Page 108 of Promise Not to Fall for the Rich & Famous

“Why don’t you wait for them to finish up in there,” Randall hollered from behind.

But Kat only walked on. Marsha Langford could be a real shark. She was probably pinning Duke and his family with all sorts of financial threats over the whole thing. Plus, he might beworried that Kat actually believed this crap. She didn’t, and the sooner she let him know that, the better.

Yet even as she headed toward the beach house, ready to get the answer she knew would come, hints of that tsunami rumbled low in her gut. And as much as she wanted to dismiss it, that rumble felt an awful lot like a warning.

CHAPTER 20

“Listen,” Marsha said, leaning a hand against the tree trunk by her side. She glanced toward the front of the beach house for a blink before setting her gaze back on Zander.

“This isn’t exactly new—the Benton family showing up in social media and tabloids. There was that incident between your brother James and the private chef. Videos replaying the mishap went viral, mainly because he’d been dating a vicious super model at the time, but still.

“Then your sister goes off and asks one of New York’s hottest bachelors to propose to her on live TV, all to get back at an old high school nemesis who’d suggested she’d end up a spinster.

“When Kat matched up with the profile so well, I had no choice but to select her. Let’s face it—the Benton family gets noticed. You’re all attractive. You’re billionaires, for crying out loud. America is fascinated. They want to see what will happen next.”

Zander followed Marsha’s gaze to see if Kat had come looking for him yet. She hadn’t. He ducked further beneath the trees and motioned for Marsha to come under its cover as well.

“So you’re saying they’re just creating something out of nothing here? They’re used to scandals surrounding us, so…”

Already Marsha was shaking her head. She squared a hard look at him, her green eyes piercing. “Listen, I showed you the page to see if you’d come clean. You’re not, so let me just put it this way…” She followed his lead, further into the brush and out of sight.

Sparks of fire-hot heat prickled Zander just beneath the skin. He gripped hold of a nearby branch to steady himself; he couldn’t let the guise unravel. Not yet. Not before he had the chance to tell Kat.

Better hidden from plain sight now, Marsha set her gaze back on Zander. “I’ve been on to you since day one,” she said.

Zander’s grip on the branch tightened.

“I know the difference between you and your twin. Your personalities are like night and day. From someone who spoke with Duke multiple times throughout this process, watched his video submissions along the way, it was obvious to me that you weren’t him.”

Zander stifled a curse. It felt like someone had set his skin ablaze. Full-on flames were moving from his palms, up the insides of his wrists, through his arms and straight to his heart.

“Kat’s going to see this page,” Marsha assured. “So you might as well take a look at some of these.” She scrolled past side-by-side shots from Zander at the wedding and Zander from The Lion’s Den. The words same exact hair scrolled beneath. Others showed montages of Duke sporting his man bun, attaching quotes about how much he loved the thing.

She paused at a video and tapped the screen. “This is from the page’s creator,” Marsha said.

A middle-aged woman with red hair sat centered behind the lens. “INDIZ stands for It’s Not Duke, It’s Zander. And guys, trust this super fan of all things Benton—it is Zander, not Duke.I encourage you to use our acronym in your feeds and posts in place of the words in this. Example…” She cleared her throat. “INDIZ world, if you marry an identical twin, you never know which one you’re going to get. But let’s face it—any woman in her right mind would gladly take either one of those twins, even if they were lying about who they were.”

There was no stifling the next curse that came to his lips. Zander clenched his eyes shut and groaned. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

He was surprised to feel a hand on his arm. “Are you falling in love with Kat?” Marsha asked.

“Yes.”

“Why did you do it? Why did you walk down the aisle instead of Duke?”

Zander huffed out a breath, lifted his chin, and squared a look at the producer. “Duke was in Nepal. Then he got stuck in Washington. I didn’t want to, but it was live TV. We know how that works as well as anyone.”

She held his gaze for a blink, then nodded. “Yes, you do. So Kat doesn’t know?”

Admitting the truth to Marsha before telling Kat…it felt like an added level of betrayal. Heck, it seemed half of the world already knew. “No,” he admitted. “But I’m going to tell her right now.”

He stepped forward to move past Marsha, but she put up a firm hand to stay him. “Not yet,” she said. “There are repercussions for what you’ve done. And for what Duke let happen after he signed a very binding contract.”

Anger flared hot in his chest as he stepped around her. “I don’t care.”

“Randall’s telling her about the page right now,” Marsha said.

Zander stopped mid-step. “He is?”