Page 2 of The Bride and the Billionaire Grump

“Okay, options.” I start counting them on my fingers. “Win the lottery, become a stripper, or pull a bank job.”

A waiter walking by raises his eyebrows at me and I try not to laugh.

“You’d be a great stripper,” Danielle says, loud enough that the cute waiter hears and then winks at me.

I laugh. “No way. I’d make a better criminal.”

“Okay, hear me out.” She shoves her phone at me.

It’s a casting call for a new dating show. I bat her phone away.

Reality TV is fun to watch, but I’d rather stick nails in my eyes than participate.

“Be serious! It’d take making this an Irish coffee for me to consider applying for that. Maybe you should apply — get yourself a man, or woman.” I raise my eyebrows.

Danielle’s been extremely coy lately whenever I’ve asked her about anyone she’s seeing. There are small signs that she might be seeing someone — she’s constantly distracted by texts and smiling at her phone — but I don’t want to push her for details because her last ‘relationship’ was extremely messy and brutal. Not that she’d admit it was a relationship because of the commitment-phobe thing.

“What if I told you it was your winning lottery ticket?”

I narrow my eyes. “Always avoiding questions about your love life. Wait, what did you say?”

“Look at the participation fee.” She zooms in on her phone screen.

I spit out my coffee. “Holy crap! That’s a lot of money!”

Still, I’m hesitant. From what I’ve heard, it seems like reality participants get put through a lot for the sake of entertainment, and half of what really happens never sees the light of day.

Danielle says it’s about the type of edit they give you, whether you’re the underdog or the villain or the girl next door, or whatever category you fit into. It seems a bit barbaric, honestly; forcing people into boxes, manipulating people and situations to orchestrate drama.

“This is your golden ticket, babe. Plus, you never know, you might actually like the guy.”

I scoff. Danielle’s always been a hopeless romantic, the one that believes in happy endings, which is ironic considering her take on committing to someone.

I stopped believing in happy endings when my mom died.

Danielle has a look in her eyes that says I don’t have a choice in this. It’s the same look she had when she decided we were going to try out for cheerleading in high school, or when she decided we would move to Seattle together.

Once she made the decision, we were doing it. She is very hard to say no to — just ask the cheer captain who was forced to take both of us.

Don’t get me wrong, she always takes my opinion seriously and wouldn’t force me to do anything I didn’t want to, but she knows me so well that she knows when I need a little nudge in the right direction. In this case, she’s pushing me off a cliff, but at least I’ll be landing in a pile of cash.

I wonder if it’s worth it. Putting myself through a cattle call to be able to go to college. There’s no guarantee I’d get picked, and it’s presumptuous of me to think I’m worthy of being chosen. What about me screams ‘pick me to embarrass myself on national television for light entertainment’? I’m not what they’d call a big personality. I mean, maybe I loosen up after a few margaritas, but nothing that would be considered entertaining.

If by some miracle I did get chosen, there’s no guarantee I would get a good edit or be interesting enough to be on the show at all.

I’m comfortable being the one that blends into the shadows while other people step into the spotlight. The spotlight seems like an uncomfortable place to be.

Danielle leans forward, a serious look on her face. “Your mom would want this for you.”

Ouch. She knows that hurts me, but she wouldn’t say it flippantly.

“She’d want me to make a spectacle of myself on national TV?” I raise my eyebrows.

“No, she’d want you to go to college. You know how much she hated that you didn’t go in order to take care of her.” She looks down at her coffee. “She made me promise I would always look out for you, and I plan on keeping that promise. Your mom would go all poltergeist on my butt if I didn’t, okay? So you have to make sure I don’t get haunted.”

I laugh. “Okay, okay. I can’t have my mom haunting you. She would probably have a little too much fun messing with you.”

I’m not surprised my mom made Danielle make a promise. She always thought of her as a second daughter.

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