_OceanofPDF

She tapped the edge of her wine glass with a manicured finger, staring
at the wildly expensive square-cut diamond. “Who is she?”
“Someone who could use cash.”
“You want me to marry you,” she stated the truth with a mix of
disbelief.
“I trust you.” I’d known her since we were kids. We’d gone to the same
upper school, where we’d developed a close friendship that had only gotten
stronger over the years.
“Right. And so this means we should get married?”
“Temporary. Just to get rid of Byron. No sex obviously.”
“Obviously.” She made a face and sipped her white wine. “Renaldo
would throw an absolute fit.”
Renaldo was a deadbeat actor with a handsome face who didn’t have the
talent to get cast in a couple of movies, but he didn’t have to because he’d
married America’s Sweetheart, Tatiana Winsome, well before she starred in
Homewrecker and Hollywood fell in love with her. All he did now was
spend her money and give himself a boner when the captions under the
tabloid pictures said “actor Renaldo DeWitt.”
“And that’s why it works.” I leaned over the table for the big pitch. “His
wife suspects something, right? You told me yourself.”
“She’s so awful.”
I’d already argued that her boyfriend’s wife had every right to be awful,
considering her husband was a philanderer, but she wouldn’t budge.
“If you marry me, she’s off your case. You keep being discreet with him
in private. Show up with me in public. We divorce in three years, and in the
meantime, I pay off your family’s debts. He doesn’t have enough to get
your mother’s estate in Montenegro out of hock. Not enough for the boats.
The debts. The bad habits. Any of it. I do.”
As successful as her clothing line was, she didn’t have enough either.
There weren’t many people on the face of the earth with enough
generational wealth to dig out the Bettencourts.
“I won’t hurt him like that.” She snapped the box closed. “Not for
money.”
That was the Bettencourt problem. Nothing was ever for money.
“Logan,” she said, pushing the box to me, “we’re friends, right?”
“Yes.”
“So you won’t be mad if I tell you the truth?”