by C. J. Anaya
He nearly laughed at this latest ploy to get kicked off the show. The only thing about her appearance that truly aggravated him were the glasses, and not because he didn’t like them. Quite the contrary. Her look screamed sexy librarian whenever she had them on, but she knew he wanted to see those freckles. It was another ploy at annoying him, and it was working. How dare she deny him visual access to her beautifully sun-kissed cheeks? And the ones that were dusted across her nose were completely hidden. Nope. That was absolutely the last straw. She could dye his shampoo fifty shades of purple if she wanted to, but those glasses were about to be introduced to the nearest garbage can.
“Charlene, would you excuse me for one moment?”
“Oh, of course.” She gave him a mildly annoyed look, but quickly schooled her features into a contrived smile. “Just don’t be gone for too long.”
Brody hardly registered that last comment as he walked over to Stacey who was hovering behind several crew members.
“I’m going out to talk to Madelyn. Can you make certain that no other contestants or crew try to encroach on my time with her?”
Stacey gave him a conspiratorial nod.
“I’ll play goalie like Beckham on steroids.”
Appreciating her enthusiasm, he thanked her and crossed the distance to the double doors, swiftly closing them behind him. Taking note that Madelyn had chosen to ignore his approach, he decided he’d have to get her attention in a more juvenile fashion. He walked to her side, knelt down at her eye level, and then plucked the offending spectacles from their snooty perch atop her nose, placing them in his suit pocket. Her stunned expression was too adorable for words.
“Excuse you! I need my glasses back if I’m going to finish my current chapter.”
She held out her hand, palm up, and waited for him to relinquish the stolen goods with an expectant air.
“Absolutely not.” He held them up and squinted through the lenses. “No prescription. You don’t even need these things. They seem like a convenient article to employ when shutting people out. How am I supposed to admire your freckles if I can’t see them?”
It was obvious his comment had thrown her off balance, but she rallied remarkably well by shrugging her shoulders. With a smirk she reached into her bag and pulled out another pair of glasses with frames the width and breadth of the Titanic. Now her emerald eyes looked as if they were being magnified several times over, and still she was absolutely delicious.
“Sounds like a personal problem to me, Brody. Now if you’ll excuse me. I’m simply dying to discover if Mr. Darcy and Ms. Elizabeth Bennet are finally going to clear up their latest misunderstanding and resolve their ridiculous issues.”
“Sounds like a fairly familiar problem. Is Elizabeth Bennet as contrary as you are?”
“This coming from a man who preaches ideals of love and commitment when his history with women reads like that of a serial dater with an obsession for females who are blond, buxom, and Botoxed.”
Ignoring her verbal barb, he gently retrieved the second pair of glasses from atop her nose and took great pleasure in snapping the blasted things to hell.
Madelyn gasped in horror as she reached for and ripped the two halves of her glasses from his grip.
“I cannot believe you did that!” She lifted them up to inspect the damage. “Do you have any idea how much these glasses cost me?”
“Judging from the cheap material they were made from, I’d say five bucks tops. Did you buy those offensive things at Wal-Mart?”
“They were ten dollars, thank you very much, and it doesn’t matter where I bought them. You owe me some money, Mr. Prescott.”
“Go on the next one-on-one date with me, and we’ll call it even.”
“That’ll be difficult to do since you’re going to eliminate me. Tonight.” She said that last part through clenched teeth and snapped her book shut with some seriously scary force. “I’d appreciate it if you would return the pair of glasses that you haven’t, as of yet, destroyed like some caveman throwing a temper tantrum.”
His grin widened at the delightful spitfire Madelyn had become. Brody knew he shouldn’t push her buttons, but he wasn’t about to let her win this round, and he loved to watch her get riled up whenever he teased her.
“I’ll return your glasses on two conditions?”
“Two? Don’t make me take them by force, Brody.”
“Oh, I think I’d like that very much.”
Madelyn rolled her eyes heavenward and let out a groan. “What are your conditions?”
“First, you have to promise to keep these glasses in your purse. I don’t want you hiding behind them ever again.”
“I’m not hiding behind them!”
“Second, I want full access to those freckles for the rest of our lives.”
She spluttered in confusion. “Full access? In what way? For the rest of our lives? I can’t promise that.”
“I’m allowed to kiss those freckles whenever I please.”
“That will be a little difficult to live up to once we go our separate ways, don’t you think?”
“Who said anything about going our separate ways? Promise me, Madelyn, or…” he pulled the glasses from his pocket and dangled them in the air, “this monstrosity goes in the sink’s garbage disposal.”
He noted her hands clenched into fists, and her cheeks burned with rosy outrage.
In a crisp, clear voice filled with venom she said, “Fine. Now give me back my glasses.”
“I want to be allowed to take full advantage of our deal.”
“What, right now?”
“You agreed that I would have full access to those freckles whenever—”
“Yeah, I got it the first time. Fine.”
She leaned forward and clenched her eyes shut as if she expected his kisses to cause her pain.
He let out a soft chuckle and cupped her chin, tilting her face toward him and placing a light kiss across the bridge of her nose. Then he hovered his lips above her cheek bone just under her eye and placed a gentle kiss across those adorable freckles. He let his lips softly graze her skin back and forth and then he moved to the other cheek and administered the same affections there. He noted that both of their breathing had become slightly labored, and he couldn’t help but take full advantage of this situation. He moved to her lips and captured them with his. His satisfaction grew as she immediately accepted his kisses and responded with heated ones of her own. Their combined heat and fervor grew to a nearly inappropriate level as he pulled her down from the chair and into his arms, rejoicing in the feel of her hands in his hair and the possessive hold she placed on him.
All too soon they broke away from one another, gasping for air. Brody took note of her panicked look as she realized that she was sitting in his lap and she quickly scrambled to her feet, smoothing out her shirt and her mussed hair.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” she muttered. “You’re only supposed to kiss contestants you’re serious about.”
Brody raised himself to his feet. His frustration with her refusal to see reason where both of their feelings were concerned caused him to act out in yet another childish way.
“This is exactly why I have no intention of eliminating you, Madelyn. You may behave as if there is nothing between us, but your kisses would suggest otherwise.”
He took her last pair of glasses in both hands and with great satisfaction broke them in half, reveling in the crisp snap it afforded.
Madelyn gasped. “You promised to give them back to me.”
He reached out and placed them in her hand, allowing his lips to linger next to her cheek.
“And so I have. Don’t you ever cover up those freckles again.” He smiled as she shivered at his close proximity. “See you at the diamond ceremony, Madelyn.”
And with that, he walked away all confidence and satisfaction in the knowledge that he had made his point perfectly clear. There was no way she could assume he didn’t feel anything but an all-encom
passing fire when she was near him. With any luck, they’d be discussing their future together after the diamond ceremony concluded.
Mission accomplished.
After the diamond ceremony is over, I’m packing my bags and flagging the nearest sail boat out of here. Trust fund be damned!
Anger burned within Midge’s breast as she watched that cocky playboy stroll away from her, clearly convinced that he’d handled her like he would some pesky little gnat threatening him from achieving his end game.
And her glasses! True they weren’t expensive, but they were a deliberate rebellion against her father’s insistence that she fit into the same visual mold as every other female in Hollywood, and a great way to avoid attracting attention. Besides, out of all the pairs she owned, they were two of her favorites. The thickest, widest set of glasses she’d found to hide behind. Such injustice would not go unanswered.
He must have assumed that fake little show of affection was going to convince her to back down and play nice, but she wasn’t about to forget the words he’d uttered to her father or his real reason for keeping her around.
She bit her lip and angrily dug into her bag, pulling out her third and final pair of glasses she’d brought with her on this trip and studying them with perverse satisfaction. He might insist on breaking them in half as well, but at least they would be broken on her terms with one final act of defiance. And if he thought she was going to accept his rock encrusted flower he was in for one massive surprise.
Brody spotted Madelyn as she ascended the riser and took her place between Cambria and Charlene. The first sign that his besotted and willing future girlfriend was neither besotted nor willing occurred when she caught his eye and made a deliberate show of reaching into her denim purse and pulling out yet another pair of offensive Coke bottle glasses that were even thicker and wider than the previous two he’d taken great pleasure in destroying.
Just how many pairs of glasses did this girl own?
She slowly lifted them to her face and put them on, giving him a wide grin in the process. Forget not being able to see her freckles. He couldn’t even see Madelyn. The damn things covered the entirety of her face. She may as well have been wearing a two-toned, dirt brown mask. She mouthed something to him which he failed to catch since he was so distracted by the way the glasses made her emerald eyes bug out like they would in a 3D IMAX movie.
He noted Cambria and Charlene giving her curious stares and her father stood in the back corner trying to catch her attention, directing her to take them off. He looked nearly apoplectic. Brody might have found the entire situation amusing if his sense of foreboding hadn’t gnawed its way into his gut. He had the awful feeling that perhaps his latest interlude with Madelyn had not given her the impression he’d intended, and looking back on it he supposed that breaking her glasses, ordering her about, and behaving, as she had stated, like a caveman throwing a tantrum probably hadn’t been the best way to win the girl over.
In his defense, he’d never had to work so hard at convincing a girl to go out with him. He’d never had to work so hard at convincing a girl he was actually interested in her, and now he wasn’t so sure that the trust fund was going to keep her here as he had suspected. From the furious look in her eyes, made that much more apparent by the bizarre 3D effect of her spectacles, she was in full on battle mode. What if she planned on rejecting his rose…rejecting him?
He couldn’t allow that to happen, but he wasn’t sure what kind of measures he might need to take now that the filming had started.
With a sickness in his stomach that could best be described as severe nausea, he recited the names of the girls who were staying and gave them each a flower, frantically formulating a plan that might keep her here, which meant he was announcing her name last instead of first like he’d originally intended.
Finally reaching the point where Madelyn and four other girls stood waiting for either a rose or a refusal, he softly called out Madelyn’s name.
She stepped from the riser and crossed the short distance between them. She stood firm and resolute just a foot from him, waiting for his question and the opportunity to give him her answer, one he knew without a doubt would send her flying home and quite possibly out of his life forever.
He reached over and gently removed the glasses from her face, reveling in the sparkling green of her glorious eyes. She didn’t appear at all surprised that the glasses were now in his possession. In fact, he thought she’d been expecting such a maneuver.
“Never cover that gorgeous face of yours, Madelyn. God never intended anything so beautiful to go unnoticed.”
He saw a little of that steady resolve waver as his heartfelt words penetrated that impervious wall of hers, but then they hardened ever so slightly, and he knew he would have to follow through with his plan.
“Madelyn, will you please take this rose and continue to allow me to get to know you better?”
She gave him a glacier smile that froze him to the very center of his heart. With a vindictive gleam in her eye she opened her mouth, no doubt ready to give him what would probably be some scathing rejection, when Brody discreetly slipped the toe of his left foot into her right instep, causing her to lose her balance and stumble forward into his arms, making it look as if she was accepting him wholeheartedly with an eager embrace.
He wrapped his arms around her and twirled her in the air, letting out a hearty, albeit forced, chuckle.
“I’ll take that as an exuberant yes.” He kissed the top of her head and set her down. From her expression, it looked as if she was still trying to figure out exactly what had transpired.
“Cut!” yelled Knightly in a harried voice. “Perfect, everyone! All of the contestants who are staying can retire to their rooms for the evening, but we need to film Brody’s last few moments with the contestants who have been eliminated.” As the group dispersed, Knightly walked over to Midge and wrapped a shoulder around her. “I’m glad you’re still playing the good sport, despite your questionable attire tonight. Seriously, Midge girl, what happened to the stylist I sent up to your room earlier this evening?”
Midge glared daggers at her father, and then leveled her killer glower at Brody, causing him to internally wince. He’d probably managed to do some serious damage to their fragile relationship after manipulating her like that. Was the damage irreparable?
“I was making a statement,” she said. “One, that had very little affect on my intended target.” She wrenched her glasses from Brody’s clutches, turned on her heel, and exited the room, leaving Brody to wonder if he would find her suite empty the next morning. Perhaps an overnight vigil was in order. He’d gone this far with his obsessive/borderline psychotic behavior. Why not add a stake-out to the mix?
Midge did some angry pacing once she settled back into her room for the night and reviewed the last few minutes of the diamond ceremony, still uncertain as to how it had all gone so wrong so fast.
How in the world was she still here?
She’d put the glasses on and earned an irritated look from Brody which had been awesome. Then she mouthed the words, “You’re going down,” mainly to instill the fear of God into him. He’d have to wonder just what she planned to do once he called her name. From the pallor of his skin, she’d felt certain he’d received the message.
“Two points for me!” she said, sarcasm bleeding through her syllables.
Then she’d marched right up to him ready to tell him to go to hell, and somehow she’d managed to lose her footing and literally fall into his more than accommodating arms. Something had tripped her up or rather someone. She was stuck on this show for the unforeseeable future.
Her cell phone jingled loudly in the silence of the room and she nearly let out a startled shout.
She reached into her purse and grabbed her phone, flipping it open without checking to see who her caller might be.
“Hello?”
Her greeting was met with dead silence.
“Hello?” she tri
ed again.
She strained to hear heavy breathing, and then a disjointed voice carried over the line.
“You need to leave the show before something terrible happens to you.”
“Excuse me?”
“That injury to your hand is going to seem like a paper cut compared to what else I’m going to do to you. Leave the show or else.”
The line went dead before she could respond. She pulled back the phone and checked the caller ID. Blocked.
Most people would have reacted with an appropriate amount of fear, packed up their things and hightailed it out of there, trust fund or no trust fund, but Midge wasn’t like most people. Her initial reaction to a personal threat wasn’t that of fear, but of anger. Now she had some psychotic stalker to contend with?
Someone had deliberately left her knife open, hoping she would cut herself and not be able to make it on the date in time. Someone wanted her off the show. Enough to threaten her with bodily harm. Enough to make good on those threats. If only her tormentor knew she’d already been trying to get kicked off the show. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one trying to submarine her TV time, and she had a fairly good idea who that someone might be.
It would seem Felicia Davenport was playing for keeps.
Midge stared at her phone and then looked to the corner of her room where her suitcase sat, waiting for her to exhibit some common sense. If she packed up her things and left in the middle of the night this would all be over. No explanations. No questions asked. But Brody, despite his infuriating ego and bossy manner couldn’t be left alone to deal with some unhinged contestant, especially when that unhinged contestant was Felicia Davenport.
Resigned to her unfortunate fate she turned her back on the inviting suitcase and flung herself on her bed, dialing her roommate Lisa’s number and praying that her friend wouldn’t kill her for waking her up in the middle of the night.
