by Lizzie Shane
Her teal eyes flared with panic as she heard the voices too. And damn if his instinct to save the damsel in distress didn’t kick in like never before.
Acting on instinct more than thought, he grabbed her arm and tucked her between his body and the door of 312 so she wouldn’t be as obviously visible if Miranda came around the corner. He waved his keycard in front of the sensor, hoping he wasn’t actually staying in 321. If this wasn’t his room they were so screwed, but after only a second’s hesitation the door beeped and popped open. Hallelujah.
Together they stumbled inside, Josh snapping the door shut behind him with his foot. He held his breath, listening against the door for some indication that he’d been seen smuggling a Suitorette into his room.
Shit. What had he been thinking?
“Was that…?” the girl whispered.
“Miranda,” he confirmed direly.
“What happens if they find us together?”
“I get fired and you get kicked off the show. And the tabloids run the story for weeks.”
Teal eyes widened. “I can’t go out there.”
“No,” he agreed, without hesitation.
“So we’re…”
“Stuck here.”
To his left, the abandoned half-bottle of six-year-old scotch taunted him from the wet bar.
To the right, a light illuminated the bed like a spotlight, casting a glow over the massive expanse, piled high with pillows and an overstuffed comforter.
And in between stood the picture of temptation in pink yoga pants and a freaking Tinkerbell T-shirt.
If Miranda came to check on him, there was no way he’d be able to explain this away now. This day just kept getting better and better.
Chapter Two
Sidney had gone looking for Mister Perfect and found Josh Pendleton.
She tried not to read too much into that. Sure, they were trapped together in his hotel room, but nothing could happen. He was famous for being happily married, for crying out loud—not to mention a million miles out of her league. And she was going to meet the man of her dreams tomorrow.
Maybe. Provided it was Daniel.
But in the mean time she was trapped with one of Us Weekly’s 100 Hunkiest Hollywood Hotties in his hotel room.
The room was posh. Luxurious. Easily double the size of her own, with a sitting area, a wet bar and a giant gift basket overflowing from the small coffee table. Stepping deeper into the room, she turned in a circle in the center of the sitting area. “Your room is nicer than mine.”
“Well, I’m the talent,” he said with just enough faux arrogance to be self-deprecating.
She felt her lips curving in a smile as he crossed to the wet bar—which looked like it could host a rock band for a week without needing to be restocked—and put the ice she’d nearly knocked out of his arms on the bar, next to a half-empty bottle of something golden.
Normally she would feel uncomfortable, alone with such a disturbingly attractive man. Chiseled features and the kind of toned body that was more commonly associated with action stars—the man was lethal. But her tongue wasn’t tying itself into the usual awkward knots. Maybe it was the fact that he was so clearly off-limits. Or maybe it was the three mini-bar bottles of liquid courage. Or maybe it was the familiarity of the warm, understanding brown eyes that had gazed sympathetically at countless Suitors and Suitorettes over the many seasons of Marrying Mister Perfect as they had their countless hearts broken.
Whatever the reason, she wasn’t nervous with him.
“Would they really fire you?” she asked as he filled a pair of glasses with ice water.
“In a heartbeat. Thou shalt not screw around with the Suitorettes is commandment one.”
“But nothing happened.” She rounded the couch and came over to accept one of the glasses from him. “And you’re so popular. I bet there are thousands of viewers who tune in just to see you each week.” Not that she would ever admit to being one of them. “There are fan sites devoted to you.”
“And whoever they replace me with will be younger, have more rabid fans and draw an even bigger audience. Welcome to Hollywood.”
“Such a cynic. I had no idea.”
“I mask it well.”
“You’d have to.” He was so charming every week on Marrying Mister Perfect. So upbeat as he encouraged the contestants to follow their hearts and leap headfirst into love. She’d always thought they had that in common—the foolish romantic optimism—but if this was how he really was…something sad panged in her chest. “You’re shattering my illusions here.”
He grimaced, downing his water. “Never meet your heroes. It will only disappoint you.”
She studied him. The Josh Pendleton. “I guess you were a kind of hero.”
He cringed. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not? I used to watch you on Brainiac.”
“Ah, so you were the one,” he said dryly.
The short-lived quiz show had never made it to prime time, but she remembered his quick-witted banter with the contestants, the way he’d always made her laugh. “How does a quiz show host become the host of Marrying Mister Perfect?”
Josh shrugged. “Right place, right time, right wife.”
When the last word left his mouth, something heavy entered his eyes.
Sidney was good at talking down nervous grooms and jittery brides. Like the version of Josh Pendleton who hosted Marrying Mister Perfect, she excelled at pointing her charges toward love. But she’d had the odd couple call it quits too. It happened. Sometimes their happily-ever-after lay elsewhere.
There was always an air about those couples, when they finally called it a day. A misery that held a finality that always made her heart hurt. Often mixed with resignation and a guilty relief.
Josh had that.
Something had happened to him. And she’d bet her next commission it had to do with his wife. “Rough night?”
He shrugged, downing his water and then grimacing as if he wished it were something stronger. “You’re interrupting my bender.”
“I can see that.”
He frowned down at his hands, then began yanking at something on his left hand. His wedding ring.
Josh tugged at the gold band, cursing as it caught on his knuckle. He struggled with it, taking a better grip and it came loose with a jerk. The back of his hand smacked his glass, sending it flying to shatter against the base of the bar, glass raining down to cover the floor.
“Shit. Your feet.”
Sidney looked down. She hadn’t bothered with shoes when she made her ill-advised escape attempt and belatedly realized she was standing barefoot in a carpet minefield of glass shards. She barely had time to register the fact and set down her own glass before strong arms caught her behind her knees and swept her away from the mess.
Or at least tried to.
*
Josh realized his mistake approximately five seconds after trying to do the gallant thing. Carrying the barefoot Suitorette away from the debris would have been chivalrous… if he hadn’t been too tipsy to make it through the maneuver with his balance intact.
He staggered as he tried to straighten with her in his arms. Knowing he was going down, one way or another, he managed to aim his collapse toward the nearest sofa and all but tossed Sidney onto it before crash landing onto the adjacent ottoman.
She smothered a laugh with one hand. “Your heroism is a little rusty.”
“I’m not supposed to be your hero,” he grumbled, giving vertical another try—and coming up with more success.
“Don’t worry, Sir Galahad. I’m not planning to fall in love with you,” she said, laughter still lingering in her voice. “I know better than that.”
He crossed to the bar, spread a towel over the glass to mark the spot and toed off his shoes—which doubtless had glass clinging to the soles. Deciding sobriety was overrated, Josh filled a spare glass with ice and collected the crappy scotch as well as her water glass before returning to claim t
he other half of the couch where the barefoot blonde was curled up.
“Can I have one of those?” she asked, tipping her mostly empty water glass toward the bottle. “I promised my best friends I’d get hammered tonight.”
“Strange promise.” He tipped scotch on top of the mostly melted ice cubes in her glass.
“Strategy,” she explained. “I swore I wouldn’t be the girl who gets drunk and stumbles around the mansion babbling about how ready she is for love to every cameraman who will listen before throwing up on Mister Perfect’s shoes. I figure if I’m hung over I won’t even want to think about having a drink to take the edge off and that will guarantee I’m sober when we meet.”
“Smart,” he acknowledged, taking a draught of the unpalatable scotch and finding it much smoother now that he was halfway through the bottle.
She lifted her own glass and drank, her face contorting as she swallowed. She coughed, wheezing. “Wow. That’s terrible.”
“Yes, it is,” Josh agreed, raising his glass to clink it against hers before draining half of it.
She watched him with a sort of concerned awe, and then bravely went back for another sip, choking less the second time. “And why exactly are we punishing ourselves?” she asked, frowning dubiously at the alcohol calling itself scotch.
He shrugged. “Sentimental value.”
“Ah.”
It had seemed a fitting way to toast the end of his six year marriage. With a shitty bottle of six-year-old scotch.
He loved good scotch, but before long crap like this was likely to be all he could afford. Between his wife’s very enthusiastic lawyer, their lack of pre-nup, and the fact that he was likely to lose his job as soon as the higher ups at the network realized he was no longer the perfect portrait of domestic bliss they’d hired to be the host of Marrying Mister Perfect—and that was if they didn’t find out about the Suitorette in his hotel room—he’d be lucky if he could afford to drown his sorrows in Wild Turkey by this time next year.
Might as well get used to the cheap stuff. Josh downed the subpar scotch in a single swallow and reached for the bottle to refill his glass, watching as the amber liquid painted lovingly over the cubes.
He braced himself for an interrogation, but Sidney fell silent, sipping contemplatively. The minutes stretched out and they drank in comfortable silence. When her glass emptied, he refilled both of them, pleased his hands were steady enough to accomplish the task without spilling a drop.
Maybe make a career as a bartender when he was booted as host for MMP. The skill sets were similar.
Good listener when people were having emotional breakdowns? Check. Keep everyone around you with a full drink in their hand because that was where the money was? You bet. And Marrying Mister Perfect had certainly prepared him for dealing with drunken cat fights.
Now that he thought about it, he was really just an overpaid bartender with good hair.
He raked a hand through the thick brown mess. At least he still had his hair. Marissa could take his retirement fund and the house in Malibu, but he was still number ninety seven on Us Weekly’s 100 Hunkiest Hollywood Hotties. So there.
Josh handed Sidney her glass and clinked it with his own, silently toasting the absent arbiters of hunkiness at Us Weekly.
“This is so surreal,” Sidney murmured, rubbing a hand over her stomach. “I’m drinking terrible scotch with Josh Pendleton and tomorrow I meet Mister Perfect. Somebody pinch me.”
“If it’s such a dream, why were you trying to get kicked off the show?”
She looked at him, but there was something evasive in her eyes. “What makes you so certain I was?”
He arched a brow and her resistance crumpled.
“I’m not used to being Cinderella. When I’m playing the Fairy Godmother, I’m amazing, but cast me as the princess and I don’t have the first idea what to do with myself.”
Something jogged loose in his brain. “You’re the wedding planner, aren’t you?”
“That’s me.”
“You know, you and I have the same job.” Maybe he could do that when he was fired for matrimonial failure.
“How do you figure that?”
“We both watch other people get paired off, knowing all the while that most of them aren’t going to make it.”
She shook her head, still smiling. “I always believe they’re going to make it.”
He almost laughed. “Naïve.”
“Cynical,” she accused without heat.
“So why come on the show if you don’t want to be Cinderella?”
“It isn’t a question of want. Just because I don’t know how to be the princess doesn’t mean I don’t want my own happy ending. Something just always seems to go wrong translating the dream to reality when it comes to my own love life.”
“Maybe it will work out this time.”
“Thank you for saying that. Even though I know you’re too cynical to believe it for a second.”
“What do I know? Maybe you and Daniel can fall in love in the middle of a three ring circus.”
She went still, then rose with studied nonchalance and crossed to the bar to get more ice. “You don’t believe in the show?”
“I’m not one to judge.”
“Who better than you? You’ve seen dozens of hopeful Suitorettes come and go. Every season another batch of us.”
“And most of you leave in tears.” At the disappointment on her face, he back-pedaled as he took the ice from her and refilled his own glass. “Don’t mind me. I’m just the World’s Biggest Hypocrite. The man who peddles love for a paycheck until the seasons start blurring together even though I’ve sworn off love and marriage and the entire damn mess.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
”About the blurry seasons?”
She held up her hand and he squinted. Gold glittered, a shiny band hooked over the tip of her index finger.
His wedding ring. He’d forgotten it on the bar in the rush to get her away from the shattered glass.
He’d need to wear it tomorrow. Another season of Marrying Mister Perfect started filming in the morning and he needed to still be Josh Pendleton, Happily Married Host, when the cameras started rolling, but tonight it had felt like the fucking thing was cutting off circulation to his finger and he would lose the digit if he didn’t get it off.
Now it hung on the end of her finger, an incriminating wide gold band.
Her teal eyes were somehow sympathetic without being pitying. He’d have to see if he could copy that look. It would come in handy in his line of work.
He took his ring, setting it on the coffee table, and met those eyes—seriously, who had teal eyes? For a moment the world around them seemed to fade out of focus. She was beautiful—not just pretty, but there was a quality about her, an openness and a sweetness. At least until the show corrupted it.
Suitorette. Off-limits, jackass.
She was about to go on a reality show looking for love on national television. His reality show. At least until they fired him.
He followed her gaze to the ring. And then he said it. Said the words out loud for the first time since he’d told his parents. “I’m getting divorced.”
Only there was no getting. He was. It was final. As of three o’clock this afternoon. Marissa was officially free to run into the arms of the man she’d been screwing behind his back for the last year and half.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
He shouldn’t have told her about the divorce, he realized belatedly. If she told his bosses he was screwed. But it wasn’t just the alcohol that had loosened his tongue. There was something about her. She was too easy to talk to, this long, leggy blonde with the impossible eyes.
“You can still believe in happily ever afters,” Sidney said softly.
“Yeah?” Josh tore his gaze off the ring, lifting his drink. “How does that work?”
She shrugged. “You just do. Every broken heart is another step in the road to your happily
ever after.”
“Wow, you’re like a Hallmark card. No wonder the producers cast you.”
She laughed softly, hiding her mouth behind the tumbler as she took another sip.
“You didn’t say why you were coming on the show, but I’m guessing you’re one of the True Love girls. Did you watch last season? Is he your soul mate, only he doesn’t know it yet?”
“You don’t have to make fun of me. I know how ridiculous the show is,” she said, though there was a stubborn hope in her eyes. “I never really expected to get picked. I auditioned on a dare and then suddenly I’m here. Meeting him tomorrow. And I know the odds are ridiculous, so every time someone asked me why I was doing it I would say it was for the experience or because I wanted to launch Once Upon a Bride onto the national stage, but the truth is I want to be the princess for a change—and I can’t believe I’m admitting that to you.”
“I’m trustworthy.”
“You think I’m crazy. But I watched last season and you can’t tell me that Marcy and Craig didn’t find real love on the show.”
“You’re right. But they were the exceptions, not the rule.”
“But it’s possible. And even if it’s only a possibility, don’t you owe it to yourself to give your heart every chance at happiness? For a chance at something real?”
“Reality television might not be the best place to look for that.”
“Even if it’s Daniel?”
A startling gong of something that could have been jealousy echoed in his brain. “You’re so certain Daniel is perfect?”
“That is the name of the show. Marrying Mister Perfect. I’m not the one anointing him.”
Josh’s grip tightened on his glass. Daniel was a nice guy. A little cliché. The kind of guy who did things because he’d been told he should rather than because he had any personal desire to do them. He’d be perfect because he followed instructions well, but was he right for Sidney? Who shone with her belief in love?
“I wasn’t supposed to tell you it was him.”
“We’re hiding in your hotel room drinking the worst scotch on the planet. I think we’ve pretty much abandoned what we’re supposed to do.”
