Romancing Miss Right

by Lizzie Shane

  For now, she had the shot she needed. They would have Josh Pendleton fill with a tasteful fireside sit down, explaining the situation.

  The show could resume filming in a few days time when they knew, one way or another, what was going to happen to the gruffly sweet Mr. Henrickson.

  Until then, Miranda would keep the cameras out. Sometimes even reality deserved a little privacy.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  There was a crick in her neck and her eyes burned like someone had been rubbing rock salt into them. Nearby someone was snoring. The dry overly air-conditioned air and slight antiseptic smell made her nose twitch with the need to sneeze and reminded Marcy where she was, even before she opened her eyes.

  Riverside County Hospital. Waiting for news.

  They would have woken her if anything had happened, wouldn’t they? She jerked awake, her body pulled upright into a sitting position by the sudden fear that they would have let her sleep.

  “It’s okay. No news yet.”

  Miranda—of all people—sat across from her on one of the narrow couches in the waiting room. It was Miranda who had spoken, continuing, “I posted an intern in the hall outside his room. If there are any developments, we’ll hear about them as fast as possible.”

  Marcy nodded, rubbing a hand over her face, trying to scrub away some of the sleep and tear-tracks. “What time is it?”

  “Just after seven in the morning. Your mother and sisters found some space in another waiting room one floor down. Daniel’s with them. He’s been bringing them coffee and looking after them.”

  “Thank you,” Marcy said, then realized it was Daniel she should be thanking, but she wasn’t ready to see him. The snoring beside her faded into a snort and then started up again.

  Craig was asleep sitting up at one end of her couch, his head flopped back to rest against the wall, mouth wide open—the source of both the snoring and the crick in her neck since she’d been sleeping with his thigh as a pillow.

  Craig had looked after her. Daniel had taken care of her family. “Where’s Darius?”

  “He may still be at the hotel. I’m not sure anyone told him.”

  Marcy nodded, her brain processing everything slowly, as if too much of her brainpower was dedicated to worrying about her father and little was left for completing basic tasks, like breathing and speech.

  “I’ll call LA as soon as it’s a decent hour,” Miranda continued. “We’ll put the show on hold for a few days, until your father is doing better.”

  Marcy wasn’t sure whether to be pleased by Miranda’s positive thinking or annoyed by her assumption. And what if he isn’t doing better? part of her wanted to demand, but the words would require too much effort. Energy she didn’t have.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Miranda asked. “The machine in here is watery crap, but there’s an espresso machine in the cafeteria.”

  Coffee sounded like heaven. “That would be amazing.”

  Miranda nodded, brisk, satisfied to have a task. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  She stepped out into the hallway, but the door caught on something on the floor and didn’t close all the way, so Marcy could still hear her, clear as a bell, when Miranda said, “Darius. When did you get here?”

  “Just now,” came his deep, clear voice. “What’s going on? Is there any news?”

  “Not yet,” Miranda replied. “It’s still wait and see.”

  “What does that mean for the show? I mean, are we still having the Elimination Ceremony tonight?”

  Marcy glowered toward the door. She couldn’t have heard him right.

  “Marcy’s father is in the hospital,” Miranda said, as if explaining the situation to a small child. “She’s in no condition for an Elimination Ceremony. The show is on hold.”

  “Yeah, but for how long? Are we just supposed to wait around indefinitely—”

  Marcy was on her feet and bursting through the not-quite-closed waiting room door before thought caught up to instinct. But she didn’t need thought. Darius broke off at the sight of her, eyes going wide as he realized he was busted.

  “You know what, Darius,” she snapped, everything in her burning righteous and clean, “let me make it easier for you. You don’t have to wait around indefinitely to find out whether my father—the man you spent the day with just two days ago—is going to live. You can go home right now. And I hope I never fucking see you again. There. Elimination Ceremony complete. Happy?”

  Darius gaped. “Are you serious?” he sputtered.

  “I think she is,” Miranda said when Marcy didn’t have the words. Her little speech to Darius seemed to have exhausted her verbal reservoirs and she was back in shell-shock mode. “Goodbye, Darius,” Miranda said for her. “We’ll arrange your flight back to Atlanta for this afternoon and see you at the reunion show taping. Go on now.” She made a shooing gesture.

  The big man looked back and forth between the two of them, opening his mouth to say something, but Miranda held her hand up, eyes narrowed behind her glasses. She was small, but with that look in her eye, no one naysayed her. “Stop. Just go.”

  She turned her back on him, ushering Marcy back inside the waiting room. “I know this sounds bad, but I wish we’d gotten that on tape.”

  Marcy frowned, looking around and realizing for the first time that there were no cameras around. She’d somehow thought with Miranda here that they would be filming everything, but there wasn’t a recording device in sight.

  “Do you need it on tape?” she asked, back to feeling like her brain was on slow motion and she was trying to play catch up with the world around her.

  “We’ll have Pendleton do a nice little explanatory fireside chat. Not to worry. Now. Would you still like that coffee?”

  Marcy nodded dazedly. The producer bustled out of the room, making sure the door shut all the way this time, and Marcy stared after her. The show really was on hold. No more Romancing Miss Right. Snoring came from her right. Craig was still here.

  She didn’t have the mental energy right now to wonder what that meant.

  Miranda turned her cell phone on when she hit the lobby on her way to the cafeteria and it rang almost instantly. The caller-ID showed the network offices, but gave her no clue which of the Big Wigs was calling to rip her a new one.

  “Hello?”

  “Why weren’t we informed there was a crisis with the Romancing Miss Right filming?”

  Wallace’s bark. She’d know it anywhere.

  “Obviously you were informed since you’re calling me about it at four-thirty in the morning,” she said, after some quick time zone math. “I was waiting until a civilized hour to let you know there had been a snag and the filming would need to be placed temporarily on hold.”

  “Do you know how expensive putting a show on hold is?”

  “Since I approve the budget reports for each week of filming and know exactly how much it costs to keep a crew around for a single day in which they aren’t working—yes, as a matter of fact, I do. But I’m not sure what you expect me to do about it. Miss Right’s father is in the hospital—during Meet the In-Laws week, I might add—and he may not recover. She’s in no state to be frolicking with Suitors.”

  “All the travel arrangements for the Overnight Dates will have to be rescheduled if we delay—”

  “I’m aware of that, Wallace. I’m also aware that Miss Right can barely form two coherent sentences at the moment. If you won’t think of her, think of the optics. How would it look if we forced her to run off to some exotic destination and roll around in the sand with a Suitor while her father is lying in a hospital bed, possibly dying?”

  “Fine, put it on hold, but the show can’t end this way.”

  “It won’t.”

  “It had better not. You’d better have a plan in place to get her back on the horse and excited about filming the last few episodes if her father kicks it.”

  Miranda flinched. “You’re a real asshole, you know that, Wallace?”
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  “I do know that. I’m also the asshole who will replace you if you make the call not to film the final episode while Daddy is still alive and Miss Right decides she isn’t emotionally able to film it later. Understand?”

  “I think I got it.” Asshole.

  “Good.”

  He didn’t say goodbye. But then, she hadn’t been expecting him to.

  Miranda turned off her phone—ignoring the dozen flashing messages from the production crew asking for instructions—and continued toward the cafeteria and the espresso machine of the gods. Right now she needed a caffeine fix almost as much as Marcy did.

  Fifteen minutes later, with a latte in each hand, she’d come to one conclusion—maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if she got fired.

  She liked her job—most days. She was good at her job—every day. But what kind of legacy was she leaving behind? What kind of person was she becoming, exploiting the emotions of others day after day in a quest for ratings glory?

  Was that really who she wanted to be?

  She wasn’t religious, but for a moment, she’d almost found herself praying for Marcy’s father to live—just to make the continuation of the show easier. And then the shame of that almost-prayer had smashed into her like a wrecking ball. No, losing the job might not be a bad thing at all.

  But what would she do if she wasn’t that person anymore? A ball busting, Machiavellian reality TV producer was the only person she knew how to be. What was left of her if she took that away?

  She didn’t have a family. Her friends were almost all colleagues. Her love life was non-existent.

  Without the job, she was just a bossy woman with a God complex and no one to act it out on. But maybe that wasn’t all she could be. Maybe she could be more than this. Maybe she could be a human being too.

  Miranda shoved open the door to the waiting room. “One caramel latte, no whip.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Craig sat across from Marcy in the hospital cafeteria, watching her poke at her lasagna with a plastic fork. The food was actually pretty decent, the chairs were comfortable, and the large windows overlooking the pond let in lots of light and made the spot surprisingly bright and cheerful—all things considered.

  It was a nice hospital cafeteria. But that was kind of like saying someone was an honest politician or a friendly executioner. Nice could only take it so far. It couldn’t change the nature of the thing.

  Marcy looked about like he’d expect the beloved daughter of a man hovering on the edge of life and death to look. Circles under her eyes. Her thick, dark hair bunched back in a ponytail, with flyaway strands sticking to her cheeks. One of the production assistants had brought her a change of clothes, so she wasn’t still in the t-shirt and shorts from the picnic, having exchanged them for jeans and a soft, long-sleeved lavender shirt. She twisted the sleeves around her wrists—when she wasn’t poking at the lasagna, staring at it with dazed, fixed eyes.

  He’d never felt more useless in his life.

  He didn’t know what to do. He wanted desperately to fix it, to make her feel better even if he couldn’t wave a magic wand and make her father wake up, healthy and whole. But all his life he’d cultivated one skill. All he knew how to do was be a jackass and that wasn’t what she needed.

  “Do you want to find your mom and your sisters?” he asked.

  She’d been with him all day. Useless him. Surely she’d be better off with them—though he had no intention of leaving her.

  Her gaze didn’t lift from the pile of prodded lasagna, but she shook her head, quick and sharp.

  “How about bowling?”

  That got her attention. Her head snapped up. “What?”

  “Hospital bowling. We steal a few of these for the pins—” He held up the plastic cup holding his soda. “—then all we need is one of those grapefruits over there and an empty stretch of hallway. Voila. Instant bowling.”

  “Somehow I don’t think hospital bowling is a good use of my time right now.” But there was amusement lurking in the depths of her eyes.

  He nodded somberly. “You’re right. Colostomy bag water balloon fight.”

  “Ew.”

  “Not used colostomy bags. That’s just gross.”

  Her lips were twitching now. Something soft and warm entered her eyes. “You don’t have to be the funny one all the time,” she reminded him.

  I do when I need to see you smile. “And you don’t have to be the clever one. So why don’t you want to see your sisters and your mom?”

  Her eyes went back to her lasagna.

  “Marcy?”

  “They’ll—I don’t want to—“ She broke off. He waited. She lifted her gaze to his. “I feel like it’s my fault.” Her voice wavered but didn’t break on the last word.

  Craig nodded. He understood that perfectly. “Feelings are stupid.”

  She blinked and frowned, her dazed eyes focusing more sharply on him. “What?”

  “I felt like it was my fault that my dad didn’t leave his wife for my mom. For years. It’s not my fault my dad was a two-timing dick any more than it’s your fault your dad had a clogged artery. But feelings are stupid. They don’t care about what really happened. They just hurt.” He reached for his soda cup, found it was down to just ice and set it back down without trying to drink. “Your mom, your sisters, they don’t blame you. They couldn’t, because it isn’t your fault. Shitty things happen and we wish they were our fault because then we’d be in control. We could make the next shitty thing not happen. But we aren’t in control. We don’t run the universe. And no one blames us.” He reached across the table, covering the hand that didn’t hold a plastic fork with his. “They love you. Any idiot can see that. And I should know, because I’ve been an idiot more times than not.”

  Marcy looked at him, drinking in everything he said. She hadn’t been saying much since they got the news about her father, but she’d held on tight whenever he’d reached for her. She turned her hand beneath his now, lightly gripping his wrist.

  “Do you want to go see your mom and your sisters?” he asked again. “It’s not too late for colostomy bag water balloons.”

  She cringed at the suggestion, but her eyes were warm. “No colostomy balloons. Let’s go upstairs.”

  Her family had claimed a corner of one of the waiting rooms on the third floor. Her mother and Laurie held hands, their lips moving in silent prayer, while Dinah played what looked like a game of spades with Rick, Daniel and her oldest nephew—though they didn’t appear to be keeping score. Laurie and Rick’s younger kids watched cartoons on the television on the wall—probably too young to understand all of what was happening, though they picked up on the worry.

  Marcy’s mother looked up as they approached and then everything happened quickly. Marcy was absorbed into a huddle of Henrickson women, all speaking at once, wondering where she’d been, sharing hope that they would hear something soon—and Craig hung back with Daniel standing awkwardly at his side.

  “Thanks,” Craig said. “For staying with them.”

  Daniel shot him a look, frowning, and Craig realized it was probably a weird thing to thank the other Suitor for, but he didn’t know what else to say. There didn’t seem to be a right thing in this situation.

  Before he could bungle it further, Marcy extricated herself from the knot of her family. Her eyes looked clearer, as if just being with them had burned off some of the fog that had clouded her thoughts. “You guys should go home. Get some sleep. We’ll be fine.”

  Craig thought about arguing, about telling her there was no way in hell he was leaving her, but if she didn’t want him here, he couldn’t very well force the point. Daniel nodded, reaching out to give her a hug goodbye and for the first time Craig didn’t want to punch him for touching her. She could use all the comfort she could get.

  He took his turn—the hug feeling oddly formal after the last twenty hours—then followed Daniel toward the door.

  “Guys,” Marcy said, when the
y were almost to the exit. “Thanks. You were both really great today.”

  Craig nodded, Daniel murmuring, “It was my honor.”

  Neither spoke as they waited for the elevator and rode it down to the lobby. Craig still didn’t like Daniel, really, but a silent truce had risen up between them and he accepted it.

  In the lobby, instead of making a beeline for the door, Craig turned toward a cluster of low armchairs that circled the indoor fountain with a funky sculpture at the center. He picked one of the chairs—much too small for his long frame—and tossed himself onto it with a grunt.

  Daniel had hesitated when he turned toward the fountain and followed him now, coming to stand over him, the usual Disapproving Danny frown in place. “What are you doing?”

  Isn’t it obvious? “Staying.”

  “She won’t even know you’re here,” Daniel protested.

  Craig shrugged. “I will.”

  Daniel’s frown deepened. He glanced toward the front doors.

  Craig sighed. “I’m not going to be able to sleep anyway. I just don’t see the point of going back to my room at the hotel and twiddling my thumbs there when I could be doing the same here.”

  After some more deliberation, Danny Boy seemed to accept this. “I’ll go back to the hotel and get some sleep. I’ll be back to spell you later.”

  Craig shrugged. He wouldn’t be moving, now or later, but he didn’t see the point in having the argument. He stretched out his legs, trying to find the most comfortable position for a body that wasn’t as young as it used to be and didn’t take kindly to sleeping sitting up with his head lolling back against a wall. As Daniel made his exit, he watched the water burbling in the fountain, letting his thoughts drift and wondering if he remembered how to pray.

  Moonlight was filtering through the lobby skylights to play over the water in the fountain when the chair beside him dipped beneath a female form and a waft of perfume brushed past him.

  “Hello, young man.”