by Emily Bishop
He grunts his approval against my mouth and strokes me through the fabric.
A lightning bolt arcs from my core, and I writhe, shoving myself out of his arms, propelling myself in one swift movement into a standing position.
Part of me is still back on that fountain, making out with Blake hardcore, while the rest of me storms from the garden. My thighs pump hard and carry me far in a matter of seconds.
“Roxanne!” he calls after me. I hear him running across the lawn and glance over my shoulder just in time to see him hurtle a shrub. Damn it, I want to smile. “Where are you going?”
“Back to my bunk!” I yell, mostly to myself. “We’re supposed to be friends! And friends don’t do that stuff!”
“People can do whatever they want; there are no rules,” Blake assures me, catching up to my rapid pace and matching it easily. He’s looking at me as he speaks animatedly, but I keep my eyes pinned to that huddle of trailers in the distance. I have to get my head out of my vagina and back to real life. He’s Sir Berringer, the Billionaire Bachelor #6. And I’m Roxy. The makeup girl. From Los Angeles. Come on.
“There are rules, Blake,” I snap at him. “You just don’t get that.”
“I know you feel it, too,” he insists.
“Could you shut up?” I still don’t look at him, even though he’s right beside me now. “Is that physically possible for you? Because if anyone hears you, I could get in big trouble.”
“I said I know you feel it, too!” he shouts, and I whirl to shoot daggers at him with my eyes. “And I don’t care who knows it!”
“You might think that none of this is real and we’re all the same,” I hiss, “but that’s only true if a super volcano erupts or something. Until then, I need this goddamn job. That’s the difference.”
One of the trailer doors swings open, and I whirl from Blake, mentally juggling all the different elements of the lie I’m formulating. I wasn’t walking. Blake was walking. Blake needs help with something. Yeah. He’ll back me up. He’s a fast thinker. He doesn’t want me to get fired.
Ms. Madden comes swaggering toward us in black compression pants and an oversized t-shirt, scowling. “What the hell is going on out here?” she demands to know, advancing from the trailer. “People are trying to sleep. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
“That’s exactly what I was trying to tell him,” I huff, climbing into the trailer where the only six women in the crew are all bunking.
“Can no one control you?” Ms. Madden wonders, arching a thin brow at Blake. “I might not have the authority to tuck you into bed myself, but I do have the authority to tell you to leave one of my girls alone.”
She reaches back and takes my hand, which is odd. Ms. Madden is not the touchy-feely type.
I move to take my hand back, and she squeezes it. Hard. She doesn’t look at me as she talks to me, but maintains unwavering eye contact with Blake instead.
“Don’t touch the bachelor,” Ms. Madden reminds me icily. “Isn’t that what I said? Aren’t those the rules?”
“You don’t decide whether or not she touches me,” Blake tells her. “She does.”
“I didn’t,” I lie to her in a soft, breathless voice. “I didn’t touch him. Nothing happened.”
Blake looks at me, perhaps expecting that I will explain the nature of the relationship to Ms. Madden, and I stare back at him, hoping that my eyes are not as sad as they feel. He looks back at Ms. Madden, shaking his head.
Blake lifts his hands, showing her his palms. “No one touched anyone, Candace. Sorry for disturbing camp.” He bows deeply and doesn’t look directly at me again. “Goodnight, ladies.”
“Goodnight,” Ms. Madden returns.
“Night,” I echo. My heart feels funny, like I might be falling ill.
As Blake strolls across the green back toward his massive mansion, Ms. Madden twists and examines me with her dark, skeptical eyes. The woman is terrifying, even though she’s still holding my hand.
Ms. Madden grimaces and yanks my hand between her own, placing two fingers firmly against my pulse. She stares at me, ruthlessly scrutinizing my hair, my eyes, my lips. I realize too late that she’s checking out my claim that nothing happened, and I probably look a lot like a woman who’s been making out. His fingers were up in my hair. His mouth wasn’t on mine in any gentle way.
She tosses my wrist from her grip as if it’s disgusting.
“No drinking,” she reiterates in a hiss. Her eyes burn into mine. “No wandering. No souvenirs. And no flirting. But where were you? You were wandering. And what were you doing? You were flirting. Three strikes and you’re out, baby girl.”
“But I wasn’t—”
“Oh please. I’m an adult, Roxy. I know what I’m looking at. And don’t think Blake doesn’t see it, either.”
A little voice inside says that I shouldn’t pursue her words, but I ask. I have to know what that means. “What are you talking about?”
“How desperate you are,” she answers coolly. “Anyone can see it, especially a man like Blake Berringer.” Ms. Madden scoffs and shakes her head at me, squinting thoughtfully. “He’s a bachelor, Roxy. He’s Bachelor #6. I mean, come on. You know how these men are. They’re gorgeous billionaires.” She laughs and keeps shaking her head, the darkness around her lightening. The air of control and cruelty breaks away and a slightly nicer Ms. Madden emerges. “He’s probably going to sleep with every woman in this trailer unless I stop him.” Then she gestures into the trailer, and it seems as if she’s my friend. It seems as if she’s looking out for me, that she’s happy to protect me. But that isn’t how it feels.
I feel cold and stupid.
“We all make mistakes,” Ms. Madden says from behind me, guiding me back into the trailer. “Just don’t let it happen again.”
Chapter 5
Blake
I know she’s gun-shy, and that’s fine. I’m trigger-happy…
I wake up the same way I went to sleep: glaring at the ceiling.
Someone is knocking on my door. I didn’t sleep well enough to start a new day yet. For Christ’s sake, the last vestiges of my nightmare are still clinging to me. There’d been an unshakable cloud of unmanned studio cameras following me through the streets. If I slammed a door and locked it, one would float through an open window. There was no escaping them.
“Blake?” Miles’ voice bleeds through my bedroom door. “Did you already leave your breakfast order with Felipe?”
“No,” I call back.
“May I come in?”
“Not yet. Tell Felipe I want a sausage and pancake sandwich.”
“Are you being serious?” Miles wonders.
“Yes. Do it. I need to sink my teeth into something juicy.”
Miles departs, and I rise for twenty minutes of yoga. Maybe a few downward dogs and sun salutations will rinse this feeling out of my hair.
How did last night start somewhere like that fountain, with my tongue caressing Roxanne’s and my hand slid between her thighs, and end up somewhere like those trailers, with her cowering behind steely-eyed Candace?
Her words echo back to me as I flow into a tree pose and hold for a few minutes, breath steady.
“I do have the authority to tell you to leave one of my girls alone.”
My jaw clenches, even as I hold the tree pose with immaculate balance.
Yoga can’t fix everything.
Candace can’t just tell me what to do. I’m not that kind of guy, and I never have been.
One of her girls, she called her. Like she isn’t a free woman.
Roxanne wants me. I know she does. She was lying to Candace last night. She’s afraid she’ll lose her job, and she doesn’t expect anyone else to take care of her. But that kiss at the fountain was no lie. The way she looks at me is no lie.
Someone knocks at the door, and my head whips to glare in that direction. I’m just prepared for today to be a bad day.
“What?” I snap.
“I brought y
our riding attire,” Miles informs me hesitantly. “The film crew downstairs requests that you join them in the gardens in an hour. They asked that I remind you that your date is with Shannon, the secretary from Illinois.” I correct his pronunciation, and he thanks me. “She loves horses, and this is the horseback riding episode. You’ll show her the grounds and later enjoy the private box at a race. It should be lovely.” There’s a pause, and then, “May I come in, sir?”
Damn. I suppose I can’t hide from this arrangement all day, can I?
“Of course, Miles.”
The other man observes as I go through my morning routine, but his expression is one of concern.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. No. Last night, I kissed one of the girls.”
“Oh? Was it the secretary from Illinois?”
“The girl in the crew, with the dark hair. The one I met at a party a few years ago.”
“Oh, Blake,” he says, as if he’s disappointed, and I glare at Miles.
“What?”
“What would your parents think?”
I bristle at the mere suggestion that I might consider their posthumous spite before kissing a woman. I’m offended that Miles actually sides with them.
“They’re dead, Miles,” I inform him, very honestly. “They’ve joined with nirvana and don’t care who I fuck.”
***
Out on the green, there are trainers and horses and lawyers and stunt doubles. I wear a starchy white button-down and khaki riding crops with dark brown riding boots, feeling ridiculous. I prefer to ride without the uniform and the saddle, but the lawyers were quick to amend that. We’re all standing on the sidelines now, waiting for clearance to get on the actual horses. The trainers, the producers, and my lawyer are arguing with such tenacity they’re probably spitting all over each other. There’s a liability issue, and no one can film until it’s resolved.
“Hey,” a familiar, husky American female voice rises up behind me.
A fist wraps around my heart and gives it a little squeeze. It’s her.
“Hey,” I return, glancing down. She’s wearing her My Billionaire Bachelor t-shirt again. Her hair is down and wild, like bedhead, at odds with the artful mask of makeup on her face. It’s flawless, and you have to appreciate it for that alone, but it changes the contours of her face in some unclear way. It creates an optical illusion which leads me to wonder if it’s really her; her lashes are too spiky, her cheekbones too prominent. The earthy red lipstick hardens her mouth.
I remember how soft and fresh she felt last night, crumbling in my arms. No cameras. No costumes. Just action.
I want to rub her lipstick away with my thumb.
Roxanne watches me like she knows exactly what I’m thinking, and she’s going to stomp out that little spark of rebellion with her ass-kicking boots. “I was sent over to fix your hair,” she informs me very professionally.
I scoff. “My hair is perfect.”
“It’s too much hair for horseback riding. You look like a damn Jonas brother.”
I sneer, but I’m also uncertain. “A what exactly?”
Roxanne grins and steps closer, calming me the same way one of these trainers would calm their horse. She whispers and coos and clicks, and my eyes flutter closed, bewitched. She laces her fingers through my hair, and I let her. I enjoy her feather-light touch on my scalp and lean back for her, allowing her to gather all my hair into a tight little knot and fasten it with a band at the top of my head.
When my eyes open, slowly, I feel almost drugged by her touch.
“So, how do I look?” I wonder.
She beams up at me. “Like the pioneer of the man-bun,” she answers gleefully. “I want to buy some Ralph Lauren cologne from you.”
I beam back at her, knowing she’s teasing me, when one of the lawyers interrupts us to let me know that the liability issue got resolved and the crew is ready to roll with the horses. I sign a quick document and turn back to Roxanne, but she’s gone when I look up from the papers. Damn it, she’s slippery.
I’m saddled up with a beautiful gray-dappled steed named Lightning. The secretary—who I call Shana and Sharron before I get it right, it’s Shannon—is saddled to a chestnut mare named Darla. We are told that we can’t ride the horses vigorously, the way I want to, but we must keep an even trot for the cameras. Shana—I mean, Shannon—and I make delightful small talk about our experiences riding. She had horses as a young girl. She asks me if the royal family goes riding a lot, and I correct her: my family is not a member of the royal family. We’re just rich and British. She blushes heavily, and the crew snickers.
“All right,” Candace barks through her megaphone. “This has been a very cute date. Strong footage. Let’s wrap it up.”
My shoulders round as I exhale, gazing across the lavish grounds. The stables are nowhere near the main house, and the only reason I know my horses are still alive is the groundskeepers all agree that they are.
It was nice to be on a steed again, even if I only ever took the thing at a clip-clop.
I stare out into the sprawling green horizon, and my gaze fixates on Roxanne in the distance, lingering on the fringes of the crew. I wish we could get a moment alone together. The show is migrating to America next week, and she told me that there are even more cameras in the next location.
How many chances will we get?
“Sir Berringer,” Candace calls in a hard, disrespectful tone, in spite of the title. “Let’s bring it in, shall we?”
My jaw sets.
Just like that, the decision is made.
I jam my heel into Lightning’s side. He whinnies, tearing forward in a gallop already. Several cries of alarm shoot up behind us, but I don’t stop. They wanted to get Blake Berringer on film. Well, this is Blake Berringer, the so-called ‘bad boy of Britain.’ They can take him or leave him.
Tearing past the throng of My Billionaire Bachelor crew members, I lean down and expertly scoop one shrieking Roxanne off her own two feet, clutching her to my chest.
It’s she who straddles me—possibly because she’s afraid of dying. I don’t really care what her motivation is. I forget about the damn horse the second her hair is all around me, her thighs locked hard against my hips. She squirms and kicks in her faded denim shorts.
“You’re insane!” she shrieks, simultaneously clinging to me. I hold her tight with one arm and grip the reins with the other hand, unable to stifle my grin. I feel like I’m running with the horse.
I needed this moment so bad, and Roxanne doesn’t scream again. She stops squirming and just hugs her body to mine, almost relaxing. Lightning pounds over the terrain.
I can’t say that I don’t love this. Even though we’ve been riding at a decent pace for hours, my heart is pounding out of my chest for the first time today.
It’s actually the first damn time I’ve had real fun since this whole crew arrived.
Roxanne sulks up at me, but she can’t pry her body off of mine or she’ll lose her balance. It’s the unexpected perk of my amazing new plan.
“I can’t believe you just did that!” Roxanne cries up to me.
“Oh, please,” I counter flippantly. “You were so bored.”
I guide Lightning through the first garden and take him further, knowing that Candace’s cameras will follow us as fast as they can. I need to put some distance between myself and all those prying eyes, or they’ll be on us before we can double back and meet them, rumbled and out of breath, full of lies.
Luckily, no one here knows this property like I do, and it’s every bit of a small kingdom.
I lead Lightning to an overgrown portion of the second garden—the garden which houses the butterfly pavilion and the bird sanctuary on which my mother insisted—because the visibility there is low. We have to circle a small lake to get there, and the brush thickens on the far shore. It’s easy to lose someone inside.
I bring Lightning to a lope, and we enter beneath the shadowy canopy of many looming pi
ne trees.
“It is beautiful here,” Roxanne breathes. Her eyes pan to the clear sky overhead.
I think about taking her to the butterfly pavilion, but I don’t want her distracted by the butterflies. I want her to be with me. That’s why I’m here.
As Lightning slows to a mild clomp, Roxanne’s eyes settle back onto mine. Our fragile magic starts to fall apart when she remembers the outside world again. I see it in those thundercloud eyes.
“So, you don’t care about all the contracts you signed, just to be clear,” she tells me, tone lulling as if this is so predictable of me. “You don’t care about the people who are forced to stay late so the whole crew can look for you. You don’t care about your so-called date. And you definitely don’t care about me.”
I pull Lightning to a full stop and Roxanne slides immediately off his back, glowering at me.
“You have fair points across the board,” I agree, “but I do care about you.”
“You just made me break Ms. Madden’s rules right in front of her!” She digs her fingers deep into her hair and marches toward the hedge of trees, back in the direction we came. “I’m going to be fired, Blake. Absorb that while I go back and apologize for you.”
“Oh, Ms. Madden, Ms. Madden,” I mimic her girlishly, leaping down from Lightning’s back. He meanders to a bush and grazes, satisfied. “She’s just another Hollywood harpy, Roxanne. Don’t let her overpower you. She can’t legally blame you for what I just did, what everyone just witnessed me do to you. If she does fire you for that, you can take her to court for harassment and discrimination. The only person who can be blamed for that action is me. You’ve got thirty eyewitnesses on a silver platter.”
Roxanne scoffs but has no real comeback for that. Because I’m right. This was the only way it could happen.
I’ve been in the public eye long enough to understand how to work it to my advantage—from back when I gave a shit.
I know she wants to be with me, and here we are, hidden by a hedge of trees. It’s even on film that I swept her off her feet, pun notwithstanding.
