by Lizzie Shane
“You’re equating my show to a horrific accident?”
“Do you remember when we started fighting? Do you remember why?”
Her throat grew tight and her skin suddenly felt like it was stretching over her cheekbones, not quite fitting right. “I was working too much. You didn’t want me to travel with the show.”
He shook his head. “No. That was a blip. It was Marcy’s father. You called me for advice on how to bully the hospital staff into allowing you unrestricted filming access inside the hospital. While your star’s father was on the verge of death and she was going through the worst experience of her life, you wanted to make sure you could get it all on film.”
“The audience loves that stuff. Everyone wants to see the picture of Jackie Kennedy after JFK. The human drama of it. The power of that moment. We connect with it.”
“That moment doesn’t belong to the rest of the world. It’s hers.” He grimaced, shaking his head with disgust. “There’s no such thing as privacy anymore.”
“I shut off the cameras,” Miranda protested. “I almost got fired because I didn’t film in the hospital and I missed several pivotal turning points in last season’s romance because of it. Wallace pitched a fit. Hell, we had to have Pendleton explain why Darius was no longer around because we didn’t even film her kicking him off.”
“You still used the shot you got before you decided to take the high road.”
She knew the shot he meant. Her cameras had caught last season’s Miss Right and her favorite Suitor together in an unguarded moment. He’d comforted her, scooping her up and carrying her through the hospital corridors. The gorgeous image had become one of the iconic moments of the season. Powerful and raw. Real.
“I was nominated for an Emmy because of that shot.”
“I know. That doesn’t mean you should have taken it.” He shook his head angrily. “I still don’t understand why you do this. Why this show? You’re so good. You could do anything.”
“Because this is what I want to do,” she snapped, temper fraying. “Because I want to believe in love. I want to believe it conquers all. This show may be ridiculous, but it’s about love and that isn’t ridiculous. People make fun of us because we’re fluffy, girly television, but why does everything have to be war and backstabbing? Do you know how many shows there are about people solving murders? Not to mention the news with all the actual wars and death. Shows like Marrying Mister Perfect might be the only things on television that are actively trying to put love on the airwaves. And yes, sometimes people get hurt, but that’s love and the way we do it may be cheesy and melodramatic sometimes, because we turn a microscope on a moment in people’s lives when they aren’t rational and clearheaded because they are falling in love and we’re all idiots when we do that.” She shook her head bitterly. “I certainly was.”
She’d been an idiot to love him. The man who could never say it back.
“Miranda.”
“No.” She turned back toward the parking lot. “Enjoy your run, Bennett. We’re done here.”
“Miranda,” he called, jogging after her. “The job I’ve been trying to get you to take. It’s mine.”
That froze her in her tracks. She turned, trying to keep her dumbstruck feeling from showing on her face. “What?”
“I’m retiring. Stepping down as EP of American Dance Star.”
“And you want me to take over.” It wouldn’t compute. “You just told me you think what I do is shit.”
“I told you I think you’re better than what you’re doing. And you are.”
She couldn’t parse through that right now. Her brain was entirely occupied by six little words.
Executive Producer of American Dance Star.
Holy shit. She’d dreamed of that job, never thinking she’d have a shot at it because no one could replace Bennett. She wanted his job with a greedy lust that was almost indecent. But… “Why? Why retire? You’re young.”
“Old enough,” he said with a wry laugh. “I just don’t have the stomach for this business anymore. And I certainly don’t have the killer instinct.”
He’d just been giving her shit about her killer instinct and now he wanted her to take over because of it? And the idea that Bennett Lang, who lived his job as much as she did was actually going to retire. “You can’t be serious. What would you do with yourself?”
“I don’t know yet. Find a hobby, maybe. Teach ethics to children who have zero understanding of privacy thanks to Facebook. Something.” He shrugged. “It might not stick, but I hope it does. I need some time away.”
Something hard and heavy shifted in her stomach. She couldn’t imagine an LA without Bennett in it. “What do you mean time away? Away where?”
“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “I guess I hoped you…” He trailed off. “It doesn’t matter.”
Her heart—which had stupidly lifted at his words—fell again. Of course he wouldn’t say he wanted her to have some say in what he did. Bennett didn’t put himself out there like that. And she was sick of being the only one out on an emotional limb.
“Are you only offering me this in an attempt to get me back in your bed?”
Anger at the suggestion flushed his cheekbones. “This isn’t a casting couch, Miranda. You’re the best for the job. I want you back but there are no conditions. You can pick one or the other or both.”
“Or neither,” she added.
His eyes narrowed further. “Don’t screw up your career because you’re mad at me. Take some time to think about it. Until the end of your season, if you want. But then I’d like an answer.”
“To which job offer? EP of American Dance Star or your mistress?”
“You weren’t my mistress,” he snapped.
Well, she hadn’t been his lover. Love was in the freaking word and he wouldn’t say it.
She just looked at him.
“Both,” he growled.
“Thanks for the offers, Bennett. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
She waited for him to say something more—to tell her that he wanted more from her than a qualified producer and a willing bed warmer. To say he needed her mind and her heart and her as his equal in every way. But Bennett just nodded, albeit reluctantly, and turned back to his run.
Leaving her with her thoughts in knots and her heart in shambles.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Oh Caitlyn, oh baby…”
Caitlyn watched herself making out with Daniel on the television, mildly nauseated. She couldn’t help the sickening sensation that she was cheating.
Cheating with Daniel, the man she was still at least nominally engaged to, on Will, the man she hadn’t done more than hold hands with on Saturday.
When did this become my life?
It didn’t help matters when Mimi tilted her head to the side and asked, “Have you noticed that he calls all of you ‘baby’? It’s like his go-to endearment.”
Caitlyn was going to explode.
Daniel was avoiding her calls—doubtless convinced that she would watch tonight’s episode in Barbados, where they danced under the stars and made out like teenagers, and all would be forgiven. Will had been swamped with work—apparently the shots of the two of them in gossip rags all over the country had made Tuller Springs into a tourist destination and the mountain was doing better business than it had in years. Which meant more ski patrol hours, more lessons, and, for her, less time with Will.
He’d held her hand the entire way back on Saturday. Even when she dozed off against the window for almost an hour, when she woke up, he still held her hand, tucked safely in his. It was probably the single most romantic moment of her life, waking up with her hand in his like that—and that included the moment of Daniel’s proposal.
They were so different, Will and Daniel. Even the way they talked about how they’d found their careers. Daniel’s story was touching—a teacher changed his life by helping him overcome his dyslexia and now he wanted to do that for other chi
ldren—but he’d told it so many times by now that it sounded like a line. There was nothing real left in the words. They’d been trotted out too many times.
But Will’s story, it was just the story of him. A story of stumbling around and piecing it together and there it was, take it or leave it. He wasn’t trying to impress anyone. He didn’t expect anyone to be impressed or moved. He was the man he was. And she loved…
That.
Not him. Goodness, it was far too early to be thinking the L word about him.
Wasn’t it?
She was simply tired of the image games. Tired of rehearsed speeches. Tired of being put on a pedestal.
And she was going to explode if she couldn’t talk to someone about her crazy messed up life.
Caitlyn leaned over to the remote in Mimi’s hand and punched the pause button, making the screen freeze with Daniel’s hands grabbing her ass. Lovely.
“Will took me bull riding on Saturday.”
“Okay.” Mimi gave her a look. “Is that a euphemism for something?”
“No, like actual bull riding. A mechanical bull. I was awful. It was incredible.”
“Okay.” The cautious my-best-friend-is-a-crazy-person look stayed firmly on Mimi’s face as Caitlyn stared at her, a little manically. The truth was bubbling up inside her, pushing, pulling, screaming to get out.
Five bajillion dollar lawsuit, here I come.
“Mimi, I have to tell you something. Something that I absolutely cannot tell you, but I’m going to explode if I can’t talk to someone. Swear secrecy. You can’t even tell Ty.”
Mimi’s eyes got huge. “Are you pregnant? Is it Will’s? Or, oh my God, Daniel’s?”
“Swear!”
“I swear, I swear! On my kids, I’ll never tell a soul, I promise!”
Caitlyn’s held breath whooshed out. And the all of the words chased that breath out on a rush.
“I won. Daniel picked me. He proposed and I said yes, even though I was panicking and I’m pretty sure the only reason I agreed to marry him is some sort of modified Stockholm Syndrome that happens during the show, but I did it, I agreed, and now whenever I try to break it off with him, he’s changing the subject or dodging my calls and he wants to get married on the show, in front of the world, not later, but in less than two months when the live reunion special airs. And he said before that he just wanted to be a normal elementary school teacher from Indiana, but now he’s living in LA and he wants me to move out there and he’s been talking to my mother who’s been talking to the LA Philharmonic about me being a resident artist or something and they both want me to get back into performing which sounds like death, but he isn’t listening to me and I’m starting to wonder if he ever did or if he just built this image of me as the delicate flower who needed the sunshine of his support to flourish as a performer again or something—that analogy didn’t quite work the way I wanted.”
Mimi gawked, mouth open, eyes wide. “No wonder you set your house on fire.”
“And then Will. Oh God, I am so freaking crazy about Will. But if I have a public relationship, then I can be sued for breach of contract for more money than I’ve made in my entire life. And I’ve told him that, but when he holds my hand all I want to do is jump on him and ride him like a mechanical bull—only for longer since I fell off after like two seconds. And of course he has no idea that Daniel picked me and wanted to marry me and that I, kind of, you know, did it with him, though it was only that one time and it wasn’t very good and I hadn’t even met Will yet, but now I feel like I cheated on him with the guy that I’m engaged to and every time I see an episode where Daniel is all romantic toward me and I fall for it like a sap because I was completely caught up in that crazy, stupid world, I am terrified that Will is going to see what an idiot I was and decide I’m not worth the trouble and dump me even though we aren’t even dating because I’m still technically—I think, I’m not entirely sure—engaged to someone else.”
Caitlyn fell back, deflated after all the words poured out. “So that happened.”
Mimi blinked at her, bug eyed. “Do you have any more of that vodka?”
Caitlyn and Mimi sat side by side on the floor, propped against the couch, not far from where she’d lain on top of Will the other night when she’d felt like all of her erogenous zones were eagerly reporting for duty. The vodka bottle—not quite empty, but close—was wedged between their legs and they took turns refilling the glass tumblers Caitlyn had grabbed from her cabinet. The glasses had started out filled with ice, but it had long since melted and now they were sipping the sugary liquor neat.
“I wonder if this is what Daniel feels like,” Caitlyn mused.
“Drunk?”
“No,” she elbowed her friend. “He has all these women competing for him and he gets to pick which one he wants, but if he doesn’t pick the right way at the right time or whatever, he could lose the one he really wants.”
“You were the one he really wanted,” Mimi reminded her.
They’d watched the remainder of the show in bits and pieces, pausing whenever Mimi had a question or Caitlyn had one of her dubious epiphanies. Now she rolled her head back to rest on the edge of the couch and stared at his face where they’d frozen it on the screen. He really was handsome. And earnest.
“Do you think he’ll be sad when I break it off with him?”
“Didn’t you already break it off?” Mimi slumped down more, blowing at her bangs and watching the neon purple strands flutter back down toward her face.
“Sort of. I think I’m going to have to be more firm. He’s slippery.”
“Did you love him?”
“Will?”
“No, Daniel. Wait.” Mimi’s hand slapped down on her knee. “You’re in love with Will?”
“Shhhhh! He could be home.” Her head swung around as she stared suspiciously at the floor. She knew he could hear her play. She’d never asked if he heard more than that. “I’m not in love with Will. I barely know him.”
“You like him! You totally do!”
“Shhsht! We were talking about Daniel. And how heartbroken he’s going to be when I break it off with him because he loves me. Though it never feels like he loves me. It feels like he has this idea of me and he keeps trying to shove me into that box.”
“I can’t believe he wants you to leave Tuller Springs,” Mimi said indignantly. “I’m here. Clearly you have to stay.”
“I would have left anyway if I’d gone to live with him in Indiana.” She wagged her feet on the rug, distracted by her toes. “Do your toes feel weird?”
“No. But my lips are numb. Look.” Mimi smacked her lips at Caitlyn and giggled.
They might have gone overboard on the vodka. A fact she was probably going to regret in about seven hours when her first lesson of the day arrived.
Mimi’s cell phone rang and Caitlyn heard her answer it, as if from a great distance. “Ty! I’m drunk! Come fetch me.”
“Your husband is going to think I’m a bad influence,” she said when Mimi hung up the phone.
Mimi patted her arm, missing the first time, but managing a few good pats after she finally made contact. “He knows me better than to suspect anyone is the bad influence but me.” She frowned. “Did that make sense?”
Caitlyn sighed, gazing at the undeniably pretty face on the screen. “Do you think he really loves me? Daniel? After that scene with Elena…”
She didn’t have to say which scene. Mimi grimaced.
Daniel hadn’t precisely trash talked the other girls, but he’d made it clear that Elena was the sex goddess and he felt nothing for any of the other women that could remotely compare to the pure passion he felt for her. No wonder Elena had always looked so annoyingly confident at Elimination Ceremonies.
But the moment that had really made Caitlyn’s stomach churn was when Daniel asked Elena not to say anything to the others about his lack of sexual feelings for them. Their little secret.
“Was he lying about not having sexy fe
elings for me? I mean he lied to everyone. By omission. And yeah, he had to because of the rules of the show, but he asked Elena to lie for him too. Which is skeezy. Unless he was lying to her? But why would he do that?”
“That wasn’t Daniel talking. That was Daniel’s Little Friend. And men’s penises lie.”
“So his heart could love me while his penis loved only Elena?”
“Hey. You’re hot. His penis may have grown to love you.”
“You’re right. He could have had a change of heart. He might really love me. And I’m being awful and unforgiving if he loves me, aren’t I? I should give him another chance, shouldn’t I?”
“If he truly loved you, he would never ask you to leave me.”
“What if he came here? What if we bought this house and lived here forever?”
Mimi pursed her lips. “I don’t think Will would like it.”
“No. But what if Will doesn’t really want me? We’re just friends, you know. And he saw me when I almost set my hair on fire with the veil. Why would he want me?”
“Because you’re awesome, obviously.” Mimi slung her arm around Caitlyn’s shoulders, a move that only worked because Caitlyn was three-quarters of the way to laying on the floor. “Don’t worry about Will. Just worry about telling Mister Perfect there that you don’t want to get married and move to Tinseltown. The rest will sort itself out.”
Caitlyn nodded, the weight of Mimi’s wisdom making her head feel heavy. It would all work out.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Never again.”
Caitlyn woke with a groan and her second Wednesday-morning hangover of the month.
She was still on the living room floor, though some kind soul had shoved a pillow underneath her head and set a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin on the floor in front of her—just far enough away that she wouldn’t knock it over in her sleep. Ty probably. She didn’t remember him coming to collect Mimi, but he must have at some point since her friend was not sprawled out beside her in a similar state of post-alcohol remorse.
