Adventure to Love (2 page)

Chapter 2

When Shane J said, “leave immediately,” he meant leave
immediately
. Harper was on a red-eye at LAX bright and early the next morning, not twelve hours after she was given the go-ahead to join the cast of
Adventure to Love
.

Granted, she still had to figure out what the adventure was all about. But if she was one thing, it was adaptive. She was like a chameleon. Or a panther. Or some other fairly perceptive animal that was able to stealthily assess a situation and pounce on the prize.

She still didn’t know what the prize was going to be. But she could guess it was a man that twelve women would be fighting over, if she had learned anything from watching episode after episode of
The Bachelor
for the past decade. The thought of competing with marginally attractive women for the attention of a wealthy, successful leading man sent a shiver of anticipation up her spine.

But she couldn’t get too excited just yet. She still had more than ten hours to go before reaching the undisclosed destination that she was being flown to first class.
First class!
Yes, it was the first time that she had flown first class, and she was taking complete advantage of it.

No one had ever told her that you were allowed to drink for free on first class international flights. She had three empty vodka bottles lined up neatly on her tray table in front of her.

The gentleman sitting to her left kept shooting dirty looks in her general direction, probably because she was having so much fun drinking, flipping through magazines, and humming happily to herself. She was going to be on TV!

It was the beginning of it all; she just knew it. She felt like jumping for joy or patting herself on the back for bypassing all of the lame roles that other celebrities had to take before hitting the big time. Nope, no one was going to be able to dig up any nasty dirt on her in some “Before They Were Stars” Hollywood story, thank you very much.

Her first TV role was going to be as the winner of a cutting-edge reality show where she fell in love with the man of her dreams. A romance novel come to life. It didn’t get any better than that.

The man to her left cleared his throat loudly. She looked in his direction but had trouble focusing since she was already three drinks in.

“Yes?” she slurred.

“Um.” The man paused. He looked embarrassed. “I don’t want to interrupt you, but I think I know you from somewhere.”

She smiled the toothpaste advertisement smile that she perfected each morning in the mirror before going on casting calls. “I don’t think so. But a lot of people confuse me with Jessica Alba. Is that who you were thinking of?”

“Er, no.”

The man paused again, loosening his tie as he spoke. “You look like a woman from a certain website I visit. Do you work part-time on a . . . certain website?”

What was this freak talking about?
What kind of website did he think he saw her on? And then it hit her. She wiped her megawatt smile off her face and replied coolly, “I think you have the wrong girl.”

She turned to the flight attendant making her way down the aisle and signaled for yet another raspberry Smirnoff on the rocks. The man made a production of opening his newspaper so that it blocked his face from her view.

Good riddance. What a pervert
. Just because she took time to care for her appearance didn’t mean she was some Internet porn star. And besides, if the man had taken a closer look at her when she wasn’t hunched over in her seat chugging vodka, he would have noticed that she was a little light in the chest department.

But
Adventure to Love
was going to fix all of that. She’d made sure to conceal that fact at her casting call interview, but as soon as she got paid for the four weeks of the show, she was getting breast implants
stat
.

She already had a doctor bookmarked on her laptop. A man who was rumored to sculpt the best breasts in Hollywood. Although he could neither confirm nor deny the rumors.

Then she would finally be the full package from head to toe. And she would have the perfect man on her arm to escort her to all the Hollywood premieres that she would surely be invited to as soon as
Adventure to Love
aired. She couldn’t wait.

The moment the plane touched down on the dusty, humid runway, Harper knew she was out of her element. For one thing, the plane didn’t exactly pull up to a covered tunnel, like she was used to in the US. Nope. The plane parked a good mile away on a hot tarmac that she had to walk across in three-inch stilettos, lugging her (fake) Louis Vuitton luggage behind her.

And the creepy pervert man sitting next to her didn’t even offer to lend her a hand.
Thanks a lot
.

She had broken out into a full-on sweat by the time she reached the airport with her luggage. She was relieved to see a young Asian man with tanned skin holding a sign that read HARPER BERRE.
Close enough.

At that point, she wasn’t going to complain. All she wanted to do was jump into the limo, take off her only pair of Jimmy Choos that were pinching the shit out of her little toes, and rehydrate with a cold glass of champagne.

The young man didn’t appear to speak any English. Or maybe he just didn’t want to talk to her. He gestured for her to join a group of eight women sitting on benches next to a makeshift coffee shop by airport security.

What the hell was going on here? Where were the cameras? Were these her cast mates?

She limped her way over to the ladies chattering on the benches next to the coffee cart. She might as well introduce herself if these were the women she was going spend the next month with. She had to get the ladies to love her so that they wouldn’t stab her in the back in any of their confessional interviews. That would totally kill her character’s reputation.

As she neared the group, she squealed just as loud as the rest of the women. “Hiiiii! Are you guys here for
Adventure to Love,
too? Isn’t this totally, like, unreal? It’s so good to meet you!”

One by one, she gave each of the sweaty women as genuine of an embrace as she could muster. She tried to remember all of the names thrown her way for later use. It was something she had learned at a Job Fair in the twelfth grade as the quickest way to get people to like you.

Apparently, Kylie, Samantha, Brinkley, Sarah M., Sarah S., Amber, Kymm, and Lindsay had been waiting there for over three hours.
Three hours
, if you could believe that! And none of them could communicate with the tour guide because no one had a clue what language he was speaking.

From pure observation, the women had gathered that they still had to wait for the rest of the cast members before they were sent to the resort for taping.

“But we haven’t seen any producers at all, and I’m starving, girl!” Sarah S. whined to Harper in her southern drawl.

“I didn’t want to say anything about it, but I suffer from really low blood sugar. So if I don’t get something to eat soon, I might faint. I’m actually feeling kind of lightheaded right now. I don’t want to freak anyone out or anything,” Kymm added as she clutched her stomach for dramatic effect.

God, what a hypochondriac. Had she never been on a crash diet before?
But come to think of it, Harper was getting hungry, too. She had planned to save herself for the luxurious spread that was sure to await them at the resort. And she could only guess it would be right up her alley, low-fat, vegan, gluten-free, low-calorie delicacies prepared by a personal chef or something. After all, if they had to cater to twelve women for four weeks, they’d better serve something delicious that wasn’t going to go straight to their asses.

She squeezed herself into the only empty space left on a bench between voluptuous Samantha and gargantuan Kylie.
Damn, the girl must be a rugby player or something.
She was twice her size and probably had fifty pounds on her. But somehow, she made it look good. Kind of like a muscular, androgynous, sexy Jessica Biel, if you could imagine that.

Harper didn’t know what to do with herself. She’d been forced to leave her iPhone back in her desolate apartment since no electronics or personal conveniences were allowed in the taping whatsoever. God forbid any of the cast members leak insider information to the press before the show aired. She knew the drill.

She wasted the next forty-five minutes eavesdropping on what was possibly the most boring conversation she’d ever heard. Brinkley and Amber were talking about the best hiking trails in some lame National Park in the snooze-worthy Midwestern state where they both lived.

Wisconsin or Minnesota or Montana or something. Some big square state right in the middle that she didn’t give two shits about.

Her ears perked up when the conversation got interesting. “I heard he was the son of a famous actor, like Robert DeNiro or Patrick Swayze,” Brinkley whispered in a hushed tone to Amber as she sipped from her Styrofoam coffee cup.

What, what, what?
Now that was more like it
. She was absolutely dying to know more about the mystery man so that she could form a plan of attack. It helped to know about a man’s background, his family, and just a little bit of dirt from his past so that she could drop a few lines and get his attention. She wished desperately for her iPhone so that she could do a little Google recon before meeting the eligible bachelor. But eavesdropping would have to do.

“No, I don’t think he’s the son of an actor. I think he’s the son of a rich LA socialite, like an investor or maybe that guy who owns the Lakers,” Amber whispered back.

Hmm
. She hated basketball, but she could probably pull a few key players’ names out of her ass if she thought hard enough. Her train of thought was interrupted by what sounded like a stampede coming from across the airport. To her trained ear, she could detect the sound of stilettos, probably fairly expensive stilettos, stomping their way across the tile floor and honing in on the group next to the coffee cart.

She looked up to find the remaining three women that made up their group of twelve.

Cori was shockingly thin with ice-blond hair and piercing blue eyes.
Probably Swedish or foreign or something.
Kendra was average height with wavy brown hair and a friendly disposition, but nothing to take a second look at. And Morgan rounded out the group, dragging a bag with a broken wheel violently behind her.

She had to admit that Morgan was beautiful. If you liked that wholesome, natural, green-eyed kind of look that had “girl-next-door” written all over it. She appreciated her fresh-faced, eager vibe but knew from experience that men always went for the sexpot. The girl next door was sweet, innocent, and kind, but she didn’t have that certain something that made you want to come back for more.

And that was exactly the tactic she planned to use to get the mystery bachelor’s attention. Sure, she didn’t have a nice rack just yet. Morgan clearly beat her in that department. But she had flawless extensions, gorgeous airbrushed makeup, and a killer body since she exercised herself to death so that the scale never tipped over 120 pounds.

And she knew how to flirt. The right way. The way that looked good on camera and sounded even better in person, which was exactly why production had cast her in the first place.

Instead of a limo and champagne, it was more like a rusty old bus and a warm bottle of Coca-Cola.
Really
. Harper didn’t want to get too diva just yet; she was still trying to make a good impression on her cast mates. But if the royal treatment didn’t pick up soon, she didn’t know what she was going to do.

From everything she had heard and read about casting for a reality series, it was a pretty cushy deal. Basically, all you had to do was sit back, look beautiful, and flirt whenever you were on camera with the eligible bachelor in question. And she had that down pat.

But what the fuck was going on with this nasty converted school bus without any air-conditioning?
The women were packed in like sardines with their many suitcases piled up on the seats in the back. And there wasn’t a valet or chauffeur or anyone to help them. They had to carry their own suitcases on and off the bus themselves.
Really.

The rest of the women didn’t seem bothered one bit by the shoddy transportation they were taking to their five-star resort for filming.
Thank God the cameras weren’t rolling yet.
She was sure that she looked a mess. She didn’t have her Chanel compact on her, but she could only imagine that her hair was flat, her mascara was running, and she had a nice little sweat mustache forming on her upper lip.

She took a quick look around at the other women and realized that they weren’t doing much better in the looks department. Not to mention that it was a steamy ninety degrees on the school bus with only open windows for air-conditioning.
Ugh.

On the short drive to their destination, she couldn’t help but notice that the creaky school bus was taking them deeper and deeper into the jungle. That wasn’t necessarily a bad sign, as long as the exclusive resort they were staying at lived up to standards.

She expected to be greeted with a tray of cocktails and to have some nice young Asian man take her bags up to her room for her. Or at least that was what had happened the one time she went to Sandals with an ex-boyfriend years ago.

The school bus was buzzing with excited conversation. All the women seemed over the moon at the prospect of the “love adventure,” whatever it may be. No one knew what to expect, so it left quite a bit of room for speculation.

Samantha was positive that the show was a spinoff of
The Bachelor,
and that they would get a rose in a ceremony every night until only one woman remained.

But Amber disagreed. She’d heard from a friend of a friend who happened to know the cousin of a producer of the show that this was a totally different type of dating reality show. With an edge. Kind of like
Rock of Love
meets
The Amazing Race
. Whatever that meant.

She still didn’t know what to think. She really hoped that
Adventure to Love
was more like
The Bachelor
and far from
The Amazing Race
. She definitely hadn’t brought any shoes for racing. In fact, she had only brought one item in her suitcase that cost less than $200, and she really didn’t want her new Betsey Johnson swimsuit to get ruined the first time she wore it.

The school bus creaked to a halt. She peered out the window and realized that they were in the middle of nowhere.
What the hell was going on here?
Was the driver stopping for a bathroom break or something?
But no, the driver turned the key in the ignition and opened the swinging school bus door. He gestured for the women to get out with a huge, gap-toothed smile on his face. At least
someone
was enthusiastic about their surroundings.