Runaway Groom Page 3

  My eyes narrow. “Why are you saying it like that? Like you don’t believe me.”

  “You just don’t seem like the type of woman who can be made to do anything.”

  “True. I’m the sort of woman who will do what it takes to make her business a success,” I say, trying to move around him. “I just…went too far with this one.”

  He puts up an arm, blocks my way. “Hot and hollow, huh?”

  His eyes are oddly intense, as though my answer somehow matters, and I wince, hating that he heard my careless assessment of him.

  Still, I’m not out to make this guy like me, and I sort of meant it. Any guy who thinks he’s going to find his true love on TV in the span of a month? Hollow.

  Or at least really dim.

  I study him. “I know why I’m in this closet. Why are you?”

  “Cleaning fetish,” he deadpans. “Brooms and buckets really do it for me.”

  I narrow my eyes and ignore the sarcasm. “You were hiding.”

  His expression flickers, and I know I’m right. The man practically lives on camera, and yet he sought out a cleaning closet for a moment of solitude that I’d disturbed with my thoughtless trash talk.

  I feel a little stab of regret—not because I was wrong about him, but because I wish he hadn’t heard it.

  Still, maybe I can use my faux pas to my advantage, getting me out of here before I can cause any more trouble for myself.

  I step back and look at him steadily. “Look. We both know that I never should have made it to this round. No doubt you were hoping that people would vote me home, but…”

  I spread my arms to the sides, intending it to be a self-deprecating gesture to put him at ease. Instead, he rakes his gaze over me and the mood in the tiny closet is anything but easy.

  “Interesting,” he says finally, breaking the silence.

  “What is?” I look longingly toward the door. Toward escape.

  “That you label me hollow, and yet you’re the one openly admitting to using the show—to using me—to sell T-shirts.”

  “Oh, come on. Surely, you’re not so naive that you don’t know what this show is—what we’re all doing here. The goal is ratings, not happily ever after.”

  “That’s the network’s goal. Not mine.”

  “Right. You’re here for…what was it again? To find your one true love?” I don’t bother to keep the skepticism out of my voice.

  He surprises me by grinning. “Why do you think I’m here?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” I say, waving my hand breezily as I again attempt to ease by him.

  He reaches out to stop me, his fingers resting lightly against my stomach, his fingers seeming to burn through the thin fabric of my shirt, and I’m embarrassed at the way my breath hitches.

  Gage Barrett is touching me.

  Marjorie and my mother would die.

  Gage grins wider at my response, and the cocky reaction is exactly what I need to get myself together. I push his hand away. “Surely there’s a more willing contestant to go molest in a closet somewhere.”

  “No doubt,” he says with a laugh.

  I step back. “Is it true you left two women at the altar?”

  He meets my gaze dead-on. “Yes.”

  “Why—”

  “Why are you so dead set on leaving?” he interrupts. “Got someone at home that doesn’t like his girl flirting on camera?”

  “I’m not flirting. Contestants aren’t allowed to be involved in romantic relationships. It’d be in breach of contract.”

  “That’s a stupid answer. Do you have a boyfriend or not?”

  “It was a stupid question,” I toss back. “And not your business.”

  “Not my business,” he says under his breath, shaking his head. “I could potentially marry you, but no, your love life is absolutely not my business.”

  “I’m not marrying you. I am leaving now,” I say, a little impatiently, as I realize the other girls will likely be wondering where I am.

  He opens his mouth, but before he can respond, voices come from the hallway. Acting on instinct, I place my fingers across his mouth to keep him from talking and giving us away.

  Gage’s eyes flare a little at the contact, and my breath does that annoying chopping thing again. His eyes are green. Have I noticed that before? I always thought they were blue, or maybe hazel, but they’re more like…

  “Your eyes look like guacamole,” I whisper, once the voices pass without anyone opening the closet door.

  He chuckles, his breath warm on my fingers, and I snatch my hand back. “Are you going to say this stuff on camera?”

  “Probably,” I admit. “Which is why it’s in both of our interests if you send me home first thing.”

  “I don’t know about that. The producers have told me in as vague a way as possible that I should keep the contestants that make for good TV for as long as possible.”

  I’m disgusted but not surprised. We contestants were basically told that we’re welcome to make a spectacle of ourselves in the name of entertainment.

  “Ah, yes, above all we must entertain the people,” I say, reaching for the doorknob. “It’s a wonder they don’t just set up a tent in the front yard, dress us in something sparkly, and have us walk around in a slow circle to creepy circus music.”

  “We talked about it,” he says, stepping closer, his breath warm on my neck. “Decided that dressing you all up in bikinis and having you splash around in the pool would be even better.”

  “Gross,” I mutter. I turn my head slightly to meet his eyes. “Send me home, Gage. Please. It’ll be better for both of us.”

  He studies me. “You really want that?”

  “I’m a businesswoman, not a groupie.”

  He’s silent for a moment. “True. You did compare my eyes to avocados.”

  “Exactly. You usually get, what…moss?”

  His lips twitch, although the smile doesn’t reach his mossy eyes. “Emeralds, mostly.”

  I turn away with a snort, opening the door slowly, listening for voices. When I’m met with only silence, I stick my head out.

  The hallway’s empty.

  “All clear,” I say, stepping hurriedly into the hallway. It’s open-air, as much of the villa is, and the faint scent of tropical flowers is vastly preferable to the astringent smell of the cleaning supplies.

  I inhale and turn around to face Gage, who’s closing the door to the closet. I extend my hand with a confident smile. “So. We have a deal? I’m the first one home?”

  He looks at my hand, then his gaze flicks up to meet mine. His eyes do look a little more like emeralds than guacamole in this light, but I’m not about to tell him that.

  Finally Gage reaches out and shakes my hand. “Sure. First one home.”

  I feel a surge of relief, even as my hand is far too aware of the warmth of his palm against mine. “Thank you. Truly. I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time on your hunt for…true love, or whatever. I’m sure one of the girls here will think your eyes positively sparkle.”

  He opens his mouth, but before he can reply the sound of feminine laughter pierces the air, only to stop completely when three of the contestants round the corner and see me and Gage standing face-to-face, my hand in his.

  I tug my arm back, but it’s too late. Cora, a gorgeous lawyer of Middle Eastern descent, and Hannah, a pretty southern second-grade teacher with a penchant for headbands and passive-aggressive behavior, are both giving me dirty looks.

  The third woman plays it smarter.

  “Hey, guys!” the stunning blonde says, giving us both a friendly smile as the trio approaches. “We were just taking a tour of the villa, it’s gorgeous.”

  Meet Brooklyn. She’s basically the most stunning woman I’ve ever seen. She’s got long, shiny blond hair that she wears in loose curls, straight white teeth, and Disney-princess blue eyes. Add in the C-cup breasts, tiny waist, and legs up to her chin, and she’s pretty much perfect.

  She’s
also exceedingly friendly to everyone, me included, and I should like her. I know I should, but I can’t shake the feeling that every single thing she does is preplanned, and it makes it hard to relax around her.

  Gage, apparently, doesn’t feel the same, because his welcome smile seems entirely genuine. “Ladies, good to see you. You all ready for the kickoff dinner tonight?”

  “Yes, totally,” Hannah drawls prettily. “And I can’t wait for tomorrow’s pool party. My poor winter skin is totally overdue for some time in the sun.”

  Cora lets out a confident laugh. “I’ve never had to worry about that.” She subtly juts out a long, exposed thigh beneath her white skirt, as though waiting for Gage to take in her naturally bronzed skin.

  But instead of checking out Cora, Gage’s eyes find Brooklyn’s. She gives the slightest of playful eye rolls at the other women’s antics, which Gage answers with a quick wink.

  Irrationally annoyed by their silent flirting, I take a step back from the group. “Thanks for the directions,” I tell Gage, trying to convey to the other girls that I was just lost and not hiding out in a utility closet making deals with our very own Runaway Groom. “This place is huge, right?”

  “Oh, sweetie, did you get lost?” Hannah says in a melodramatic whisper. “You poor thing!”

  “Just took a wrong turn looking for my room,” I lie, lifting a hand in farewell. “See you all at dinner.”

  Cora, Brooklyn, and Hannah all give me a singsongy goodbye, but Gage doesn’t even look my way as he drapes an arm over Cora’s and Brooklyn’s shoulders. “Ladies, care to join me on the patio for a beverage?”

  I’m clearly not included in the invitation, and I tell myself it’s a good sign—a show of faith that he’ll stick to his promise to send me home first.

  But as they walk away, his manners far more charming than they were when he was talking to me, I stare after them for just a moment, wondering which is the real Gage Barrett: the silver-tongued charmer out to fall in love for the sake of ratings, or the guy in the cleaning closet whose avocado eyes hinted at dark secrets?

  Ellie

  It’s only the knowledge that it’s my first and last day at the villa that lets me allow Paisley to talk me into putting on the black bikini for the kickoff pool party today. That, and the fact that I fully intend to keep my T-shirt on the entire time.

  Then tonight I’ll have my ticket home, and I can put this entire mistake behind me.

  Paisley hands me a bottle of SPF 50. “Is it too forward if I ask you to put this on my back? Redhead skin and Maui sun do not mix.”

  Our roommate LeAnn bats my hand, knocking the bottle of sunscreen to the ground. “Are you crazy?” she asks Paisley. “Don’t have her do it, ask Gage to do it!”

  “Yeah, because I’m sure nobody else will have thought of the whole ‘put sunscreen on my back’ ploy,” Eden says snidely as she arranges her small but perky boobs inside her bandeau bikini.

  “I’m not,” LeAnn says, plopping down onto her bottom bunk, making her own, more generous boobs bounce within the confines of her hot-pink halter top. “I’ve got something else in mind.”

  “Oh?” Eden asks. “What’s your plan?”

  Paisley gives me a slight eye roll, but I notice all of her attention’s on Eden and LeAnn’s conversation, as though taking mental notes of the competition’s game plan.

  I pick the sunscreen off the floor and start applying it to Paisley’s back. The girl’s skin is gorgeous, but it’s alabaster white. She can have Gage slather a second coat over all of her if she wants, but no way am I letting her out into the tropical sunshine without a base layer.

  The unmistakable smell of sunscreen immediately adds to the already scent-drenched room. Four women living in a small space with two sets of bunk beds (Paisley and I are on the top bunks) and a tiny connected bathroom means that the place smells constantly like perfume, hair spray, mouthwash, shampoo, and now Coppertone.

  It’s as noxious as it sounds, although most of the girls seem to think the unobstructed view of the Pacific makes the cramped quarters worth it. Me? Not so much. I realize I’m going to sound like a spoiled brat here, but I grew up in San Diego. My mom’s apartment didn’t have a waterfront view—far from it—but weekends spent at the beach are pretty much par for the course.

  In other words, it’d take a hell of a lot more than a great view to make this situation more tolerable.

  One more day. I can do this.

  “Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking,” LeAnn says, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, even though the door to our room’s closed. “When I was in high school, I used to spend Saturdays at the pool at my parents’ country club. There was this super-hot lifeguard, and all my friends and I had like, the biggest crush, but he never noticed us—”

  “Shocker,” Eden says cattily, studying her pink-tipped nails.

  LeAnn, bless her, doesn’t seem to notice Eden’s bitchiness. Actually, if I’m being honest, LeAnn doesn’t seem to notice much. She’s a curvy brunette, with great curly hair and huge blue eyes, but there’s something just slightly off about her social skills. At dinner last night, her laughs usually came five seconds too late, and her jokes were a touch too off the wall. Adding insult to injury, she’s a close-talker—you know, one of those people who stands far closer than necessary when speaking to you.

  “So anyway,” LeAnn is saying, “my friend Karen, she’s always been super-clumsy, and one day she slipped and fell at the pool and hit her head—”

  My hand stills in the process of smearing sunscreen on Paisley’s back. What the…?

  “Anyway, she totally ended up being fine, but she got all the attention, especially from the hot lifeguard,” LeAnn says, grinning as she looks around the room.

  We all stare at her. “Please tell me you’re joking,” Eden says.

  For once I agree with Eden. “LeAnn, you can’t be thinking of pretending to slip and fall as a way of getting attention.”

  “Why, you’ve heard someone else is already planning that?” she asks, sounding crestfallen.

  “Oh my God, I can’t,” Eden mutters, shimmying into a teal cover-up. Though cover-up’s a strong word. What she’s got on is more like a pile of string that does nothing to actually cover the tiny white bikini. “I’m going over to talk with the girls in Room B. See you all at the pool.”

  Paisley waits until the door’s shut behind Eden before going to sit beside LeAnn. “Sweetie, promise me you won’t intentionally fall at the pool today.”

  LeAnn pouts. “But it’s the only way he’ll look at me. You were there last night. I was the only one he didn’t seek out during cocktail hour.”

  “Not the only one,” Paisley says soothingly. “He didn’t have any one-on-one time with Ellie either.”

  Ouch.

  She’s right, though. Though filming doesn’t start until today, there was a casual cocktail hour preceding dinner last night, and Gage made a point of pulling aside all of the women to chat with them privately. Except not all the women. He hadn’t sought me out once. Nor LeAnn, apparently.

  LeAnn looks between me and Paisley for a moment, chewing her lip nervously, before she gets a mutinous look on her face and stands, marching to the door. “You girls are just jealous you didn’t think of my plan first. And I’m not actually going to hit my head, just pretend.”

  “LeAnn—”

  Paisley’s objection is met with a door slam. We look at each other for a moment before Paisley sighs, plucking a hair elastic off the dresser and pulling her long red hair into an artfully messy bun atop her head. “I’ll go try to talk some sense into her. See you down there.”

  Paisley leaves to follow LeAnn, and I glance at the clock. I have ten minutes until the cameras start rolling. Not much, but it’s the first time I’ve had the room to myself since we’ve gotten here, and I take advantage, hurrying to my suitcase in the closet and pulling out my iPhone, which I’ve hidden in the inner lining of the pocket.

 
I turn it on and wait impatiently for it to start up. I know, I know, I totally told Gage that I’d turn it in, but I lied and—

  I frown as the phone starts, my messages starting to load. There’s one from my mom, another from Marjorie, which is the reason I’m checking my phone in the first place, but the most recent is from a 323 area code…

  I click on the text, my eyes narrowing as I read. Wear one of your precious T-shirts to the pool today. Bet it looks great wet.

  My mouth drops open.

  Only a handful of the women know about High Tee, and I’m betting none of them give one crap what it looks like wet. Gage Barrett, on the other hand, is exactly the sort of grown-up frat boy to know his way around a wet T-shirt contest.

  That asshole wasn’t just snooping on my phone yesterday, he was looking up my phone number!

  I shouldn’t respond. For one thing, it’ll encourage him. For another, it’ll confirm that I still have my phone, which is probably what he’s testing in the first place.

  I’m about to put the phone away when I think of LeAnn. Hopefully Paisley can talk some sense into her, but in case she can’t…

  I reply to Gage’s text before I can rethink it. First of all, I think you accidentally signed up for the wrong reality TV show. This isn’t Girls Gone Wild. Second of all, you need to pay attention to LeAnn at the party today.

  His response is almost immediate. Either he’s snuck his cellphone in as well, or he doesn’t have to give it up like the rest of us. Probably the latter. Why? And which one’s LeAnn?

  “Jerk,” I mutter as I text him back. Curly brown hair, kinda short. One of the few you ignored last night.

  How do you know which ones I ignored?

  They were the ones crying themselves to sleep last night. The walls in this place are thin.

  Could have come to my room. I could have comforted you.

  I smile a little at the cockiness. Don’t be gross. Are you going to pay attention to LeAnn or not? I think she’s going to do something dumb to get your attention.

  Dumb how?

  Fake fall. Maybe hurt herself, I type.

  Are you kidding me?

  Nope.