Walk of Shame

by Gregory, O. L.

  "Does that worry you?"

  "No, I know Chloe is talking to her. She'll be fine with me just as soon as this is all done."

  "How would she deal, if you left the country for a spell?"

  "She'd come to terms with it."

  "How would you feel about leaving the country?"

  "As long as I was comfortable in the country I was visiting, I'd be content. I just would very much like for my children to know their grandparents."

  "All their grandparents?"

  "Of course."

  "So, all the traveling isn't just something you're getting out of your system? You pretty much want to keep up this way of life until retirement, maybe?"

  "That's my current plan."

  "And you're good with mountains?"

  "I'm very good with being around mountains."

  "How about being up on them for a few weeks at a time, totally self-sufficient?"

  "Hmm, see, now you're messing with my ability to connect with the internet and shower every day."

  "You can get clean and conserve water at the same time. And there are ways to get you connected to the internet, provided you don't require a constant connection."

  "So," I twisted against him to face him, "what made you come seek me out in the dead of the night?" I whispered.

  He tightened his arm around me. "I wanted five minutes where I didn't have to share you with the cameras, or the other guys."

  I smiled. "Well, you've had your five minutes. Are you ready to go back now?"

  His arm pulled me toward him. "Not quite," he said and reached with his other hand to maneuver me around to face him fully. "How about five more?"

  I moved to straddle his lap on the bench we were on and whispered, "At least."

  He groaned in approval and closed the small distance between his lips and mine.

  We'd only had one other mouth-to-mouth encounter before, and it had been good. This time was more than good, it was amazing. Jared brought heat, and Phillip brought flair, but Liam made it so that I just didn't want to stop. I found myself clinging against him, engaged in a full-on make out session. And the longer it lasted, the more aware I became of how little he and I were wearing in that hot tub.

  The swimsuit soon became annoying. On one hand, I was beginning to want it to disappear altogether. The barrier was a little frustrating. On the other hand, it was small and not substantial enough to slow us the hell down.

  I broke the kiss, bending and resting my forehead against his chest. I was all but panting, and groaned out my reluctance to have pulled away in the first place.

  He dropped a kiss down on the back of my head, sighing with his own regret. "There's a part of me that wants to pick you up and carry you inside that house."

  I groaned again, lamenting the circumstances. "There's a part of me that really wants you to."

  He placed his hands on my hips and gently massaged. "If I didn't think you'd regret it in the morning, I would."

  "I'd regret betraying them, yes. And I'd be disappointed in myself. There's a certain level of trust going around, and I'd like to not be responsible for either of us breaking it."

  He reached under my chin and tilted my face up to his. "For now, it's enough to know that you want to," he whispered and brushed his lips across mine one last time before moving me off his lap.

  Wednesday

  Mike was already halfway through his run before I managed to stumble across the lawn and out onto the track the next morning. Goldie was running alongside him, having adopted the early morning run into her new routine.

  "Somebody looks like they had a late night," Mike said when I caught up to him and matched his stride.

  I struggled with what to say. I didn't know whether or not to make up an excuse about having work to catch up on, doing late-night interviews, or even just watching a movie. Or should I maybe tell him the truth? But, I wasn't sure what good could come from that, under the circumstances. "Yeah, it was."

  He gave me a rueful smile and I could tell he wanted to ask what had kept me up, but, to his credit, he let it drop. We'd been getting quite chatty on our runs, and I wasn't readily chatting about this. He had to know that if I wasn't giving an explanation, there must be a reason.

  He stayed with me until I'd finished my run, instead of leaving at the normal end of his. He just kept sneaking up on me with how easy he was to talk to. It made him so easily likeable. But, I worried that while he was moving so slow with the romance, while we built the friendship aspect, he might end up propelling himself into the friend-zone without either of us even realizing it.

  Was that a messed up way of thinking? I wasn't sure anymore. Dating all these guys was messing with my head. I knew that I shouldn't really be comparing one relationship with another, that I should be viewing them individually. But, when one of the objectives I had with this setup being to discard a man every week, you just naturally started comparing and contrasting them.

  But, to be fair to Mike, I had to remind myself that aside from Trevor, he was the only one working on laying a solid friendship down first. I was dealing with two different approaches to the same end goal.

  And before we parted ways, he kissed me on the forehead. Again.

  I sighed to myself on the walk back up to the cottage. I wanted to know if there was a true, physical spark. On the other hand, he'd never kissed my forehead when parting from a workout before, only after a date. So, in the grand scheme of things with him, it was progress.

  On to my shower, hair, makeup, and wardrobe routine. No dates today, but an extensive interview session with Troy was scheduled.

  "All right," Troy said. "We're going to go name by name. You give me a list of pros and cons for each one. Then, we'll go back and I'll have you elaborate on each point on the list."

  "That's going to take awhile," I muttered.

  "Yeah, and they'll edit most of it out. Only clips will be used here and there. And be warned, because we'll take breaks for you to go change clothes and have your hair adjusted, so they can weave the snippets throughout the week's episode and not have it look like you only answered questions like this on one day."

  "Ugh."

  "Come on, princess. Have a seat. Let's get started."

  Four hours. That's how long it took. And if I tried to glaze over one of the many points, he'd ask a more probing question about it to get me to talk more. If I started to lose my patience and turned snarky, he'd call for a costume change. I'd get up, get something to drink, move around for a moment, and be more patient when I sat back down.

  It only took five wardrobe changes before I caught on.

  "Can I ask a question?" I said at the end of his litany of questions.

  "Sure."

  "You've been doing this for a few years now. Can you tell who I'll end up with?"

  He smiled, then disappeared into my office and came back out with an envelope and a piece of paper. He leaned against the wall and wrote something on the paper before folding it up and putting it in the envelope. He sealed it and waved it at me. "I'm going to pin this to your empty bulletin board in there. At the end of the season, we'll see exactly how good I am."

  I'd started smiling before he'd even begun talking. "How often are you right?"

  "I'd say fifty/fifty."

  I laughed and waved his ridiculousness away. "Is my surprise ready for tonight?"

  "Absolutely, we'll see how many show up."

  "I just told them about the movie," Troy whispered as he waved me over from the shadows alongside the house. "They groaned when I gave them the title."

  I crept over to him and let him usher me down into the basement of the main house. "How many do you think will figure it out?"

  "I don't know. None of them looked too enthused." He gestured to the seats in the media room. "You might not get anybody," he said as one of the production team walked through with the disk. "I told them to be down here in fifteen minutes if they wanted to watch."

  "Okay," I said with a sigh
. "If no one shows, I guess I'll just have a quiet couple of hours to myself."

  He smiled. "Enjoy."

  "I will."

  Someone from production walked over and placed a tub of popcorn and some sodas on the end table, trying to finish setting the scene.

  I glanced up at the seventy-five inch TV and smiled. Since I was all but being held as a hostage, not being allowed out in public without my merry cast of cameras in tow, I couldn't see a way to go see the newest chick-flick at the theatre. And it had looked really good to me in the trailers. So, being as connected as my producer friends are, they got a copy of it for me to privately screen. All of the guys had been told it would be playing downstairs and that the price of admission was a two-second blurb at the end, of their opinion, that could be shown on the show as part of a cross-promotion. But, they were also told that watching the movie, or opting out of it, was totally their choice.

  Troy never mentioned that I would be here to watch it as well.

  I waited until eight, alone, until the movie started. No one came down. I wrinkled my nose over the backfiring of my idea just before I decided to make the best of it. I got up and pulled the couch up close to the screen, to make it feel more like a true movie theatre. Then I grabbed extra throw pillows from the other seating in the room, and got comfortable.

  The movie was just getting underway when I heard soft laughter at the doorway. "I was in the shower when it occurred to me that the only reason they could have for showing a chick-flick down here was if there was an actual chick in the room to watch it."

  I hit the pause button and tilted my head to look over the back of the couch to see Mike lounging against the doorframe. "And are you the only one that had this thought occur to them?"

  "They all looked pretty occupied with video games when I snuck down the back stairs on my way here."

  I moved to the center cushion on the couch and decided that if one of us didn't use this opportunity to make a move, then it was likely not going to happen. "Are you staying to watch?"

  "If you're here, I'm here."

  "Then come cuddle with me," I said with a pat on the cushion next to me.

  He gave me a grin and pulled away from the frame to come take the offered seat. He put his arm across the back of the couch and I snuggled into his side. Once I was settled, he shifted his arm to drape across my shoulders. I hit the play button, we focused on the movie, and were sucked into the storyline.

  The cameramen adjusted their positions to settle in for the two of us to be boring for a while. I think they actually started paying attention to the movie themselves.

  Mike started shifting his weight from one hip to the other. I sat up to let him adjust positions.

  "Sorry, muscle cramp," he said.

  "No problem." I hit the pause button, stood, and grabbed our empty cans of soda. "I'm going to use the bathroom, you get comfy."

  When I came back, he had removed the prosthetic and stretched the remainder of his leg against the back cushions, his foot stayed on the floor and he had tucked a throw pillow up against his torso for me.

  "You said to get comfy," he reminded me.

  I nodded and sat, finding a comfortable position leaning back against his chest. "I meant it."

  Having settled, we finished the movie. To his credit, he didn't utter a single complaint or mocking remark as the female lead got her happy ending. The credits rolled and I didn't sit up. The screen went black and I didn't move. I just waited, listening to his breathing.

  He gave my shoulders a squeeze and I could feel him waiting for me to do something, anything, like sit up and move away.

  I twisted in his hold, but didn't straighten. Our eyes met and I waited.

  "Did you want something?" he asked.

  "Yeah," I answered, our eyes not wavering from the other's.

  He reached up, cupped the back of my head, pulled me forward, and kissed my freaking forehead. Again.

  He pulled back and his smug expression was met with one of frustration.

  He smiled. "That's all you get for now."

  "Why?"

  "You have seven other guys kissing you on your mouth. I'd rather be where none of them has gone before. And as far as I know, none of them aim for your forehead."

  "Mike..."

  "I don't go around sharing my woman. I just don't. I know what I signed up for, but I'm having a tough time with it. The only thing I can come up with is to cover different physical territory than they are."

  I let that roll around in my head for a moment. "So your answer is to claim a body part of lesser prominence than what they have claimed?"

  He gave me a simmering look. "Would you rather I claim an area of greater intrigue?"

  I dodged that question. "I'm wondering why you haven't tried."

  "Because if you cross into anything more than kissing with me, it opens the door to you letting others claim the same spot. I certainly don't want that."

  "How long do you figure on following through with this plan?"

  "Until I can deal with the idea of sharing that mouth with the others."

  I pulled away and stood, gathering our empty cans to throw into the recycling bin.

  "You're mad."

  "I'm not mad," I muttered.

  "You're something," he said, his eyes following my movements.

  "I'm irritated."

  "Why?"

  "Because I've gotten past figuring out who I have a friendly connection to. That brings us to the eight who are still here. Then, I moved on to figuring out who I have a romantic connection with. That's going to knock a couple more guys out of here soon. And now, I'm trying hard to figure out who I have a spark with."

  "Spark?"

  "Heat. Who makes me want to melt against them? Your little no kissing rule of self-preservation, which I respect, is interfering with my ability to determine that."

  "Okay. I hear you. But you're saying there are a couple other guys you can let go of, for sure, right?"

  "Yes."

  "So we still have two more eliminations to go through before you're hard-pressed to figure out who else can go. Which should give us two weeks, and getting down to six guys, before it's a real problem for you."

  "In theory."

  "All right. I'll use that time to work on getting past the idea of wanting to pulverize the other guys for touching you. And with any luck, we'll find that heat. Deal?"

  "Deal," I said with a reluctant sigh.

  We said our goodnights, with him giving me a playful grin when he leaned forward to kiss my forehead again, before we went upstairs and I snuck out of a side door to head back to my cottage.

  It was hard to call the evening a wasted effort. Mike might have been the only one to show up and still not kiss me, but I did learn a few things. One, Mike is interested in being more than a friend. Two, he's also the only one who's picked up on enough of my personality to realize that the movie wasn't about cross-promotion, it was about my scheming for stolen time. Three, the man was jealous, but reasonable. And four, when our needs differed, he was ready to hear me out and propose a compromise. - I don't know if you can ask for much more than that.

  Thursday

  "Who's the victim today?" Jared asked with a wink as I forked a bite of breakfast into my mouth.

  I smiled up at him. "You."

  "Awesome." He left the room to go change.

  I looked around at the six remaining guys in the room and noticed there was a suitor missing. "Where's Trevor?"

  Looks were exchanged around the room and my eyes followed them all.

  "All right, someone talk. Now," I said.

  Even the camera and sound guys in the corner of the room shifted on their feet.

  Phillip sighed. "He woke up in a mood, let some words fly, and then decided to separate himself from the group."

  "Where is he?"

  "He's in his room," Ardent answered.

  I put my fork down and headed for the stairs. No one else moved. I could hear their
silence follow me up the steps and down the hall.

  Everyone's names were on the doors, for benefit of the camera crews. I didn't see his name on any of the second floor rooms, so I went up to the third and found it. I gave a warning knock and stepped inside the room.

  Trevor was sitting in a chair, staring out the window. I quietly moved to go lean against the windowsill, deliberately putting myself in his line of sight. He blinked a few times and shook his head as his mind came back into the present and he focused on me.

  "Hey," he said.

  "Hey. I hear you woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning."

  "Yeah, you could say that."

  "Yeah, I get moody sometimes too. Mine's PMS, you got PMS?"

  He grinned. "I really don't think so."

  "So what makes you such a yeller sometimes?"

  "I come from a loud family. And they curse, a lot. I don't even realize when I'm getting loud and the language has surpassed politically correct boundaries. It's when they start looking at each other with odd looks on their faces that I realize and pull myself away."

  "Why pull away instead of just going silent?"

  "Because once I get started, it's hard to stop. So I walk away."

  It'd sounded like a rehearsed answer to me. I took a step closer to him. "But you're okay now?"

  He let his gaze travel my body and he reached out for my hand. "Yeah."

  I let him pull me down onto his lap. Our mouths collided in a quick but thorough kiss. "I've got to go," I whispered against his neck, after I'd pulled away.

  He sighed. "Yeah. Go."

  I gave him a quick hug, and left the room to find the bathroom. I took one step into the bathroom and walked right back out. I went down the back set of steps and snuck into the ground floor bathroom that production staff was responsible for cleaning. I touched up my makeup, smoothed down my hair, and set back out into the kitchen.

  "Did all go well?" Jared asked.

  "Yep. You ready to go?"

  "Absolutely."

  I made my goodbyes with the other guys and Jared and I headed out to the waiting car.

  "Where are we going?" Jared asked after we'd buckled ourselves in and the driver pulled away from the curb.