This woman needs a hug.
She needs a hug and my security detail.
I grew up in the public spotlight. I know what it’s like, but I’ve had training. Buffers. Publicists and media guidance and when all else failed, money talked.
And here she is, all by herself, wanting to go to the beach before the sun’s fully up and anyone else spots her because she’s famous for her disaster of a failed Hawaiian wedding to a guy who was apparently secretly a massive dick.
“I’m sorry.” I wrap my arms around her.
Can’t help myself.
But it makes sense now.Go away. I don’t want to be seen with you too.
My brother hates the spotlight that I’ve mostly happily lived in my entire life.Hatesit. Doesn’t do well with publicity, and he had his own run-in with the press when they caught him and Begonia—let’s just sayin a compromising position—last summer.
Almost broke him. And not becauseRutherfords don’t get caught in compromising positions.
We’ve both rained down some hits to our family’s reputation.
I belatedly realize I shouldn’t hug strangers—thanks again, whiskey brain—but after the smallest hesitation, Emma’s body droops against me.
“This isn’t your fault,” she mumbles.
“But I still know it sucks.”
“I’m supposed to be on my honeymoon, and instead I’m realizing I’m an idiot who was in love with someone who didn’t love me back, that I alienated my friends to the point that they didn’t want to tell me, and that the whole world knows now just how stupid I am.”
My mother has drilled into me the idea that the world’s problems are not mine. That my fans’ problems are not mine. That my staff’s personal problems are not mine.
But I made myself Emma’s problem when I landed drunk on her doorstep.
So maybe her situation isn’t my problem.
But it’s close enough to my own that I’m making her problem my problem.
Not like helping a person in need will make my life any worse.
3
Emma
Jonas Rutherford smellslike a hungover ponderosa pine tree in the summer sun.
Like stale whiskey and yesterday’s sweat and butterscotch.
And it makes him seem so real, but also,butterscotch? It’s not enough that he’s movie-star handsomeanda billionaire by birth, he also smells like butterscotch.
“I know it doesn’t seem like it, but this will pass,” he tells me while he pats my back.
That’s the other thing.
I’m a total stranger.
I could be planning on doing something horrible, like—like—like burying his body if he were a reporter.
And I don’t think I evertrulybelieved he was a reporter. Or an imposter. Or even possibly everything his ex-wife recently painted him to be when she went public with why they got divorced.
I believed the best of him.
