der Heusen and the motherfucking expectations of being an Abbot-Fritz. ”
A tear somehow manages to escape—the bastard—and tracks down my cheek. He attempts to wipe it away and I shake him off. “You should have told me about her. About that lunch. I shouldn’t have been blindsided by this.” Again. Blindsided again.
“Between Owen and the subsequent press with that and how little I saw you last week, I honestly didn’t think about it. As far as I was concerned, I was done. Out. Finished with all of it.”