“One and the same.” Her voice is bitter, and my heart aches with a need to hold her in my arms.
I drop the cherries and wipe the juice off on my jeans as I attempt to keep a level voice and compose a calm question. “Holly, what happened?”
She groans. “Promise you won’t tell Alex? I don’t want him to get involved.”
“I promise I won’t tell him without your permission. I hope you’ll tell him eventually though, because he loves you and he’ll probably want to know about this.”
“I know. I just put my foot in my mouth and need to fix this on my own. Alex has been protecting me his whole life. Now he’s married to Reina, and I need to stand up for myself without his help. Ineed to learn to be strong and not let people walk all over me. When it comes to my job, I’m confident. But relationships and men are an enigma to me. I don’t know what to do.”
My lips twitch, and I don’t withhold my smile at Holly’s logic. She can’t see me smiling like a goon over the fact she called me to help her be self-reliant. “So you’re calling me for help, even though you’re trying to be independent?”
“I’m a work in progress, okay? Will you just listen?”
“Yes.” My muscles tighten as I finish climbing off the ladder and sit in the grass, leaning back against the metal steps. “I’m all ears.”
“Jorge is trying to blackmail me into dating him. He’s threatened to spread rumors about Alex from his "experience" working with him if I don’t go on a date with him. He first threatened me after we ditched the red carpet. Then I went on a date with him the next day, after Rodney, my mentor, pressured me to give him another chance. Things didnotgo nicely, and I left when he touched me in the wrong places and implied I owed him certain favors. Since then, he hasn’t stopped messaging me, and sending me letters. I swear he’s stalking me, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve never filed a restraining order, and I don’t know if I have enough evidence, and it seems complicated. I don’t know if I’m just crazy or blowing this out of proportion or what.” She’s breathing fast by the time she stops talking.
My blood boils, my teeth hurt from clenching them, and I force my jaw to loosen so I can say words to comfort this woman instead of reacting like a caveman.
“Holly. You’re not overreacting. That man is stalking and threatening you. That isnotokay. He touched you inappropriately. That isnotokay. You one hundred percent should get a restraining order.” I take a deep breath when I hear her trying to hide sniffling noises. “Holly, how can I help? I’ll do anything.”
“Anything?” she whispers.
“Within reason. I don’t know if prison at my age would agree with me,but we’ll see.”
She laughs, and the sound relaxes my tightened shoulders. “I don’t think it’d be something you’d go to prison for. People might just think we’re crazy.”
“I like crazy.”
“Well, remember how I said I put my foot in my mouth? I saw Jorge earlier today. He said he wanted to make sure I made the right choice when it came to a future spouse. I may have lied and said I’m already engaged.”
My heart plummets at the thought of Holly being engaged. But I tell myself to calm down because I don’t have all the details yet. “Well, who’s the lucky man?”
There’s a pause on the other line. “That’s what I’m calling about. I kind of said I was engaged to… you.”
NowI’mthe one pausing as I process what she just said. “Come again?”
Holly groans, and if she’s anything like her brother, I can imagine her gripping her hair in frustration right now like he does. “Mateo, I told him we’re engaged and we’ll pick a date to get married after your harvest season is up or something. I can’t even remember what I said because I was panicking.”
I’m frozen in shock but a glimmer of hope rises in my chest.
“I was just going to let it die down and let him forget I ever said it. But all afternoon I’ve been thinking about how maybe wecouldpretend to be engaged for a while and then get married. But it wouldn’t be a real marriage, just a name-only one. If we got married, it would make this Jorge mess go away.”
My heart races while my stomach plummets.
Get married to Holly?
I mean, I absolutely have a crush on her, but marriage? “How would a marriage between us work, exactly?”
“It’d be a marriage of convenience, of course. I wouldn’t expect anything from you besides being legally married for a year or two. We don’t evenneed to live in the same place. I’d take care of myself financially, and we’d have to go to some events together, but it’d basically be like we weren’t even married except for when I need to show off my ring and my husband.”
My mouth is dry. I clear my throat. “A fake marriage?” I say the words slowly, still trying to wrap my brain around it. Except the longer I think about it, the more it sounds appealing. I could be married, get my parents off my back and avoid more date setups, and I’d have a chance to occasionally escape the farm. This is starting to sound appealing in more ways than one.
“Well, the marriage documents would be real," Holly says, "but none of those other marriage-y things would happen between us.”
I’m suddenly grateful for my teenage sisters who have trained me for this exact moment. “Got it. We’d be pulling aThe Proposalon people?”
She laughs. “Yes! Exactly. I’m going to guess Cruz had you watch that one. She mentioned how much she loves that movie at Alex’s wedding.”
