“Let’s get you set up while we still have the sunset behind you.”
Craig froze as the producer’s voice carried from the next balcony over. Danny Boy was back from his date already.
The other Suitors weren’t supposed to hear the recaps and confessionals. Keeping them in ignorance as much of the time as possible was definitely part of the Romancing Miss Right game plan. They must not have realized Craig was on the adjacent balcony, blocked as he was by the high privacy walls between the suites as he sprawled out prone on a lawn chair watching the waves crash against the Bora Bora shore.
It was gorgeous. And boring. Whenever he wasn’t with Marcy, there was nothing to do but sit around with the other guys—no cell phones, no internet, no television. Hell, the producers even forbade books, unless they wanted to journal about their feelings. Craig found he wanted to spend less and less time with the other guys. It had started to feel weird. So he’d come out to the balcony of the room he was sharing with Aidan to watch the surf and zone out.
And hit the jackpot.
He wasn’t about to announce his presence. Not when eavesdropping on Daniel could give him an advantage in the end game of the show.
And it was a game. A fact he had to keep reminding himself of more and more lately.
Surrounded as they were by cameras, it shouldn’t have been possible for him to forget, even for a second, what he was trying to gain here. But lately it was easier and easier to get caught up in the moments with Marcy. The dates were designed to be entertaining, but she made them fun. Her wry little comments, the devilish twinkle in her eyes, the hoarse, reluctant pitch of her laugh when he was being particularly bad to get a rise out of her. Sometimes he got so fixated on making her laugh, he almost forgot he was there to make America love him, not her.
He needed to keep his head in the game. And eavesdropping seemed like the perfect place to start.
On the adjacent balcony, Danny Boy completed his microphone check and the segment producer—Amelia, by the sound of it—guided him into the first section of the recap with, “How did you feel when you saw her standing on the boat, waiting for you?”
The boat. Lucky Craig hadn’t gotten that date. He got seasick sitting at the dock. He felt queasy just thinking about it. Surely that was queasiness and not jealousy stirring biliously in his stomach as Danny Boy waxed poetic on the feminine graces of Miss Right.
Wind through her hair… felt so connected… blah blah blah.
It was all very perfect and predictable.
Craig began to wonder why he was bothering to eavesdrop. Daniel was a walking romantic cliché. He didn’t need to hear his confessional to know that. Or to know how to beat him. Marcy was too edgy for Daniel. Too smart to be taken in by the trappings of romance. She wanted the real deal.
Not that Craig could give her the real deal, but he was at least honest with her and with himself.
He came to his feet, moving silently toward the sliding door back into his suite, when the word “marriage” stopped him in his tracks.
“It was the kind of setting where a man would take his girlfriend to propose, so I suppose it’s only natural that I found myself thinking a lot about marriage today. Before now, I’d been enjoying myself and enjoying the time with Marcy, but today was when it really hit me where this could be heading for us.”
Craig bristled at the casual, possessive us.
“I knew from very early on that she was the kind of girl I always saw myself marrying, but now I’m starting to think of her as not just the kind of girl, but the girl I’ll marry. And I think she may be thinking of me the same way. When we talk about the future, our future, everything just lines up so perfectly. We want the same things. We value the same things—”
If Craig could have been assured of hitting Daniel in the head, he would have chucked something over the wall between the balconies. Like a chair.
What kind of asshole talked about marriage after only a handful of highly choreographed made-for-TV dates? It was insane. Marriage was for life, not for ratings. It was fucking sacred, damn it.
Though Danny Boy didn’t sound like he would be proposing as a publicity stunt. For him it really would be due to some delusional idea of who Marcy was. The image of Miss Right he’d built up in his head.
“I could really love her.” Daniel’s voice floated over the wall. “I’m definitely falling hard now. Every day she reveals more of herself to me. More things that prove how easy it would be to love her.”
Because that’s what love is—a series of tests to see if the object of your affections measures up to your standards. The chair wasn’t good enough. Craig wanted to pummel Daniel with his bare hands. Feel the skin of his knuckles splitting with the force of his blows against Daniel’s perfect cheekbones.
“Do you worry about her relationships with the other men?” Amelia prompted.
“I try not to think about it,” Daniel said, smooth and unruffled. “I know she’s seeing them, but I’d be surprised if she sees herself having any sort of a future with them. We have plans.”
Plans. The word was a mule-kick in the gut. She didn’t talk about the future with Craig. Not that he wanted her to—that wasn’t what they were about. They were fun and flirtation and making out in the hot tub until he was left with the worst case of blue balls of his life. So what if they hadn’t talked about the names of their unborn children?
Fuck. Did that mean he was behind? Was Danny Boy winning?
If Marcy decided to get rid of him before he had a signed contract in hand from Miranda, would the producer still be motivated to go to bat for him with the network higher ups? Bribery, blackmail, whatever you wanted to call it, none of it worked if Marcy kicked him off the show.
He’d thought he was doing fine. They were having fun. But were they past the “fun” portion of the show now? Was it all about feelings and connections and love now? Because if so, he needed to step up his game before the next Elimination Ceremony.
He’d been playing nice, doing as Miranda asked, but now it was time to play to win.
#
Marcy sat on her veranda, trying not to shiver for the cameras as the tropical night rapidly cooled now that the sun had set. Just a few more minutes with the date recap footage and then she could escape inside her nice warm room, pull the comforter over her and get a few hours of sleep before her sunrise date with Aidan.
“Daniel is always telling me how much he cares for me and doing little things to make me feel special, but sometimes I wonder how attracted to me he is. Maybe it’s just that he’s such a gentleman, but he never grabs me and kisses me senseless. All Craig has to do is give me that look and my heart starts to race—he is far and away the best kisser of the bunch—but life is about more than just chemistry—”
“Is it? Says who?”
Marcy whipped around, her jaw dropping as Craig dropped over the veranda wall and into her private garden, stumbling on the pavers. She flicked a glance to the producer running her confessional, who looked mildly panicked, but spun her finger in a keep-going gesture, even as she quietly radioed for a second camera crew.
Marcy sprang out of her chair. “What are you doing? You can’t be here!”
“Why not?” he asked, strolling over to her with a hitch in his usual cocky swagger. “Are you trying to hide something from me? Because if you are, you might want to rethink telling eleven million home viewers.”
“How did you find me?”
“Followed the lights. It wasn’t hard. Not many of the resort’s guests are using industrial grade lighting on their verandas tonight.” He grabbed one of the empty wicker chairs and spun it to face the one she had been seated in for her confessional. He twisted awkwardly, wincing as he dropped onto the chair.
“Did you hurt yourself?” she asked, dropping back into her own chair. “I should say it serves you right.”
He carefully straightened and bent his left knee, poking at it. “I guess my landings could use some work.” He jerked his head back toward the veranda wall. “I’m lucky I only had about an eight foot drop. I probably would have killed myself if I tried to do that back at the mansions.”
“You wouldn’t be the first ambulance called after someone tried to scale it.”
“It’s practically a Romancing Miss Right of passage.”
She groaned at the pun and he grinned.
“I’d planned to climb the wall back at the mansions, but the exotic adventure portion of the program began before I had the chance.” He leaned back in the chair, stacking his hands behind his head like he was settling in to stay a while. “So tell me, is Fiji the perfect place to fall in love? Or was that Bora Bora? Or Vanuatu? We keep moving around so much, I can’t keep them straight.”
“What are you doing here, Craig?”
“Tempting you to come over to the dark side.” He wagged his eyebrows.
She frowned repressively, folding her arms protectively across her middle. “Try again.”
Something flickered across his face, as if he was trying to decide whether to go with another joke or try a different strategy.
“You don’t have to be the funny guy all the time,” she said.
“Don’t I?” he countered lightly. Always light. Always surface. That was Craig.
She stared him down, willing him to give her something more, something real. The cameras were still on them, but this wasn’t an official date. It was as close to an unscripted moment as they were likely to get.
For a long moment, silence stretched between them, until she became certain he would break it with another joke. But Craig always knew how to surprise her.
He shrugged, dropping his hands and his cocksure pose. “When people tell you your whole life that you’re the funniest guy in the room, you start to feel like you’re a liar or a fake or a failure if you aren’t always the funniest guy there. That’s all the world wants from me.”
Whoa. When he went below the surface, he really went for it.
Marcy felt understanding shiver through her, starting at her soul and working out through her limbs. She swallowed. “My dad—I love him like crazy—but he’s always praised me for being so clever. My sisters are the nice one and the adventurous one, but I’m his clever girl. Over and over, I’ve heard that, my entire life, and even though it’s a compliment, it feels like this command hanging over my head. Be clever, Marcy. Like there is always this expectation and when I’m not clever—because no one can be clever all the time—then he’ll find out that I was never the clever girl he thought I was and I’ll lose all of his love and affection if I’m not always the clever girl. Which is stupid.” She grimaced. “In my head I know it’s silly and that my dad would never stop loving me just because I had a dumb moment, but my heart and my gut are singing a different song.”
He nodded. “It feels like you’re getting away with something. Like they’re all going to find out one day that you aren’t funny after all. And it will all be taken away.”
“By some man with a clipboard who arrives at your door to check on your cleverness.”
“You can’t trust a man with a clipboard.” He met her eyes—the man gave incredible eye contact. “So we’re both screwed up.”
“We are. But maybe that means you don’t have to be funny with me and I don’t have to be clever with you.”
“I like making people laugh.” His dark eyes added, I like making you laugh.
“And I like being the clever girl. But we don’t have to be the funny one and the clever one. Not when it’s just us. We can just be.”
He arched a brow at the cameras. “Is it ever just us?”
“There won’t always be cameras.”
His eyebrows flew up. “Are we talking about the future? Life after the show?”
“It doesn’t last forever. In a few weeks, I’ll go back to being a happily-ever-after pimp and you’ll be on your way to being the next Johnny Carson.”
Something unreadable shifted in his gaze. There, then gone. Fleetingly, she wondered if that was how he looked when he was lying—Craig who was always brutally honest. “Yes, I will.”
Why would he start lying now?