Hayden Botsford.

How the fuck was I supposed to know that guy was a billionaire? Hell, the bartender looked cleaner cut than he did. I thought he was just a normal guy! A normal guy drinking at a hotel bar at one in the afternoon but it doesn’t get more normal guy than that, right?

Now, not only do my parents think I’m dating a billionaire, they think I’m dating the guy whose family owns their favorite line of hotels. My little white lie just got a metric shit-ton more complicated than it was ever supposed to be.

Thankfully, there is a silver lining to all of this. It seems to have worked perfectly on Dylan McCoy. He’s barely said a word to me since Hayden left...

Since Hayden kissed me.

It is what I requested, wasn’t it? Just a quick game of pretend, a kiss on the cheek, and voila! He walks away twenty dollars richer and I go back to living my life. Can’t say I expected it to come with a bolt of throbbing lightning aimed straight at my—

“Penelope.”

I look up from my drink to find my mother staring at me from the other side of the table. “What?” I ask.

The room has filled-up quite a bit since mine and Hayden’s epic lie. Aunts and uncles. Cousins once, twice, three times removed from both sides of the family. Every last one of them is now well aware of my totally real and accurate personal activities thanks to my father’s big mouth.

My baby girl’s bagged a Botsford! Handsome kid, too. How’s Sally?

My mother glares at me. “Mr. Botsford,” she says, the name obvious tasting like acid on her tongue. “Your grandmother would like to know how you met the young man.”

I hold my breath as I scan the table, softly locking eyes with the women staring back at me with great interest. Even my father has turned around in his chair from the next table over to listen in.

“Um...” I hesitate, trying to come up with something plausible. “We met in a bar,” I say.

My mother closes her eyes to make the rolling a little less obvious.

“Yeah, a bar,” I say, thinking fast. “It’s a funny story, actually. I had no idea who he was and we just sorta got to talking about…”

My eyes hop around the room, looking to trigger some sort of plausible improvisation. I land on the television across the bar, still displaying a baseball game over the bartender’s head. Hayden was watching it when I approached him before… He even shouted at it once or twice.

“Baseball,” I say.

“Baseball?” my mother repeats

I nod. “Yeah.”

“Since when do you care about baseball?”

I reach for my drink. I’m gonna need a little tongue loosening if I plan on keeping these lies up. Man, I did not think this through. It would have been far easier to spit out bullshit if the guy wasn’t a fucking billionaire.

I take a thick sip and set it back down. “Ever since that new girl at work, Iris, started putting it on the TV at the salon. Ace and I kinda got addicted to it.”

Another blatant eye roll plagues my mother’s face. That’s right. I brought up the salon. Until Hayden, it was one of the many aspects of my life she likes to pretend doesn’t exist.

A snort rises up from beside me. “I’d be addicted to baseball if I were banging a third baseman, too.”

My Aunt Leigh scoffs from her other side. “Trudy…”

I turn to look at my young cousin. “What?” I ask.

She glances up from her phone and tilts it in my direction. “This is your guy, right?” she asks.

I lean over to check out the photo displayed on her screen. It’s definitely Hayden… I think. Swap out the jeans and t-shirt for a blue and white baseball uniform with dirt stains and cleats. I pinch-zoom in on his face and that familiar bolt of lightning travels down my spine.

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s Hayden.”

Trudy leans back and focuses on her phone again. “Says here he plays third base for LA.”

“He does?”

She blinks at me with suspicion. “You didn’t know that?”

“No, I did,” I say quickly. “He just… I thought he switched to first.”

Nailed it.

In the end, she shrugs, seemingly buying it along with everyone else within earshot, though I can’t say the same about Dylan McCoy. I catch him staring at me from my father’s table as he takes his own phone from his pocket. Maybe I should do some Googling of this guy, too, before I really fuck this up…

“So, yeah,” I say, clearing my throat. “We met at a bar back in LA. Got to talking baseball. Low and behold, I didn’t realize who he was for like an hour and a half. Made a real ass of myself. Excuse me…”

The ladies around the table chuckle at the cute story as I slide my chair back and grab my purse.

“I’m gonna use the restroom,” I say. “Be right back.”

I bolt away from the table, following the signs around the large cluster of tables toward the restrooms in the far corner.

As soon as I’m out of sight, I withdraw my phone from my purse and plant myself in the first bathroom stall, locking the door behind me and sitting down on the toilet’s lid.

“Hay…den…Bots…ford,” I mutter as I tap his name into the search box.

A thousand results instantly pop up, confirming the same information Trudy gave me before. Twenty-eight years old, so only about three years older than me. Third baseman for Los Angeles. Drafted into the minors at age seventeen (?!) but he couldn’t officially join until his eighteenth…

Motor vehicle incident leaves popular baller on the injured list?

I click the headline and quickly scan the article. Los Angeles player Hayden Botsford was put on medical leave this week after an accident on the 405 left him…

My chest aches with sympathy. Damn, that doesn’t sound pleasant. Poor guy…

I flick back to the search results and scroll down for more. Oh, nice. He’s got an Insta—

My jaw drops.

He likes shirtless selfies.

He really likes shirtless selfies.

… And women in bikinis.

I sneer. Whatever. He’s not really my boyfriend. I have no right to get jealous.

I scroll a little slower, my gut twinging the further I get down his page. More gorgeous women. More photos of him with gorgeous women…

Nope. Not jealous.

That would be crazy.

Oh, shit.

I jolt, nearly dropping the phone to the floor.

I liked it.

I accidentally liked one of his gym selfies.

I tap twice again, quickly undoing my like. Maybe he won’t see it. Please, dear God, don’t let him notice that. No, he won’t notice. A guy like this gets thousands of likes every day. There’s no way he’d notice just one…

Right?