Marcy flicked a glance at the cameras. She knew she should send Craig away. The viewing audience was going to be screaming at their televisions, telling her what an idiot she was. She’d officially become that girl who knew a guy was bad for her, but kept him around anyway.
There was just something about Craig.
He understood her, without even trying. The conversation she’d just had with Craig, she could never have had with Daniel. He wouldn’t have understood about that fear of being found out, because he wasn’t self-aware enough to know how often he was putting on an act.
Marcy cringed at the thought. That was unkind—her mother would be ashamed of her for thinking it—but she couldn’t bring herself to trust Daniel, who always seemed to know the right thing to say. Craig was always honest with her, even when she didn’t like what he said, but Daniel was a façade of perfection and she couldn’t seem to stop searching for cracks, trying to see the real man behind the mask even he believed was real.
The other Suitors were all just competing for her. She could see she was a prize to them. A goal. They liked her well enough, but the prospect of a future relationship never really entered into it. Nice guys, some of them, and all of them gorgeous, but they didn’t occupy her thoughts the same way. Really, even Daniel didn’t come close to matching the amount of time she spent thinking about Craig.
He frustrated her, but she couldn’t seem to send him home. Craig Corrow, her favorite bad influence.
If she picked with her head, there was no contest. It was Daniel every time. It would be a popular decision. They would be America’s Sweethearts and live happily ever after. He ticked all the boxes and then some. A real life, genuine Mr. Perfect to her Miss Right.
But if she picked with her heart…
Her heart was an idiot and a masochist. It kept leaping toward the man who had come right out and told her he would rip it into tiny little pieces if it advanced his career.
Stupid heart.
Craig reached across the distance separating them. The chairs were too far apart for him to play with a lock of her hair like he usually did, but he grazed the back of one finger along her forearm, making goosebumps jump out in stark relief.
“I was jealous today, while you were out with Daniel,” Craig admitted. “I hated thinking of the two of you together.”
Her epically stupid heart lurched eagerly at the sign that his emotions were engaged—even if it was just jealousy. “Is the great Craig Corrow admitting to having feelings?” she teased.
He shrugged and reached for her hand, tugging her until she came out of her chair. “Possessiveness? Competitiveness? Hell, yeah. I want to win as much as the next guy.”
“So that’s all it is?” She resisted his hold, forcing him to reel her in.
He pulled her down onto his lap, the position playful and easy and in direct contrast to the dark challenge in his eyes. “I told you I need to go farther in this journey to advance my career.” His arms looped around her waist, holding just tight enough for her to know she wouldn’t be moving unless he wanted her to. “And I want to make sure no goody goody farm-boy is the one you’re having dirty dreams about tonight.”
“Craig…”
He stole whatever else she would have said with a kiss that burned through her thoughts like a wildfire. Something scratched at the back of her thoughts, trying to tell her that this was a bad idea, but his lips coaxed and cajoled her past good sense.
His hands, rough and deliciously masculine, snuck beneath the hem of the light, loose blouse she’d worn for her date with Daniel, skating up the length of her spine to tug at the strings securing her bikini top. She moved restlessly in his lap, caught between leaning into his touch and twisting away from it. The firm ridge of his erection brushed her hip. One calloused palm traced the path of her ribcage, his pinky teasing the soft skin of her stomach while his thumb crept beneath the loosened cup of her bikini top, stroking the under-curve of her breast.
She tangled her hands in his hair as the kiss went on and on, an infinite feedback loop of lust and need. His thumb advanced, teasing closer, until it rolled over her tightly budded nipple and she shivered, his name tripping off her lips on a gasp.
A footstep scraped over the pavers. A whispered question. “Do we keep filming?”
Marcy choked and jerked back, shoving Craig’s hands away from her and frantically checking her clothing. “Shit.” Her gaze darted to the cameras and she tried to leap off Craig’s lap, but he still had a grip on her and she fell back against him when he didn’t immediately release her.
“Hey, take it easy,” he crooned.
“Let me up,” she bit out through her teeth.
He held his hands above his head, like a hostage at a stick-up. “It’s fine. No one saw anything they shouldn’t.”
She hoped like hell that he was referring to the fact that her blouse had concealed everything his hands were doing and not saying the cameras should be able to watch him get to second base. She scrambled to her feet and retreated to her own chair, but her agitation wouldn’t let her sit. She circled it until the chair was between them, a physical barrier lest he reach for her again.
“Was that for me or the home audience?”
Something flashed across his face, too fast for her to read, and then he lowered his hands, spreading them wide. “Can’t it be both?”
Wrong answer, asshole. “I think you should go.”
In that moment she wasn’t certain whether she meant he should go back to his room or he should just go home.
He rose, sobering, seeming to realize he’d pushed her too far. “Marcy, it was a joke.”
“Just go.”
He nodded, moving toward her suite rather than the wall he’d scaled before. “I’ll see you Tuesday.”
Tuesday. The Elimination Ceremony. The last one before she went home to meet the Final Four’s parents. She was tempted to tell him to go right now. To do it before the temptation to keep him around overruled her good judgment again. But she said nothing as he moved past the cameras who had recorded her latest lapse in good sense and through the veranda doors out of sight.
There was a pause—far too short a pause—once he was gone and then Avery sidled forward cautiously. “Marcy? Can we get a reaction reel?”
Her hormones had just made an idiot of her on national television and they wanted her to tell the cameras how she felt about it. Of course they fucking did. She gave Avery a look that could melt steel. “No. You can’t.”
Avery flushed. “Right. Let’s pack it up, people. Miss Right has an early morning.”
An early morning. An early date. With Aidan. Who never tempted her. Never made her feel wild or on the brink of losing control. She shuddered, watching the crew efficiently gather up their gear and leave.
Thank God for Aidan.
#
“Where the fuck have you been?”
Craig cringed as his attempt to stealthily re-enter the suite he was sharing with Aidan was foiled by the man himself.
Fucking Aidan.
He’d hoped the man would already be catching his beauty sleep for his dawn date the next morning, but no such luck.
If he’d snuck over the wall back at the mansions, he would have been screaming the news to the rafters, trying to use the information to psych the other Suitors out, but he was already walking a fine line with Marcy at the moment. He didn’t need to look like the kind of guy who bragged about his conquests on top of everything else.
But he was caught now. If he made up some story, it would be too easy for Marcy to contradict it and getting caught in a lie always felt worse than owning his actions.
He was boxed in. So he did what he always did when he was out of options. He cranked up his confidence to eleven and put on his cockiest grin. “Where do you think?”
Aidan’s expression instantly darkened and Craig almost regretted the words. He liked Aidan. They’d actually developed a friendship of sorts as they were whiling away the endless hours of waiting for Miss Right. That should be the name of freaking show. Waiting for Miss Right to Make Up Her Fucking Mind.
“That’s against the rules,” Aidan grumbled.
“When have I ever played by the rules?”
“Dude, it’s my date tomorrow. My date you’re fucking up by bugging her all night.”
“I left as soon as she told me to,” Craig said. “It’s not my fault she wanted me to stay as long as she did.”
Aidan shook his head, disgusted. “I like you, man, but you can be a real asshole, you know that?”
The big man stalked into his bedroom, kicking the door shut behind him.
“I do know that actually,” Craig said softly to the closed door, only remembering after the words were out that these rooms might be rigged with hidden cameras and microphones. Everything was fair game.
He tugged off his mic pack—they never knew when the damn things were live—and tossed it onto the couch, cursing softly.
What was he doing here? Indiscriminately hurting the people around him without any guarantee that it would lead to his ultimate goal?
Maybe it was better for all of them if he went home.
He’d wanted to be remembered, wanted to be colorful and told himself that his honesty excused all his dickish behavior, but was he just giving himself a blank check to be an asshole? What would his mom say when she saw the show? The villains were remembered, but they were also hated. He needed to be loved. But he couldn’t be Daniel. He wasn’t that guy.
He was a smartass. A cynic. But he hadn’t come here to hurt anyone. Least of all Marcy. He’d thought being upfront about his motives would ensure she never started to care for him, that her emotions were never engaged so he couldn’t break her heart—but then he’d started to want her to like him. Making her care about him had become part of the game.
He stalked out to the balcony—the same one where he’d heard Daniel talking about marrying her. The memory of it still burned like acid. Craig sank onto the lounger, scrubbing his face with both hands.
A good man would walk away, leaving Marcy to the honorable men who wanted to make an honest woman of her.
It had never been so obvious to Craig that he wasn’t a good man.
He couldn’t leave her. He was too selfish to give up a second he could get with her.
Marcy deserved better than him—better than all of them—but Craig always demanded more than he deserved. It was how he would claw his way to the top. He just hoped he didn’t have to hurt her along the way.