Walk of Shame (17 page)

He shook his head as his grin
broadened. "See? There you go. Don't underestimate me. You just might be
the one making us both lose out."

I smiled and
watched him leave before turning and waving to Goldie. "Come on, girl,
time for bed."

"I saw your trio trying to
sneak back in last night."

I had just walked outside with
Goldie and started heading for the track, when I heard his voice behind me and
whipped my head around.

Mike had pulled a patio chair
into the shade of the overhang, and was sitting there.

"Did they explain why?"
I asked.

He shook his head as he gestured
for Goldie to come to him, which she did. "They don't know that I saw
them. And it doesn't matter why, all that matters is that they did."

"And why is that?"

"Because, if they're going
to break rules and sneak over to see you, then so am I."

I gave him a big smile.
"Awesome!"

His shoulders relaxed now that he
had my approval. "Are we running today?"

I chuckled. "I was going to
do poolside yoga."

He gave me an expression that
clearly stated I was out of my mind.

"I guess I could go for a
run," I said with a smile.

"We could go to one of the
gyms, or play tennis."

"No, we can run."

"Okay. Why don't you go get
us a couple bottles of water and I'll get ready."

I walked over to the outdoor
fridge and got the two bottles.

He gave me a consternated look
and sighed. "I'll just go into your bathroom," he said as he reached
for the large bag behind him. "I'll be right back."

"You're already wearing
workout clothes."

"Yeah, but-" he
started.

"Just swap the leg out. Who
cares?"

He looked at me.

"We have a finite amount of
time to figure out if we're compatible enough to get married. If you're trying
to shield me from the realities of your missing leg, don't. If I couldn't
handle it, I'd have sent you home by now. If it's your own insecurities holding
you back, then maybe coming on this show wasn't the best choice for you. You're
welcome to leave at any time. Otherwise, let me get to know you, all of you,
especially if you're going to come over here and steal time."

He looked me dead in the eye and
took off his leg.

I met his determined gaze and
raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to get on with it.

He switched the piece out and put
on the running leg, then met my gaze again.

I hadn't blanched, I hadn't
flinched, I just asked, "You ready to go?"

"Yeah." He stood and we
took off down to the track, with Goldie trailing behind.

"It was you on the rooftop
yesterday morning, wasn't it?" I asked.

"Yeah, I thought I was the
only one who got up that early."

"I do it so that I can get
the workout done outside, before the place is crawling with cameras and people.
It's my opportunity for some quiet solitude."

"And I'm interrupting."

"No, not as long as you
don't hit me with issues or expect me to make decisions until the end."

"I guess I can manage
that."

"You've been spending time
with Goldie," I remarked.

"So have you, she came out
of your house this morning," he said. "What's with that big bandage
on your leg?"

I gestured toward Goldie.
"She knocked me into the pool right after my run yesterday. I got scraped
up on the way in."

"Oh, man. Must have been
right after I went back inside."

"And she spent the evening
and night snuggled up against me. She keeps sniffing and whimpering over a
bandage. But you pull off your leg in front of her and she doesn't even lift
her head. She's seen you do it before, hasn't she?"

"She's become my workout
buddy."

"She just
gets all around, doesn't she?"

I trounced up the path, to the
main house, when I smelled meat hit the grill.

"Don't do it, Drake!" I
yelled out as I cleared the path and he was about to bite into a potato chip.

He pulled the chip away from his
mouth. "It's alright. This crisp and salty chip is just fulfilling its
destiny."

I had to stop and smile at how
Mr. Too Smooth had an immediate, calming, comeback about a stupid chip.
"We're going out tonight. We're leaving at six-thirty and you need to be
hungry."

He put the chip back in his mouth
and ate it, then he winked. "Sorry, it had a destiny. I'll be back. I have
to go help the shower fulfill its destiny."

I shook my head as I watched him
leave.

I chatted with the guys until it
was time to leave and then we were off.

"Where are we going?"
Drake asked.

"An Art Walk. They close the
street down. There are a number of galleries open along the road and street
performers pick outside locations. Restaurants set up outside stands and sell
tapas. Bakeries set up tables and sell sweets. Acting troupes perform skits in
the street. And there's usually a flash mob at some point."

"Sounds really cool."

"I just figured you work
with musical artistry, I work with the written word..."

"I get it. We can go
appreciate other forms of artistry."

"Exactly."

I had a wonderful time exploring
that tiny part of the city with him. And it opened up a lot of conversation
about jobs and interests. But every time I tried to steer the conversation to
his family, he changed the subject. I took the hint and stopped trying to ask
after the third brush off.

I think production talked to one
of the street performance groups and Drake and I got pulled into it to ad-lib
some lines and act out their scene with them. One of the galleries had a
photography showing going on. The collection was waterfalls from around the
country, and Drake and I kept pointing to the different ones we'd seen in
person.

There was another gallery, run by
an art school, that put up prints of original masterpieces side-by-side with a
few of their students' interpretations. We spent time comparing them and then
tumbled into a conversation about singers and their differing performances of
the same song.

We were nearing the end of our
time when Drake sidestepped and pulled me into an alley. He wasted no time
kissing me in shadows while the cameras rolled with their zoom lenses.

We talked the whole ride back to
the property. Though, in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about how the
kisses back in the alley had held no heat or zing for me.

I left him at the main house and
went back to the cottage. There was a movement in the shadows of the house when
I emerged from the path, using the flashlight app on my phone to see. I shined
the light on the spot the movement came from and found Goldie thumping her
tail.

"You done making the rounds
tonight, girl?"

She came forward to get her share
of attention. I squatted down and let her lick my face as I gave her a good rubdown.
I tried to shoo her away, and then thought about walking her down to Troy's
trailer, where she'd been staying... But I didn't want her thinking I was
trying to pawn her off on someone else. And for as much as she'd been bouncing
from one group of humans to another around here, I didn't want her getting the
idea that she wasn't mine anymore.

I ended up
letting her inside and she slept snuggled against me.

I slept in long enough the next
morning to skip my workout. But I was showered, re-bandaged, dressed, and had
my face painted on by breakfast time up at the main house.

"Pancakes and sausage,
milady," Liam offered a filled plate when I'd walked through the door.
Obviously, they'd seen me coming.

Ardent's eyes swept over me and his
gaze caught on my shoes. "Thicker fabric clothing and hiking boots. You do
love to beat me up on dates, don't you?"

"Just trying to see if you
can keep up."

He smiled. "Looks like I'll
have to pull out my Superman underwear today." He turned to leave the room
to go change.

"You have Superman
underwear?" I asked, stifling a giggle.

He paused and glanced back.
"Yes, I do. And I'm not the only one here who does."

"Oh, come on," Liam
said. "Are you going to say that you don't own any embarrassing
undies?"

I smiled. "Well, there is
that pair of Rudolph Christmas panties."

"I rest my case," Liam
said.

"And the pair with the glow
in the dark cat face across the rear I bought around Halloween," I added.

"Now see? You're just
painting images in our heads now," Ardent said as he walked out.

"Twenty minutes!" I
called after him and grabbed the syrup bottle.

Fifteen minutes and a plate of
breakfast later, we climbed into the car and set out.

"I gotta tell you,"
Ardent said, "It's nice to get out and about. The house is nice, and I can
still escape down to my RV, but it gets to feeling a bit claustrophobic after
awhile."

"I can understand. It's the
lack of freedom that wears you down."

"Yeah. So, where are we
running off to?"

"Vasquez Rocks Natural Area
Park."

"Ah. So we'll be climbing
around on rocks."

"Yeah. Something around here
that I haven't done yet."

"Vasquez... They... Don't
they have Indian sites there?"

"They do. I was hoping you
could show me a little of your world today."

He shifted in his seat a bit and
sat taller. "We'll need some rock-climbing gloves. Or at least something
with some grip," he told the girl from production who was tagging along
with the camera crews.

She responded with a nod.
"I'm sure we have some in the date prop box."

"I'm sorry," I
interrupted. "The date prop box? Isn't it a little early in the game for a
box of props?"

She actually turned three shades
of red. "It's just a box of stuff that has accumulated over the seasons of
things that we bought for a date and then never had another use for. Every once
in a while, someone will ask for something and we bring out the box."

"You got a couple horses in
there, too?" Ardent asked.

"No. And the park doesn't
have any to rent out, either." She let out a sigh. "I could make a
call and maybe have a couple horses here by lunch."

"Excellent," he said.

I shook my head. "When,
exactly, did I lose control of this date?"

Ardent smiled. "When you
said you wanted to see into my world. I mean, I could have her send someone
into my travel trailer and get my tools. I'm sure if I showed my credentials,
and we asked very nicely, and flashed them our camera crew, they'd let us dig a
little. But I didn't have time to plan and call and work the channels."

"Poor baby."

"I'll live."

I could see why Chloe was so set
on liking him. Today had reminded me why I'd kept him around. He was a sweet
guy. And very patient. He did well with teaching me about reading the sandstone
and how it tells a story of weather and wind over time. Our tour guide had been
given a head's up on Ardent's profession and brought out some of the artifacts
and showed him charts on where the items had been found. I was content to study
those items as Ardent and the guide started going into far more detail about
the digs and began to speak in, what I can only say was, a foreign language
disguised as English.

Production made good on their
near-promise of horses after our picnic lunch. The gloves proved very helpful
while hiking on the rocks, and I made a mental note to pick up a pair for
myself after all this was over. I could think of several locations, out hiking
with Goldie, that they would have come in handy.

It had been a
good day. And I had been thoroughly interested in both the geological history
and artifacts they'd found. But... you know that feeling you get when you're
with someone who isn't your friend, but you're trying to act like you're
friends? It was kind of like that. We'd been perfectly pleasant with one
another, nothing had gone wrong, but there was no connection. It was like going
out with your sister's boyfriend to help him buy a birthday present for her.
Perfectly acceptable to go out and do, but not something you'd plan on doing
again.

I was sitting at the dining table
that evening, staring out a window facing the back of the property, depressed
for the first time since coming here.

"I don't know what to tell
you, Chloe. I tried, I did, with both of them. But it's just not
happening."

"Are you assigning either of
them white?"

"I didn't say I was ready to
give up on them."

"Then what are you
saying?"

"I'm saying I enjoy having
them around. I had a good time on both one-on-ones, I really did."

"But you might have had a
better time if you'd taken one of the other guys, instead."

"Yeah, maybe, but I don't
know that. The dates were planned around who I was taking. If someone who
couldn't appreciate different kinds of art went on the Art Walk with me, I
wouldn't have enjoyed it as much."

"You know what I'm
saying."

"Yeah."

"So, you're back to having
four ditchables?"

I laughed, "Oh, my God. Could
you imagine if I sent all four home? Production would have a fit."

"You used the one-on-ones
for the two that you liked, but didn't have anything romantically going on
with, to see if the romance would come. Now, the question is, will you ditch
one of them and use next week's one-on-ones for Mitch and
what's-his-name?"

"Mitch and Tyler have had
their chances. I've pulled them aside during the group dates enough to know
that it's not going to happen, at least not with this setup. Drake and Ardent, though,
ugh, I'm so disappointed. I wanted something to be there."

"Stop. You have something
there with six other guys. Exactly how many potential husbands do you
need?"

"I'm only supposed to
eliminate one guy this week."

"So pick three of them to
keep and give it a little more time to develop. You know, sometimes people are
friends for years and then one day something happens. Something shifts and
then, boom, you have yourself a fifty-year marriage."

"Yeah, wonderful, one
problem though. I don't have years to do this."

"Maybe they were all trying
to connect with you on a friend level, before diving deeper for something more.
You know, see if you have a real brain in there first, before they get blinded
by the beauty that is you."

"Do you really wanna make
fun of me now?"

"I'm being serious."

My eyes searched the tree line
outside while I thought about it. "Do guys even think like that?"

"I don't know. Maybe some of
them do."

"You're not helping
me."

"I'm not there to see what's
happening. Hey, do you think you could get them to send me footage of the
dates? That way, I could see how it's all going down and give you a solid
opinion."

I closed my eyes and shook my
head. "No, they're not going to do that. They won't even let me see
footage of the guys when I ask for it."

"What footage do you want to
see that you weren't there for? Their interviews? If you listen to how they're
feeling about you, isn't that like cheating?"

"No... Though, that's a
decent thought. It might make my choice easier if they'd let me."

"Then what do you want to
see?"

"I heard through the male
grapevine that one of the guys up at the house has temper issues."

"What kind of issues?"

"Like, one of them snaps and
yells and curses. But then he separates himself and disappears into his bedroom
for awhile to cool off."

"So... is he trying to hide
it, or has he just learned to harness it that way?"

"I don't know. But if he's
one of the four, I'd eliminate him and put them out of his misery."

"You'd think the guys would
want to rat him out."

"You'd think. But I think
they like him when he's not acting up. Why else wouldn't they tell me who it is?"

"But you need to know which
one it is. You need to see him when he's having one of his little episodes, so
you can figure out if it's something you'd be willing to live with, in close
confines."

"I know."

"Well, if you don't end up
eliminating him, they'll crack and tell you, once feelings start running deep.
There's enough of a competitive undertone that they'll alert you to who has the
mood swings. We've seen it a hundred times on the show. Eventually, they will
start pointing out the weird and two-faced ones. It happens every season."

I sighed. "I know you're
right. It would just be easier if I knew it was one that I didn't think I might
end up with."

"Tomorrow is my last final.
I can get on a plane and fly over, if you want. You could sneak me onto the
property during one of your early-morning workout sessions and I could spy for
you."

I smiled. "I love you for
offering that. But I'm pretty sure someone would spot you, and I don't feel
like bailing you out of jail for trespassing."

"They wouldn't arrest me.
They'd film it and I'd be in promos for the following week's episode."

I lost it, Chloe always found a
way to make me laugh.

"Maybe," I said.
"I don't know about putting you in camouflage or anything like that. But
maybe you could come out at some point and help me when the decisions start
getting tough."

"My fee would be the right
to pick through your leftovers."

I laughed hard at her.

"Hey, normally I don't like
your hand-me-downs, but it sounds like you have some really good ones out
there."

"I do," I admitted.
"Did I tell you...?"

"What?"

"Hold on, there's someone at
the door." I got up and headed for the front entrance. "Probably Troy
with some last minute plans to fill up tomorrow." I opened the door to
find Trevor standing there, holding motorcycle helmets. "Uh, sis, I gotta
go."

"Just tell me who's cheating
the system this time," she begged, with so much enthusiasm that you'd
think I was plotting revenge against her worst enemy.

"Trevor."

"He's stealing more time?
The man's becoming predictable."

"No, he's holding a set of
keys. I think he's stealing a date."

She squealed. "Now that's
what I'm talking about!"

My eyes hadn't left Trevor's
since I'd opened the door. "I've really gotta go."

"Yeah, okay. But, hey, about
figuring out who to ditch?"

"Yeah?"

"First-world problem."

I smiled and let some of the
earlier tension fade. "Yeah, I get it. Maybe I'll flip a coin again.
Bye."

"Bye."

I hit the end button and pocketed
my phone. "How did you arrange it so that you could get me off the
property?"

"By agreeing to let one
camera crew follow behind us in a car," Trevor answered with a grin.

"I'll take it. Where are we
going to go?"

"Well, Ardent and Drake both
said you tried to connect with them by seeing into their world a little bit. I
know a restaurant on the coast with a rooftop terrace. It's about an hour's
drive from here. I have a lengthy reservation for us. We'll do dinner and I'll
bring my laptop along and, if you want, we can work together to make the cover
for your next book, or maybe some banners for your website, and I can show you
want I do."

"We can't mix business with
the show."

"It's an unofficial date.
They can either choose not to use any of the footage, or edit out anything that
could be connected to your writing."

"How are you going to
explain your absence to the guys? You don't have an RV to claim to be working
out of for the evening."

"Well, wouldn't you know it?
My mother called and said she fell off a ladder and thinks she broke her
ankle." He paused to wink at me. "It's going to turn out that she's
exaggerating and it's just a sprain."

"Wow. So you're supposed to
be on your way to the hospital to sit with her."

"Yep."

"Well, sitting in an ER will
certainly account for a few hours," I said with a chuckle. "Where'd
you hide the bike?"

He shrugged. "I drove it
around to the back gate that the crew uses."

"You are a sneaky little
buggar, aren't you?"

"I
certainly can be. I maybe did some covert ops during my stint," he added
with a wink.

Dinner was wonderful, the view
had been spectacular, and after an hour and a half in the hands of Trevor, my
website had been given a sprucing. And I'd had a really good time. Trevor was
funny when he was relaxed. And the flirting that had started on the yacht
continued with ease. He was making it easier and easier to slide him out of the
friend-zone and into the boyfriend-zone.

I'd tried to get him to talk a
little about his time in the Marines, since he'd touched upon it back at the
house. He'd steer the conversation back around to his family or job instead.

I did find out how he'd managed
to score an extended reservation for us though. The head chef had come out and
made his rounds. When he came to our table, Trevor stood and gave him a hug. It
turned out that the head chef was his uncle. I was half-tempted to ask his
uncle if he was the one that cooked holiday dinners in his family. Because if
Trevor made it to the end, I might need little things like that to tip the
scales.