by Lizzie Shane
“I appreciate the ambition, but I do have to be back for my lessons on Monday.”
He grimaced. “Yeah, and I was only able to swing one day off. I guess it’s just Grand Junction, then.” He pointed the Jeep west.
Caitlyn leaned against the window, letting the chill of the glass seep into the skin of her arm even as the warm air from the vents blew her hair back from her face. They were only fifteen minutes from home and already she felt lighter, freer. No cameras, no comebacks, no one staring. Just her, Will, and the road disappearing beneath the tires.
She only felt bad that her messy life had spilled over into Will’s and made him into a fugitive as well.
“I’m really sorry about all this.”
“Did you arrange for those pictures to be taken?”
“Of course not.”
“Did you want to be gossiped about from Sacramento to Savannah?”
“No, obviously, but—”
“Then it isn’t your fault. I lost my shit the other night, but it was more because I found out about the first article from my ex than because of what it implied about us. I shouldn’t have gone off on you like that.”
“This is the ex-fiancé?”
“Yeah. It’s no excuse, but it was definitely a trigger. Six months later and the sound of her voice still makes me want to spit nails.”
Caitlyn studied his profile, the way his hair flopped over his forehead. “Are you still in love with her?”
He laughed, shooting her a look out of the corner of his eye. “Don’t hold back, Caitlyn. Ask me anything.”
“Sorry. It’s the reality television. I feel like I have the right to everyone’s secrets now.” She said it flippantly, but it was a bald-faced lie and they both knew it. She’d asked him because he was Will, and even though they’d only known each other a few weeks—not even a month—she felt like she could ask him anything. They were just easy with each other.
And she knew she hadn’t offended him with the question. Just startled him.
“No,” he said finally. “I’m not in love with her anymore. I’m angry with her, but it’s because it feels like she stole the life we planned right out from under me not because I’m harboring some secret desire to win her back. Honestly, I can’t imagine getting back together with her now.”
“Does she want you back?” Because what woman wouldn’t? “Is that why she called when she saw you on TMZ?”
“No. Nothing like that. We have a… legal issue.”
“Like an annulment?”
“No. We never got as far as a ceremony. But I did buy us a house. Which she now lives in. With my ex-best friend. And since I’m not going to get raise my kids there, it seemed reasonable to me that they should buy me out of my down payment. They disagreed. Now our lawyers are disagreeing. And it looks like they’re going to lose, so she’s trying to ‘work something out’ with me.”
“So when you said she stole the life you wanted out from under you—”
“I pretty much meant literally, yeah. I moved in below you so I wouldn’t have to be a twenty-eight year old living with his parents.” He hooked his wrist over the wheel, surprisingly casual for one talking about his broken heart. “Hey, speaking of the chalet, did Les talk to you?”
“Les, the landlord? Last time I spoke with him he said he’d take care of Dale’s bill. I haven’t heard anything else. Why?”
“Apparently the insurance company is dicking him around and he’s decided it’s too much of a hassle to own a rental property. He called me to see if I wanted to buy the place. I figured he’d do the same for you.”
“He might have. I had my phone off most of yesterday.” Her head whirled with the heady idea of buying her place. She’d never owned anything. Never had anywhere that was entirely hers. Yes, her mother had lived in the same Upper East Side apartment for years, but Caitlyn had spent most of those years traveling and it had never felt like home.
When she’d first moved to Tuller Springs, she hadn’t wanted to buy. She’d had the money, but she’d hoped she would buy her first house with someone—kind of like Will had before it blew up in his face. Now…
Daniel, Will… her love life had never been more complicated and her future more uncertain – so why was the idea of buying her place and slamming down some roots suddenly so appealing?
“Do you want to buy it?” she asked Will.
“Not particularly,” Will admitted. “I can’t afford it until I get my money back on the other house, and even if I could, the lower level has a little bit of a dungeon thing going on. Your apartment is all sunshine and happiness, but mine is like something out of an Indiana Jones movie—all doom and darkness. What about you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” She grinned. “Don’t worry. I’d be a good landlord. I might even give you discounted rent if you teach me to ski.”
His head whipped around, though the Jeep stayed steady in its lane. “Tell me you’ve been skiing before.”
“A sport where I could break an arm? Not exactly encouraged for concert pianists.”
“Oh, honey. You haven’t lived.” He grinned, all wicked promise, and for a moment she forgot they were talking about skiing. “I’ll take you next week. You’ll love it.”
I’ll bet I will.
Caitlyn was grateful most of Will’s attention was taken by the road. She didn’t think she could handle the full force of his sex appeal aimed at her right now. She squirmed in the seat, pointing the heater vents away from her—she was quite warm enough on her own. She forced her attention away from the mountain of solid muscle in the driver’s seat and toward the sharp, familiar lines of the mountains outside the car.
Nothing to see here. Just two friends out for a drive. Nothing to see.
But so much to feel…
The woman sitting in his passenger seat was driving Will crazy. He’d been half hard for the last hour. Not that she’d been doing anything particularly seductive. Apparently all she had to do was sit there, with her legs tucked up under her on the seat and her auburn curls twisting over her shoulders and he wanted her.
Who was he kidding? All she had to do was breathe and he wanted her.
He told himself it was because she was off limits. Or because he’d been seduced by her music long before he met her. He could tell himself any number of reasons, make up a thousand excuses, but the truth was he wanted her. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it but wait.
She took the contracts she’d signed very seriously. Until the show was over, he had to keep his hands off. But that didn’t stop him watching her out of the corner of his eye as they drove. She had a little half smile on her lips and her eyes were bright and open, with none of that guarded nervousness she’d had since the first TMZ spread hit.
This had been a good idea. A road trip to nowhere. Something to clear his head and chase the shadows out of her eyes.
“Do you think I’m too fragile to go bungee jumping?” Her fingers tapped out a quick, complicated rhythm against her thigh.
The question came out of the blue and Will laughed, until he realized Caitlyn wasn’t smiling. “Wait, are you serious?”
“I’m an adventurous girl. Just because I’ve never done much of anything and I’m sort of shy doesn’t mean I’m not brave.“
“You already know I think you’re brave. And of course you can go bungee jumping. And sky diving and whatever the hell else you want to do. Did someone tell you that you couldn’t?”
She pulled a face. “I just feel like that’s how the world sees me sometimes.” He had a feeling the world was code for that dickhead on the television show. “Like I’m made of glass or something and I’ll shatter at the first sign of strain. There are all these crazy adventurous dates on Marrying Mister Perfect and I never got to go on any of them. I’m not saying I wanted to jello wrestle on national television—”
Will choked, nearly swallowing his tongue at the mental image of Caitlyn, in a bikini, dripping jello. Dear God.
> “I just don’t want them to be right. I don’t want to be the kind of girl who can only survive if you keep her up on a pedestal.”
“You aren’t that girl. They aren’t right.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, and there was such heartbreaking vulnerability in the question he had to do something.
“Positive. And we’re going to prove it.” He flashed her a wicked grin. “I have an idea.”
The highway-side bar had a corrugated metal roof and cattle horns sticking out of the door. Caitlyn eyed it dubiously. Will hadn’t told her what his idea was, but this place looked like the kind of bar where the peanut shells were permanently stuck to the floor thanks to the help of bodily fluids she didn’t want to think about. Not exactly her speed.
“I’m not much of a drinker,” she murmured, her steps slow and reluctant as they approached the door and those long white horns, her sense of adventure tamping down somewhat. She might want to go zip-lining, but getting in a bar fight with a motorcycle gang was an experience she’d just as soon forgo.
Will grinned and snagged her hand. “We aren’t here to drink.”
There was no bouncer guarding the door at two-thirty on a Saturday afternoon. Will shouldered it open and held it for her as the stench of the place—sweat and beer and French fries, not entirely unpleasant—assaulted her nostrils.
“Then what are we—Oh.”
The bar was built around three rings – two smaller ones on either side and a giant one in the center. And in the center of each ring was a massive mechanical bull. Two of them were silent and stationary now, but a woman was rocking back and forth on the smaller one to the left, laughing and flinging one arm back and forth.
It looked jarring and uncomfortable… and completely outside her comfort zone. And fun.
Caitlyn swallowed. “I’ll have that drink now.”
Will grinned.
“You hold on here.”
“Here,” Caitlyn echoed, squeezing with a white-knuckled grip.
“If you’re falling, don’t try to fight it, just let yourself slide right down to the pads.”
“The pads,” she repeated, nodding jerkily.
She was doing this. Caitlyn Gregg, child prodigy who might as well have reserved as her middle name, was straddling the padded back of a mechanical bull in a virtually abandoned honky tonk outside Grand Junction. She might have lost her mind.
She lifted her head and her eyes locked on Will, draped over the rail, a little smile quirking his lips as he watched. When he caught her gaze, he winked, broader smile flashing, and gave her a thumbs up.
The operator looked up at her. “You ready for this?”
Caitlyn grinned, feeling the start of something fierce and wild inside her for the first time in her life. “Absolutely.”
The bull began to rock.
“I think we can safely say bull-riding is not one of your many skills.”
“I was awesome,” Caitlyn insisted as they crunched across the snow in the parking lot together, back to his Jeep.
She’d been terrible. Beyond terrible. She’d squealed and tumbled off the bull after about two seconds—when they still had it on the kiddie setting. The operator had actually said he’d never seen anyone fall off that fast.
But she’d done it. She gotten up there, wrapped her legs around the dang thing, and held on for dear life. Her mother would have a coronary if she knew.
Caitlyn felt like she could fly.
She wanted to fling herself into his arms and—
No. Not that.
Things with Daniel were unresolved and even in Grand Junction there was no guarantee that one of the eleven other people in the bar hadn’t recognized them. They could even now be watched by a camera phone. But she felt like her skin would burst trying to hold all the emotion in her body and if she could just throw herself against him, he could absorb it all like a lightning rod.
Then he caught her hand.
And wham. Just that. Just his palm against hers, but she felt that skin-to-skin touch from her scalp to her toe nails, like a circuit connected making her a conduit for electric emotion. She was surging with it. No one and nothing else had ever made her feel this alive. Nothing and no one else had ever tried.
His grip was electricity, his hand the only thing tethering her down so she didn’t float right away.
Will opened the Jeep door and she was forced to relinquish his hand. She rubbed her singed palm against her jeans as he rounded the hood and hopped in. He backed out of the parking space, teasing her about her bull-riding prowess—or lack thereof. She replied, barely aware of the words, just the effervescent tone.
Then they were on the highway, pointed back toward reality, and his hand slid across the divide, catching hers, resting their linked hands on the emergency brake, and the circuit completed again.
Just that. But it was everything.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Miranda pushed herself up the last hill, breathing hard, feeling the muscles in her thighs straining with the ascent, each footstep a struggle. She hated running with a passion that she normally reserved for telemarketers and the incompetent. If not for the mental clarity that came afterward and the need to keep her body from becoming a saggy mess from too many hours in the editing bay, she would happily never run again.
The pavement jarred through the soles of her shoes and she glared at a woman loping the opposite direction on the path with long bounding strides as elegant and effortless as a freaking gazelle. Miranda mentally planned the gazelle’s murder and slow evisceration until she realized another pair of footsteps were thudding in rhythm with hers.
She swung her head around to the runner in her blind spot and glared. “Are you stalking me?”
Bennett—another of the it’s-so-easy-and-I-look-amazing-doing-it gazelles—arched a single brow. “I showed you this route. You know very well it’s my regular Sunday run. I figured you wanted to see me.”
She glowered at him—the gorgeous and effortless asshole Bennett—and realized he was right. Her subconscious was a piece of work. She’d been pissed this morning for no reason and needed to run, but not just anywhere. Here. Where she was sure to see him.
The show was going well. The ratings were through the roof, seriously sensational—thank you, Elena—though public sentiment was starting to shift against Daniel. She’d seen that coming. And it would only continue. She’d known it in her gut even as she’d fought against it, trying to force herself to believe that he was a nice guy and he and Caitlyn would ride off into the sunset together when all of it was over.
She knew that wasn’t going to happen now. She’d seen the pictures.
Not the ones of Daniel and the women. No. It was the innocent little picture of Caitlyn and the man she said was just a friend. Her neighbor. She was just holding his arm in the shot, not even looking at him, her face shyly averted.
Miranda had seen that and she’d known. Her spidey sense had gone crazy. That same romantic spidey sense that had predicted Jack and Lou, and Marcy and Craig—though she’d been a little behind the ball on that one. The same spidey sense that had never made a freaking peep during Daniel and Caitlyn’s season. Because they weren’t really in love.
But if they didn’t end up together, if there was no happily-ever-after, if love didn’t conquer all, did that mean Bennett was right? Was Miranda part of what was wrong with society?
“I take it this isn’t a truce,” he said.
Miranda was panting too hard to give a decent response.
She stopped running, planting her feet. Bennett jogged a few more steps before he stopped as well, turning to face her with that patient, curious expression she’d used to love and now wanted to throw things at. Nothing to throw here.
“Why do you hate my show?” she demanded. “I realize we aren’t you. We aren’t finding needy families and building them homes. Nor are we finding the next big dance star and giving them a shot at their lifelong dream,” she snapped, rattling off
two of his biggest hits, “but we’re doing something worthwhile, aren’t we? Isn’t love worthwhile?”
His expression tightened. “If your show were about love, I’d be all for it, but it’s not. Not as it is now. It’s about pandering. Cheap entertainment.”
“So it’s not the show concept you disapprove of. It’s me. It’s the way I’m running it. Because I’m cheap.”
He ground his teeth, getting in her face. “Miranda, would you stop twisting my words?”
“I’m so very sorry,” she said with acid sweetness. “I’m sure you mean pandering as a compliment.”
The words were even more biting because she was afraid he was right.
She was starting to feel, more and more, that although she’d had two seasons end in genuine love, giving her a sense of righteousness about what she was doing with the show, that Bennett freaking Lang might actually have a point about the exploitative nature of reality dating shows.
It was Elena that was killing her.
The delightful members of the press were eviscerating her. She’d been cleverly tagged the “Slutty Suitorette” on a variety of blogs and the damn name had even started trending on Twitter. She was a hashtag. Elena hadn’t been alone in that Jacuzzi, but no one was calling Daniel a slut. No, it was only Elena who was dirty because she’d dared make out with a man she was dating.
It just didn’t sit right with Miranda. The injustice of it.
“They know what they are signing up for,” she said, but she could hear the defensiveness in her own voice.
“That isn’t the point.” Bennett held his tongue as a group of runners jogged past. When they were out of earshot, he took her arm and tugged her to the side of the trail. “When you started with Marrying Mister Perfect, you didn’t want it to be just another dating show. Do you remember that? You weren’t calling all the shots yet, but you still managed to make something real with Jack and Lou. Something that was about more than sensationalism and sex appeal. When you got promoted I was so incredibly proud of you, but what have you done with it? We have a responsibility to be better, Miranda. When a horrific accident happens, now the question isn’t whether or not we have the footage, because there is always footage these days, the question is whether or not we should show it. Does seeing it benefit us? Is it right?”
