by Meg Collett
“That was uncalled for.” Stevie focused straight ahead on the curtain. Off to the side, a producer was in the middle of the countdown to open the curtain.
He swiped his hand down, and with a great whoosh, the curtains swept apart.
Stevie blinked in shock, her mind temporarily frozen.
The store’s center had been gutted of aisles and festooned in a maze of domestic ecstasy. Stevie saw couches, lamps, pillows, beds, paintings, side tables, and everything else a house would ever need for days. It was like Martha Stewart had an orgy and didn’t clean up after herself.
This was going to be a bloodbath.
From the corner of her eye, Stevie swore she saw Helena climax at the sight.
A flashing red clock started counting down their strategy minute and the contestants erupted around her. Partners shouted at each other and waved their hands wildly, pointing out certain things. Voices escalated until all Stevie heard was a vibrating drone in her ear.
“Uh, Cade?” Stevie called up to him. He wasn’t saying anything.
Their eyes locked.
“Dude,” Arie breathed between them. “This is seriously screwed up. Who had the time to make this fresh hell?”
“Maybe we should switch!” Stevie shouted above the clamor so Cade could hear her. Her heart tried to pound through her skin and run from her body, sweat coated her palms, and her vision pulsed in time with her heartbeat. She was going to screw this up for them.
Cade finally noticed her building panic.
“Listen!” He leaned over the railing. He strained against his safety rope and his sinewy muscles bulged against his prim shirt. His eyes were fierce and focused. She imagined he had that look when he was—
She slapped her cheeks, focusing herself.
“You can do this,” he was shouting. “Go to the beds first. You can’t see them because they’re so far in the back, but just angle hard right and slam through anything in your path. The containers are cardboard. Grab the first bed you can, okay?” He double-checked something in the distance. “Yeah, they’re all within our price range. We can adjust after that, okay?”
“Thirty seconds! Blindfolds in position!” The host called through a bullhorn.
“Make sure you grab some side tables,” Arie added.
“And lamps. And a rug maybe.”
She glared at Cade as she worked the red blindfold over her head. Of course, Emilie had fastened it too tight. It was going to squeeze her brain in half.
“Never mind,” Cade smoothly adjusted. “I’ll make sure you hear me.”
“Fifteen!”
Stevie nodded and took a deep breath, the blindfold resting on her forehead, ready to go. She checked the position of the containers in front of her one last time, memorizing the angle she would need to get to the beds. The contestant next to her was stretching his glutes. She should’ve stretched too.
“Dear God,” she muttered to herself, “please don’t let me die next to the shag rugs. Anywhere but there.”
“Ten!”
“Stevie!”
She looked up at Cade. Her hand went to her blindfold, ready to jerk it down at the last second.
“Five!”
“I’ll take care of you.” His voice was low, quieter than the last-minute shrill instructions hurtling around them, but his voice cut through it all. Somewhere behind them, she thought she heard the host countdown a few more seconds.
“Two!”
He winked.
Instantly, Stevie was wet.
Did this man really have no idea? Surely, he knew. He had to be screwing with her. He had to know exactly what he did to her nether regions. Her girly bits. Her snatch and grab. Her shimmy-shimmy-bang-bang—
“One! Your three minutes start now!”
She jerked in surprise, her mind rocketing from her thoughts in time for her to yank her blindfold down. Emilie had fastened it so tightly that Stevie wondered if her skull had just fractured a bit.
“Go, Stevie. Go!” Cade shouted.
Arie gave her a propelling boost forward, and she raced across the red starting line painted on the ground in front of the carts.
Instantly, she collided with another cart. The wheels clashed and everything turned into one big metallic scream. She shoved the cart forward. Someone grunted and cursed next to her, and their challenging ram quaked up her arm. Tightening her grip on the shopping cart, she crouched behind the handle and ran forward with all her strength, using her shoulder to propel herself through.
She broke free.
“That’s it, Stevie! Go!” Cade called through the cacophony.
She crashed into a container and careened left. Someone’s leg hooked onto hers. A pillow hit her in the face. Before the owner could pull it back, Stevie wrenched it free and tossed it in her cart.
Her helmet tipped forward and she pushed it back up, setting off to the right, toward where she hoped the beds were. She had to be getting close.
Just in time, Cade shouted, “Keep going straight! Oh, watch out for that—”
Stevie’s cart collided head-on with something that felt like an elephant or Henry Cavill’s Superman abs. It was a toss-up, really. Could be either. Whichever one it was, Stevie was hurled forward through space, and she dove headfirst into her cart.
Thank the Martha Stewart gods for that pillow and her helmet.
Shimmying her butt into the air, she hauled herself out and found the floor again.
“A little warning next time!” she said, hurling the words over her shoulder in Cade’s general direction.
“Sorry!” He really didn’t sound it, sounded more like he was trying not to laugh, but she would address that later. “Go around that thing and keep going straight!”
Stevie hissed. Angling her cart a little to the left, she shoved until she found a way around the damn thing and broke into a stumbling run.
“A little to the left!”
She adjusted.
“Too far!”
“No, the other way, Stevie!”
“Yeah! Yeah! That’s it! Straight! Right there!”
Stevie rammed into something that could only be a bed.
“Well, it’s a little banged up now, but yeah, get that one!”
With one hand still gripping her cart, she grappled for the massive tag. Her hand connected with the foam board and she jerked it free.
Or she tried too.
“That’s mine! I had it first!”
Helena. Spawn of Satan, in the flesh.
“Screw you!” Stevie jerked on the tag.
“You’re not getting this bed,” Helena growled into her ear as she tried ripping the tag from Stevie’s hands.
Stevie almost lost her grip. Completely blind, she set her knee against the mattress and hauled back with both hands. “Go fuck a duck!”
From a great distance, she heard Emilie snap, “No cursing, Stevie!” She could practically see the little associate righting her headset.
“Let go, you harlot!” Helena screamed in Stevie’s ear.
Stevie released a hand and grabbed for Helena’s precious blonde hair. She hit the jackpot on the first try and wrenched Helena’s head down as the woman screamed bloody murder. “Who you calling a harlot, you fake Prada-carrying bag of dicks!”
A finger stabbed through Stevie’s blindfold straight into her eye, sending stars sparking across her vision. “My bag is not fake!”
Stevie flailed backward, hissing, and released Helena’s hair to fumble for her eye, which had to be falling out, right? Like she was blind. Completely blind. Oh God . . .
No, that was the blindfold causing the endless darkness. She wasn’t blind.
She reared back with her free hand and slapped the hell out of where she thought Helena’s face might be.
The woman howled and released the tag so suddenly that Stevie did a rolling backflip off the bed—and landed on her feet. She jabbed the tag into the air and war-cried in triumph.
“Stevie!” Cade shoute
d. “Stevie! Stevie! Stevie!” Her name was like a chant across the battlefield.
“Go right!”
She wheeled the cart around and did a wheelie forward.
“Yes! Straight ahead! Watch that—”
Stevie didn’t even care what she ran into, but she heard a lamp rocking back and forth. As she whirled by, she grabbed it by the base and tossed it in her cart.
“Two minutes!” the host screamed through his horn, voice cracking.
The cart hit something else and slammed into her stomach.
“Go around it!”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious!” Stevie shouted.
Whatever she’d hit contained a thick stack of rugs. Stevie hauled one into her cart. It was a fraction too big, but she could use it as a jousting stick, her cart her noble steed and she the knight in black.
“Grab that tag to your left!”
Stevie hooked her foot into the bottom of her cart to stop its careening momentum and flailed around for the tag. She found it a moment later.
“That’s it!” Cade’s voice rang out, cutting through the chaos. She tossed the tag into the cart. “Stevie! Spin your cart around. Let me see the rug’s price tag!”
Stevie leaned into her cart and spun like she was a shopping-cart ballerina.
“Okay! You’re good. Stop spinning! Go straight! No! No! Go left! Yeah, left!”
Stevie readjusted and flung herself into the fray.
Carts bashed into her sides and a wheel smashed into her ankle with vicious, biting speed. She yelped and nearly went down right in the swarm of bodies. Sweat spotted her brow, her grip on her noble steed slick with sweat.
Or blood.
Probably blood.
She threw elbows and grappled her way back to the surface—back to standing behind her cart. She threw herself forward.
“One minute left!” the host announced through the bullhorn above the madness.
Stevie ran into the corner of a plastic container when Cade didn’t direct her to the right spot, probably breaking a rib, and grabbed some framed decorations. She found a tag for a bookshelf and some more decorative shit that Cade had helpfully shouted, “Arie likes that! Get that! Getthatgetthatgetthat!”
Every noise ringing in her ears became, “Grab that! Take that! Back up, you missed that ball thing!”
“Are you adding up this stuff?” she shouted.
“You’re fine! Head toward my voice! Oh! Get that! That right there!”
“Where?” Stevie screeched, her hands whipping out to her sides. “What?”
“That! Next to your left hand! No, dammit, your other left!”
“My left or your left!”
“YOURS!” Cade roared.
Stevie yanked the narrow box thing and tossed it into her very full cart that was getting harder and heavier to maneuver by the second.
“Thirty seconds!”
“Hurry, Stevie! Hurry! Come toward me!”
She rammed forward, her lungs heaving and her heart doing terrifying acrobatics in her throat. At any moment, she might open her mouth and spew smoke like a dragon.
“Twenty seconds!”
She hit a wall of containers and shouted at Cade, “Where do I go?”
“A little to the right! Right there! It’s narrow, but you can fit!”
A hand wrapped around her shirt collar and wrenched her back. Stevie gagged, strangling, and fell backward, losing contact with her cart.
“Hey!” Cade shouted. “Don’t you fucking touch her!”
“You bitch,” Helena whisper-shouted in Stevie’s ear.
Choking, Stevie threw a few elbows. One connected with Helena’s gut. She doubled over, onto Stevie, and coughed. Fighting to free herself like a wild dog against its leash, she kicked and punched.
A hand slammed into her nose and she saw stars. Instantly, a deluge of wetness poured down her face and into her mouth.
Blood. That was definitely blood.
“You broke my nose!” She pounced in Helena’s general direction but found a cart instead. The handle bar rammed into her stomach, knocking the wind out of her. Helena had used it to block Stevie’s exit.
“Five seconds!”
In a blind rage, Stevie kicked at the cart. After a few blows, it crashed onto its side with a metal clang, contents spilling like an avalanche.
“Four!”
“No!” Helena wailed. “No!”
“Three!”
Spitting blood from her mouth, Stevie jammed her cart through the tiny space between the containers and rocketed toward where she hoped the finish line was.
“Two!”
“You’re here, Stevie!”
Someone grabbed her around the waist, stopping her forward momentum and whipping her around into a solid chest.
“One! Time’s up, contestants!”
Cade pulled her helmet off and jerked her blindfold free. She blinked up at him, realizing a beat later she’d basically collapsed into his arms. He pulled a handkerchief from those damn khakis that made his ass look like heaven and gently pressed it to her nose before shouting, “Can we get Medical over here?”
Blearily, Stevie lifted her head and looked around.
“Easy,” Cade murmured. “You took some hits out there.”
“Did I win?” she asked, head spinning.
“We’re under budget. You did amazing.” He grinned down at her.
Those damn dimples, Stevie thought as he wiped blood and snot from her face and probably some drool. She was definitely drooling. He was so perfect.
“Kiss me,” she whispered to the two Cades who had suddenly materialized in front of her, her eyes fluttering as the floor dipped and swayed.
“What?” Cade’s shocked face wavered in her vision. Another person came up next to him.
“Take me now,” Stevie slurred.
“I think she hit her head,” Cade told the person.
“Let’s make sweet, sweet love . . .”
And then everything went black.
12
“Stevie?”
Something blissfully cool swept down her face. She cracked her eyelids open a bit and found Cade’s face hovering a few inches from hers. The corner of his mouth pulled up when he saw her waking.
“Hey,” he said, wiping the damp rag over her forehead again. “How are you feeling?”
She groaned because she felt like her face had split open. “What happened?”
Cade cringed, the rag going to a pool of warmth beneath her nose. He swiped at it and the cloth came away red. Glancing up, he barked at someone, “Where the hell is Medical?”
Someone answered him, but Stevie didn’t listen. She sat up on her elbows, and the floor tilted beneath her.
Before she could sag back onto the floor, Cade wrapped his arm around her back, supporting her weight. She was cocooned against his chest, his other hand cradling her face.
“Am I ugly?”
“The blood matches your hair,” Arie said, his head suddenly popping in over Cade’s shoulder. He smirked down at her. “Your fight gave all the producers drama-boners. It’s all anyone can talk about.”
Stevie tried to roll her eyes at him, but she only made herself dizzy.
“Can you see what’s taking Medical so long?” Cade asked him.
Arie nodded and hurried off, his boots slapping across the store’s linoleum floor.
“Do you remember what you said right before you passed out?”
“No?” She racked her brain to remember, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t recall saying anything before things went black. Whatever she’d said must have been important if he was asking her about it before Medical came over. “Why?” she wheezed through her nose. “Was it bad? Did I say something on camera? Did anyone hear me?”
If she didn’t know better, she would have thought Cade was trying to keep his face neutral. He’d never looked so aloof around her. “You’re certain? And no, no one else heard.”
She strugg
led for a scrap of memory, but nothing surfaced. “All I remember is you catching me and then nothing.”
At her words, he almost looked . . . disappointed, but that couldn’t be right if she’d said something awful, and she assumed she had. She always did.
Then why wasn’t he relieved?
Medical came over and attended to her bloody face. Once she was bandaged up, the crew migrated back over to the neighborhood to film on the judging soundstage with all the teams. She stood off by herself, holding a towel beneath her nose to stop the spontaneous blood that liked to gush out.
“There’s my girl,” Shepherd said, catching her by surprise as he came up behind her.
She had to bite back a yelp. Around them, the teams and crew were busy getting into place. “You did wonderfully today.”
“Um, thanks?” Stevie wanted to shoulder past him and get onto the stage before anyone noticed her standing down here with him, but he stayed in her way, oozing a smile down at her that made her hackles rise. She wished she’d stayed unconscious, even if it meant she would have missed out on Cade being all hunky and chivalrous.
Before she realized what was happening, Shepherd pulled her into a slimy hug. He cinched her in so close and so tight to his chest that even with her battered nose she could smell the overpowering wave of his cologne and hair gel, as well as the croissant he’d had for breakfast. A few crumbs still clung to the corner of his lips.
“It turned me on when you slapped her like that,” he whispered wetly into her ear.
She shuddered and tried to pull back. He held tight, his grip nearly bruising, before he released her. As he did, his hand swept down her back and squeezed her butt.
At her glare, he merely laughed and turned away. Feeling like she might be sick, she put some distance between them. She looked up at the soundstage, and her eyes locked with Emilie’s. Standing up there with her tablet and headset around her neck, she’d seen it all, and the damning scowl she gave Stevie made her think Emilie might have a thing for Shepherd. For a second, Stevie almost felt sorry for her.
Then Emilie barked, “Get your ass up here, Reynolds. Time to start.”
* * *
Over a week had passed since the massacre at the home improvement store. They’d been so close to winning. Helena and her sister had to film an elimination shot since she’d failed to recover the contents of her cart and her team hadn’t had anything to decorate their spare bedroom with for Finishing Touches. They’d been spared from actual elimination because of some shitty team Stevie hadn’t even realized was in the competition. With none of the producers liking the team’s story progression, Shepherd had made the call to cut them, the judges citing the lack of completion during the demo stage as the reason they were going home. It was the first real elimination of the show.
