Bethenny Frankel Needs Some Attention, Which Is the Only Explanation for This Photo

You can call Bethenny Frankel a lot of things — and her co-stars do on The Real Housewives of New York City — but the woman is no dummy. So the fact that she flashed a ginormous diamond ring in an Instagram Stories pic earlier today, while in the arms of her boyfriend, was no accident. The 45-year-old reality star wanted to drum up some buzz about her love life — and, well, mission accomplished.

Take a look:

First things first, she is not engaged to Dennis Shields. We reached out to a rep for comment and received no response, but a “friend of the star” (likely a member of her publicity team) told People magazine she has no plans to head down the aisle. She is merely “happy and enjoying her summer.”

Enjoying her summer by trying to get some attention, apparently. After all, Bethenny does have a lot of projects that she’s promoting — the reality show, her SiriusXM radio show, the Skinnygirl brand, and all the Zero F***s stuff she’s always pushing, to name a few. And look — now we’ve mentioned them in our story, proving that her plan worked.

Frankel is currently on vacation in Nantucket with Shields, who’s the estranged husband of one of her high school classmates. (They are legally separated.) Either that or she was in bed with another bald man in a second Instagram Stories post she put up this morning.

As for whether they will get hitched, Frankel, who has called Shields her “perfect match,” has repeatedly said that she will “never get legally married again” after her disastrous, four-year divorce from Jason Hoppy, with whom she has a 6-year-old daughter, Bryn. But while gushing about her new beau during this season of RHONY, she said she was rethinking that vow. “I did say that I would never get married again and I’m taking that back,” she told Carole Radziwill. “I’m not saying I’m getting married. But I can’t destroy everything because of one bad apple.”

Plus, “never” doesn’t mean a lot in Hollywood, and Shields is still married. So it’s not something that could happen right now anyway.

And if it does, we’re certain Bethenny, former The Apprentice: Martha Stewart contestant and nanny for the Hilton sisters, wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to cash in on it. Like we said, the woman is no dummy.