***
I get lost twice before I find the hedge maze, much less the center of the fucking hedge maze. By the time I find him, my hair looks like day two of being stranded on a jungle island, I smell emphatically of myself, and I have scratches on my fingers from clawing through two hedges as soon as I heard him. But I’m not going to lose my job over this little prep school fantasy Sir Blake Berringer probably has for punk girls. I’m not his road-less-taken, charity, five-minute finger-bang. Nope. Not me.
“Hey,” I call as I struggle through the stupid vines and leaves. I give a little roar as I come through the last bit, and a piece of one branch comes off in my hair. I struggle to liberate it as I storm toward him. “You can’t just walk off the set like that, Blake. This is serious. We’re paying these people for their time.”
Now I can see him clearly. He’s sitting on a wrought-iron bench, bookended by dark red rose bushes in full bloom. It’s kind of ridiculous. It looks like it is part of the My Billionaire Bachelor set, but it is part of his regular house.
I march on him, unswayed by the beautiful environment. The buzz of bumblebees. The thick aroma of flora. I’m totally unmoved. “I know money doesn’t mean anything to someone like you,” I snap at Blake, “but to someone like me, it means a lot, so can we please get back to that makeup chair?”
Blake lets his head fall to one side and examines me thoughtfully, like I’m some rare creature he needs to document. “Are we not even going to talk about what happened out there?”
“Your hard-on?” I scoff. “Right. Let me alert the crew. We need to get a slow-mo shot of that boy, I think.”
“Not my hard-on,” Blake corrects me. “You. How I know you.”
“I assure you, you don’t,” I say, throwing back his earlier line in his own face. “Come back to the set before we have to sue you for breach of contract.”
“Roxanne.” His voice turned my name into a love spell. “You’re not going to sue me for anything. Why are you saying ‘we?’ You’re not the show. You didn’t integrate consciousness with My Billionaire Bachelor, did you?”
“That’s how poor people see work,” I inform him. “Yes, I say ‘we’ when I talk about this show, because it keeps me a-fucking-live. When I stop needing it to live, I’ll stop thinking of it as a part of me. Come on now, pretty boy. Let’s get back to the set.”
Blake and I stare back and forth at each other for a moment.
His eyes gleam unreadably, and his lips are slightly curved. Is he happy, right now, with me? When I first saw him—for the first time since 2013—I thought he looked older in more ways than just physically. His mouth and eyes seemed stoic and heartless. But right now, he looks young again.
He likes to mess with people, I guess.
“Let’s go,” I say again. Maybe he can use his quips and mystique on other billionaire women, but they won’t work on me. I need real things. I lean down and stretch my hands out to him, beckoning like he’s a dog. “Let’s get back to the set, okay? Come on boy!” I whistle for him and pat my knee.
“You don’t even want to acknowledge it?” His deep voice pitches high with disbelief. “You literally asked me if I was an angel.”
By complete coincidence, my necklace—Blake’s brass key on a slim brass chain—slides out of my neckline at that precise moment, dangling in Blake’s face.
His eyes brighten, and he snatches the key out of the air, incidentally tugging it and drawing my face to hover just above his, my breasts crowded beneath his nose.
“You kept it,” he realizes.
“Did you want it back?”
“No. No.” The key slips from between his fingers and topples back toward my breasts, where it is normally safely snuggled. I stand and slip it down the front of my shirt again, almost offended by the fact that he didn’t ogle me at all.
“Good,” I say. “We’re not supposed to take gifts from the bachelor, but gifts from before must be okay.”
“Oh, is that what I am now? ‘The bachelor’?”
I step back and turn, desperately gesturing for him to follow. I don’t have time to talk about how we met like we’re old friends or ex-lovers, because we’re not. Anyway, I saw the footage of him chasing down and whooping that kid with the camera. No, thank you. Ms. Madden was right. He is unhinged. “Yes, you’re ‘the bachelor.’ Come on.”
“Not until you break one of the Billionaire Bachelor rules,” Blake blurts from behind me. “Come on. You need to get out from under Candace’s grinding old thumb.”
“She told me you were bad,” I mutter, mostly to myself. He’s going to get me fired. I’m already standing at the hedge, waiting impatiently. “I don’t know why I didn’t believe her.”
“Just one,” Blake coos. He snaps a red rose off the nearest bush and stands, sauntering toward me. It twirls between his fingers, and his eyes dance. “A flower to die in your suitcase.”
I glare at the flower, then turn the same glare on him. “You’re going to get me fired.”
“Just break one rule, and I’ll come back with you.” He twirls the rose in front of my nose. “A souvenir for the first erection you ever gave me. Hopefully not the last.” He winks.
I gape into his arrogant face as I snatch the rose, smack it against his chest, and whirl. Typical bachelor.
“You’re such a spoiled brat,” I grumble, marching through the hedge maze.
“By the way,” he calls after me, “you’re going in the wrong direction.”
I storm past him and into the only other hedge maze corridor. I also crush his gift of the rose down into my pocket like it’s a crumpled receipt. That’s how little I care.
“By the way,” I call after him, mimicking his know-it-all tone perfectly, “I broke two of your hedges.”