Later that night, after Carolina had taken a detox bubble bath that did not erase the sound of Charlie’s voice from her head, she checked her Ask Carolina social media accounts. No shock to see more notifications than one single person could wade through in a year. They’d been coming in since her live show. By the thousands. Charlie’s impromptu call today had generated an enormous amount of interest from her viewers. They all wanted her to do it. Of course they did. They were frothing at the mouth to see her kick a man to the curb in real time. She’d earned every single one of her viewers with her trademark blend of sarcastic wit, blind faith that the caller was the injured party, and above all, her time in the trenches. She’d walked the walk, and they loved her for it. And now they wanted to see a prime example of how it was done. They’d all but popped the popcorn. What was she supposed to do about that —marry Charlie again in some kind of experiment to prove that his tools were a joke? The joke would be on her viewers. And her. Because the man made her crazy enough that she couldn’t trust herself around him. Let alone trust him. Someone knocked on the door of her condo. Three beats, pause, then three more beats. Hugo. He was utterly predictable, but she’d forgotten he said he’d stop by tonight. She’d forgotten Hugo entirely while she’d been on the call with Charlie, which didn’t bode well for the little flirtation she’d struck up with the cute billionaire who owned the building. Her pal Hugo was the perfect distraction from the ghost of Charlie Wilson. Maybe she could even get him to ask her out this time. She swung the door wide, a smile already on her face. “Mr. Bishop, how lovely of you to take time to visit your serfs.” “That’s Lord Bishop to you, cheeky woman.” She laughed and curtsied, but despite the jokes, she’d known Hugo long enough that she could tell something was on his mind. She invited him in and crossed her arms, still standing in the foyer instead of moving the party to her cheerful living room, just in case this was a drive by visit, which seemed pretty likely given the grave expression on his face. “You heard the show today I take it.” A total guess. But a good one since he nodded. “I didn’t know you’d been married,” he said almost apologetically, as if he thought it might be bad form to discuss it, despite the fact that millions of people had tuned into the show the same as he had. “It wasn’t worth mentioning. The whole thing was a mistake.” She’d love to blame her brief marriage on prescription drugs or a bout of particularly black grief. But she had no excuse—Charlie had popped the question on the eve of their four-month anniversary and she’d been so deliriously in over her head with him that she actually thought he was taking their relationship seriously. That he’d quit with the teasing
comebacks and flirty lines whenever she tried to talk to him about... well, anything that wasn’t surface level. Before she could blink, he’d sw ept her away on a romantic weekend to Vegas. The second she’d said I do, he’d kissed her within an inch of her life and then asked if he could call her Mrs. Wilson, which proved he knew nothing at all about her. And that’s when she’d panicked. Hugo ran a hand through the longish flop of hair that fell down over his forehead, which wasn’t even the most adorable thing about him. “Do you think you’ll reconsider his wager? It seems as if he must still have a thing for you.” “He didn’t even have a thing for me the first time. That’s the reason he’s the ex-Mr. Carolina. Trust me, we’re finished.” Why would Charlie spring such a stupid idea on her, unless he really was angling for a second chance? It had all the hallmarks of one. After all, in order to win the bet, she’d have to agree that he’d won. Which would mean that he’d somehow not only convinced her that love really did exist, but that he was in love with her and vice versa. Pure fantasy. That’s the kind of thing that got her in trouble with Charlie. Imagining that things were completely different from reality. “I just don’t want to get in the middle,” Hugo confessed, his cheery gray eyes growing a little dimmer than normal. “Not that I’m saying I am. Or I could. I mean, you and I are not dating, not yet anyway, though I was hoping...” She took pity on him because it was wonderfully sweet to see a man with his kind of money and personality at such a loss for words. “I ke ep waiting for you to ask me out.” He hadn’t though. Which had kind of been bothering her, honestly. Was it too much to ask for a man to be clear about his interest? “Oh, well you know, I’m so busy with managing the merger for my father’s company.” Hugo glanced down with an apologetic smile that wasn’t so adorable all at once. “I’ve been back and forth to London so many times I’m starting to feel like the jet is my office.” A woman couldn’t be clearer about her interest than throwing down a blatant invitation for a man to ask her out. Since he wasn’t taking the bait, that pretty much answered the question. Hugo Bishop was single and dateless because he had a problem with commitment that extended to dating a woman he’d been cozying up to for a month or more. Disappointing. But far from unusual. “You are the CEO of a billion-dollar company,” she said with false cheer, choosing to let him off the hook because he was still the owner of her condo building and lived just one floor above her. She’d mostly likely run into him at some point, despite his weaseling about being out of town too much to ask her on a proper date. “One day you’ll be able to take a vacation. I’ll still be around.”
“Brilliant. I’ll check my schedule for some time in the next few weeks.” Sure. Because a man who ran a billion-dollar company didn’t have the power to rearrange his schedule at a moment’s notice, if he’d found something that required his full attention. Carolina expected that and more from a man she was dating. Which definitely explained why she hadn’t dated a single soul since the annulment. High standards. And apparently a lack of interest, even from a man who she’d have said was very interested. Hugo extracted himself without ever explaining why he’d said he’d come by tonight and it was only after she shut the door behind him that a band tightened across her chest, threatening to cut off her oxygen. So that was over. If you could call something over when it had never even started in the first place. Thanks Charlie. This called for ice cream, stat. She texted Eliza. Eliza appeared with Ben and Jerry’s less than four minutes later, because what Carolina lacked in a good man, she more than made up for in girlfriends. “Joaquin is in L. A.” Eliza held up a pint in each hand. “And he won’t be back until Friday, so I stocked up. Your timing is impeccable.” For once. “Great. What are you going to eat then?” Eliza quirked a brow. “That bad? Charlie still begging you to take him back?” “What? No.” She shook her head a little too hard. “What is with everyone and their insistence on painting Charlie with some kind of besotted lover brush? This is a publicity ploy, nothing more.” With a non-committal grunt, Eliza skirted Carolina and went to the kitchen to pull two bowls from the cabinet, one dark purple and one tomato red. None of Carolina’s Fiestaware matched, by design. That way, if she broke anything, she didn’t have to buy a whole new place setting to r eplace it. Though the funkiness of mismatched dishes suited her to the ground, just like the condo’s décor of sloppy chic and modern lines hidden by a layer of dust and stuff she’d forgotten to throw away. A successful advice show run by one person did not happen in an eight- hour day, leaving Carolina a ton of time to do something as useless as cleaning. Stuff just got dirty again the next day. When she thought about it, she booked a cleaning service to come in and do a torch and burn to the whole house. That hadn’t happened in a while. Eliza just moved a discarded jacket to the back of the couch and settled in with a heaping bowl of Caramel Sutra. She pointed at Carolina with her spoon. “If the ice cream isn’t for Charlie, who’s it for?” “Hugo.” Carolina snagged her own bowl from the counter, but dumped the rest of the Caramel Sutra on top of her Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough because why not? “He bowed out. Says he’s too busy to date right now.” Eliza flipped her spoon upside down to lick off every last drop of caramel. “Excuse city. I’m sorry. I mean, I get that he has to travel a lot but a man with his own plane can find a minute or two to swe ep a woman off for a romantic something if he really wanted to.” Yeah. Carolina just wasn’t worth the trouble, apparently. “I’m not all that upset.” She really wasn’t, oddly. “He’s nice and
everything but way too much of a doormat as it turns out.” “Yeah. Charlie’s a hard act to follow.” The death stare Carolina leveled in Eliza’s direction changed her friend’s expression not one iota. “Oh, come on. You’re not going to sit there and lie to me. You know Charlie did a number on you. Why is it so hard to admit that you haven’t moved on because you still have a thing for him?” “Because it’s not true.” It was. Totally, one hundred percent true. The only problem was that the thing she still had wasn’t the same thing Eliza meant. “He’s just an ex. That’s all.” “Sure.” Her friend made a great show out of eating her ice cream, going so far as to drape her legs over the arm of the couch as she scooped frothy mounds into her mouth. The casual pose didn’t fool Carolina at all. “Spill whatever’s on your mind, honey. I can take it.” “I’m just thinking that if you’re really over him, then why not take the bet? I mean, where’s the harm, right? You spend a couple of weeks letting him romance you, do a few shows to let your viewers know how unaffected you are by his pathetic attempts, and in two short weeks, you have an iron clad resume to present to some bigtime television producers. Where’s the downside?” Wearily, Carolina sank down in the armchair she’d chosen for this inquisition, her mind splintering into a thousand pieces, nine hundred and ninety-nine of them emblazoned with Charlie’s name. Eliza had only voiced what had gone through Carolina’s head the whole time she’d been in the bath. Well, that and a whole lot more. Hugo was smarter than she’d given him credit for, bowing out. If she’d really been interested in him, she’d have asked him out. There was no rule that said she had to wait around on a man. She hadn’t pursued that connection for a reason. Charlie. Dang it all. Why hadn’t she realized this before now? What good was a psychology degree if you couldn’t recognize the hidden traps in your own heart? Everything in her life came down to that infuriating man. Her show was a success because she’d funneled her disappointment and heartache over what had happened between them into advising the lovelorn how to be happy without a man. Obviously she hadn’t learned her own lesson. “I have to do it, don’t I?” she said. Now that she’d said it out loud, it made a strange sort of sense. She hadn’t fully gotten over Charlie because she’d fled within an hour of saying her vows. She hadn’t given him a chance to prove that the relationship would fall apart anyway. And he’d just handed her that opportunity. Because of course that would be the result. Not some contrived happily ever after once he’d plied her with his silly relationship tools. But closure to their whirlwind romance and epic breakup. Finally. This bet would be like a measles shot. An inoculation against all future Charlie-induced rashes of crazy bad decisions. She could take two weeks to get him out of her system, prove his entire platform was bunk and move on. As if she’d conjured up the man simply by talking about him, her phone buzzed and she didn’t have to glance at the screen to know what she’d see. Charlie: I’ll be by at nine in the morning to pick you up. We have to apply for a marriage license asap.
She rolled her eyes and texted him back: I haven’t changed my mind. You don’t know me as well as you think you do. Charlie: You’re wearing pink Converse with either mint-green leggings or purple jeans. She unlaced her pink Converse and kicked them across the room. Carolina: I’m not wearing shoes. So there. Charlie: I’ll move in with you. I don’t mind giving you home court advantage. “What’s he saying now?” Eliza called in a sobering reminder that her friend was still in the room, which she’d actually forgotten in the scant few seconds that Charlie had invaded her mind. “He’s volunteering to move in with me.” What was the point of pretending she could maintain some sense of mystery when apparently everyone knew her better than she knew herself? “He’s up to something.” “He wants to make it as attractive for you as possible, so you’ll do it,” Eliza suggested with maddening pragmatism as she set her empty bowl in the sink and ran water into it. “Which frankly, you should.” “Really. Do tell.” Eliza perched on the arm of Carolina’s chair, a gentle smile on her face. “You spend a lot of time trying to convince everyone your heart is made of stone but secretly, you’re a romantic.” That was just wacky enough to get a laugh out of Carolina, despite the band around her chest that hadn’t quite gone away since Hugo left. “Have you met me?” “A time or two. And that’s why you can’t fool me. Why would you go to so much trouble to make sure all of your friends find love and happiness if you didn’t believe in it yourself?” “Because it’s totally different to help other people pull their heads out of their rear ends so they can see what’s right in front of them. Nomi and Malone were already in love with each other. I just pushed them into figuring that out for themselves. Lilith was a bit trickier, but she got out of her own way long enough to fall for Dane once I laid the path down for her. Shiloh was easy. Anyone could see she already had Kellan’s heart in her hand. Exc ept her. All I did was open her eyes.” Eliza’s expression got decidedly smugger the longer the list grew. “Go on. Get to the part where you did all of that because you’re cynical and bitter about love.” “I’ve never said I was cynical.” Carolina stuck her tongue out, even as her heart twisted over how hard it was to see everyone else deliriously happy when that wasn’t in her future. “I just like being right. And I was, in every case. Including the one where you needed a real man instead of a virtual one.” “Exactly my point. If I can fall in love with a movie star, anything is possible. Even you and Charlie.” “Charlie and I are not happening. That’s why I have to take the bet.” She couldn’t risk anyone thinking she wasn’t over him and that was the reason she’d declined. “To prove the opposite. Love is not in the cards for everyone. Which, by the way, has long been the philosophy I preached.” “It’s okay. I still love you even when you’re being obtuse.” Eliza patted Carolina’s knee. “If there’s anyone on this earth who’s perfect for you, it’s Charles Wilson.”
“Ha. Then I’m doomed to be single for the rest of my life.” Which was pretty much the conclusion she’d drawn the first time she’d married him. Nothing had changed. The only way he’d hurt her was if she let him, and surely she was smart enough not to fall for his tricks this time as well. Plus, she’d get to take him down a few notches at the same time. There really was no downside to Eliza’s point. And the upside? She’d banish him from her heart, once and for all.