Husband For Hire

by Caitlin Daire

  Instead, she’d asked everyone to share their biggest fears. They didn’t necessarily have to be fears relating to our relationships (like a woman being afraid of losing her husband, for instance). They could be anything. And so, we all had to sit around for two hours and listen to stuff like Vanessa expounding her irrational fear of ghosts, or Dean outlining his plans for a zombie apocalypse.

  It was ludicrous.

  The therapist claimed that the session was a good way to get to know each other better, and on top of that, she spouted some crap about how our deepest fears can often be reflected in the way we treat our partners. I wasn’t sure about that, to be honest. Vanessa was afraid of ghosts, so what….was she going to ghost her husband and suddenly stop responding to all his calls and messages? That’s what they called that these days, right? Ghosting.

  Whatever. The whole thing was dumb.

  One thing that wasn’t dumb, however, was the influx of strange stuff happening all over the inn. Almost every contestant had a story to share about something odd or freaky that’d happened to them over the last few days, and I could tell more than a few of them weren’t too happy about it.

  Yuri Tilden had apparently heard strange whispers coming from a locked broom closet on his way to dinner last night.

  Addison Connelly swore till she was blue in the face that she’d seen a man with a dark hood peering in her window in the early hours of the morning just before the therapy session.

  Ben and Annie Holbrook both claimed that someone had been knocking on their window at two A.M. on the first night here on the island….and their room was all the way up on the third floor.

  To top it all off, there was also the case of the leaking ‘blood’ pipe in our bathroom which terrified Indi enough to let me see her naked for three whole minutes before she realized.

  It was shit like that. Nothing major, but still enough to freak everyone out when it was all shared collectively. It didn’t help when Indi fearfully brought up what she’d heard from that local on our first night here, either. When she told everyone about the island massacre that occurred fifteen years ago, one of the guys—Chris Ramirez—had gone off at the producers, asking them why the hell they hadn’t told any of us about that before bringing us here.

  Ed seemed vaguely apologetic, but he said he didn’t think it was a big deal. The massacre was over a decade ago, and the people of Fremantle Island had moved on. It was all in the past, and the island’s history shouldn’t have any bearing on a brand new reality TV show about marriages.

  He also made it clear that we couldn’t leave, even if we had a problem with it. We’d all signed pretty watertight contracts before coming here, and we weren’t allowed to leave the island just because a little history lesson from a local creeped us out. I didn’t care about that—I wasn’t freaked out at all, and I understood contract law pretty well. Enough to know he was right, and that we couldn’t get out of the show easily now that we were here. But a few of the others really weren’t happy, and Ed’s words were met with more than a few grumbles.

  “Wait, Blake!”

  I was about to close the bathroom door when Indi called out to me and ran over. She was dressed in black leggings and a bulky pink and grey sweater.

  “Yeah?” I said, my gaze traveling downwards as I admired the shape of her thighs in the tight leggings.

  “Can you pass me a hair-band? I put some in the bathroom the other day. I need it to do my hair up while I go for a jog, or I’ll get too sweaty.”

  I nodded and rummaged through the bathroom cabinet before finding something for her and tossing it out the door. “There you go.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You sure you want to go jogging?” I asked, arching a brow as she pulled her hair into a ponytail. “I was about to shower. You could always join me instead. I can think of a few ways to get our hearts racing.”

  Her face flushed, and I knew exactly what she was thinking about. She was recalling the evening a few days ago when I saw her stark naked in this very same bathroom, dripping wet and cold. I still remembered what her stiff pink nipples looked like on her goose-bumped breasts, and I hadn’t been able to get them off my mind.

  “Very funny,” she said with a shy smile. “I’ll see you in an hour or so? I’m having coffee with Amy, Meredith and Donna after the jog.”

  “No worries. See you soon, my beautiful young wife.”

  She blushed even more and abruptly turned away before heading out through the terrace doors. I turned the shower on before stripping my towel away and throwing it down on the floor. I planned on meeting up with Mike in half an hour to do a bit of island exploring while we had some more time off from filming, so I didn’t take too long in the shower.

  When I was done, I put the towel back around my waist as I stepped out of the bathroom and headed toward the closet. Halfway there, I heard a knock at the door. Assuming Indi had forgotten something and also forgotten her room key, I headed over and threw the door open. “Hi, wifey, I bet you…”

  My words dried up as I saw that it wasn’t Indi at all. It was Vanessa, in an expensive camel-colored trench coat.

  “Hi, Blake,” she purred. “Are you gonna invite me in?”

  She opened her coat to reveal nothing but black lingerie beneath it.

  Oh, shit.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Indi

  After stretching, I sprinted out onto the grass, heading away from the terrace and toward a little track I’d found on a walk the other day. The grounds here were full of these tracks, and the views of the gardens, nearby forest, and distant cliffs made for a wonderful jogging location.

  Just as I reached the edge of the grounds, I realized I’d completely forgotten my water bottle. I was already panting for breath and desperate for a drink. I slowly jogged back over to the inn, and five minutes later I was back where I started on the terrace outside the room I shared with Blake.

  Only it seemed I was sharing it with someone else now, too…

  I peered through the glass, confused by what I was seeing. And then I wasn’t so confused.

  It was Vanessa in lingerie, her hand on one hip as she licked her lips voraciously, staring at Blake. He had his back to me, but I could see that he was completely nude…and he was close to her. So close. Only inches away.

  I squinted, hoping I was mistaken. Nope, there was Blake’s bare butt. He was definitely naked.

  My heart pounding, I drew back from the glass terrace door. Then I ran toward the track again as bile rose in my throat. I could barely believe what I’d just seen. Vanessa wanted Blake from the second she saw him—any idiot could see that—but how could Blake just fall for her seduction attempts like that? She was married. And he was married to me!

  Well, no… I guess we weren’t really married. We weren’t anything, in fact. But no one else knew that. As far as Vanessa knew, she’d just managed to seduce an unavailable man. I bet she was feeling really proud of herself for that one.

  I stopped and bent over for a minute, panting and trying to catch my breath. I wasn’t sure why I was entirely blaming Vanessa. Yeah, she was a bit of a skank, but it takes two to tango, as they say. Blake was just as much to blame for this as she was.

  As I took a deep breath before continuing on my run, I thought about what I would say if I confronted him. I figured he would immediately deny it, but come on….I knew what I saw. He was naked before her, standing at kissing-distance, and she was half-naked as well. Right now, they were probably screwing each other’s little brains out.

  On our bed!

  Ugh. I wondered if this had already happened at some stage in the last few days; if I’d already slept in their sex-sheets, blissfully unaware of what went on when I wasn’t around.

  I stopped again, tears suddenly and inexplicably filling my eyes. There was another reason I was so upset. A much bigger reason that I didn’t want to admit to myself before now. And yet, I had to now.

  I wanted Blake all to myself. I’d been i
n denial over these last few days, but now that I’d seen him with another woman, all those hidden feelings had come rushing up to the surface. Feelings of lust, and something more… something I hadn’t expected at all. Shit, I actually liked him. Not just as a friend, after the enormous favor he did for me by pretending to be my husband on this show. No, it was more than that. I liked him in a romantic way. The sort of way where I wished we were here as a real couple.

  But not anymore. I couldn’t. I had to pull back, stop myself from feeling anything. He obviously felt nothing for me, after all, because he was banging that skinny blonde seductress behind my back. Behind her husband’s back, too. I’d almost started to think that Blake was a good person deep down, but if he was okay with helping someone cheat on their spouse, then he wasn’t anywhere near as nice and decent as I thought.

  I stopped again. I couldn’t run anymore. I was too tired all of a sudden. Too weary after thinking about all this shit.

  I walked back toward the inn again, wiping sweat from my forehead and the back of my neck with my sleeve. I had no idea what I was going to say to Blake when I got back to the room, but I knew one thing for sure—I wanted those bedsheets washed.

  As I reached the terrace door, I sneaked a glance inside to see that Vanessa was gone. Blake was on the bed, reading a book, and he was fully dressed now. I snorted to myself. The sex obviously hadn’t lasted very long between them, so perhaps Blake wasn’t the man he painted himself to be. Maybe he was nothing more than a one-pump wonder.

  I finally decided not to say anything at all. In the end, it was Blake’s life, not mine. He wasn’t my real husband, and he could do whatever he wanted. If what he wanted included having an affair with a married woman, then fine, so be it. It could be his problem.

  I was still getting those sheets disinfected, though. Or burned.

  I stepped inside, and Blake glanced up at me. “I thought you were getting coffee with the girls.”

  “Not for another half an hour. I forgot my water, so I didn’t jog as long as usual,” I replied. My voice sounded stiff, even though I was attempting to disguise my mood. I could smell a faint perfume in the room, and it sure as hell wasn’t mine.

  Blake wrinkled his forehead. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  He stood up. “Is this the kind of ‘fine’ where you’re actually not fine at all?” he asked with a lifted brow.

  “I said I’m fine!” I snapped. So much for disguising my bad mood…

  He held his hands up. “Wow. Yeah, you’re definitely fine,” he said sarcastically. “What’s going on, Indi?”

  “Nothing.” I turned away, refusing to look at him.

  “Nothing? Real mature, Indi.”

  I whirled around. “You’re one to talk. Don’t call me immature when you’re acting like a horny teenager and sleeping with a married woman.”

  I clapped my hand over my mouth, but it was too late. It was out there now, and I couldn’t take it back.

  Blake’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “I saw you fucking Vanessa!” I said, crossing my arms. “But it’s fine. Whatever. Destroy her marriage to Jay if you want. It’s none of my business.”

  A confused expression marred his handsome features. “You saw me what?”

  “You heard me,” I hissed.

  “So you saw my penis literally entering her vagina?”

  I frowned. “Well…no.”

  “What did you see, then?” he asked. A smile was playing on his lips, and to be honest, I wanted to sock him in the face. This was no laughing matter.

  “I saw you in here, naked. You were only an inch away from…from her. And she was wearing lingerie. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened next.”

  “Did you actually see what happened next, though?” Blake asked, taking a step closer to me.

  I shied away. “No,” I admitted.

  He raised his brows again. “Well, Indi, if you stayed behind and watched for a few more seconds, then you would’ve seen what actually happened. You would’ve seen me telling Vanessa to put her coat on and fuck off after she came in here begging for me to sleep with her. Then you would’ve seen her huffing and puffing before finally leaving, just like I told her to.”

  I hesitated. I wanted to believe him….god, I wanted to so much. But it simply wasn’t believable. “You were naked, Blake,” I said scornfully. “If you didn’t want her, why would you strip everything off?”

  “I was wearing a towel when she knocked on the door. If you recall, I was about to get in the shower when you left. So anyway, I’d just gotten out when she arrived, and she pulled the towel away because she’s obviously a sex-crazed maniac. That must’ve been a second before you looked in the window. But again, I told her to fuck off, and then I grabbed the towel and covered myself up again.”

  My face flushed hot. “Oh. I forgot you were showering,” I mumbled, not daring to look him in the eye.

  I was an idiot. A bona fide idiot. And now I’d made my feelings toward him abundantly clear, because why would I get so mad unless I was horribly jealous?

  Blake confirmed this for me only seconds later. “You’re jealous, aren’t you?”

  I shook my head. “Nope.”

  “Then why were you so upset when you thought I screwed Vanessa?”

  He took a step closer. I drew back again. “I just don’t like seeing people cheating, and she has a husband. That’s all,” I said, mustering up the most nonchalant tone I could.

  Blake smiled. It was that same smarmy, cocky smile that’d made me want to simultaneously jump his bones and punch his lights out so many times in the past. I wondered how many other women had fallen for that smile in the past. A hundred? A thousand?

  “I don’t believe you,” he said simply.

  “I don’t care. Believe what you want,” I replied. My voice was trembling, along with my hands. He was so close now, and his masculine scent was filling up my nostrils, making me want to bury my head in his shirt so that I could drink all of him in.

  I once read somewhere that smell was the sense most closely associated with memory. Blake still wore the same cologne he did back in high school. Whenever I used to think of him, his signature scent was one of the main things I recalled. I loved it.

  I took another deep breath. He wasn’t touching me, but I could practically feel his fingertips on my body and his lips on mine. His scent alone was enough to make me feel all of that, even though it wasn’t happening. I was so desperate for him to kiss me that I felt like I might spontaneously combust if he didn’t.

  Just when I thought I couldn’t stand the tension between us any longer, Blake smiled. “I will,” he said softly. “And I believe that you want me.”

  That was all it took for me to snap out of my reverie and back to reality.

  “No. You’re wrong. Dead wrong,” I said before stalking away to the bathroom to wash my sweaty face. I didn’t turn around to see his reaction, and I slammed the door behind me.

  He was just so damn cocky! Okay, yes, he was right—I did want him. And yes, perhaps a part of me always had, even when we were kids, and I simply never wanted to admit it before now. But this attitude of his… god, it made me want to slap him. He wasn’t wrong, but this insane level of arrogance was exactly what I couldn’t stand about him.

  Did I want to kiss him now?

  Sure.

  Over my dead body.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Indi

  I huffed as I dropped my backpack on the leafy forest floor. “Christ, that’s heavy,” I muttered.

  Blake turned around and looked at me. “I’ll carry it,” he said.

  I shook my head, not wanting to admit I needed his help. “No, I’m fine. I just need a quick break.”

  Blake smiled and nodded, and I knew he knew exactly what I was up to. It’d been like this between us for the last few days—me trying to act nonchalant and totally self-sufficient, and Blake acting as if he had no idea I secretly want
ed to screw his brains out.

  Well, not so secretly… but I digress.

  It was Saturday now, and our first filmed challenge for the show was underway. Every couple was given two heavy packs, a map, and a compass, and the task was to hike up a mountain and through a forest to find our way to a camping spot. Each couple left fifteen minutes apart to minimize the chances of one group simply following another. The point was we had to figure it all out ourselves, working as a team. We had GoPro cameras attached to our chests to film the proceedings, and when we arrived at the campsite, the devices would be replaced with proper cameras again, as the film crew were already there waiting.

  Upon our arrival, we needed to unpack our bags and put up a tent together to complete the challenge. When the episode went live online, each couple would be rated via viewer polls in terms of how well they worked together, how good their chemistry was, and so on. Blake and I probably wouldn’t score the highest, given our relatively cool treatment of each other during the hike, but we were both experienced with the great outdoors due to us both growing up in a rural area, so we wouldn’t score the lowest, either.

  As such, we were one of the first to arrive at the campsite, and we were the first to begin putting our tent up in our designated spot. Two cameramen hovered around us as we pulled the tent out of the bag. Blake immediately started putting tent poles together and sorting out ropes, and I pored over the instructions that were included in the bag.

  “Okay, in the tips and tricks section, it says we should erect it with the front facing away from the wind. Can you tell which way it’s blowing?” I asked, glancing around and trying to remember which way was north.

  Blake looked up. “Sorry, I was concentrating on the ropes and all I heard was ‘erect’ and ‘blowing’. Is that a promise for later tonight?”

  I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t stop myself from giggling. The nearby cameramen looked amused too. Score one for us. I knew the viewers would like Blake’s boyish wit.