Romancing Miss Right (18 page)

But his mother didn’t smile. “You know I’ll
support you whatever you choose,” she said, “but you don’t have to
be a millionaire for me. I’d rather have a happy son than a big
fancy house.”

“Luckily, you can have both.”

“And a half-dozen adorable
grandchildren?”

He laughed. “Don’t push your luck.”

Her eyes gleamed. “Can’t blame me for
trying.”

Chapter Twenty

“Todd, bring up Marcy’s
confessional footage from tonight’s Elimination Ceremony,” Miranda
said as she strode into the editing bay. “The part where she recaps
all the Meet the In-Laws dates.” She looked at her dead-on-his feet
assistant. “And then go get some sleep. The flight to Ohio is early
enough to plan strategies for Marcy’s hometown.”

With only three Suitors left after tonight’s
Elimination, the hours were getting easier for most of the crew
members—though the travel this last week had been hell for anyone
expected to be in all four of the Suitors’ home towns, which
included Miranda and her personal assistant. At least this coming
week they’d spend the entire time in Murphysboro as the Suitors
tried to win the favor of Marcy’s family and friends.

Todd pulled up the requested footage and
departed, shuffling off to find his bed. Miranda took the chair
he’d vacated and tapped a key to roll the confessional reel. Marcy,
decked out in an Elimination Night cocktail dress, appeared on the
main screen, smiling and poised for the camera. Miranda still
hadn’t gotten the tears she’d promised Wallace. Not even close.

“
I should have known I would fit right in
with Daniel’s family. It was so easy, spending time with them. I
can see us spending alternating Christmases with them. Not like
Mark’s family. They didn’t make any secret of the fact that they
don’t approve of my career. I guess I’d hoped that a family of
academics would be more welcoming of someone who writes books for a
living, but I don’t think I’ve ever been insulted for writing trash
and smut and bodice rippers so many times in one evening before.
It’s bad enough that they all think that of me, but the fact that
Mark never once rose to my defense—I have to wonder if he agrees
with them. If I picked him, would I spend my entire life being
denigrated for the fact that I like books with satisfying, happy
endings and I believe sex is a natural part of falling in
love?”

Miranda flicked the dial, rolling the footage
forward.

“
Darius’s family was a little
overwhelming. I had no idea an impromptu game of touch football
could turn so competitive so quickly, but it certainly helps me
understand where his drive to win comes from. With Craig, too, I
feel like seeing where he came from really gave me a better
understanding of him. He’s not just self-obsessed and
desperate-to-be-famous. He’s a real person. His mom obviously means
the world to him and seeing him with her, you can see how he’s
always trying to make her smile, and how that would turn him into
the guy who always tries to be funny.”
On screen she paused,
her eyes growing distant and warm.
“It must have been lonely,
growing up with just the two of them. And I know he said he wasn’t
coming on the show looking for love—but aren’t we all? He’s just
looking for love from the audience, the never-ending applause, you
know?
”

Miranda paused the footage, swearing softly.
Craig was still coasting along, cruising through Elimination
Ceremony after Elimination Ceremony like he was bulletproof.
Predictably, Marcy had gotten rid of Mark earlier that night,
leaving the final three as Daniel, Darius and Craig.

Miranda wanted to believe Daniel was the
front runner, but she’d seen too much of the confessional footage.
It was Craig who still consumed Marcy’s thoughts and tangled up her
emotions.

Miranda knew guys like Craig.
Guys like
Bennett
. Charming, persuasive, endearing—yes. But no matter how
he weaseled his way into your affections, he wasn’t in it for the
long haul. He wasn’t a happily-ever-after guy. Marcy needed to see
that.

It was time to make him an offer he couldn’t
refuse.

Marcy was falling for Craig now, and she
deserved to know what she was getting herself into before it was
too late and he ended up breaking her heart in the finale. This was
for the best. Even for Miss Right. It might mean tears in the short
term—which could only help the ratings—but everyone would be better
off in the end. Craig with his shiny new career, Miranda with the
ratings gold she needed, and Marcy with a man who would take care
of her heart rather than trade it in for a job as a television
personality.

Miranda felt a little twinge of what might
have been guilt, but she brushed it aside. This was the job. Toying
with Miss Right’s heart was what she did. You pushed for the pain
because that was what America fed off of. Marcy knew that when she
signed up for this gig. And she didn’t regret it. She wouldn’t let
herself.

When Craig’s true colors were revealed, Marcy
would probably thank Miranda. In the end.

Miranda checked the time. Too late to make
the call. Better to do it in Ohio, anyway. She didn’t want him
skulking off without having it out with Miss Right for the cameras.
And when he bailed on her, Marcy would have her loving family there
to comfort her. Then it would be Darius and Daniel on the romantic
overnight dates and a finale with a beautiful happy ending. Darius
or Mark would do decently well as the next Mr. Perfect, since
Daniel would be taken.

And they would all live happily ever after.
If Miranda had anything to say about it.

#

“Entertainment correspondent and back-up
co-host for the weekend wake-up show.”

For a minute, Craig’s heart actually stopped
beating. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

Miranda smiled slowly, turning her tablet
around so he could see the offer laid out in black and white on the
screen. “Entertainment correspondent and back-up co-host for the
weekend wake-up show. With the possibility of moving up to the
weekday team or regular co-host if you prove to have a talent for
the work.”

His jaw dropped. “Holy shit. You did it.”

“I am a woman of my word.”

This was it. He was going to be a host on
national television.
Too good to be true.
“What’s the
catch?”

“No catch. Though there is one
condition.”

“Of course there is.” Craig glanced around
the hotel café, surreptitiously checking for cameras, but they
appeared to be alone. Miranda had asked to meet with him over
pancakes before the dressers got a hold of him to prep him for his
evening meeting Marcy’s family.

“You’ll have to leave
Romancing Miss
Right
.”

“I wasn’t planning to stay on the show
forever,” he said dryly. Miranda just looked at him. “You mean they
want me to start right away? Like now?”

“No, they want you to start when the episodes
begin to air—you’ll provide insider commentary on the show until
the end of the season and then you’ll transition to doing more
general entertainment stories.”

“I don’t understand. If I’m not supposed to
start for months, why do they need me to leave now?”

“They don’t. I do.” Miranda shoved aside her
half-eaten peach crepe. “Craig, listen. You’re bad for Marcy.”

“Excuse me?”

“She likes you, and I think you like her,
which is why I’m asking you to leave the show now, before anyone
gets hurt.”

“I’m not following you.”

“As things stand now, Marcy might actually
choose you—and I think we both know how that ends. You screw her
over for your career and she winds up heartbroken and
alone—America’s most famous dupe. But if you leave now, she chooses
someone else. You get your back-up host gig, and we all live
happily ever after.”

He couldn’t argue with anything she was
saying. Miranda was just laying out the facts exactly as they
were—but he still couldn’t make himself say yes.
Leave
Marcy.
Something in his gut churned painfully. “If I accept,
what happens next?”

“You go on your date tonight as planned. Meet
Marcy’s family, if you like. You can tell her whenever you like
that you’re taking yourself out of the show. It’s up to you whether
you choose to tell her why. If you want to leave it to the last
minute to make it particularly dramatic, that’s perfectly fine.
Just as long as you remove yourself before the next Elimination
Ceremony. The offer expires as soon as Marcy starts handing out
favors.”

“Right.”

This was it. His big break. All he had to do
was break Marcy’s heart. If her heart was even engaged. She knew
better than to give him her heart. Didn’t she?

Chapter Twenty-One

Marcy gripped the wheel
nervously as she crept up the drive toward her family home. The
passenger seat beside her was empty—the men wouldn’t start this
round of Meet the In-Laws dates until tomorrow, thank God. She
couldn’t think about them now. All she could do as they approached
the big white farmhouse was wonder if her father would even be
there to greet her or if his objections to the show would have sent
him to Timbuktu to get away from her.

The farmhouse sat on a dozen acres that
hadn’t been used as a dairy farm since long before her family
bought the place. One of the smaller barns still stood and had made
an excellent play house when she was little. The house had a
wrap-around porch and a sort of hodge-podge look, thanks to the
addition jutting off the side—but also thanks to that addition it
had fourth and fifth bedrooms and a third and fourth bathroom,
which had gone a long way toward keeping the peace when the house
was filled with three teenage Henrickson girls hopped up on boys
and hormones.

Marcy pulled around into the side yard, the
van filled with the camera crews pulling in behind her as the
dash-mounted mini-cam captured her silence and nerves. Her father’s
pick-up was parked in the side yard alongside her mother’s sedan
and her sister Laurie’s minivan.

Not in Timbuktu then.

“Here we are!” She announced the obvious for
the dash-cam as she turned off the engine, feigning an enthusiasm
she couldn’t muster. “Casa Henrickson.”

Crew members were already piling out of the
van, calling out instructions and getting organized, but the
details were lost in the ringing of her ears.

She’d always been a daddy’s girl. His
unspoken but universally known favorite. They thought the same way,
attacked problems the same way, and she talked through all of her
major life decisions with him first and the rest of the world
second.

Then she’d decided to go on
Marrying
Mister Perfect
without even consulting him and he’d started
looking at her like she’d been abducted by aliens and he wasn’t
sure who’d been left in her place.

He hated the shows, hated her part in them,
and had barely tolerated Jack’s visit during the last season. At
the time she’d thought he was playing up the overprotective papa
bit for the cameras, but when she got home and watched the episodes
air, it became apparent something had shifted in their
relationship. She had no idea what to expect this time around, and
the producers had sent along a team of cameras to capture their
reunion—however it went.

The side door swung open, screen door
banging, and Dinah burst out, leaping down the porch steps in a
single long jump. “Marcy’s here!” she shouted back toward the
house, already jogging across the packed-dirt driveway toward the
car.

Dinah’s sporty little coupe wasn’t here—she
must have caught a ride out to the house from town in Laurie’s van.
Marcy had never been so grateful to see her baby sister. Dinah had
been in LA when the whole show started. She might be the closest
thing Marcy was going to get to an ally.

Her sister smacked into her at a run,
laughing and rocking side to side as her arms clapped around her in
a fierce hug. “God, I missed you,” Marcy groaned, squeezing back
tight. She hadn’t realized how badly she’d missed having someone to
talk to who didn’t want something from her until she was hanging
onto her little sister and trying not to turn into a blubbering
mess.

The screen door smacked against the house
again. Marcy looked up and lost the fight against becoming a sappy
mess. Her parents stood atop the porch steps, her sister Laurie
stepping through the side door behind them.

Her mother and Laurie looked lovely and put
together. Camera ready. But as they all came down the steps and
came to join in the hugs, Marcy watched the stiff, slow way her
father moved and her heart lurched. He looked older. More grey in
his hair. More tension lines on his face.

Had she done that by making him worry?

Her mother rushed forward and the second
Marcy was enveloped in those warm Downy-scented arms, the tears
she’d been fighting began to fall. She wasn’t a crier. She hadn’t
cried when she saw her parents during the last season, but here she
was sniveling like an idiot.

It was harder this time. When she was a
Suitorette, she was only “on” when she was with Mister Perfect or
during certain staged moments with the other Suitorettes. Sure, the
production crew had waivers that gave them the right to film her
twenty-four/seven, but they didn’t actually
care
about what
she was doing every hour of every day. Not so with Miss Right. She
was the star. Which meant someone always wanted something from her.
Always.

It was exhausting—both physically and
emotionally. And it wasn’t until she was here, in the one place
where she could finally release some of that tension, that she
realized exactly how much she’d been carrying. So the tears
fell.

Her father stepped forward, the hug as
awkward and gruff as his hugs always were. He was still frowning
when he stepped back to let Laurie take her turn.