Pierce shook his head, his smile strong. “Mari, go after him. Oliver is a catch, and from what I’ve seen, the two of you would be an excellent match.”
My cheeks turned a slight shade of pink. “And you should go after her.”
Pierce cleared his throat and fixed a perfectly fine button on the shirt. “Let’s focus on you and Oliver. What’s our exit strategy?”
“Well…” That was the part I wasn’t one hundred percent sure about. We had multiple options. I wanted to lay them out for Pierce and let him pick the best one. After all, he would have to deal with the fallout of my leaving.
26
Mari
“Ready for your last act as the future Mrs. Kensington?” Pierce asked with a smile on his face as we stopped outside the front door of the real estate title company where he would sign the papers to complete the purchase of the bed-and-breakfast.
Our meeting took almost three hours the evening before, and halfway through we called in Oliver for his opinion. He brought Chinese takeout with him. Pierce had a wonderful business brain, and between the three of us, we worked out the details. It was exhilarating to be part of a team working hard to solve a problem. I didn’t realize how much I missed it until we clustered around his desk mid plan.
The idea was perfect in its simplicity. I would slip away in the middle of the night and Pierce would tell people I returned home for a few weeks before he admitted I ran off with his cousin or we’d blame it on a sick family member. He’d concoct a story he thought would work best when the time came. It turned out when faced with the rest of my future, I didn’t much care what happened to my reputation.
I was getting a happily ever after, so the least I could do was provide Pierce with a situation that allowed him to save face. I understood what it was like to be the laughingstock of your town’s social circle and didn’t want to do that Pierce. He’d been so nice to me. I’d grown to like the women in Pelican Bay I’d met, but we had no ties to one another. Things were different in my life now. I’d been marked as the evil villain once before and survived. I would this time too.
My parents would never let me forget it, but considering they hadn’t talked to me in years before my fake engagement, I wasn’t too concerned with their feelings on the issue. Another failed relationship for Mari. Oh well.
I grabbed onto Pierce’s hand, stopping him from opening the door. “You’re being amazing with this.”
The one thing I regretted was leaving him to handle all the fallout. Just like when things went south in San Francisco, rather than step up and admit my wrongdoings, I planned to run away in the middle of the night and leave everyone else to fix the chaos. Pierce and I were going to have a shorter marriage than Britney Spears in the nineties.
Pierce smiled. “I understand more than you realize. When you can finally have what you truly want, take it. I’ll be happy to see you and Oliver run off into the sunset.”
It was more like we’d sail away, but I didn’t correct him.
Pierce then led me into the building as he walked into the space as if he owned it. Maybe he did. When it came to Pelican Bay I could never be too sure what Pierce owned and what he didn’t. We reached the end of the hall where a large conference room took up the end space and Pierce opened the door, greeting the people already waiting around the table.
“I imagine you want to get this done as quickly as possible,” Morgan the real estate agent we met to look at the bed-and-breakfast said to the man at the table with a stack of papers in front of him.
“Yes,” he replied. “We want to get you in and out before the protesters begin demonstrating.”
“No one knew it was today on my end except for my beautiful fiancée,” Pierce said, looking me lovingly in the eyes and laying it on quite thick.
I bit my bottom lip but smiled back. Before coming up with something to say in return, the man at the end of the table tapped his stack of papers with a pen. “You get the drill by now,” he said.
“Quite,” Pierce replied and then began signing his name at the bottom of the real estate agreement sheets.
On occasion his head would stop as he skimmed the page and asked about a certain number, dollar figure, or date, but it went through smoothly, and in no time at all Pierce had signed his name for the last time.
Morgan clapped her hands together once we finished with the entire ordeal and pushed back her chair rising from the table. “Congratulations, Mr. Kensington, you are now the private owner of the historic Pelican Bay bed-and-breakfast. I’m sure we’re excited to see what changes you make to the space.”
“Yes, I hope you will return the building to its glory,” the man who was in charge of the paper stack said, grabbing them up and sticking them into a neat pile.
Pierce nodded. “Yes, I hope I will do right by the building and town as well.”
“Let me go make copies of this and then you’re free to go,” he said leaving the three of us alone. Time passed as Morgan and Pierce talked about another home he considered purchasing from an elderly couple after they went into the nursing home. Morgan’s words were abundant with appreciation. If she tried to impress Pierce any harder, she’d need to get on her hands and knees, crawl to our side of the table, and lick his shoes. It was disgusting to watch her display.
Especially right in front of me, the woman she believed he planned to marry.
One thing I needed to do before leaving Pelican Bay was tell Pierce to find a new real estate agent. Something about this woman—everything about her—rubbed me the wrong way.
Morgan was tapping away at her phone, bringing up pictures of the home for Pierce to look at, when a gigantic crash came from the hallway and a female yelled, “I have every right to be here.”
Pierce’s eyes flashed to mine as if he was trying to tell me something, but I had no clue.
