“Thanks, Dad, I’ll see what I can do.”
“And Reagan?”
“Yes Dad?”
“I’m doing this for your own good. I can’t imagine what the hell you’d do with yourself without TV. It’s not like you’ve got a career to fall back on and you know my stance about you making it on your own. I’ve already done more than I wanted trying to salvage your job…besides, you’d look awful working in fast food.”
I sighed deeply and closed my eyes. He was right, he was always right. “I know, Dad, thank you for everything.”
He hung up after that, and I gave myself a silent pep talk. I had to get any fantasies of Aaron out of my head. I had to focus on the show and getting back into Charles’s good graces.
Dad had just let it slip that if I could make this a success, I could be running the whole studio in a few short years.
And he was right about my options, as much as I hated to admit it. Without making TV shows, I had nothing. What the hell did I think I would do with a guy like Aaron? Run to the bush, have a bunch of kids, and chop wood for a living? It was a ridiculous pipe dream—but one that made me realize I just needed to get some action.
I had an itch that I couldn’t scratch myself, if I could find somebody other than the dreamy lumberjack I’d hired, I could focus more on salvaging the rest of my career.
It didn’t have to be anyone in particular, just somebody willing and decent-looking. I was sure once we got up to Alaska and settled in, I could find myself a warm body to curl up with and chase all horny thoughts of Aaron straight out of my head.
With new determination, I finished up my paperwork and waked back down the hall.
I behaved myself when I joined Melanie and Aaron back in the studio’s screening room. I was proud of how focused and professional I was being, I made the decision on three different girls, stopped covertly staring at Aaron when he wasn’t looking, and even managed to not get my back up when Melanie chose an incredible model from Europe with perfect skin and a love of the outdoors.
I was good. I could do this. Aaron was just a distraction, but I could get over him by getting under another guy.
I had this.
6
AARON
I sat on the edge of the bed in the hotel room and exhaled loudly.
Reagan had finally gotten approval for my accommodations after two nights of sleeping on her futon with Tiger snoring beside me.
The problem was that I couldn’t get that morning encounter out of my fucking head, and it was driving me mad.
I couldn’t spend time with her, and yet shit kept cropping up that threw us together. One day, it was getting to know Melanie and the studio and some of the people I’d be working with. The next, it was choosing some of the women I’d be living with. Today, it had been a long day of lunch with studio execs where I’d been sandwiched into a booth with Reagan pressed right up against me.
You try eating allegedly the best steak in the city with a bunch of suits while sporting a painful hard-on the whole meal.
Talk about awkward.
But I couldn’t stop playing that scene from her hallway over and over in my head, and thinking about how I should have acted.
What I should have done was pick her up and toss her over my shoulder, take her to her bedroom, and lick every inch of her intoxicating body. Gone nose-deep into her pussy, then fucked her until we both sobbed each other’s names and fell into each other’s arms, unable to do anything but tremble with lust.
God, I was a fool, and now the moment had passed. I’d done fucked up, as my dad would have said.
She barely spoke to me anymore, and when she did, she kept her eyes away from me. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but it was clear that Reagan could barely stand to be in the same room with me.
I think she might have noticed the hard-on at lunch, or maybe I was too enthusiastic about some of the women we were choosing, but goddamn, I’d done fucked up with the most alluring women I’d seen in…well, shit…pretty much ever.
Even my ex, Peony, hadn’t done it for me like Reagan did. Peony was a gorgeous girl, a true Alaskan. She’d been raised by hippy parents and there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do. On paper, we’d been the perfect match, similar backgrounds, similar interests, our families had gotten along perfectly, and we’d been heading towards marriage if I hadn’t put the brakes on it last year.
Something hadn’t felt right. She’d started pushing me harder to move in together and get married, to start a family and start our lives together.
And I couldn’t do it. The final nail in our coffin had come when I’d caught Peony sleeping with some Biologist up from Seattle for the summer studying Caribou herds. I’d caught her red-handed with him in my bed in my house, but truth be told, I’d felt more relief than anger that it had given me an out.
She’d begged and pleaded with me, claimed she’d only been trying to shake some sense into me by making me jealous and realize how much I’d loved her.
Unfortunately, it had done the opposite—it had driven it home how little I felt for her and shown me I needed so much more in a woman. I needed a woman who I would have torn the world apart trying to win back, I needed a woman who would have never cheated on me in the first place.
I’d felt horrible at the time and hated that I’d left her with tears streaming down her face and her body wracked with sobs. I’d felt like a total bastard, to be honest. Even though she’d been unfaithful, I felt like it was my fault, like I’d driven her to it.
I’d learned that I had to stay true to myself. I wanted what my parents had had for thirty years before Dad died. I wanted a best friend and lover, the kind of girl I couldn’t stay away from.
Somebody I couldn’t stop thinking about.
Somebody like Reagan.
I let myself fall into a fitful sleep, her face on my mind and her apparent disgust of me haunting my heart.
Goddammit, Aaron, I could almost hear my Dad say, why do you have to go and make everything so hard on yourself?
* * *
“I don’t care who else you pick, just pick one,” Reagan snapped at me on my final day in LA. We’d been going over audition tapes again, and the river of vapid blondes was starting to all run together.
Reagan was cranky, Melanie’s jokes had lost their edge about an hour earlier, and I was exhausted.
“I don’t care, you pick,” I growled. “I’m leaving tonight and won’t have to think about them ever again.”
“Until we start filming,” Reagan snapped.
“Just choose so we can all go home,” Melanie sighed. “This whole sexual tension thing between you two was cute at first, but now it’s getting old.”
“Seriously, pick one,” Reagan snapped at me again.
“Fine. The blonde,” I growled, crossing my arms in front of myself and settling back in the chair. We were seated three in a row in front of a wall of TV screens. Reagan was next to me and Melanie next to her, but the room was too small for the feelings I had for Reagan.
On that point, Melanie was correct.
It was making me snappish and growly, and I needed to get out.
“Which blonde? They’re all blonde!” Reagan said with frustration edging her voice.
“Alright, the surfing champion.”
“Seriously? Her?” Reagan sneered.
“Sure, I honestly don’t care. I just want to get home.”
“If we can’t settle this, you’ll miss your flight,” Melanie said.
“Fine, Miss Surfer it is,” Reagan replied, screwing up her face. She scratched something on the pad of paper in front of her and turned to look at me.
If looks could kill, I’m telling you.
“What?” I asked. “I’ve given you everything you need.”
Melanie chortled at the end of the table.
“I don’t need anything from you,” Reagan said. “Now let’s get you on your flight. I’ll be up in a week to scout locations, and filming will start in
four weeks.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said, standing up. She followed, and I was reminded of how close our bodies had been just a few days earlier. She was so perfect and so petite, I still had the urge to throw her over my shoulder and carry her off into the sunset like a real man.
And I was a real man, goddammit. I drank beer by the fire, I could chop a cord of wood like nobody’s business, and I could burp and laugh about it like the best of them. I could defend my woman from other dudes, I could open the door for her and pay for dinner, then fuck her like a savage later when we were alone.
But there was something about Reagan’s rejection that made me feel like less of a man. I didn’t know why her approval meant so much to me, but I did know I needed a few days back in Alaska steeling myself against the tumble of feelings she brought up inside of me whenever we were together.
Real men didn’t turn to Jell-O when they sat next to a hot girl. I couldn’t let her get to me, especially considering I apparently disgusted her now.
We barely spoke after the tenth and final contestant had been locked in. Melanie glared at the both of us, mumbled something about fucking already and getting over it, and breezed out of the video booth to leave Reagan and I alone.
“We’d better get you to the airport,” she said as she stood, then took a deep breath. “Listen, Aaron, I know I’ve been really weird these past couple days. There’s just a lot riding on this show being successful and it’s getting to me. I can’t go and have anything…” Her voice trailed off, and she waved her hand at me, “like this messing it up.”
“What do you mean ‘like this?’” I asked, standing and looking down at her while raising a brow. We were inches apart, and the heat from our bodies radiated toward each other, as if we knew on some primal level that we were destined to be together.
“Like anything. You know, I can’t let anything get in the way of the show making the studio a bundle of money.”
She screwed up her face and chewed on her lower lip.
“I get it,” I replied softly. “Business before pleasure.”
“Pleasure?” she snapped, looking up at me, her eyes narrowed in that familiar scowl of disapproval. “Don’t flatter yourself, that isn’t what I meant.”
She exhaled loudly, turned on her heel, and stomped out of the room.
Like a switch being flicked she went from softening toward me again to shutting me down like a goddamned door.
Well, two could play at the ice-cold game, and Reagan was about to find out how frigid the Alaskan winters could be.
* * *
“Make sure to get those papers to my agent,” I said coolly as Reagan dropped me off at the airport security line. I’d expected her to barely slow down and kick me out of her little car, but she’d been decent enough to walk me all the way in.
Her studio was footing the bill for the flight home, so I’m sure some sort of practicality factored into it. I couldn’t help but think she wanted to spend just a few minutes more with me.
I got in line, and we talked amicably as it moved slowly toward the security checkpoint. I was reluctant to leave her there with so much unsaid between us, but I wasn’t exactly the most romantic man in the world…what could I have possibly said?
A few feet from security, she cleared her throat and looked up at me. People on either side of us were listening in, not even trying to seem discreet about it. I think they all picked up on the vibe that there was something going on with us.
“I didn’t mean to come off sounding so short with you,” she said and placed her hand on my arm across the rope barrier. “It’s just that…well, this show means a lot to me, you know?”
“I get it,” I said, “I don’t hold it against you.”
“Oh good, because I want this relationship between us to work.”
My ears perked up at that. Was she finally admitting that there was some kind of insane chemistry between the two of us? The old woman in line behind me looked intensely at Reagan, and then me, waiting for my reply.
“Relationship? Me too,” I said softly.
“I mean, I want all my work relationships to go smoothly. Like with any show I produce. This one is just like all the rest of them, but I think it will take my career to the next level if we can maintain a certain level of professionalism.”
“Oh, right, I see,” I replied, realizing she was never going to admit anything between us, and as long as she wasn’t curling her lip in disgust whenever she talked to me, that was the best I was going to get from her. Goddamned city girls, always putting their careers first instead of focusing on things that mattered…like family and love and having a happy life. Reagan seemed addicted to the rush of LA living, though, so that was that—I had my answer. “I agree,” I told her. “Here’s to being professional.”
I edged her hand off my arm, caught it in mine, and shook it while looking her in the eye. We each had a fake smile plastered on our faces as we slapped together the basis for whatever relationship we managed to eek out during the TV show.
“You’re next,” the old woman behind me whispered with a nudge.
“Thanks,” I said with a more genuine smile, and Reagan jerked her hand away. “See you soon, Reagan.” I waved and left her standing there, looking at me like I was a steak on legs and she was starving.
I know the feeling, I thought to myself as I let the cute TSA agent giggle and chat me up within hearing distance of Reagan.
“Oh my, I thought you were smuggling something with those big bulges in there,” the TSA agent said with a sultry laugh as she patted me down and ran her hands up my arms.
“I’m sure I could smuggle you in under my jacket if you’d like,” I chuckled with a quick glance over at Reagan.
Her face was red with anger or embarrassment as she watched us shamelessly flirt with each other.
I smiled to myself when she turned and stomped off, her anger clear in the tension of her shoulders and her angry walk.
Two could play at this game, and as long as I kept reminding myself that this was purely professional, I wouldn’t let her get to me.
7
REAGAN
It took everything I had to not react. I hated that I was so angry every time Aaron showed even the slightest interest in one of the bimbos the studio had chosen for the show.
I hated myself for reacting so badly in general. I was a professional, dammit, and I needed to act like one in spite of the fact that I had to tell myself this very fact about a million times a day.
I kept my distance until we pressed him to choose the final girl who would be sharing the house with him and potentially become his wife.
I kept my distance, because I was going crazy being near him. His mere touch sent jolts of liquid fire through my body and images of him with his massive morning wood in the hallway the other morning racing through my brain.
I had to keep my distance just to stay alive.
We were almost silent the whole drive to the airport. I thought about dumping him off in front of the departures level but couldn’t quite bring myself to do it.
So I walked him to the security line up like a love-struck teenager. I hung onto his every word while doing my best to stay cool and calm and definitely collected.
I couldn’t help myself though. It was like I was in the middle of some feverish dream and couldn’t wake up.
I loved the way his voice rumbled in his chest, and I felt faint at the times I made him laugh, how it bubbled up out of him like an unexpected volcano. I loved making him smile, seeing it reach his eyes, and the way his full lips curved up on the edge made me want to kiss him right there.
I even loved his beard. Now, I don’t like beards in general, so that surprised me, but it framed his gorgeous mouth and made me wonder like mad what it would feel like when he kissed my lips and kissed me…down there.
And of course, his muscles. God, how I loved those muscles. He wasn’t bulging all over the place like a thick side of beef, he wasn’t a gym
rat. His muscles were developed through good, honest, hard work, and it showed. He wasn’t fragile—he was the kind of guy who could cut a pile of wood with his axe, then come in and fuck you on the kitchen table before dinner.
With that huge pole I’d seen the other morning.
And good god, that pole…I couldn’t keep it out of my head.
After he left, I walked slowly back to my car and wondered how the hell I was going to handle this. How was I going to sit idly by and watch ten gorgeous women drape themselves all over the man who made me feel like this?
I drove back into the city and texted Melanie the moment I got home. She was still working, running some stupid errand for Charles, so I decided to take Tiger for a walk to calm my jumpy nerves.
He was a little overexcited about me taking him out. He kept jumping up and down and weaving in and out of my leash until I made it to the dog park and let him run free.
I laughed as he spun in circles, rolled in the grass, and snuffled against my calf, trying to get my attention.
I’d never been a really outdoorsy kind of girl, but as I grew older, I found more solace in being out in nature.
I mean, as much nature as we could get here in the city.
I tossed Tiger’s ball, and he chased it, his pudgy little butt wiggling like a madman until he found it. He loved being outside even more than I did, and I felt a little bad having a dog cooped up in an apartment. It was a big apartment, but it wasn’t like Tiger could go and roll around in the grass whenever he wanted.
I threw the ball for him again and backed up as he ran towards me, his confused excitement making me giggle and keep going.
I hit somebody, stopped short, and turned around to apologize. Instead, I heard myself blurting, “Nick! What are you doing here?”
In the flesh, my ex-boyfriend, soap opera star and recent movie action hero…and heart throb for millions of women around the globe. Nick Evans. Nicolas Ethan Johnson, actually, but he’d moved to LA and rebranded as the studly Nick Evans a few years ago.
Lumberjacked Page 4
