While a bunch of sweaty jocks roared with laughter and made cow noises. No, that incident was something Tara would live with forever.
No one cared. Only Tara did.
Her face burned again as if she were right back in high school, pounding on that damn door for all she was worth. Her hands clenched tightly in her lap and wrapped around the bottle of antacids. She could still remember the sharp throb in them as she begged to be let back into that locker room.
Bitch. Kelsey Little was a selfish, overblown, egotistical big mouth who needed a good dose of her own meds. Tara would happily pry her mouth open and pour them directly down her throat.
Tara Douglas wasn’t timid and mild mannered anymore and she wasn’t a fat ass either.
She reminded herself—again—that revenge was sweet and Kelsey Little deserved this in sticky, cavity like portions. She needed to toughen up if she was going to be a bigger bitch than Kelsey. She’d waited a long time to see the likes of Ms. Little squirm in humiliation. Tightening her jaw, she regained her focus.
Her Mission Impossible, if you will.
Duh, duh, da da, duh, duh da da. The theme from the movie played in her head. Her mission: pick a freak of nature for Kelsey so she’d at least have to spend a year in hell with him to win the million dollar cash prize. Taunt her, remind her that Tara Douglas, Evanston High nobody, was the Captain of the humiliation squad now.
Yeah…
So screw the girl she used to be and screw guilt with a capital “S”.
The man next to Tara left and another girl took his place, svelte and sleek in tight fitting clothing. She smiled absently at Tara. “Hi,” she murmured.
Tara smiled back and ran her hands over her own tight jeans, feeling self-conscious. Tugging at the area where her phantom belly used to be, Tara unconsciously sought to tent her shirt, covering the roll of flesh that she fully expected to seep out from underneath her T-shirt, between the top of her jeans and ooze from just below her breasts. Of course, that didn’t happen, because there was no roll of anything anymore, but old habits die hard. Her habits kept stalking her from the grave.
Who could fluff this damn shirt out anyway? It was like a second skin, as sleek and as supple as her midriff had become.
Tara squirmed in her seat, shifting positions and crossing her legs. No one from her past would ever recognize her, not now, and she wanted to keep it that way. The shows producers would only choose one high school friend to be on the jury and Tara planned for that friend to be her.
No matter what.
The secretary popped her head out of the door again and called into the crowd, “Contestant two-hundred and twenty three…”
Chapter 2
The Contenders
Bah ba bah, ba ba ba bah ba bah (work with me here). Can you hear the Rocky theme song?
Tara squirmed in her seat as Henry Abernathy, the producer of “Whose Bride Is She Anyway?” flipped through his clipboard of applications. She ran her tongue over her bottom lip slowly, waiting to see if good old Henry reacted. His eyes certainly were not glazing over with untamed lust.
Maybe she still didn’t have the seduction thing down pat? The heavens above knew she’d practiced enough in front of the mirror.
A vixen you ain’t, honey. Well, Hell. Okay, one more shot at this.
Thrusting her breasts forward, Tara pretended she was disinterested and bored. Henry’s eyeballs were not responding with the usual pop. He never once looked up from those damn papers.
He was gay.
Okay, scratch the big seduction scene. No amount of cleavage and booty was going to catch this guy’s attention. She’d have to rely on her brain, not something that was foreign to Tara. Not by a long shot, but to a degree, she rather took personal pleasure in her newly acquired looks, and wasn’t above using them for personal gain. She remembered a time when she’d scorned the pretty girls for using their looks to get what they wanted. If she’d only known the benefits she would reap as a result. Tara took a quick peek at her thighs to make sure they weren’t splitting the seams of the jeans she’d poured herself into.
No, she reminded herself, that didn’t happen anymore. She could wear her clothes as tight as she liked and it made no difference, nothing was ever going to bulge on her body again if she could help it.
By all things Richard Simmons, I do solemnly swear.
Henry Abernathy’s chair creaked as he tilted it back and fired his first words since she’d entered the room. The hum of the video camera droned in the background. “You do know the show requires the jury foreman to know Kelsey Little, right?”
Tara nodded and took in his gaze solemnly. Oy
“So, Tara, tell me how well you know Kelsey Little.”
Well enough to know I hate her guts, how’s that? “We didn’t talk on the phone every night, but we hung out in school.” Not a total lie, Tara soothed herself. They did hang out. At least in the same science class when they’d passed papers to one another. She sat behind Kelsey every day for a year, that sort of constituted hanging out, right?
“Were you on the cheerleading squad with her?” Henry tapped his pen on the desk in front of him.
Click, click, click.
Tara tried to keep from visibly cringing. The cheerleading squad…
Hah! Yeah, that was me on the top of that pyramid, all thighs and cellulite.
“No, I wasn’t a cheerleader.”
Remember, less is more. Just say as little as possible about your relationship with Kelsey and you might skate through this unscathed.
“So, exactly what was your relationship with Kelsey?” Did Henry seem a bit skeptical here? Well, shit. How did you define their relationship?
Tormentor and the tormented? Hunter and the hunted?
Tara battled another cringe as a bead of sweat popped out on her forehead.
Play it cool. It wouldn’t look good to have sweat marks under her armpits. “We hung out together, went to a party or two. Did the girl-thing.” ‘Nuff said.
“Hung out together?” Henry drawled. “Were you a close personal friend?”
Define close. “We were friendly enough for me to know what she likes in a guy.” Tara followed that statement up with a smile, a slow, upward tilt of her freshly glossed lips. It was, after all, the truth. She did know what Kelsey liked in a man. It wasn’t a difficult task. Low on brain fuel, big on six-pack abs; hold the grammatically complete sentences, if you don’t mind.
“What makes you think you’re qualified to pick a potential husband for Kelsey?”
Tara almost snorted. She wasn’t qualified to pick her nose, let alone a husband for Kelsey. That’s what would make this fun. She tried to keep her expression composed.
She cocked her head in thought and pondered how to answer. “Well, Kelsey and I had very similar tastes in high school, in guys anyway. We liked a lot of the same things. I want the best for her. I want her to have the man of her dreams.”
And a good dose of universal, televised humiliation. Her stomach lurched. Damn, there was that pang of guilt again, sucking up all of her revenge energy.
Henry didn’t look too impressed with her answer. His blank stare mirrored her own. Okay, she was tired of this stupid, inane crap and her mind kept wandering to the guy in the damn hall. It was time to show Henry that she wasn’t the least bit interested in his lame show because her focus was drifting.
Reverse psychology and all.
Tara leaned forward, letting her breasts rest against his desk because it was unlikely it would make the slightest difference to him. She eyed Henry closely, making him noticeably shift in his big producer chair. “It’s like this, Henry—I’d love to be on your show, who wouldn’t want a free tropical vacation for a month? But, I’m not going to try to sell you anything here. I’m smart enough to know there’s a line of salivating wannabes a country mile long just looking to be on this show. Everyone has their own personal reasons, I’m sure. I think mine are clear. I knew Kelsey in high school, even i
f we didn’t socialize in the same circles very often. I’m hoping to help her choose a husband because she obviously wants one and we had similar tastes in beefcake. So either you want me or you don’t. It’s as simple as that. I’m probably the only one with an IQ higher than a tomato plant and I’d say that makes for interesting television, wouldn’t you?”
Her ears burned at her rather bold answer. It sounded so vain. Conceited even. A bit too confident?
Henry narrowed his eyes. Tara watched his mental wheels spin. “Thank you, Ms. Douglas. We’ll be in touch.”
You are officially dismissed. Vamonos. Scram.
Tara rose slowly and ran her hands over her legs. Maybe her thighs didn’t look as good as she thought they did after all. Sticking out her hand, she offered it to Henry Abernathy, behaving as though it didn’t matter one way or the other if she was chosen for his stinking show. “It was nice meeting you, Mr. Abernathy.”
Henry offered her a limp shake and looked back down at the pad on his desk. He was scribbling away as Tara made her exit.
As she stood outside the door of the audition room, her legs felt weak. She’d screwed it up and now she’d never have the chance to toy with Kelsey the way Kelsey had toyed with her.
She slowly headed down the long hallway that led back out to the parking lot and caught sight of the large blond guy with the name of a calendar month leaning against the wall in all his hunkiness. He was so damn hot, Tara thought, and he’d have to be to still catch her attention after a whooping like the one she’d just taken from Henry Abernathy.
Catching a glimpse of herself in the windows that lined the corridor, Tara decided today was a “fat day”. It must have been, because all of a sudden, she was seventeen again and Kelsey was taunting her because she couldn’t even make the cut for a brainless reality TV show.
Another evil plan foiled again…
* * * *
As Henry Abernathy watched the broad, well-muscled back of August Guthrie disappear out of his office door, he flipped through his application one last time. This piece of mouth-watering hunk was perfect, short on words and an even shorter fuse. To sweeten the pot, he knew Kelsey from high school. A scorned boyfriend maybe? That always made for exciting television. Maybe August could be the secret bomb he dropped on Kelsey’s picture perfect world, smashing it to smithereens and checking the selfish bitch’s attitude with a big black mark. What a diva that one was.
Henry had been against her as the final choice all along, but he was out-voted in the end. Everyone on staff thought she was vain enough to make America spend every Tuesday night at ten p.m. glued to their television sets, just waiting to see what she would do next. There was nothing Henry would like more than to see Kelsey Little wallow in her own load of crap.
Ruffling a feather or two kept things very interesting, add to the mix that August Guthrie was hot and you had the makings of a hit. All shaggy blonde hair and flaring nostrils, a hard line to the set of his mouth and biceps like bowling balls.
Hot, hot, hot.
Then there was the very pretty Tara…Tara Douglas didn’t know Kelsey Little from a hole in the wall, Henry mused, as his callous producer’s mind raced to make something sordid of this opportunity. Of course, he’d have his people check to be sure they’d at the very least graduated in the same class. He could do that in minutes. It was a requirement to be a jury foreman on the show, but no one said they had to be best buddies.
Just friends. Sort of. And Tara was the perfect jury foreman. She was more than just great looking. Fans of the show would eat up her wholesome yet sultry looks. You could strike a match on those cheekbones of hers.
Henry scribbled bikini on his notepad by her name. Tara should definitely wear one on camera. The male viewing audience would be hard pressed to keep from having their flags waving at full staff while watching her. She was better looking than Kelsey—that was for sure. He was going to wet his knickers just waiting to see if the contestants liked Tara better than Kelsey. Though he couldn’t afford any more controversy after the last season. Unless he used the hullabaloo to his advantage…
Something about Tara Douglas made Henry’s heart go pitter-pat and it wasn’t her ass. Though he supposed from a heterosexual point of view, her ass was rather pleasing to the eye. She was up to something and that was A-okay with Henry. He could smell controversy like little boys could smell cookies baking in the oven.
It meant payola.
This season was going to be a hit for Henry Abernathy, bigger than last year’s ever was. He swiped at the drool forming in the corner of his mouth. Life was going to be very sweet if he could pull this baby off. Tara rather reminded him of the volatile August Guthrie. Quiet and introspective one minute, then whaling him with this aura of insecurity he couldn’t quite put his chubby finger on. Henry buzzed his secretary, grinning smugly at his sheer brilliance. He checked August off as one of the twenty men who’d better hold onto their hats, because he was one of the final twenty contestants and he’d better be prepared to hit the friendly skies ASAP. Leaning back in his chair, Henry chuckled and thought, let the games begin…
Chapter 3
What was I thinkin’?
As Tara headed out to the parking lot to grab her rental car and spend the night sulking in her hotel room before she had to go back home and live with the agony of defeat, she heard her name called from across the studio’s big parking lot. Turning, she cupped a hand over her eyes to block the sun and scan the surrounding area.
“Ms. Douglas! Wait!”
Tara caught a glimpse of Henry Abernathy’s secretary running in heels, waving a big manila envelope.
What now? She just wanted to go home and forget she’d ever considered this. More paperwork maybe? Did you need to fill out “loser” paperwork? Sorry, Tara Douglas, you just didn’t make the cut, but could we trouble you to sign on the dotted line, sealing your loser deal?
“Oh, Ms. Douglas!” Henry’s secretary gasped, fanning her face with the envelope. “I’m so glad I caught up with you. Mr. Abernathy would have my head if I didn’t.”
Tara smiled vaguely and furrowed her brow. “I’m sorry. I missed your name when I was waiting to be interviewed.”
“Oh,” she chuckled, “I’m Linda. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I have some exciting news!”
You too can be excited about being a loser…”Um, I’m not sure what you mean. Did I forget something? Did I miss a disclaimer?”
“Oh, no it’s nothing like that. Guess what?”
Okay, she’d play. “What?”
Linda bobbed her pretty head in disgust and stomped her foot. “No! You have to guess!”
Guess? What was this, trivial pursuit? “Guess?”
Linda shook the envelope she held in exasperation. “Yes! Guess!”
Tara was tired and plumb not interested. Maybe if she answered the “guess” correctly, she’d get a nice parting gift. “Oh, I couldn’t even venture to. If it’s not more paperwork, then I’m plain stumped. I’m all guessed out,” she said flatly.
Linda looked disappointed that Tara didn’t want to play. “I know, all those interviews and tests and stuff are grueling, huh? Okay, so I’ll just tell you.”
At this stage of the game, that might be a right fine idea. Tara leaned against her rental car and folded her arms over her breasts. “Okay.”
“See this?” Linda waved the envelope under Tara’s nose.
“Uh-huh.” She nodded.
“Know what it is?”
Her loser certificate? Ah, yes to make it all official and all. She could frame it. “I have no idea and no, I can’t guess.” Tara smiled.
Linda thrust it at her. “Well, silly, open it.”
She threw her purse through the open car window and tore open the envelope, peeking inside she pulled out the official “Whose Bride Is She Anyway?” letterhead and began to read it.
Tara’s expression went from wary to shocked. A grin spread over her lips in astonishment, then a frown, then ano
ther grin. Holy Shit!
Linda put her hand under Tara’s chin, clapping her mouth shut. “Cool, huh?”
Indeed. She nodded wordlessly.
Hell’s bells…they’d chosen her as the jury foreman.
Tara’s knees began to shake as her eyes blurred from the long day and an end to her goal in sight.
“Did you read the small print?” Linda shook Tara’s shoulder.
She squinted and looked to the spot where Linda’s finger pointed, reading the smaller print below her acceptance letter.
Oh…
Well, that was just silly. Who could possibly leave at this very moment to go to Hawaii? I mean, really, she thought as her head spun. Who could just up and leave with no notice whatsoever to anyone? She had a job and an apartment. A fern that needed watering…
Bills to pay…a more definitive blueprint for “Kelsey Little disaster” to design.
But the letter said if she wasn’t prepared to board a plane tonight, then she would be excluded from the competition.
Well crap. If she didn’t sign this now and go, she wasn’t ever going. What a friggin’ crappy thing to pull. All this high-and-low emotional stuff was going to be the death of her. How could she possibly prepare mentally for this if she didn’t have time? Humiliation was a craft best given one’s single-minded efforts.
Linda leaned over her shoulder and asked, “So what are you going to do?”
Tara ran a hand through her hair and started putting her brain into neatly filed compartments of organization. Call mom, call work, return rental car, go to hotel, and pack bags…Clothes, she didn’t have any clothes but what she’d brought with her for a couple of days. They couldn’t make her go without clothes. That settled that.
“But I have nothing to wear. I can’t just jump on a plane for a month and have no clean underwear with me. I mean when I watched all of the other shows the jury talked about how they had weeks to plan to leave. How can I go without clean underwear…”
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