Romancing Miss Right

by Lizzie Shane

  “Marcy, there’s something I need to tell you—”

  “I swear to God, Craig, if you are really dating that bimbo from San Diego—”

  “It isn’t that.”

  “Then what? What is this big dramatic secret that’s had you being a dick all day?”

  He swallowed. Rubbed the back of his neck. Now he was the one with the nervous ticks. He didn’t want to say it. As soon as he said it, it was real. It was over. They were done. And he wasn’t ready to be done with her yet.

  But he wasn’t sure he ever would be and the clock was ticking. Better now. He’d never have a more perfect opportunity.

  Craig leaned forward, bracing his hands on his knees. “Miranda came to see me the other day with an interesting offer—”

  “Marcy!”

  The distant shout froze the rest of the words in his throat. There was something in it—some edge of fear or urgency that made Craig’s stomach automatically clench with dread. Bad news. Footsteps thudded rapidly down the hallway. A PA appeared in the doorway, out-of-breath, eyes seeking out Marcy’s.

  “It’s your father.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The county hospital was too cold, overly air-conditioned. Marcy wrapped her arms tight around herself, trying to find some warmth, and speed-walked down the corridor away from the ICU where they wouldn’t let her see her father. Her chest felt tight, her face hot. Her eyes ached and burned, but still no tears came. She’d forgotten how to think actual words.

  Heart attack. Surgery. Complications. Wait and see. Prepare yourself…

  She was so good at words, knowing the right thing to say, the right description, but now her thoughts were devoid of words. Only emotion was left. It had cleared out her brain, a flash bomb going off inside her head to incinerate all her coherency and replace it with a sucking void, an empty, confused, achy, echoing chasm of thoughtlessness.

  She didn’t know how to feel yet. She was in a holding pattern, circling in the air above the twin airports of relief and grief, not knowing which was going to clear her to land.

  The corridors weren’t crowded this late at night, but she kept walking. Away, always away. Mama was down in the cafeteria with Laurie and Dinah. They were trying to comfort her with ice cream. Marcy didn’t want to be that far away from her father, separated by floors and floors, in case he woke up. Or in case…

  Her footsteps slapped against the freshly mopped linoleum as distant monitors beeped—as oddly soothing as crickets on a country night. She kept moving until even those sounds faded behind her, turning through a maze of halls until she had no idea where she was anymore.

  She only knew it was quiet. And empty. A tiny stub of a hallway, shooting off another corridor, dead ending in a large window that reflected the white hallway back to her.

  It was after midnight. She wished she could see the moon, or just the blackness of the night outside, but all she saw was her own face, the blank, shell-shocked expression, the shaking of her hands.

  Marcy put her back to the blank wall to her left so she didn’t have to look at her reflection anymore. The wall felt unaccountably good, firm against her spine. She slid down it until her tailbone touched the floor and drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms tight around them.

  She stared straight ahead, looking for something inside her head, some thought, some clue as to what she was supposed to do now, but she only felt blank.

  She couldn’t say how long she sat there, staring sightlessly at the opposite wall and thinking of nothing. The world had evaporated. She had evaporated. Reality was just vapor and mist.

  Until decisive footsteps gave the world shape again. Confident footsteps. Probably a doctor’s. But when the shoes came into view, they were ratty Converse All-Stars with her initials scribbled across the instep in silver Sharpie with a heart.

  The school in Fiji. Some of the girls had wanted to use the new supplies to scribble MH+CC on his shoes.

  Craig.

  He sat beside her with none of Daniel’s compact grace, folding his long limbs awkwardly. Six foot four men were not built to squat on floors. But he didn’t make a single sound of complaint. That wasn’t Craig.

  “Hey,” he said softly. Just that. His arm bumped hers, then sort of nudged and shifted until she was leaning against his arm and it was the most natural thing in the world to let her head tip to the side and find his shoulder.

  He smelled good. Was it wrong to be thinking that right now? Wrong to be so grateful there was nothing antiseptic in his scent?

  “What have you been told?”

  His voice was low. Grim. She’d never heard such ultra-seriousness from him before. He didn’t sound fakey-solicitous or hyper-sympathetic. Craig sounded like he was asking what the weather in Hell was going to be like this week so he would know what to pack because he wasn’t going to let her go there alone. He was here.

  The tears arrived. They streamed silently down her face, hotter even than her flushed cheeks. “They say there’s a fifty-fifty chance he’ll wake up.”

  She felt his nod move through his body. “A coin flip,” he repeated, as if branding the odds in his memory. “What do you need?”

  What did she need? When had Craig become the considerate one? When had he expressed even a passing interest in her needs? No, that wasn’t fair. He wasn’t a bad guy. He was just… frivolous. About everything except his own career.

  But he wasn’t frivolous now. And he needed an answer. One she didn’t have with her brain hollowed out.

  “I don’t know.”

  A feeling, strong and distinct, flitted through her heart and she tried to capture it, to contain it and identify it, like a scientist examining a specimen.

  Guilt.

  Yes. That made sense. She’d done this. She’d put him through the stress of the show for the last several days and the stress of worrying over her for the last several weeks. She knew he didn’t eat well, but she’d brought him artery clogging salami and fried chicken.

  She may not have blocked off his arteries herself, but she’d done her part to make sure it happened.

  A razor-edged sob scratched its way up her throat, leaving bleeding tracks. Swallowing, speaking, they were suddenly too painful to contemplate.

  Craig removed the arm she was leaning against to wrap it around her, pulling her against his side. He crooned nonsense, little nothing syllables that didn’t quite add up to words with a few stray Babys and I knows thrown in for good measure.

  Marcy held onto him, intensely aware of tactile sensations. The softness of his shirt against her forearm, the firmness of his abs beneath the cloth. She pressed her face to his neck. It felt warm to her chilled skin, heated and soothing.

  Craig tucked one arm beneath her knees and lifted her easily, settling her onto his lap and winding both arms around her. He was long limbed, almost gangly, with none of Daniel’s sleek, puma grace, but now she was grateful for that length of limb as he wound them around her, a cocoon of comfort where she finally felt safe to feel.

  As if his warmth was the key, a flood of sensation rushed in to fill the emptiness in her mind. Her fears took shape and suddenly there were a thousand words to describe them, a thousand syringes of doubt with What Ifs as the needles to pierce her skin.

  What if her father never woke up? What if she never got to speak to him again? They’d spoken again after Craig left, but had she told him she loved him? What if that was the last chance she had? He was supposed to be an ever-present force in her life, always there, always big and strong and larger than life. What would she do if he wasn’t there anymore?

  What if he never got to meet the man she was going to marry?

  No, he’s met Craig, a small voice in her heart whispered. A voice she somehow heard over the clatter of what ifs in her brain. Her heart stuttered a beat.

  She didn’t want Daniel. It wouldn’t have been the same to be here with Darius or Aidan or any of the other guys. Only Craig could have given her this cocoon. O
nly Craig – who seemed so flippant and unconcerned about the whole business – had managed to slip past her defenses and carve his name on her heart.

  She loved him. It wasn’t a question of whether she would let herself do it. She did.

  And tonight she wouldn’t let herself worry about whether he would ever love her back. Right now, with her father connected to tubes and monitors down the hall, with the one man she’d always loved fighting for his life, she was cradled in the arms of the other man she loved. And tonight, that was enough.

  Marcy closed her eyes, huddled warm and safe in Craig’s arms.

  Miranda didn’t know what to do. The hospital administrators were stonewalling her. She had the release waivers in hand, ready to prove that she had the right to film the Romancing Miss Right participants and their family members, but the administrators were refusing to allow the camera crews access into the building. She’d managed to smuggle in a couple producers with button-cams, but the picture quality would be terrible. She needed to get a real crew in here. This was drama. It didn’t get more real than this.

  She’d been considerate and persuasive, promising discretion, donations to favorite charities and excellent free advertising, but nothing had worked. She was drawing a blank.

  Miranda strode away from the administrative wing, back down to the lobby where she could use her cell phone, running her hand over the slim rectangular shape in her pocket until she was free to pull it out and use it.

  She could call him. He would know what to do. Admittedly, they hadn’t spoken since their rather unfortunate parting in LA, but he would take her call. Wouldn’t he?

  Miranda strode through the lobby, past the indoor fountain and out the automatic doors into the chilly Ohio night beyond. It was late spring in this part of the world. Warm enough that the picnic had been pleasant this afternoon, but with nights still cold enough for the air to bite. She didn’t have a jacket, but she liked the cold air on her arms and slapping her in the face. It helped her think.

  She dialed the number by heart.

  She half expected to get his voicemail, but he answered promptly. It was only nine-thirty there, she realized. “Miranda?”

  “Bennett, I need you.”

  His sigh was loud and filled with relief. “Thank God. I thought you would never call. Are you in LA?”

  “No. Ohio. Miss Right’s father had a heart attack and I’m having a hell of a time getting the hospital staff to let me bring in a camera crew. And then I remembered all the hospital shoots you’ve done for Renovation of the Heart, when the needy families have a sick kid, and I figured you must have tricks for getting hospitals to grant permission.”

  A pause.

  Miranda rubbed at her upper arm with her opposite hand, starting to feel the chill more keenly. “Bennett?”

  “Is that the only reason you’re calling me? Because you want my help to exploit a family’s pain?”

  “We’re not exploiting. We’re documenting. This is a pivotal moment for Miss Right. If we don’t have footage, the viewers won’t get the full impact—”

  “Goddamn it, Miranda, can you even hear yourself? It’s too far. You’re a parasite on their pain and you don’t even see that what you’re doing is wrong anymore, do you? It’s disgusting.”

  The words were a barrage, but they bounced off her. Harmless and distant. “Are you going to help or not?”

  He made a soft, frustrated noise. “No. I’m not.”

  Miranda hung up the phone without another word. She had lawyers to call.

  “What do you mean you lost her?” Miranda tried to keep her voice at hospital appropriate levels, but she and legal had been doing battle with the hospital administrators for the last two hours only to discover that when she finally won that battle the producer she’d assigned to shadow Marcy with a hidden camera had misplaced Miss Right. She was on her own, somewhere in the vast hospital that served this county.

  Linus stood his ground. “She needed to take a walk. Clear her head.”

  “And we need footage of her walking and clearing her head,” Miranda snapped, her temper frayed by hours of legal wrangling and that universal hospital scent in her nostrils. She refused to blame Bennett. He was nothing. “That’s why you’re here. Not so you can sit on your ass after you lose our Miss Right.”

  “I didn’t lose her. I told her I’d be waiting right here when she was ready.”

  “She doesn’t decide when she’s ready. We do. So go find her and get me some usable B-roll. Or better yet, go home. I’ll take this segment.”

  “It’s not a segment, Miranda,” Linus said softly, but he stood and gathered up his bag, heading off down the hall without further argument.

  Miranda turned to the two man crew she’d managed to talk the administrators into allowing into the building, so long as they only filmed Romancing Miss Right contestants and did not bother any of the other patients or visitors. It was after two in the morning, but they just stood with their equipment at the ready. Professionals. Ready to capture the next juicy dramatic development at a moment’s notice. At her bidding.

  Footsteps sounded down the hall behind her. She knew who it was before she turned—clued in by the way Doug snapped up his camera and instantly began filming as Jerry lifted the boom mic into position.

  Miranda pivoted and for a moment her cold producer’s heart melted. Now that’s good television.

  Craig strode down the hall, a quietly sleeping Marcy cradled protectively in his arms. The shot was perfect—fluorescent lighting notwithstanding. They were both exactly as rumpled and exhausted as she would have arranged for them to look. The expression on Craig’s face was ever-so-slightly tender, but still macho and protective enough to remind every woman in America that he was a man. Miranda couldn’t have coached a better expression onto his face if she’d had three hours of prep time.

  But as he grew closer, that tender expression hardened into something darker and he shot a glare toward the cameras. “Is that necessary?”

  “The show must go on,” Miranda said, careful to keep her voice low so she didn’t wake Marcy.

  Craig met her eyes, his own hard. “You have your shot. That’s enough.”

  She opened her mouth to argue and a little sliver of misgiving stilled her tongue. This was Craig. The man who would do anything to stretch his fifteen minutes of fame into twenty, and he was telling her it was too much. He was showing her the line… and exactly how far across it she’d already gone.

  When she didn’t respond, Craig asked in a low voice, careful not to rouse Marcy. “Do you know if there’s an empty bed or a couch somewhere she can rest for a few hours?”

  There was an empty room three doors down. Miranda could direct them there. Craig and Marcy could curl up together and she could get hours of B-roll of their cuddlefest. Good television.

  But it didn’t feel good. Not anymore.

  “There’s a family waiting room on the second floor. The couches looked pretty comfortable.”

  And the hospital had flat refused to allow any cameras anywhere near the other families in that room. It would be private.

  Craig nodded his thanks and continued down the hall. If he was surprised the cameras didn’t follow him, Miranda couldn’t tell. She watched until he was out of view around the corner toward the elevators. Then she watched the empty hallway where he had been.

  “You guys can pack up and head back to the hotel. We’re done for tonight.”

  Doug and Jerry packed up their equipment with a speed that showed just how eager they were to get the hell out of there. Miranda still didn’t look away from the empty hallway.

  The dry air tickled her throat and she cleared it with a cough. God, she hated hospitals. They were all the same. And every time she entered them she was five years old again, watching her father die. The job wasn’t any different here than on any other day, but today, here, it was hard not to feel sickened by it. Here, it was hard to escape the feeling that it should be different.
r />   That she should be.

  She strode down the lobby and outside again, out into the night. Her cell phone was in her hand as she shivered in the cold, but she didn’t know who she would call.

  She didn’t allow many people close to her. Her mother and brother would both be asleep. It was late in Chicago. No one else got inside the Citadel that was Miranda. Certainly not Bennett.

  But that was over now. If it hadn’t been wrecked before, she’d certainly destroyed it tonight.

  She hadn’t seen it. A man’s life hung in the balance tonight and all she’d been able to think about was getting the shot.

  This was her dream job. Capturing true moments, creating a sense of empathy, marrying reality and drama. But today, for the first time, after all the things she hadn’t blinked at doing, today it suddenly felt exploitative. Wrong.

  You wanted her to cry, didn’t you? Happy now?

  She’d never thought what they did was slimy before, but suddenly the fact that these people had volunteered to have their privacy invaded and their emotions stripped bare for the entertainment of the national audience just didn’t seem like enough.

  She’d spiraled out of control, but maybe it wasn’t too late to get back to her center.

  She could make amends. Start listening. Start delegating. Start letting Marcy and Craig make their own choices. She’d been great last year with Lou and Jack because she saw the love that they were missing. Now she was trying to force love where it didn’t exist, flinging Marcy at Daniel.

  She’d needed to control the show because she felt so helplessly out of control with Bennett. He was gone now. The bastard would never know how out of control he made her feel. How much she felt. But she could do this.

  She could pull back and let Marcy guide her own love life. She could give Craig and Marcy a shot at love, if that’s what they had.

  Change of plans.

  The question was still on the table. Love or money. And they would get back to it because Marcy deserved to know now whether she was getting a good guy or someone who would turn out to be just like Miranda in the end. Incapable of letting another person in. Consumed with her career.