Page 17 of Fake Dating Daxton Hawk
A young waitress arrives at our table with drinks, placing a coffee in front of me. For Mina, I took the liberty of ordering her signature drink: hot chocolate with pink baby marshmallows.
The waitress realizes who I’m sitting with and lets out a fangirl squeal. “Ah! Mina Midnight. I loved you so much inThe Velvet Cigar. Your voice is incredible. And I’m so excited slash jealous you’re marrying Zac Delavin.”
The shock from hearing about my apartment fire is still plastered to Mina’s face. I can tell she’s about to gently avert the waitress in order to comfort me, so I shake my head and smile. “You two talk. I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” Mina asks me.
“Yes.”
Fan interaction is important for Mina’s career. I sit back and let the two of them chat, listening to the waitress ask about how Zac proposed. Mina retells the story of how it happened while vacationing in the Whitsundays for their friends’ wedding, Verena and Adrian. She then stands up and takes a selfie with the waitress.
Being approached like this in public is a regular occurrence for Mina and one I can’t ever imagine happening to me. Okay, so I did get recognized at the gym a couple of weeks back due to a paparazzi shot of me holding Daxton’s hand, but it hardly counts because I wasn’t recognized as a burlesque dancer. I was recognized asthe girl dating Daxton Hawk.
As soon as the waitress leaves us, Mina stirs her drink and gets back to the topic of conversation. “Sorry about that. Babe, a fire? What happened?”
“I don’t know. But I’ve lost everything. I didn’t have insurance.”
“Why didn’t you call me? You could have stayed with me and Zac.”
I blow on my coffee and take a sip. “My phone died. I didn’t have any of my contacts, just Daxton’s business card. I called him from a borrowed phone, hoping for a room here at the hotel. It was fully booked. So he let me stay in the penthouse with him. It was fine.”
Mina places her hand on mine. “You’ll stay with me and Zac from here on out. We’ll help you find a new apartment. We’ll also help you find a job.”
“About that…” I retract my hand, my palms growing sweaty because I know she won’t approve of what I’m about to tell her. “I’ve found a solution to both.”
“You have?”
“Daxton has offered to let me live at his place for free.”
Her face scrunches with disapproval, as I knew it would. “You havegotto be kidding me. Men don’t let beautiful women live in their home for free. Tell me what’s really going on here.”
“Thisisthe truth, and it’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be. Daxton will be out of town most of the time, so I’ll barely have to share the place with him. Plus, he’s paying me ten thousand dollars a week to escort exclusively for him so he doesn’t have to deal with the hassle of finding another date. Some weeks I probably won’t see him at all. It’s free money.”
Her eyebrows lift with surprise. “You’ll be earning ten thousand a week? Why would he pay you that much? It’s suspicious.”
“It would be suspicious for the average person, but ten K clearly means nothing to Daxton.”
She brings the hot chocolate to her lips. “Is there any way I can talk you out of this?”
“No, babe. Do you know how much money I’ll save after doing this for a couple of weeks?”
Mina nods. “Just be sensible, okay? I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“Can’t get hurt when there are no feelings involved.”
“Feelings can creep up on you fast.”
I place my hand on her shoulder and look her straight in the eyes. “Mina, I’ve got this.”
“Okay, I’ll trust you.”
“Thank you. Now, can we please talk about something else?”
“Have you seen Ryan’s latest YouTube video? He uploaded it this morning.”
“No. What was it?” I race for my phone and open my brother’s video, snorting at the title.Naked Yoga in the Himalayas. Spoiler: I got frostbite on my junk.
Got to love him. He’s always doing something crazy, like living in a nudist colony or the video that made his career where he went naked bungee jumping.
