Calais laughed properly then. "No, I like guys, or I did. I just...someone very close to me was in a restrictive relationship, where her partner kept her isolated, just like we are here, until she pretty much depended on him for everything. And when he didn't...didn't love her any more, she died. Suicide." Calais pressed her lips together, shaking her head firmly. "So I don't like harems. And I think I realised that today, when we were all lining up, and everyone looked to you for your favour. I wanted to scream that it was wrong and we should all go home."
"But you didn't."
Calais shuddered. "And turn it into a horror scene like when Daphne left? No thanks. I'm not a raving lunatic. So I held together as long as I could, before coming up here to be alone."
Jason nodded. He took that as his cue to head back to camp. He needed to talk to Paige.
FORTY-ONE
"But what about your next date?" Paige hissed. "You have to pick one of them and – "
"I'm going home to the resort," Jason said. "When I come back out here, we'll see." He climbed into the jet boat, nodded to Baz, and ignored Paige as they set off across King Sound.
Jason barely noticed the changing tides as the boat skirted around the whirlpools at the entrance to the Sound, and then they were around the point, skimming between the islands of the archipelago. He needed to think. He needed to talk to someone. A woman, preferably, who didn't have a stake in all this craziness.
His first thought was his sister, Jo. She'd be honest, and she wouldn't hold back, either.
The moment he walked into his villa, he headed straight for the phone. Jo made it halfway through her greeting before Jason asked, "Are reality TV shows degrading?"
Jo didn't hesitate. "God, yes. Degrading to the people in them, and more degrading still to the idiots who watch them. I stopped watching TV almost entirely because of them. It's not reality. It's a warped, distorted view, manipulated by the TV producers and the people that agree to the whole farce."
"Including the dating shows?"
Jo made a noise of disgust, deep in her throat. "Those are even worse. You mean like the rural romance one the resort's hosting? I know it's good for the resort, because Xan gets to show the place off, but I don't know how anyone can sign up for one of those. They'd have to be desperate for love, if they think they can find it in a matter of days with a bunch of complete strangers. Not to mention...it's not one stranger at a time. It's all the girls competing for Desperate-and-Dateless's attention while he seduces all of them. I bet if the show didn't have a PG rating, there'd be mass orgies going on behind the scenes. There probably are, but just not on the bits they show on TV."
She sure did know a lot about them.
"Thanks, Jo." He walked over to the cradle to put the phone back.
"Wait...why are you asking? Are you thinking about...no, Jason. Don't. Just don't. If you – "
Jason set the phone firmly on the charger, ending the call before he had to lie to Jo.
She hadn't answered his question, though. Not really. She'd been so against all such shows that he couldn't bring himself to ask her.
Sighing, Jason strode out to the jetty. He thought better walking the boards, than he did cooped up inside. Something about the sea air, or something. Not that it smelled any different to the air at Camp Romance. Just being alone, maybe...
"I thought I saw you come in."
Or not.
"Had enough of your harem already?"
Again with that word. Jason stared at Xan. "Are harems degrading to women?"
Xan snorted. "Blood hell, yes. They're the ultimate expression of male power. Keeping a bunch of women locked away from the world, existing solely for your pleasure? It's barbaric."
"So I'm a barbarian now?" he tested.
"Only if you've turned them all into sex slaves." Xan blinked. "You haven't, have you? Woven some sort of rock star spell over them, the way you have all the other girls I've seen you with, so they'll agree to share you?"
"Not that I know of." Jason broke into a smile. "You seriously think I'd be capable of that?"
Xan's expression grew unusually blank. "Well, look at the evidence. Phuong, Flavia, Gaia...and all the girls who came before. I guess the only question would be...why haven't you done something like this earlier, if that's what you wanted?"
Jason shook his head slowly. "I never wanted a harem. Not before, and not out of the show. I only wanted one woman, and now... One of the girls today said she felt like a harem girl. That they all were. If she's right, it's wrong, isn't it?"
"Which part?" Xan asked. "The bit where you have multiple girls at the same time, or that the whole sordid story gets filmed for TV?"
"That they have no real choice. No say in how things play out. Who goes on what date. Who spends time with me and when. Who has to go home...I make the decisions. I make them for them. Who gave me all that power? And what if I make the wrong decision? I don't want to fuck this up."
"So let the girls decide."
It sounded like such a brilliant idea...but... "Paige will never go for it," Jason declared. "She said the show has to follow the standard format. The eliminations, the dates, the family dinner, the final decision..."
Xan broke into a wry smile. "There's no format for a dating show with one rock star bachelor. Her format is for a bunch of farmers who all have to follow the same storyline. You've already messed with that just by being you. And you get to see all the footage, which I'm sure no other bachelor from the previous seasons got to see before he made his decisions. Do the girls suspect when you leave on business, you're actually just rushing back here to watch the bits you missed? I think if you tell Paige to do things differently, she'd accommodate you. She's still under your spell a bit, you know."
"No. Not Paige."
Xan shrugged. "Try her and see. After all, without a bachelor, she has no show."
FORTY-TWO
The next morning, Jason was woken by the intercom, informing him he had a visitor. The calm, recorded voice repeated the message as Jason stumbled to the front door. He cursed back, asking it why it couldn't tell him the name of his visitor. All staff and guests wore wristbands, after all. If he opened the door and found a fucking frog...
"Jay, you need to come back. The date, remember?" Paige called through the door.
Not a frog. Not a guest or staff, either, and probably not wearing a wristband if she didn't intend to remain on the island.
Time to see if Xan was right about Paige.
Jason palmed open the door. Desire flamed in Paige's eyes as she took in his nakedness. One point to Xan. "Let the girls decide," he said.
Puzzlement creased Paige's forehead. "What?"
"I'm not going to pick the girls for each date. They should get to pick what they want. Offer them the different dates and let them decide which ones they want to go on with me. If they want to." Calais might not want to, and Penelope... "Give them a choice."
"I can't. Some of the excursions are way better than the others. I mean, there's a helicopter ride, a jet boat ride, a charter flight, a pearl farm tour with a night in the deluxe safari tent...and all of them include romantic dinners at some really spectacular locations. They'll all pick the best one."
Jason shrugged. "So make them compete for it. Whoever comes first, gets to pick first, until they all do. Schedule the dates and that's what we do."
"But the viewers love the bit where the blokes ask. It's romantic," Paige protested.
"I can still ask them out, and if you keep the schedule a surprise, they'll still look surprised when I ask, because they won't know which day," Jason offered.
Paige wavered. "But they're already competing for you. What else do you expect them to do?"
"I don't know. Something more taxing than putting on makeup and the most revealing clothes they own. Make them run sprints, or arrange flowers, or mud wrestle, or play a chess tournament. I don't care. Making good TV is your job. If they want first pick, they'll try harder. If they don't, that's
fine. They don't have to go on a date with me if they don't want to. But every time I choose, it's like going into a brothel and picking someone for the night. It doesn't feel right."
Paige eyed him. "You've been into a brothel? YOU?"
Jason squirmed. "Once, all right? A bunch of guys from uni decided to drive out to Kalgoorlie and see the sights. That included the historic brothels."
Paige whistled. "So somewhere in the wilds of Western Australia, there's a working girl who got paid to sleep with the legendary Jay Felix."
"I didn't say that. I said I went into the brothel. I was a starving uni student. I could barely afford more than two beers. An hour with one of those girls? Way beyond my means back then. Nah, I just sat in the bar, nursing my beer, making the girls laugh while they were waiting for work."
Paige still looked puzzled. "You're a strange man, Jay."
He shrugged. "There's only one of me in all the world. Which is why the world loves me, of course. And you know it. So, are we doing this?"
"All right," she said slowly. "But not mud wrestling."
Jason sighed. "All right."
FORTY-THREE
"Right, there's been a change of plan," Paige announced.
Inwardly, Penny groaned. Without Jay there, she figured it meant no date tonight, but Paige had brought ashore a whole bunch of boxes that were piled up in the kitchen, before she'd declared the whole structure off limits for the girls.
Lazy Luke had smirked at that, until Bec nudged him and said he was making dinner tonight.
"We're having a little friendly competition," Paige continued. "Whoever comes first, gets to choose where they go with Jay on their date. Second gets next pick, until all the dates are allocated."
"What do we have to do?" Melissa asked.
She'd already had a date with Jay. She should automatically go last, Penny fumed.
Paige smiled widely. "First, you're going to pick a dozen – that's twelve – roses from the boxes in the kitchen. Then, you're going to carry them to the top of the ridge, where you'll find four vases. You're to arrange your flowers in one vase, before coming back down to the bathroom block for fresh water. You'll carry the water in those clam shells on the veranda until the vase is full to the level marked on the side. First girl to fill her vase, wins!"
It sounded like a lot of work for the privilege of picking where you went on a date. "What if we don't do it?" Penny asked.
"Then you don't get a date with Jay at all," Paige replied. And be the next girl sent home, she didn't add, but then she didn't have to. They all knew it.
Penny sighed. Flower arranging. Couldn't be that hard, could it?
Paige lined them up, then released them with a, "Ready, set, GO!"
All four of them bolted for the kitchen. Lorelei managed to push Penny out of the way so she could squeeze through the doorway first, but her momentary lead didn't help her. The boxes were taped shut, and Lorelei's acrylic talons were no use. Penny reached automatically for a knife and sliced her way into her box. She counted out the roses – only ten. Another box gave way to her cutting skills and she had a dozen roses in her arms. She sprinted for the door, with Melissa right behind her.
The track to the ridge was wide enough for all four of them to run abreast, so Penny didn't mind so much when Melissa kept pace with her. Reaching the top of the ridge, Penny scanned the sand and scrub for the vases. Someone had placed them in the only cleared spot – grouped around the base of a dead snag that held a wild beehive in its hollow trunk.
The few bees buzzing high over her head didn't seem to care about her, though, so Penny ignored them to head back down the dune for water.
The clam shells were roughly the size of large soup bowls, and they balanced nicely in her hand just like a bowl. Penny grinned, grabbing a stack of them and proceeded to fill them from the tap before placing them along her arms. She managed six before the weight became too much, then strode carefully up the dune. Melissa sprinted past her, looking stunned, but the girl didn't stop.
Penny reached her vase with most of the water still in the shells, so she poured it carefully in. They only filled a quarter of the big vase, which meant three more trips, at least. Penny stacked up her shells and ran back for a refill.
This time, she had to wait in line behind Lorelei and Calais, who hadn't seen her waitressing technique, so they only carried one shell each. Melissa had two, which she filled before taking off at a fast clip.
When Penny's shells were full again, she didn't hurry. Speed wasn't as important as steadiness, so she wouldn't spill...
Lorelei bumped into her on her way down the hill, upsetting all three of the shells on Penny's right arm. Penny cursed, convinced the bitch had done it on purpose. Lorelei just stuck out her tongue and veered off.
Penny poured. Not half full yet. Another three trips still. Down she went.
The next two trips she managed not to spill much, but the water level was still a good inch shy of the fill line, though much higher than anyone else's. One of them barely had an inch in it. One last trip, she promised herself. Then she could choose her date with Jay. That meant she had to stay long enough for that, at least.
Penny was halfway up the dune when she heard Paige's shout ring out behind her. "We have a winner!"
On top of the ridge, Lorelei held her brimming vase aloft, her face split in a triumphant grin.
What? How? It wasn't possible. There was no way Lorelei had carried enough water up that hill to fill a vase more than halfway.
Penny reached her vase, which had somehow tipped over, leaving nothing but a trickle of water at the bottom. Yet the sand was dry, showing no signs of spillage. She glared at Lorelei, knowing what the girl had done. Throwing her shells on the sand, Penny marched up to the lying, cheating bitch and punched her in her perfect nose. Lorelei went down like a sack of potatoes.
Penny was good at mashed potatoes, come to think of it. She reached for the nearest vase, one that still had water in it, and raised it over Lorelei's head.
A piercing scream came from Penny's other side, distracting her.
Melissa's face was ashen as she clutched her arm. "A bee. It stung me."
"Brush it off," Calais advised. "You'll be fine."
"No, I won't," Melissa whispered, swaying. "I'm mortally allergic to bees. I need to get to hospital. Now. Or I'll die."
Penny could kill Lorelei later. Melissa didn't deserve to die yet. Calais and Penny moved to support Melissa, one under each arm, carrying her down the hill. Calais explained breathlessly to Paige while Bec brought out the first aid kit. Someone found some sort of injector, which Bec stabbed into Melissa's leg, while Penny looked away.
Before Penny knew it, Melissa was whisked away in the four-wheel-drive, to meet the Royal Flying Doctor Service plane winging its way to the pearl farm air strip.
It wasn't until after eating a dinner of Luke's specialty – burned barbeque – that Paige came to ask Penny which date she preferred. Penny took one look at the list and picked the helicopter tour to the pearl farm on the other side of the peninsula. They'd arrive by helicopter, have a seafood banquet with champagne and cruise the creek the pearl farm was named for. Now, if she could just negotiate with the chef to be allowed to prepare the food instead of him...
"Lorelei already picked that one," Paige said. "You'll have to pick something else."
"She cheated!" Penny returned hotly. "She had barely any water in hers, while mine was nearly full. She stole mine and cheated!"
"On the footage we have, she won, so she picked first," Paige said evenly. "Unless someone videoed her doing what you said, there's no proof. And as Melissa has now been airlifted to Perth, we can't redo the race, so the result will have to stand. Make your choice, or no date."
"What's left?" Penny asked, fighting to keep her voice calm. Now she wanted to break Paige's nose so she matched Lorelei. But if she did that to the show host, she'd be cast as the bitch for sure.
"A charter flight to some waterf
all, or a night in the luxury safari tents at this pearl farm."
"The tent night," Penny said promptly. She wasn't giving anyone else a chance to spend the night with Jay.
"Done," Paige said.
No, they weren't, but Penny could be patient. She'd bide her time, but she'd get her revenge on Lorelei. Maybe even on Paige, too. If she could get Jay to choose her over Calais and Lorelei, then Paige would have to make her look wonderful in every episode.
All she had to do was win the rock star's heart. He'd already kissed her twice, and he'd said he was in love, though he might have been talking about her cooking more than her. Still, he had said love. How hard could it be?
FORTY-FOUR
"So how did the competition go?" Jason asked Paige when she appeared in the conference room that had become the film crew's editing studio. He eyed the hard drive in her hands that held the previous day's footage. He'd finally caught up on everything he'd missed over the last week, and some of the interviews had been eye-openers.
Melissa had admitted she guessed that Maia would be sent home, after watching Maia distance herself from the rest of them, following her date with Jay. Melissa then went on to say that Jay had "hidden depths" that she'd like to explore, and she was looking forward to having the opportunity, because he was just the sort of man she could see her future with.
Jason wasn't sure whether to believe her or not. He'd gotten the impression that she hadn't liked him all that much, but maybe he'd been wrong. After all, there was a big difference between throwing herself at him like the fangirls did and hating his guts. He could hardly compare her to a fangirl.
Lorelei had giggled about how compatible they were, dropping heavy hints about how much sex they'd had and how good it was. This was news to Jason. Unless he'd met her before the show and forgotten – entirely possible, give how many groupies he'd slept with over the years – he'd never so much as kissed the woman, let alone had sex with her.
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