by Vi Keeland
Flynn catches me as I wobble. “Woo … you okay?”
“I’m great.” I fling my arms around his neck.
He smiles.
“I liked your song.”
“I’m glad.”
“It was sexy.”
He chuckles, amused.
“Just like you.” I push up on my tippy toes and lean into him, pressing my lips to his. He doesn’t kiss me back.
“You’re drunk,” Flynn says when he pulls his head back.
“So? If Jessica tried to kiss you when she was drunk, I bet you wouldn’t say no.”
“That’s because Jessica would kiss me when she’s sober.”
A little while later, I fall asleep in the SUV on the ride back to Sugar Rose, my head resting on Flynn’s lap. He helps me out of the car and into my room.
The door closing behind us is the last thing I remember in the morning when I wake with a pounding in my head. I’m snuggled into Flynn, his arms tight around me.
“Morning,” he says with a broad smile.
I’m quiet for a moment as I wrack my brain trying to remember what happened after we came into my bedroom. But my mind is completely blank. “Did we?” Too embarrassed to say the words, I motion between the two of us.
He responds with a devilish glint in his eye. “Did we what?”
“You know.”
“Yes, but I want to hear you say it.”
I roll my eyes. It’s enough movement to cause my headache to worsen.
“Sweetheart, trust me, if we did, you’d remember it.” He kisses my forehead and hops from the bed.
“Well, then, thank you. For … being a gentleman.”
“Better look under the sheets before you call me a gentleman,” he says sheepishly.
My eyes go wide and, hesitantly, I lift the sheet and look down. I’m wearing a t-shirt and underwear. I look up at Flynn and he shrugs and smiles.
“I might have helped you change.” He winks and disappears.
chapter thirty-seven
Kate
“How you feeling?” Flynn asks with a knowing smirk on his face after he returns from an hour-long beach run.
“Like death,” I groan. I’m lying in a lounge chair near the water’s edge, oversized sunglasses blocking the rays of light that cause the pain in my head to worsen. It’s nearly five o’clock, yet I feel as queasy now as when I woke up this morning.
“How can you run after last night?”
He shrugs and takes off his shirt. “I’m better at partying than you.”
“My idea of partying is drinking two glasses of wine in sweatpants after studying for four hours.”
“Wild woman.” He balls up his shirt and tosses it at me. “Come on. I need to walk to cool down.” He extends both of his hands.
“The last time I took those hands, I wound up in the water against my will.”
“You’re safe with me today. I’ve had my share of hangovers. I feel your pain. I won’t add to it. Just a walk.”
He’s sincere, so I take the hand he’s offering. The first fifteen minutes we’re both quiet, but I’m uneasy. “I’m sorry about last night.”
“About what?”
“Kissing you.”
“I’m not.”
“But you didn’t kiss me back.”
“Only because you were too drunk.” He halts. “You wanna try it again now, sober? See if I hold back?”
I smile and take his hand, tugging him forward. “Underneath that tattooed bad-boy exterior, you’re really a good guy.”
We walk some more in silence, hand in hand. Finally Flynn asks, “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Did I do something to turn you off?”
“What? No. What makes you say that?”
“When the show first started, I thought we had a connection. And then I kissed you and I felt it. I could swear you did too. But then things changed. We still had the connection, but you keep me in friend territory.”
I sigh audibly. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. If it’s not there, it’s not there for you. I just wondered where we went wrong.”
“We didn’t.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There was someone else in the room with us whenever we were together. Not physically. But I couldn’t really be with you, when my heart was involved with someone else.”
“Was involved. Not is involved?” He’s astute.
“It’s over now. I’m sorry. It should have never happened to begin with. What you felt when we first met … when we first kissed … you weren’t alone. I felt it too. Then things got complicated and I could never move forward after that.”
“And now? Are you available now?”
“Technically, yes. Honestly, you’re a great guy. But my heart’s broken. I wish we’d met under different circumstances at another time.”
“Why don’t we start over?” he says, taking my other hand and turning to walk backwards.
“How can we do that?”
He shrugs and smiles. “Easy.” He lets go of my hands and extends a handshake to me. “Hi, I’m Flynn Beckham.”
I shake my head, but play along. “Kate Monroe.”
“Nice to meet you, Kate.”
“Likewise.”
“Listen. I hope this doesn’t sound too stalkerish, but I’ve been stealing glances at you every chance I get. Would you go out with me the day after tomorrow?” We’re already scheduled for our one-on-one date on Wednesday.
“I’d love to,” I say and, for the first time since my eyes landed on Cooper Montgomery, I mean it.
The invitation that was delivered to my room this morning gave only a hint of the date that was to come this afternoon. The card read, You make my heart soar, although there was a bikini delivered with the gold-embossed invite.
I slip on the white bathing suit. It’s simple, yet sexy—alluring long strings hang from the tie closures, almost a flirty invitation to anyone to tug and see what lies beneath. My skin is deeply tanned to a golden bronze after the last four days of lazily soaking up island sunshine. The image that bounces back at me in the mirror is pleasing—a flutter of hope that I won’t be stuck in sadness forever finally starts to peek through.
Wardrobe outfits me with an almost see-through white cover-up dress and an incredible pair of high-heeled sandals. The only color in my ensemble is from the aqua bow on the brim of my straw sun hat. Mercedes and Jessica eye me angrily when I walk through the living room to answer the door for my date. It validates what I saw when I looked at my reflection.
“Wow. White’s your color.” Flynn’s eyes pore over me and then he kisses my cheek.
“I don’t think white is actually a color.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s the absence of color.”
“Well, then the absence of color looks hot on you, smarty pants.” We both laugh.
“Likewise, your absence of color looks mighty handsome.” Flynn’s dressed in all white too. Well, except for the splash of color artistically running down his left forearm. All of his tattoos are black and grey except one. I’d never noticed it until now.
My handsome date leads me to the car and opens the door for me. “Is it a coincidence that we’re both dressed in white?”
“Nope.” He closes the door and jogs around to the driver’s side. “It’s symbolic. We’re starting over. Remember? Today is our first date.”
“Please tell me you don’t expect me to go up in one of those?” We pull into a beach parking lot and a shack offering parasailing rides makes me suspicious. There are a few people floating around in the sky tethered to colorful parachutes above them.
“I do.” He parks and smiles at me.
“I told you I was afraid of heights.”
“We’re starting fresh today. Remember? What better way to start off than to live a little.”
“I’m all for living, it’s the opposite of living that scares me
and keeps my feet on the ground.”
He opens my car door. “They set us up for a double harness. I’ll hold you through the whole thing.”
“Even when we splatter on the ground?”
He chuckles. “We won’t splatter on the ground. Besides, there’s water underneath us.”
I look around and find the cameras already rolling. Taking a deep breath, I finally give him my hand. “What’s your greatest fear?” I lean in and whisper to avoid my voice being picked up.
“Rejection.” He kisses my cheek. “See, we’re both conquering our fears today.”
I’m still on an adrenaline high from our afternoon date as I get ready for dinner. Flynn was right, facing one of my biggest fears was somehow freeing. Leaving me to feel like today really was a fresh start.
As promised, Flynn held me the entire way. My body secured in a harness clipped to his, his muscular thighs straddled me, long legs wrapped tightly around my waist from behind the minute we lifted into the air. One strong arm fastened around my middle in a bear hug left me feeling secure as we soared high above the ocean. Even when I had finally relaxed enough to enjoy the breathtaking view of the crystal-clear aqua water below, his hold on me never loosened. Eventually, I found myself leaning into his embrace instead of clinging to it.
After parasailing, the boat took us to a sand bar in the middle of the ocean and we hand fed giant sea turtles and snorkeled amid schools of colorful fish. Today was a day made for reality television, yet I was so completely enraptured with everything we did, most of the time, I didn’t notice the cameras.
The smile on Flynn’s face when he arrives for dinner matches my own. His long hair is loose, framing an undeniably swoon-worthy face. But it’s his smile that undoubtedly would have women throwing their panties at him on stage.
“What? I didn’t even say anything yet and you’re shaking that head at me like I’m up to no good.” Flynn feigns innocence, although his eyes tell me his thoughts are anything but.
“That smile. I bet women drop their panties for those dimples.”
He takes a step closer. The air between us shifts. “I hope so.”
Unlike the playful carefree mood from this afternoon, tonight there’s a tension that hangs thick between us. The challenge of navigating down the steep natural stairs of the dimly lit cliff to Bottom Bay is handsomely rewarded at the bottom. The serene beach, surrounded by tall privacy-ensuring cliffs is dark and empty. Until we walk a few hundred yards and pass a towering jut of a mountain to the other side. I actually gasp at the vision.
Leaning palm trees are bedecked with sporadically placed candles ensconced in hanging glass lanterns. A blanket is spread in the corner, an oversized picnic basket illuminated by a few candles surrounding it.
“Wow. It’s beautiful.”
Flynn looks at me pensively. “It is. Are you okay with this?”
The ice protecting my heart for the last week melts just a little. I look at him and smile. “I think I am.”
We spend the next three hours eating, talking and laughing. With only the candlelight around us, it’s easy to forget there are probably cameras set up all over. It’s romantic and beautiful, and Flynn is a complete gentleman. I learn things about him I never would have guessed—things we have in common. We both were science majors in college, although his focus was astronomy and mine was biology. We both love Johnny Cash, but don’t get the Beatles phenomenon. And our dads never met a casino they could walk past.
“What makes the stars twinkle, Copernicus?”
“Ahh. That is a common mistake of the layperson,” Flynn says with some sort of accent. I assume it’s an attempt at the dialect of the famous astronomer, but I know little about Copernicus other than he is the granddaddy of astronomy. “Stars actually don’t twinkle.”
“They don’t? I’m not sure I want to hear this.”
Flynn chuckles. We’re both lying on our backs, gazing up at the sky filled with stars—some of them twinkling. He rolls from his back to his side and props up his head on his elbow with one hand. His other hand brushes a stray hair behind my ear. “It’s just the angle we view them at. A ray of light bends slightly when it passes through the atmosphere, it deflects and we see it as a twinkle. If we were on the moon, we wouldn’t see a twinkle at all.”
I smile, captivated by the splendor of the twinkles above, even if they aren’t really what they seem. “Well, then I’m glad we’re here and not on the moon.”
“Me too,” he says quietly. My heart skips a beat meeting his direct gaze. We hold a long stare, his eyes filled with longing and intrigue, the candle illuminating the blue in his eyes. And his mouth … full and soft, perfectly kissable. He smiles staring down at me, revealing luscious dimples and a confidence that makes me think he absolutely knows what to do with a woman. His eyes drop to my lips and then return to mine with even more heat in his gaze.
The last thought I have as his lips meet mine is that this may be more than a game, and I’m either all in or all out.
chapter thirty-eight
Cooper—
2 weeks later
Walking from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around my waist, I jerk to a halt when I hear the sound. My gaze is riveted to the TV I’d left playing, where her face knocks the air from my lungs. I stopped watching the DVDs after the day the camera zoomed in on them sleeping snuggled in a bed. In the yellow room, of all rooms.
I know I left her with no reason to think I was worthy of a second chance. But I guess I’d secretly hung on to hope that maybe, just maybe, we could be together after the show ended.
Dickhead comes on the screen. This must be the finale. My asshole brother must be in his glory. Ratings have been through the roof. I’ve caught glimpses of the advertisements in the moments before the remote could change the channel. He got what he wanted. America is dying to know if the longhaired, hippy-looking cocky bastard choses the temptress or his torch.
As much as I despise my brother, I have to hand it to him. He’s turned the last week of the show into an advertising phenomenon. Women of all ages are on edge waiting to find out which of the two final contestants he picks. Jessica—the pinup girl who seduced him from the minute he met her—or Kate—the woman he set his sights on seducing from her first smile. I’ve even overheard Helen gossiping about who she thinks he’ll pick.
Against my better judgment, I don’t change the channel. Instead I stand and glare at the scene that plays out before my eyes. It’s a recap of last week, Dickhead’s in a tuxedo and Kate in a gown. She looks gorgeous, but nervous, as they enter an elevator. The doors slide closed and my heart aches as the camera pans to their hands. They’re standing next to each other, but Dickhead’s pinky reaches out and locks with hers and then they briefly turn and look at each other smiling.
The doors glide open again and the sign on the suite in front of them makes my blood boil. Honeymoon Suite. I can’t bear to watch it, yet my eyes won’t leave the screen.
He slips a keycard from his pocket and holds it up to her. Their gaze catches for a moment and she takes a deep breath.
Don’t go in, Kate.
Slowly, she reaches down and takes the key out of his hand. The slow, wordlessness anticipation is killing me.
Shake your head no, Kate. Don’t go in.
Key in hand, control of both of our destinies hanging in the wind, her eyes meet his once more. I hold my breath as she slips the key into the door. Dickhead hangs the Do Not Disturb sign and sound finally returns with the click of the door shutting behind them.
I feel hollow inside. Wounds that had only begun to heal are ripped open again. But seeing her move on, watching the door close behind them, is what I needed. It’s symbolic of what I need to do. It’s time. Forcing my balled fists open, one finger at a time, I stretch my palms wide. The door closing. Them walking inside. The end of the show. Finally, I let go. Closure.
chapter thirty-nine
Kate—
1 month later
“No trucks outside today,” Sadie says as she walks in, a shopping bag in each hand.
“I’ve bored them to death.”
“You are kind of boring.” She chides and unloads her bags. One bag from the liquor store, the other is lingerie.
“That’s some combination you have there.” My eyes point to her purchases.
“Isn’t it? The funny thing is, too much of one leads to the removal of the other.”
“I’m just glad you’re wearing underwear again these days at least.”
“Jared gives me a hard time if I don’t.”
“Which is pretty funny since that’s how you met.” Sadie’s new boyfriend, Jared, is an entertainment correspondent who was filming out front of our apartment after the finale. The media went into a frenzy after I won Throb, setting up camp all over our building to try to catch a glimpse of me and Flynn. One afternoon it all got to be too much and Sadie was tired of people screaming questions at her as she navigated to our door. So she pulled up her skirt and mooned the cameraman—she wasn’t wearing any underwear. That got the cameras off my back for a little while. But Jared, the reporter who’d caught the entire thing on the camera behind him, was hot on Sadie’s trail instead.
It’s been less than two weeks, but the two of them are already inseparable. Somehow he’s even got her to do the unthinkable—wear underwear under her skirts.
There’s a knock at the door. “That’s Jared,” she yells over her shoulder as she heads into her room. “Tell him I’ll be ready in five minutes.”
I open the door and find Jared. And Flynn. “Hey. What are you doing here?”
“Just met him in the parking lot.” Jared smiles and I step aside for both men to enter. “Figures. I don’t have a camera with me.”
“No one is really interested in us anyway. We’re just a boring old couple now, right, honey?” I say to Flynn.
