High watt lights angled at the pool simulated moonlight glittering on the water as Aidan tilted toward her on the loveseat.
“Marcy, I just want you to know how badly I want to be here—how sexy I think you are—” Aidan leaned in, his slurred words and the fumes wafting off him letting her know in no uncertain terms that he had been partaking liberally of the liquid courage before this attempt at seduction. “If you want to test our chemistry, I am ready, willing, and able, baby.”
His lips puckered, eyes falling closed and he swooped closer. Marcy squeaked and scooted backward on the couch. Aidan kept listing forward, tipping precariously when he didn’t bump into her face-first as intended. She braced a hand on his shoulder to keep him from tumbling to the floor. “Aidan.”
“Marcy,” he crooned, still in romance mode.
She cursed under her breath. Aidan really was a sweet guy. A little too likely to reach for a bottle when he was nervous, perhaps, and definitely too inclined to cave to peer pressure, worrying about what the other guys were saying and fixating on what he should be doing to win her, but he was so adorably earnest she’d wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
If she hadn’t felt like she was being attacked lips first for most of the week, she probably would have had a little more patience for his amorous efforts. It was like someone had painted a target on her mouth. Every guy in the house had been on a mission to kiss.
The only date that hadn’t been dominated by clumsy make-out efforts was Paul’s Napa Adventure—which had been dominated instead by Paul’s tragic history. Neither of them had felt much like making out after he’d confided in her that he donated a kidney to his diabetic sister only to have her die in a car accident two months later.
But with everyone else, it had been a race to her mouth.
Aidan swooped in for a second attempt and Marcy gave him a gentle shove until he collapsed back into the depths of the plush loveseat.
“Aidan, who put you up to this?”
“What?” he blinked at her blearily. “Put me up to what?”
“Who told you that you had to kiss me, Aidan?”
“I want to,” he insisted.
“I’m glad, but why are you suddenly in such a hurry? Why are all of you suddenly all about making out?”
Aidan shrugged. “I dunno. Craig said… you know.”
“Craig said. Of course he did.” She stood and Aidan’s head wobbled on his shoulders as he tried to track the movement with his eyes. “Let’s find you some coffee.”
Then she had a piece of her mind to give to Craig.
#
“You warned me that you were a bad influence, but I somehow thought you were only trying to influence me.”
Craig looked up from his game of solitaire—minding his own business like a good boy like he’d been doing all week—to find Marcy standing over him with her hands planted on her hips. Tonight was the Elimination Ceremony and he was laying low, hiding out in the card room and trying to avoid confrontations, but Marcy had found him and she looked pissed.
Wasn’t that how it always went? Just when he started actually behaving himself, he got accused of all manner of nefarious things he didn’t actually do.
He gathered the cards into a stack. “Who am I influencing now?”
She ignored the question. “Did you start some kind of competition to see who could kiss me this week?”
“Ah.” He might have done that. Not in so many words, but he’d known the effect his challenge would have. On the plus side, at least he was being accused of something he’d actually done. “It wasn’t a competition, per se.”
“I can’t believe you.” She threw up her hands and the cameramen swiveled to get a better view. She really was something when she was pissed off. Face flushed, eyes flashing—it was a good look on her. Eat your heart out, America.
“In my defense…” He trailed off. He didn’t really have anything to say in his own defense. Apologizing, justifying his actions, they weren’t exactly activities he had a lot of practice with.
“You did it on purpose. You knew exactly what would happen.”
Craig slapped the cards down on the table. Fuck it. Being good was boring as hell. “Of course I did. We’re competitive beasts, princess. I didn’t even have to say much to bring out the Neanderthal brigade.”
“That’s your excuse? It was easy?”
“It’s not an excuse. Just a fact.” He rose, tired of giving her the high ground—literally—in the argument. On his feet, he had several inches on her, even in those pointy heels—don’t get distracted by the legs, Craig. “How many of them see anyone beyond Miss Right when they look at you? They’re competing for the prize. At least I see that there is more to you than just the girl we all want to win.”
“Do you want to win? Or are you just here to make a splash so you can become a star?”
“Can’t I do both?” he asked, though he knew he couldn’t. The winners tended to fade from memory, riding off into the sunset together. It was the runners-up who stayed in the public eye.
“I don’t know. Can you?”
“Look, Marcy…” He reached for her, certain that if he could just touch her, he could bring them back to a good place, but she shied away from him, stepping back quickly.
“Just stop sabotaging the other guys, will you, Craig? You may not want to find love, but some of them do and I’d like them to have a fighting chance.”
If his mediocre efforts could derail them, they didn’t deserve her, but before he could say as much, Marcy swept out of the card room, in search of comfort from some other Suitor.
Craig threw the cards and cursed vehemently. Let them bleep it out.
#
Marcy moved quickly through the mansion, needing distance not just from Craig but from all the Suitors, from the show itself. She was so sick of this. Sick of always being on display. Sick of having every second of every day planned out for her. Sick of the illusion that she was in control of the situation when really she was just a plaything, America’s toy, a doll supposed to love and laugh and cry on cue.
She tried to block out the sound of the camera crew behind her. They rushed to keep up as she lifted up her train and half-jogged in the excruciating high heels into the courtyard garden. If she never saw another camera crew again her life, she could die happy. And as for the Suitors, never would be too soon—
Daniel stepped out of a break in the sculpted bushes. “Marcy, I’ve been hoping to catch you alone. I have a surprise for you.”
Her hand went automatically to her face and she only realized after she brushed her cheeks that she was checking for tears of frustration. But her cheeks were dry. And Daniel didn’t even seem to notice she was upset. Perhaps she really was an ice queen, keeping all of her emotions bottled up behind Midwestern reserve.
“Daniel, I’m really not in the mood.” Her voice surprised her with how calm and collected it sounded—further evidence that she couldn’t show her emotions, no matter how violently she felt them.
“Let me put you in the mood,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to do something special for you.”
She wanted to argue. To scream that none of them ever listened to her—except Craig, which she didn’t even want to consider. She sighed and extended her hand, letting Daniel lead her to whatever surprise he’d cooked up for her since it would be a battle she didn’t want to have to resist him.
Daniel guided her through the courtyard gardens, back into the mansion, along the west wing—where she’d had her room when she’d been one of the Suitorettes—and onto the pool deck. Several of the Suitors were gathered there, looking incongruous in their suits on the lounge chairs, but Daniel didn’t pause, taking her around the pool to the edge of the lawn. He then turned to her and swept her up into his arms—which had none of the impact of the first time he’d done it—and carried her over the grass until they were back at the gazebo. Only this time, in addition to the fairy lights, it was stuffed to the rafters with roses.
The smell of them hit her first, cloying and sweet, and she almost sneezed.
Some devil inside her—influenced by Craig, no doubt—urged her to tell him that she was more of a daisy kind of girl, loving the happy little faces of the flowers, and that she actually preferred carnations, with their carefree petals, to rosebuds. But he hadn’t asked. So she didn’t volunteer.
Then she noticed the cameras. They were stationary—like the ones that were set up for some of the longer dinners and events where they didn’t need cameramen chasing them with steadicams. The kind of cameras that were operated by a producer by remote, so the cameraman wasn’t even present, giving them an illusion of privacy they didn’t really have, but at the moment, Marcy was grateful for even that much space.
“Thank you,” she said to Daniel, glad to have found a way to mean it. “This is lovely.”
He set her on her feet and took her arm to help her up the steps into Flower World. It was surprisingly dark, the flowers blocking out most of the moonlight and making the fairy lights seem dimmer. Marcy wondered if the stationary cameras would be using night vision, if her face would be green and her eyes glowing demonically for whatever romantic scene Daniel had planned.
“I wanted to make this place for you, where you can get away from the competition and the stress and just be with me.” He took both of her hands. “I want you to know that I know about the kissing gauntlet that one of the Suitors threw down and how the other Suitors reacted to it and that’s why I’m not going to kiss you this week.”
Marcy blinked. Daniel was generally pretty predictable, but she hadn’t seen that one coming.
“I want to be your safe haven,” he went on. “I want you to know there will never be any pressure from me and you can always come to me when you need someone who doesn’t want anything from you beyond the right to guard your heart.”
Would America be swooning, she wondered? Was there something wrong with her that the line did nothing for her? She was officially a cynical bitch, letting her skepticism rule her heart.
“Thank you, Daniel.” She squeezed the hands that held hers. “I know I can trust you.”
At the word trust, his face screwed up as if he were in pain. “Marcy… there’s something you need to know.”
He’s gay.
Shut up, subconscious, that is not helpful commentary.
While she argued with herself, distracted, Daniel forged on.
“I thought we had to let you make your own decisions, your own mistakes—”
How magnanimous of you.
“But I worry that you are acting without all of the information. I didn’t want to get involved in your relationships with any of the other Suitors—”
Then don’t.
“But I can’t in good conscience let you continue being deceived by this man for another Elimination Ceremony.”
Marcy searched her feelings—trying to figure out how to react, to determine what the producers would want her to feel in this moment, but all she got was a vague curiosity if the lighting was good enough for them to be having this conversation. The night-vision feature was typically reserved for blurry make-out sessions because it wasn’t that sharp.
“I appreciate your candor,” she said. Even as I find it slightly insulting that you think I’m oblivious to everything that’s happening here.
Daniel’s shoulders relaxed at her words. He was visibly relieved at that slight encouragement. She tugged on the hands he still held and urged him to the mouth of the gazebo where the camera crews hovering on the lawn could get a clear, bright shot of them during this discussion.
“It’s Craig,” he said firmly. “The guys and I have been discussing it and we don’t think he’s here for the right reasons.”
Marcy sank down onto the gazebo steps and Daniel hesitated only a moment before brushing off the other side of the step and perching on it.
“I know.”
His jaw dropped like a character in a cartoon. “You know?”
She patted his knee and he caught her hand, lacing their fingers together. He probably wouldn’t believe her if she told him that Craig had already told her what he wanted out of the show. Any more than he would understand why she still wanted him to stay, knowing that. Sometimes it seemed like he was the only one here who really got her.
What would Daniel think if he found out that Marcy wasn’t here strictly for the right reasons either? How would he react if she told him that she thought coming on a show like this for the sole purpose of finding love was an exercise in naivety and self-delusion?
Daniel thought she was a romantic because she was a romance writer. He didn’t have a clue that her bar for romance wasn’t set at roses and moonlight, but rather at a real connection. The trappings of love just brought out her cynical side—which inevitably made her feel like a fraud. Like she was faking her romance expertise. What the hell did she know about happily-ever-after anyway? She’d never had one. She feared every day that her readers would figure out she’d been putting one over on them and the dream job she had would vanish in a cloud of smoke.
But Daniel didn’t know that because he didn’t know her. Was that because he wasn’t looking? Or because she wasn’t showing him?
And what could she tell him now to explain why Craig was going to get a favor tonight, because Daniel was probably the best Suitor she had and she didn’t want to lose him over the guy she already knew wasn’t going to stick around long enough to win her heart.
Marcy looked down at their interlacing hands. “I don’t expect you to understand—” Truth. “But I’d like you to respect that if I do keep Craig it’s because my relationship with him—while unconventional—is still worth exploring to me.” Truth. “But I appreciate your desire to warn me.” Bald-faced lie. “And I will keep your reservations in mind.” Because they are the same as mine.
Daniel’s mouth puckered for a moment like he was sucking lemons, then his gaze flicked side-eye toward the cameras and he lowered his voice to whisper—though the mics would easily pick it up and subtitles would clarify it for any viewers who might miss it. “Are the producers pressuring you to keep him because he creates drama?”
“I can’t talk to you about the show, Daniel.”
His face instantly cleared. Apparently her evasion was as good as a confession. “I understand,” he intoned gravely, though she was reasonably certain he didn’t. She thought for a moment he would hug her, but he just sat there, holding her hand. “If you ever need a respite from him, I am always here for you. I’ll be your safe haven.”
But who will be yours when you discover I’m just like him?