Gaia. One of them had mentioned Gaia, thinking he'd be impressed. Actually, he'd struggled not to gag. He'd manfully managed one night with the billionaire, but he couldn't summon the slightest bit of enthusiasm for another. Especially not with another girl watching. Besides, if he sent the girl back to Gaia, they both might leave him alone.
There. Decision made. He had his list of six. Now he just needed to remember it while the cameras were rolling and everyone was looking to him to make his choice.
He hitched up his best cheeky grin and waited on the Jungle veranda, winking occasionally at the camera.
"And now, I'd like to properly introduce our mysterious bachelor, Mr..."
"GO!" Allie mouthed.
Jason sauntered up the steps.
"...JAY FELIX!" Paige finished, clapping loudly with all the girls.
She'd lined them up, like they did to criminals at a police station.
Jason felt an overwhelming urge to say, "Yes, officer, that's the girl who said she'd deep-throat my dick while fisting herself." Except that he'd have to point the finger at five of them, and Paige would get pissed off because she couldn't show that on TV, so he'd have to go back out and start over. It'd be worth it, though, to see the shock on their faces...
At least they all looked delighted to find out that he was the bachelor to their brides-to-be. That was enough to keep his grin in place while he chose not to cause any more trouble than necessary.
"Have you chosen your six favourites?" Paige asked.
"Yes, Paige, I have."
"Well, let's hear their names, then!"
Jason cleared his throat. "First, I have to say what amazing women they all are. Coming all the way out here, not knowing who I am..." He drivelled on for the required five minutes until he caught Paige's slight nod. Good. He'd talked up the girls enough so that the ones who left wouldn't look too bad, and he didn't look overeager to get started.
Think of it as foreplay, Paige had said. Spin it out until they're so close they're ready to scream, and then give them a little. And a little bit more...
Yeah, he got the picture. He wondered how many bachelors she'd said that to, and realised this was the only dating show she'd done. So she absolutely knew what she was asking for, when she suggested he pretend this was foreplay. He could take all damn night if he wanted to.
"The first favourite I choose is...Calais."
She beamed, crossed the room to hug Paige, and then gave him a hug, too, before standing by his side. On the other side of the room a few smug smiles had turned to looks of consternation. Good.
"The second one...will be Maia."
Panic had set in among the porn fans.
Jason waited until Maia had finished her hugs before he took a deep breath and said, "My third favourite is...Daphne."
The girl emitted an ear-splitting screech, then insisted on hugging everybody. Jason watched with smug satisfaction as the remaining girls in line wore forced smiles as they awkwardly returned Daphne's hugs.
"The fourth one is...Lorelei."
Tall and proud, this girl strutted to his side of the room, joining the line of girls without deigning to hug anyone.
He glimpsed Allie's signal and remembered the next bit of drivel he'd promised to deliver. "It was really hard to choose only six of these wonderful women, and I'd like to thank..."
He only droned on for two minutes this time, cutting the speech short because he wanted to put the remaining girls out of their misery. This was cruel.
"My fifth favourite is...Melissa!"
The redhead tossed her head and marched across the room, choosing to give him a hug, but not Paige. Paige didn't seem put out, so Jason took a deep breath to end this performance.
And his mind went blank. Staring at the girl with ebony-coloured hair, who was looking at the floor, he completely forgot her name. The Simpsons fan who'd looked the most animated when she was talking about cooking. C'mon, her name had to be in his head somewhere...
"Penelope," someone breathed beside him.
He glanced left to find Calais grinning up at him. She nodded toward the same girl.
"And the sixth and final girl I choose to spend the next four weeks with, here in the Kimberley, is...Penelope!"
EIGHTEEN
Penny's breath hissed out in relief as he said her name. She truly hadn't believed he'd pick her and now...and now...
She opened her eyes to find Paige beckoning her silently to move to where the other chosen girls stood. Oh, right. She didn't want to stand with the rejects any longer than she had to. Not so confident now, were they? The cheap tarts who'd boasted so casually about screwing celebrities in the pub weren't going to get their claws in Jay.
But Penny might. If she was really, really lucky.
She didn't want the man, she wanted the opportunity to cook for him, she reminded herself, but it was no use. For just a moment, she let her imagination run riot, that she'd won the competition, and Jay would be hers. If only...
"Well, that was kind of him," Lorelei said, startling Penny into opening her eyes again. "Or perhaps unkind, depending on your perspective."
"What do you mean?" demanded Daphne.
"Well, he had to choose five other girls after me, because it's part of the show rules. So he sent away the girls who might have given me some competition, and gave the rest of you false hope. Now it's MY turn to be kind." She stuck her hands on her hips. "Forget it. He's mine. Give up hope now, because you don't have a chance."
Daphne opened her mouth to protest, but she couldn't seem to find the right words. Melissa just looked disgusted, while Maia rolled her eyes. Calais fixed her gaze firmly on the floor and Penny bunched her hands into fists.
"How would you know?" Penny spat. "He chose all of us. That gives you one chance in six. No better than the rest of us."
Lorelei looked her up and down. "Oh, I am better than the rest of you. And if you don't see it, you're delusional."
Penny drew back her fist.
"Oh good, you're all still here," Paige said.
Grudgingly, Penny dropped her hands to her sides.
"Now the show really gets started," Paige continued. "Once the other girls are gone, I'd like you to return to your rooms and pack your things, too. We'll spend one more night here before we head out in the morning to your new home for the next four weeks. Well, those of you who are lucky enough to stay for the full four weeks. Not all of you will, by the way. But that's the price you pay, when the prize is a rock star's heart. And what a chest it's in, right, girls?"
No one responded.
"We'll do a quick set of video interviews with each of you, asking how you feel about our bachelor, now you know who he is. Now's the time to really spill your feelings, because Jay will be with us at our new home. I just can't wait! Can you?"
"Where are we going?" Melissa asked.
Paige clapped her hands. "The home of romance, of course!"
NINETEEN
By the next morning, Paige still hadn't been any more forthcoming. "Get in, girls. Leave your gear on the jetty – Luke will come back for that next trip!" Paige cried, gesturing at the jet boat as if it was a luxury yacht and not one of the pearl farm's battered dive boats.
Penny and the other girls trooped aboard. Well, all of them except Lorelei, who stood on the jetty, squawking about how she was afraid of boats.
Stay on land all alone then, Penny thought but didn't say.
"Nothing to be afraid of. There won't be any whirlpools in the Sound for hours, if you go now," Jay remarked, scooping Lorelei up.
She squealed in delight, but her triumph was short-lived as Jay took three steps, then set her down on the side of the boat.
"My shoe!" she screeched.
Penny peered over the side. Sure enough, she could see one of Lorelei's ridiculously high heels sinking into the milky, blue water.
"These are Jimmy Choos!" Lorelei wailed. "You have to get it!"
Penny recognised the name of the Malaysia
n shoe designer whose wares she'd never be able to afford, and prayed silently that no one surrendered to Lorelei's pleas. The bitch deserved to lose her expensive shoes. She could probably afford to buy a new pair every week.
The boat pulled away from the jetty, amid Lorelei's wails of what she was supposed to do with only one shoe.
Daphne dealt with the problem. She leaned over, ripped off Lorelei's other shoe and pitched it over the side of the boat. "There. Now the fish can have a matching pair."
Everyone except Lorelei laughed.
"Wait, what about Jay?" Maia asked, pointing.
Jay stood on the jetty, his chiselled chest and abs gleaming in the sun, as he waved to them.
Luke shrugged. "He's headed over on my next trip, when I bring the gear. We have to set up camp first. Something rock stars don't have to do." He sounded bitter. Jealous, maybe.
Who wouldn't be? Every girl's gaze was fixed on the rock god. The bloke driving the boat didn't exist to them with Jay around.
For a moment, Penny dared to hope that Jay could be hers. Every inch of hard muscle, hers to have any time she wanted. Not just once. Her mouth went dry. It was like winning the lottery. No, better than that. But not for her. Never for her. The universe hated her. She'd never have someone like Jay. Better to focus on what she was really here for – to showcase her cooking on television, so she could finish her apprenticeship and open her own restaurant. Where she could cook what she wanted, without some overbearing bloke telling her what to do, and people would come from all over the country, no, all over the world, just to taste...
"He looks so yummy, doesn't he?" Calais' soft words dragged Penny out of her daydream. "I still can't believe I'm here. A month with him sounds like a dream, though I don't think I'll last that long."
"What do you mean?" Penny asked.
"Well, we won't all get to stay for the whole time. We get eliminated. Voted off the island, sort of. Except Jay's the one who has to choose who stays and who goes." Calais bowed her head. "I bet I'm the first to go."
Penny surveyed the mousy girl, who probably had a point. From what she remembered, Jay liked his girls outspoken and confident. "I hope it's Lorelei. Shit, I wish she'd fallen over the side instead of her shoes." She glanced up, hoping the cameraman hadn't heard that. No, he didn't even have his camera on. It hung by his side, pointed at the deck.
Calais laughed. "I liked her shoes. I could never walk in them, of course, but they were pretty. Not something you'd want to wear out here, though." She kicked her sneakers against the side of the boat.
Penny glanced down at the thongs on her feet. "No."
The cameraman swore and rushed to the side, camera in hand.
"What is it?" Maia called.
"There's a pod of dolphins over by the oyster lines. Feeding, by the look of it." Luke pointed at some black buoys.
Penny squinted at the water, and something broke the surface, then slipped under again. Could be a dolphin, but could be a shark, too. Plenty of them around here.
"And there's home for the next four weeks. Shenton Bluff." Luke pointed proudly at a row of what looked like tents, lined up along the beach.
"We're sleeping in those?" Daphne whined. "I thought we were staying at the resort! There might be bugs!"
Penny hoped there would be bugs. Big, deadly, venomous ones that wanted whiny bitch for breakfast.
"Nope, you're not sleeping in those. Your tents are by the fire pit. You have to assemble them yourselves."
Lorelei's wailing drowned out Daphne's.
Luke raised his voice so he could be heard over the two idiots. "First one finished doesn't have to cook tonight, and the last one to finish has to do the dishes." The boat ground to a halt in the shallows, a good twenty metres from shore. "Go get them, girls!"
TWENTY
Penny didn't hesitate. She slipped over the side, landing knee-deep in the warm ocean. She trudged through the shallows to shore.
"You have to take one of the tent kits to a platform, and when you're finished, it has to look like that one there!" Luke shouted. Penny's eyes followed the direction of his outstretched arm until she found the tent in question.
Huh. She'd expected the tents to be complicated, but they were the same as the heavy-duty four-man safari tents she'd used at every school camp. One person could put them up, even if that person was a ten-year-old who wasn't listening to a word her teacher said. The hardest bit was banging the pegs into the ground if it was rocky, or you couldn't find something suitable to use as a hammer.
Penny grabbed a kit and hauled it up to the platform furthest from the beach – and beside the only proper building at the campsite. When she grew close enough to read the signs, she congratulated herself on her foresight. The rainwater tanks were a big hint, as were the doors lined up along one side, but the signs identifying it as the toilet and bathroom block sealed the deal. She wasn't wandering around in the dark through the camp when she needed to go to the loo.
She emptied her bag on the raised decking. Tent, centre pole...but no pegs! Swearing, she dropped to her knees and searched the bag for them, but the tent pegs were nowhere to be seen. She'd have to head back to the fire pit and see if another kit had spares. Penny stomped across the decking, annoyed at whoever had forgotten to pack her tent kit properly, she didn't notice the metal ring until she caught her toe in it. Too late to correct, she sprawled onto the sand dune, getting a face full of sand.
Shrieks of laughter floated up from the fire pit. The other girls had reached the tents just in time to see her face-plant. Swearing some more, Penny dragged herself back onto the platform to rip out whatever had tripped her.
Sure enough, there was a metal ring, firmly fixed to the platform, with a clinking carabiner clipped to it. But it looked like it was supposed to be there.
Maybe the reason there weren't any pegs was because she didn't need any, Penny mused, unfolding her tent so the base spread across the platform. She pulled one of the peg loops over to the metal ring and clipped them together with the carabiner. Crawling across the platform, she did the same with the other tent corners. Much easier than hammering pegs into hardened clay, and much sturdier than shifting beach sand.
All she had to do was put up the centre pole, throw the fly over and tie that down. Easy.
"Whoever's tent goes up first doesn't have to cook!" Luke bellowed, striding along the path to the bathrooms. "You'll get to relax with us blokes by the fire pit!"
Except...Penny didn't want to be first. She wanted to cook in front of the cameras. That's what she was here for.
She surveyed the other girls. Calais had picked the platform next to hers, and she was unfolding her tent with a bewildered look on her face. On the next platform, Maia and Melissa were puzzling over a sheet of instructions that had come with one of their tents. The two closest to the fire pit had been claimed by the whiners, Lorelei and Daphne. Lorelei had managed to drag her bag up the dune, by virtue of her bare feet, but Daphne's heels kept sinking into the sand, and she refused to remove them.
She had to help someone else come first. Not Lorelei or Daphne, and the two Ms were already allies. That left quiet Calais. If she was first, she'd be too shy to talk to Jay or even Luke. Penny's decision was made.
"Have you ever put up a tent before?" Penny addressed Calais.
Calais shook her head. "I've been camping plenty of times, but we never bothered with a tent. We just threw the swags in the back of the ute and strung up a tarp if we needed it to shelter from the dew. Tents are for townies and tourists."
Penny gritted her teeth. "Well, how about letting this townie show you what to do?"
"Please," Calais said fervently.
With two of them clipping and tying, they had the tent up in minutes.
"And Penny's first!" Luke roared.
"No, I'm not!" Penny shouted back frantically. "This is Calais's tent. Mine's that one." She pointed at the staked tent lying on her platform. Scrambling through the scrub to hers, she screw
ed the centre pole together and used it to raise the roof. Next, she shook out the fly and tried to flip it over the top of the tent. The breeze caught it and blew it back in her face. "Shit."
Someone peeled it away from her. "Let me help. After all, you helped me." Calais offered a smile as she took two corners of Penny's flysheet. Together, they hoisted it over the tent and tied the corners down.
"First is Calais, second is Penny! Who will be next?" Luke yelled, sounding like a carnival barker at the Royal Show.
"Who cares?" Penny muttered.
"Bedrolls are on the decking outside the kitchen," a female voice said. "That big tent at the end. The one that looks like a canvas donga. That's the kitchen."
Penny and Calais glanced up in surprise.
A woman, dressed in a uniform similar to Luke's, stood on the bathroom block veranda. "Hi, I'm Bec," she said. "When he's done ordering you around, he'll tell you about the bedding. I'll tell you a secret, though. The ones with the best mattresses will have names written on them, because the tour guides claim them. See if you can get Luke's before he does."
"But leave yours alone?" Calais asked.
Bec shrugged. "All the tents are taken. I'll be sleeping in one of the tent cabins tonight. They've all got beds with linen for the glamping crowd, so I won't need a swag."
"Why don't we get beds?" Penny asked.
"You'd have to ask the TV crew that. They booked you into the tents. Maybe their budget doesn't run to more than that." Bec nodded toward the two Ms. "You better hurry. It looks like those two are nearly done with theirs."
Calais and Penny collected their bedding and lugged it up to their tents, then headed back to the fire pit, where Bec now sat in a plastic garden chair.
"Grab yourself a beer," Bec said, pointing with hers. "The local brewery's sponsoring the show, so there's plenty."
"No, I need these two for interviews," Paige chimed in, linking her arms through Penny's and Calais'. "Show me your little canvas palaces, girls, and tell the viewers your secret. How did you get it up so fast?"
The Rock Star Wants a Wife Page 5
