That night at the Plaza Hotel, Arielle was totally certain that Mitchell had meant it when he’d proposed to her—really, she was—but she was kind of watching him, looking for signs that he’d been telling her the truth about love and marriage and wanting to spend their lives together, nevertheless.
That big, honking diamond in the ring easily scratched a very tiny corner of the hotel’s mirror.
Dang. It was real.
Arielle had never seen a diamond that size in person.
“You didn’t have to get one this big,” she told him, flapping her hand with the ginormous diamond ring on it.
He laughed. “Think of it as collateral that I’m telling the truth.”
“Yeah, but I mean, it seems excessive. I don’t need a diamond this size.”
“Do you not like it?” he asked. “Because you can pick out something else if you want to. I don’t mind at all. I’d always thought my bride and I would go ring shopping before I proposed, but it didn’t happen that way. I’m perfectly fine with going back to Tiffany and Company and picking out a different style.”
“No, I really love it.” Delicate braces encrusted with tiny diamonds buttressed the central stone. “It just seems so expensive, and I think we’ll need to conserve money if we lose the famous bet with that Shark guy.”
“On the contrary,” Mitchell said. “I have three and a half months before the bet is officially over on New Year’s Eve and Gabriel Fish gets his hands on my accounts. I can buy you a goddamn engagement ring if I want to. And I’ll pay off your contract to fund your parents’ retirement with liquid cash instead of Match Play options. I have it set up as a debt in Last Chance, Inc.’s ledgers, so I can pay that off any time I want. Fish can’t take official possession until New Year’s Day, so I have until the end of this year to make other arrangements for your parents and transfer the money. I’m not going to hang them out to dry.”
Arielle sagged in the chair where she was sitting in the living room of their suite. “Oh. But shouldn’t you keep it somehow? Paying off my parents seems insignificant if you’re going to lose everything. Maybe you shouldn’t.”
He shook his head. “Absolutely not. I will pay off your parents and any other debts I owe before Fish wins the bet.”
Arielle didn’t want to ask because she knew why Mitchell was going to lose the bet, but she couldn’t stop herself. “And he’s going to win the bet now, isn’t he? Because of me.”
Mitchell was sitting in a chair across the coffee table from her. His hands clenched, and he bowed his head and stared at the carpeting. “I did the math last night. By admitting to the world on live Golf Channel TV that our relationship was faked for the publicity, I estimate eighty percent of Match Play’s members will cancel their memberships within the next week. There will be segments on the Golf Channel with video of my confession and exposé articles in the golf magazines about how Match Play was a scam. The app will go down in a sea of flaming one-star reviews on the app stores. The FBI will probably investigate me for fraud, and it’s likely they’ll find enough to indict, if not convict.”
“Oh, no,” she said. She wasn’t worth that.
“We were lucky those Match Play couples charged the stage and created enough of a diversion for us to escape. Every word I spoke will be used as evidence in court.”
Arielle closed her eyes and bowed her head. Dammit.
He sighed. “We shouldn’t get married until we know how this will all go down. You shouldn’t tie your finances to mine until my head is above water. Indeed, you probably shouldn’t marry me at all. Gabriel Fish will take my business, my house, and probably my car. I’m going to be deeply in debt for decades. My parents have Emily’s future to think about, plus Peregrine and Rhys to launch in their businesses. They shouldn’t throw good money after bad. No bank or hedge fund in their right mind will finance me. Even if I stay out of jail, I’m ruined. We can be in a relationship as long as you’ll have me. I want to be with you and love you forever. But you shouldn’t form a legal relationship with me, and certainly not until we know how bad it is.”
Arielle went over to him and knelt beside him. “I love you. I’ll stay with you, no matter what, and we’ll figure this out together.”
“You shouldn’t marry me,” he repeated. “You shouldn’t hook your life to mine. You should marry someone who has a future and prospects, not someone who blew it.”
“But you gave it all up for me, and I want you more than all the money. You had a pretty house, but I’m not going to marry you for your house. I’m not going to marry you for your car, especially a BMW. I want to marry you because I love you and because you love me so much that you gave up everything, including that it was just business.”
His pants pocket buzzed.
She asked, “Shouldn’t you get that?”
“It’s just more texts from the Match Play office. I assume they’re telling me that we’re hemorrhaging customers and I destroyed the app. I just can’t look at it. We just got engaged. We’re supposed to be happy right now, but I screwed even that up.”
She reached around his pocket and removed his phone, lying it face-down on the table. He didn’t need to look at that bloodbath. “It’s okay. You’re more important to me than the money. I love you, and I still want to marry you.”
He raised his head. “I love you. I’m sorry you’re not marrying into the life you thought you were. I’ll make it right, though. I promise. I’ll make it all back.”
“You don’t have to make it back,” she told him. “I love you no matter what. We’ll be okay. My dad was a teacher, and my mom worked part-time sometimes. I know how to run a family with very little money. I can work. I’m a pretty good HR admin, you know, and you have a degree in business. We’ll be okay.”
Arielle kissed him, and Mitchell cradled her face with his hands. His fingers stole down her neck to her shoulders, trailing softly over her throat. Her skin prickled as goosebumps followed his touch.
He pulled away and glanced at his phone on the end table beside him. “I should be figuring out how to salvage Match Play.”
She kissed him, a peck on the lips. “Hey, sweetie bear, we just got engaged. Let’s celebrate.”
Mitchell looked into her eyes like he was trying to figure out if she was kidding, and then he squeezed his eyes shut. “I am the luckiest man in the world.”
He stood and picked her up in his arms like she was nothing, even tossed her a little to readjust as she giggled, and he turned sideways as he carried her through the doorway into the bedroom. Under her hand on his chest, his heart thudded steadily.
“Let’s leave it all out there,” he said as he carried her. “In here, it’s just us.”
“Right.” Arielle smiled up at him, trying to encourage him because he hadn’t looked so glum for a moment. “In here, it’s just us. We’re leaving everything else in the living room with your phone.”
“My—” His head swiveled back.
“Nope.” She held his chin and angled his head back toward her. “None of that matters anymore. In here, it’s just us, and we just got engaged. Show me you mean it.”
Mitchell began to smile, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. He squeezed Arielle close to the warmth of his chest as he gently lowered her onto the bed. “Absolutely, future-Mrs. Saltonstall. I’ll show you I mean it.”
Arielle scooted over for him to lie on the bed beside her, and he reached for her and kissed her, trailing his lips down her throat. “That was brilliant, by the way, what you said on the stage,” he muttered into her neck. “That I’d shown you over the months that I loved you. Did you mean it? Because I did.”
Arielle knew precisely why the answer had popped into her mind. She stretched against him, and he stroked down her side and over her hip. “Yes. I saw. I knew. I was just afraid to believe.”
“Never be afraid again,” Mitchell whispered beside her ear as he lifted her clothes from her body. “You have me. You have my whole heart. I will love you and be faithful to you my whole life. I will always choose you.”
Bliss suffused through Arielle. They were the words she didn’t know that she’d needed to hear. They were just words, yes, but the rasp in Mitchell’s voice and the tenderness of his hands as he touched her changed them from mere words into a promise.
He kissed her again, kissed her like his soul was hungry for the touch of hers, and her body responded to him. His hands caressed her curves, an expression that he wanted her, that he possessed her, and that he loved her.
The doubt in her heart fled.
Arielle clung to Mitchell, holding onto him as his breath and hands and body moved over her. Skin against skin, fingers entwining as he pressed his palms against hers and raised her hands above her head, so intimate. Arielle arched against him as his lips traveled lower, finding the sensitive peak of her nipple and tonguing her until she was gasping.
He moved inside her, filling her, his body hard in her softness. He overwhelmed her, his strength and weight, and Arielle clenched her fingers with his and gave herself over to him.
They held each other, safe in each other’s arms, moving with the rhythm of their love. The spark rose in Arielle, ignited, and she arched against him as he thrust, rubbing deliciously until a torrent of ecstasy rose through her body and filled her.
Her head was spinning as she became aware of her breath, her body, and Mitchell gasping against her shoulder, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
When she stood, her legs trembled like a new fawn, so Mitchell carried her to the shower and washed her, kissing her as the warm water sluiced over them.
They lay in the bed, sated and sleepy, until Arielle finally couldn’t stand the weird buzzing sound scratching at her ears and asked, “Are the light bulbs making that sound?”
Mitchell squinted. “I’ve been hearing it, too. I’ll just check—oh, Jesus. My phone.”
He hopped while he shoved his legs into his pants and ran out to the living room.
“Is everything all right?” Arielle called after him. “Your parents, or Emily? Are they okay?”
He didn’t answer.
“Mitchell?”
Still no answer.
Arielle dragged the crisp white sheet off the bed and wrapped it around her toga-style, nearly tripping on it as she traipsed out to the living room.
Mitchell was staring at his phone, his eyes expanded with shock, and he twitched as he scrolled his texts.
Oh, Jesus. The poor guy. The Match Play bloodbath had probably turned into an inferno. “It’s okay, Mitchell. Whatever happens, we’ll weather it together.”
His hands were shaking around his phone. “Turn on the Golf Channel.”
“Oh, honey, no. We don’t need to watch it. Come on, let’s go back to bed.”
“It’s not that.” He took five strides over to the TV and clicked it on. The set was already tuned to the Golf Channel because he’d been watching it earlier. “They said—wow.”
Arielle followed him. “Don’t do this. We don’t need to watch it.”
Mitchell waved his phone in the air but didn’t look away from the screen. “I’ve been getting texts from the Match Play office because they want to know what’s causing the enormous surge in subscribers. We’ve been adding ten thousand new subscribers every hour.”
“What?”
Mitchell shook his head. “The office is calling everyone in from home to work overtime. They needed me to approve triple-overtime for working a weekend night. My very public mea culpa barely made the news. The Golf Channel is showing our engagement, not my admission of fraud. They’re showing and interviewing all those couples who had their ‘I am Spartacus’ moments on the stage. This is insane.”
The television was showing the Golf Channel’s Golf Central, an evening show suspiciously like SportsCenter on ESPN but for golf, and it was all Match Play, all the time.
Video clips of their engagement played on the television, followed by couple after couple proclaiming that they “found their Match on Match Play.”
Arielle recognized some of the couples who had talked to her in the booth earlier that day or even at other trade shows, but most of them were new to her.
“That publicity is the equivalent of millions of dollars in advertising.” Mitchell checked his phone. “Thirty-five thousand new subscribers and climbing. They said the rate isn’t even slowing down.”
Arielle hesitated before asking because she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer. “Did you know that was going to happen?”
He shook his head. “I thought I’d destroyed Match Play and lost the bet. That’s what I tried to do. I left it all out there on the stage. But it backfired spectacularly.” He turned on the couch and held both her hands. “I meant every word I said on that stage, that I wanted to burn it all down because I wanted to be with you more than to have all of that, but nothing goes according to plan. So I guess I still have a chance to win the bet and save Last Chance, Inc. Maybe Jericho, Kingston, and Morrissey won’t murder me.”
Arielle chuckled.
The unease of Mitchell destroying Match Play for her settled in her mind, and she turned her hand over to admire her engagement ring again. The central diamond sparkled in the lights of the hotel room as if filled with multicolored glitter. “I guess I won’t have to pawn this pretty ring.”
Mitchell laughed. “The diamond corporations tell me that I’m supposed to spend two months’ salary on your engagement ring. If I win this bet with Gabriel Fish, I’m going to owe you a matching necklace and earrings. And probably a tiara.”
“I’ll take them. I always wanted a tiara.”
He laughed. “We should eat. It’s after nine-thirty. I’ll call us in some room service.”
Mitchell tapped his phone for a few minutes while Arielle watched the television, still shocked as all get-out by what she was seeing. The golf news anchors were fawning over Match Play, practically giggling with excitement over the couples who’d met on the app.
The sliding band of news at the bottom of the screen said that the week’s PGA golf tournament round had been rained out all day.
That was why the anchors were starving for news.
And luckily for Match Play, they’d decided to expand the segment with the interviews and a pictorial retrospective of Mitchell and Arielle over the months.
Oh, dear Lord.
Arielle almost crawled under the couch with embarrassment. The Golf Channel found all the pictures of them, from the press conference in Phoenix where Mitchell had bent her over backward to kiss her, to the wedding-ish photo shoot in California, to all the weeks where Arielle knew her rigid smile had been plastered on her face because she wanted to kill Mitchell Saltonstall.
Maybe they should get ahold of a tape of that. It would be an easy way to entertain at the wedding reception.
“Bad news,” Mitchell said. “The kitchen is slammed. It’ll be an hour and a half before the food shows up.” He came back to the couch where she was sitting with her legs crossed and ran his hand up her thigh. “I’m sure I can find some way to pass the time with my beautiful fiancée.”