“You know what…it might be better if you give this to her. I’m trying out this whole big romantic gesture thing, but it might be better if someone else hands her this letter, rather than me standing around awkwardly while she reads it.”
Blair squealed. “Oh my god, that’s so cute! Of course, I’ll give it to her as soon as I get there.”
“Thanks, Blair. See you round.”
I spent the rest of the day packing everything I needed to take with me to the city, and I kept waiting for a text from Eden, telling me she got my letter. When I didn’t hear from her, I assumed she was out doing the scavenger hunt and that I’d hear from her later.
By Friday morning, I still hadn’t heard from her. I showed up at the bus station at eight o’clock, just like I’d told her, and she wasn’t there. No worries; maybe she accidentally slept in.
At nine, I finally tried texting her to see where she was, but my prepaid phone informed me that I’d run out of credit. Just my luck. She still hadn’t tried calling or texting me, either, but I kept telling myself her phone was broken, or that maybe she wanted to keep the whole thrill of my gesture going and didn’t want to ruin it with text messages and calls.
I must’ve gone through every other excuse in the book by ten o’clock, but by a quarter to eleven, I’d finally accepted my fate. She wasn’t coming. She didn’t feel as strongly about me as I did about her, and she couldn’t face the prospect of a long distance relationship for a whole year. Maybe more, if she went to a different college than me.
I stood out there in the drizzling rain till ten to eleven like a fucking chump. It really was just like a movie, but not the good kind. At five to eleven, the driver came to tell me that the bus was leaving soon, and I needed to get on. I took one last desperate look around to see if I could spot Eden racing towards the station, but there was no one there. With a heavy heart, I got on the bus, and I never came back.
Not once.
Not even to get the ring back, as awful as that was, given that it once belonged to one of the only decent family members I’d ever had. I just couldn’t face going back to the town with the girl who had broken my heart and never even called to tell me. I couldn’t exactly blame her, though, and I wasn’t angry; she was only seventeen. We were just kids, really, and we had our whole lives ahead of us at the time. No wonder she didn’t want to throw all that away by hanging on to me and following me around wherever I went. She had her own life and future to think of, and there were probably plenty of other guys out there who were better for her than I could ever be.
I’d been right when I first saw her—a girl like her was too good for me, and she’d finally figured that out too.
After a year or so at college, I started to move on. I still loved Eden, but I knew I couldn’t spend my life moping around, waiting for a lost love to come back to me. Besides, I was still young—maybe it was never even real love. Maybe it was just puppy love that I built up and exaggerated in my head….but then I’d think of her eyes, smile, and laugh, and I’d realize it was all definitely real.
I still needed to get over it, though, and you know that saying: the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else. And so began my descent back into my old playboy ways. It wasn’t hard to get women to fuck a guy like me, and I never went back to the same one twice. I’d never even stay the night, and every time without fail, the girl’s eyes would flash with disbelief when I got up, got dressed and headed for the door as soon as I was done. I never waited around long enough to listen to their protests, because it was easier to be a cold bastard in these situations. Any sign of kindness or caring would inevitably be misinterpreted as something more serious, and I didn’t do serious relationships.
Not anymore.
I’d been with a lot of women in the last few years, gorgeous ones too, but it had never felt real like it did with Eden, and as far as I was concerned, none of them were even half as beautiful as her. Out of curiosity and an old sense of longing, I tried looking her up a few times over the years, but she didn’t seem to be active on social media sites.
Then came a moment of serendipity. Glenn van der Koning showed up after one of my home games a few months ago, trying to talk me into going on his stupid reality show during the upcoming off-season. He seemed like a smug son of a bitch, and I’d initially snorted with laughter when I realized that he genuinely thought I was going to say yes to being on The Stud. It had been an immediate and decisive ‘no’ from me, and I got a lot of ribbing from my teammates about even being asked. Glenn hadn’t pushed the matter too hard. He’d simply asked me to watch just one episode of the show before I gave him my final answer, and if I still hated the idea of it, then he’d leave me alone and pursue other candidates.
My teammates goaded me into saying yes to that, so I accepted and sat down to an old re-run of it that very night. I thought the show was pure trash—totally unrealistic manufactured garbage—but I was a man of my word, and I’d promised Glenn that I’d at least watch the whole thing. When the credits began to roll at the end, my answer was still ‘hell no’, but then I saw a name in the producer credits which made my heart stop.
Eden Zamora.
My pulse began to race, and I pulled out my phone to look up the TV show database which included all the cast and crew lists from various shows. My eyes scanned the crew list for The Stud, and there was her name again, with a link to a LinkedIn profile. I clicked on it, and there she was—my Eden, with a list of her college qualifications, CV, and a little photo.
This was my chance to see her again, to finally get some real closure on why she’d never shown up…and to try and get her back. We weren’t kids anymore, and the whole long distance thing was no longer an issue. We were both living right here in San Francisco, or at least I assumed she was, seeing as the show was filmed on an old horse stud in the Bay Area. If there was even a smidgen of a chance at rekindling things between us, then I was sure as hell going to take it, so I called Glenn back and accepted his offer.
And now here I was with Eden only a few yards away, looking as gorgeous as ever.
“So the contestants will be arriving in a couple of days, and before then, we’ll be setting up your initial introduction reel. We’ll need to get as much light as possible, so tomorrow will be an early morning. You okay with that?”
My attention snapped back to Glenn. “Sorry, what?”
He smiled. “We’re having an early morning tomorrow. For filming. Happy with that?”
“Oh, yeah, sure.”
As I spoke, my gaze left his face and wandered back over his shoulder to Eden again, and my pulse began to race like mad with excitement. I could still barely believe that I was here, staring at the only girl I’d ever loved after seven long years of absence, but it was all too real. No dream could have ever matched the real-life sparkle in her green eyes.
I smiled.
No matter what it took, I was going to win her back.
Chapter Three
Eden
“Eden! There’s someone here who wants to speak to you!”
I heard a junior show assistant calling out to me, and I cringed, hoping to god that it wasn’t Troy by her side who wanted to talk to me. I was still pissed that he didn’t even remember me after how much he’d hurt me back in school, and I’d managed to avoid him over the last day and a half by doing prep jobs around the set which were nowhere near him. Luckily, I could get away with that seeing as I wasn’t his main producer—his producer was my colleague Wren.
When I turned around, I breathed a sigh of relief, seeing that it was Cailin with the assistant instead. Cailin was one of the twenty-four contestants who’d arrived earlier this morning, and was one of the four whom I was directly responsible for. It was my job to ensure she was happy, performed to expectation, and produced enough drama-worthy moments for the show, among other things.
She was a pretty ballet dancer with willowy limbs, mocha skin and hazel eyes, which were currently wide with concern
.
“What’s up, Cailin?” I asked.
“I need to talk to you about the food here again. You know I’m allergic to peanuts, right?”
I smiled patiently and took a deep breath before replying. She’d already told me four times about her allergy, and in turn, I’d told her four times that it was fine, and that the chefs were under strict instructions to be very careful.
“Yes, Cailin, I’m aware of your allergy. Don’t worry, the chefs are—”
She cut me off with an impatient wave of her hand. “That’s what I need to talk to you about. The chefs! You said they’d be careful, but they just put out some pesto pasta salad on the buffet table over there, and I know that pesto is made from peanuts! It’s lucky I have my Epi-Pen on me all the time just in case.”
Oh, for the love of…
“Cailin, pesto is made with pine nuts, not peanuts,” I said, mustering up another patient smile. “Believe me, the food is fine. We’ll take care of you.”
Her shoulders sagged with relief, and she gave me an embarrassed smile. “Oh. I’m sorry to bother you about it, then. You must get so many ridiculous questions like this from all the girls.”
“Don’t sweat it. It’s good to make sure sometimes,” I said. She was right; we did get a lot of ridiculous requests when it came to food, like exclusively gluten-free food for contestants who didn’t have celiac disease or any other conditions that would warrant a gluten-free diet, and raw dairy-free vegan food for contestants who claimed to be vegans and then wolfed down a double cheeseburger the minute they got drunk. Cailin’s peanut allergy was real though, so it was a serious concern, and she had been nice enough to apologize just now for the pesto complaint. I could already tell that she didn’t have a mean bone in her body, and she was likely going to be set up as one of the nice ‘butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth’ sweethearts this season.
“When are we filming the introduction interviews?” she asked.
“Soon. You’ll need to head over to the confessional room, which is over there,” I said, pointing. “And remember, try to be charming yet honest. Smile a lot. They cut a lot of footage from these interviews, so try to condense everything. Got it?”
“Yep. You’ll be there, right?”
“Of course. You can head over to the room now, if you want. I’ll be there in a minute. I just need to sort some stuff out first.”
She smiled and walked off towards the confessional room, although ‘strutted’ was probably a more apt term than ‘walked’ given the five-inch stilettos she was wearing. Almost every contestant here was dressed to the nines in gorgeous dresses and towering heels with perfect hair and makeup courtesy of our hairdressers and makeup artists, and it made me feel positively boring with my plain clothes and ponytail.
Then again, I wasn’t here to look beautiful in an attempt to win the heart of the Stud, otherwise known as my ex.
I watched to make sure Cailin found the confessional room, and then I turned my attention back to my clipboard as I waited for my final girl to finish filming her outdoor shots. The outdoor shots were just bits of footage we got of the contestants doing ‘active’ stuff outdoors to splice into the introduction videos, and what they did in the shots was related to the direction we wanted to take her in for the show. If we wanted a woman to come across as one of the show’s potential mean girl ‘villains’, we’d make her look like a total Glamazon, wearing an expensive bikini and designer sunglasses while sunbaking out by the pool. If we wanted her to come across as an outdoorsy ‘girl next door’ type instead, we’d film her doing something like jogging by the lake, or pretending to muck out one of the old stables here at Palomar Horse Stud, where the show was filmed.
The old horse stud was on an enormous expanse of land in Marin County, and another reality show about city people living like cowboys and cowgirls had been filmed here about nine years ago. After that show was cancelled, the network had bought the rights to Glenn’s idea for a show, and The Stud was born. There’d been eight seasons now—two of which I’d worked on—all filmed out here on the old horse stud, and I had to admit, it was the perfect location. There were old but classic-looking farm buildings for pretty exterior shots, a picturesque lake on one side, rolling hills and plains, and even a forest towards the far-right side.
On top of that, there was also what the crew members referred to as the Castle—a three-storied Spanish-style villa with thirty bedrooms (each with their own personal bathroom), four kitchens, and a spacious ballroom, among other amenities. There was also a gorgeous courtyard near an azure-tiled pool and Jacuzzi, and all in all, it was a little piece of paradise.
Too bad we didn’t get to stay in it.
The mansion was for contestants and suitors only, and the rest of us lived in trailers on the property while the show was filmed before returning back to our regular places in the city during the off-season. My apartment was in San Francisco, and while I missed the buzz of the city, I also loved being out here during the filming season. My trailer might’ve been small and cramped, but the scenery out here was expansive and beautiful, which was more than enough to make up for it.
“Eden! I’m done. Do I need to go and get into a dress like all these other girls now?”
I glanced up at the sound of the feminine voice calling to me, and I broke into a grin as I saw Blair rushing towards me. She’d been a little down on her luck over the last six months—her boyfriend had dumped her, she’d been fired from her job, and her online handmade jewelry store was failing to take off. While commiserating with her over a bottle of wine when I’d gone to visit her in L.A., where she now lived, I floated the idea of her becoming a contestant on the next season of The Stud. After all, she fitted the mold—beautiful, young, and vibrant, with a need to promote herself and her business. A lot of the women on the show applied for the same reasons; they had a business which needed promoting, and being on such a popular reality show helped immensely with that.
I also thought it would be a great opportunity for us to spend more time together, because now that we were adults and living in different cities, we didn’t get to see each other as often as we used to, and we’d drifted apart a little.
When I floated the idea, Blair thought I was kidding at first, but then she realized how useful it could be to kick-start her jewelry line, and she applied. Seeing as I knew her and helped her get on the show, she was also one of the four women I was responsible for…and she was going to freak out when she found out who the Stud this season was. If I’d known it was Troy sooner, I never would’ve suggested she apply.
I nodded at her. “You can wear whatever you want for the interview, but a lot of the girls like to get dressed up. It really depends what kind of image you want to put across. And tomorrow night, when they film the unveiling of this season’s Stud, you’ll definitely need to wear a gown. Everyone does.”
She smiled. “Okay. God, this is so exciting. I can’t wait. You can’t tell me who he is, can you?”
Troy was currently being hidden in a separate wing of the mansion, so that none of the contestants know who he was. The idea was for their surprise to be genuine when we filmed the scene where he ‘arrived’ (even though he’d already been here longer than them), although we usually ended up having to reshoot the scene five times anyway.
I shook my head, hoping my eyes hadn’t already betrayed who it was. “No, I can’t tell you who it is,” I replied. “But I’m sure you’ll be….surprised.”
Blair must’ve caught my slight pause, because she arched a brow. “Surprised in a good way or bad?” she asked.
“I really can’t say.”
She arched an eyebrow. “One of the girls I was talking to earlier claims she overheard one of the assistants talking about who it is. But she kinda seems like an attention seeker, so I bet she was totally just making it up.”
“Oh?”
“She tried to tell us the Stud this season is Troy Ballard. But there’s no way you would’ve made me apply for th
e show if it was him. God, can you imagine?”
Wow, one of the assistants really did have a big freakin’ mouth. She or he wasn’t going to get very far in the business with that trait, and I had a feeling they’d be fired once it got out that they’d been overheard by the contestants.
Blair saw the look of horror in my eyes, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh…my…god…” she said, enunciating every word. “It is him, isn’t it?”
“I can’t confirm that.”
“Jesus, Eden, why didn’t you tell me?”
I sighed. “Like I said, I can’t confirm it’s him. But hypothetically, if it was, we didn’t find out till the other day, a long time after you applied. Only the top executives and the showrunner knew who it was going to be.”
“Should I quit?”
I shook my head. “Hell no. Get as far as you can to get attention for your jewelry line. You’ve already come all this way.”
“True. Shit, I can’t believe it’s really him. How are you feeling about it?”
I shrugged, dropping all pretenses of not being able to confirm who The Stud was. Blair was my friend, so I knew she wasn’t going to rat on me and tell all the other contestants. “I dunno,” I said. “I saw him when he arrived yesterday, and he didn’t even seem to remember me.”
“Wow. What a dick,” she said. Then her face broke into a smug smile. “Well, don’t worry, I won’t let him get away with being a prick to you again.”
“I know. Anyway, you better go get changed and wipe that sweat off. The introduction interviews will be starting any minute in the confessional room.”
“Where’s that?”
Daddy's Fake Bride (A Fake Marriage Romance) Page 47
