Walk of Shame (37 page)

He smiled and leaned down to meet
my gaze. "If they strand you up here, I'll climb up to rescue you,"
he promised and leaned down further to kiss me.

I wrapped my arms around his neck
to continue the kiss and he smiled. He hauled me up and straightened, wrapping
his arms around me and lifting me off the chair, all the while letting the kiss
get out of control. He left me utterly flustered when he put me down and pulled
away.

"I've got to go, my turn is
done," he whispered as the chopper crested the peak and found its landing
spot.

Stephen got off with a backpack
of his own, and Liam climbed on.

"Hi," Stephen said,
once I'd waved bye to the chopper and turned my attention to him.

"I thought we weren't going
to get aerial shots this week," I said with a smile.

"It turns out that when I
was looking over my list of assignments, I found a couple things I could cross
off my list here. I didn't know until this morning that Liam was planning on
coming up here. When I found out, I figured this would be the perfect spot for
some video work."

"What do you need to
record?"

"Cloud movement, and then
later, a sunset."

"Haven't sunsets been way
overdone?"

"The park actually asked me
to do the sunset when I told the ranger I wanted to come up here to do the
clouds. PR wants a time-lapse of it for their state parks website."

Well, this is going to be
boring.
I'd just gotten done with sitting here for a few hours. Now I was
going to have to sit here in silence for a few more.

"There won't be any audio
turned on. All I have to do is set the cameras up and let them run. Then you
and I can pull out the two pair of binoculars I brought along and we can spy on
whatever we can find down there."

"We're going to people
watch?"

"People and animals, yeah.
They're good quality binoculars I keep, so I can track whatever it is I'm
trying to film or photograph."

I was amused over this one. I
wouldn't have thought to use the height, and people's lack of thinking to look
up, as a way to spy on what they were doing.

He set up the film equipment and
handed me a pair of the binoculars. We spent a good chunk of time pointing
things out to each other and laughing at our finds. Mountain goats in search of
salt, a bear eating its latest kill, a couple going at it a few hundred feet
off a trail, a father picking up his toddler to put her on his shoulders
halfway through another trail, people waterskiing out on the lake, a bear
fishing on an uninhabited part of the shore, the list went on. It was an
eye-opening experience. Leave it to Stephen to come up with such an original
idea.

"Ready for dinner?" he
asked.

"Sure."

He pulled out numbered packets.
"I don't cook," he said.

"I remember."

"The downside is that I eat
out a lot, and buy a lot of pre-made stuff. The upside is that I use my lack of
cooking skills to really try the different foods available in the area that I'm
in."

"Okay."

"I had catering gather
samples from the area of different kinds of prepared meats. If you're feeling a
bit adventurous, we can sample our way through the American west."

I gave an overwhelmed sigh,
trying to figure out the best way to get myself to participate. "Okay,
don't tell me what any of them are until we're done, or I won't be able to try
them all. We can each make a like and a dislike pile and then compare. How's
that?"

He smiled. "Deal. And we
don't have to eat the entire sample, just enough to get a real taste."

"Okay."

After we'd compiled and compared
our lists that contained bear, elk, antelope, and the like, he pulled out
another set of packets.

"These are edible plants
found in the park. I figured these might be a tamer choice for round two,"
he teased.

"Sounds like a walk in the
park after the meat."

"And if you're a good girl,
after this I'll brew you some pine needle tea."

I laughed. "Well, I wouldn't
want to miss out on that."

Once again, I'd had a wonderful
time with Stephen and had totally underestimated him. It was something that I
needed to stop doing. Every date he planned came as a complete and utter
surprise to me.

I'd half-expected Jared to steal
me away next, when we returned to base camp, since he was the only one I hadn't
spent time with today. But he made no movements to take me away. I guess he
figured his three encounters with me were enough to solidify his getting a spot
to stay on for another week.

At the end of the night, I
grabbed a leash and hooked Goldie up to walk her one last time for the night. I
rounded some humongous boulders and Phillip came up behind me. I didn't even
know he'd come to seek me out. I just thought that the other footsteps behind
me all belonged to the crew following me.

He grabbed me and started backing
me up to the boulders, out of sight of any of the other guys. And just like
he'd done in the kitchen of the cottage, and behind the main house, he cornered
me and kissed me. And just like I'd done each time before, my hands reached
around his head. I delved into the familiar kiss and he lifted me off my feet,
guiding my legs to wrap around his hips, before his hands landed on my bottom
to help hold me up. He leaned into the rock, pinning me against it. He didn't
let up on his careful assault until I moaned into his mouth.

He pulled his head away and gave
me a gleaming smile. "Gentle guys wouldn't do this to you," he
whispered. "And you like it every time I do it." He turned his
attention to my ear, neck, and shoulder, sending tingles down my spine.
"What's the difference between me then and me now?"

"Well," I said between
moans and wiggles to get closer, "you're turning me on more than you did
before."

"I'm going to take that as a
good thing."

We made out a little longer
before returning to the extinguished fire.

"I'm sorry, I really
am," Troy said from the shadows before my hand could land on the doorknob
to my rig. "We have to do the interview before you go to bed."

Phillip chuckled, gave me a
sympathetic look, and headed to his own rig.

"We can do it tomorrow.
First thing in the morning, I'm all yours."

"All the other interviews
are fresh from the same day. Today's should be, too."

"Do they pay you extra when
you torture me more?"

"Sometimes," he teased
with a coaxing smile. "The sooner you give in and we get it done, the
sooner you can go to bed."

I sighed in disgust. "You
suck."

"I
know."

"Even when Stephen is all
wind-blown and smelling like a mountain, he still looks damn good," I
informed Chloe the next morning.

She'd gotten up, made a sign for
the door, and taped it to the outside, before she grabbed bagels and cream
cheese from the breakfast buffet. 'Off Limits: Women Deliberating', it read. I
shook my head and told her that production had devices that I was sure would
allow them to hear everything we said. She said she didn't care, as long as
people stayed out of our hair.

"So whose life do you see
merging with yours the best?" Chloe asked.

"Stephen, because he doesn't
have to be in a particular spot for too long, usually. Phillip's would be easy
too, since he mostly does computer work. Then Mike, but the only reason he's
third is because he has to stick around specific sites longer. Liam and Jared
would be the most difficult. Liam would have way more interesting views, but
Jared has all the answers as to how to make life with him work."

"You just defended all of
them when the question I asked merited a one word response."

"Fine, Stephen and Phillip
would probably tie."

"Pick one," she pushed.

"Stephen."

"Why?"

"Because he can film clouds
from anywhere. He can film and photograph stuff along the way and pull the
files out if he ever needs them. So, sometimes an assignment is done before he
even gets it."

"Who treats you the
best?"

"Impossible to answer.
They're all here to impress, they all treat me very well. After all," I
said and fluttered my lashes at her, "I'm the pretty, pretty
princess."

"Who turns you on the
most?"

"Again, impossible to
answer."

"Unless you start seeing
some fault in someone, you're going to have to make them all draw straws."

"Your idea has merit."

Chloe rolled her eyes. "I'm
not a big fan of Phillip."

"That's because he's
old."

"It's creepy."

"Not unless he's Mom and
Dad's age, and he's not."

"You and Jared aren't going
to work, you know this. You can't live your life in the swamp. Mosquitoes love
to feast on you."

I sighed so hard. "Everybody
keeps telling me that. I just like him so much. In some ways, he's my favorite.
I really, really like him."

She turned serious. "He's
swamp boy. He's exotic. He's the summer fling you find on vacation, and then
never call him again once you get home. He's a big turn on, granted, but the
novelty will wear off."

"Ugh."

"With Liam, it's his
heritage."

"Uh, I'm pretty sure it's
him."

"Really? You don't still get
lost in the idea of him being Scots?"

"I've been saying it for
weeks. The man behind the accent is awesome."

"And Mike?"

"I fall more in like with
him all the time. There's just something about him."

"And Stephen?"

"He's a constant
surprise."

She shook her head at me. "You
have to choose someone to get rid of. If I had to choose, I'd say toss out
Phillip or Jared."

"I'm telling you, drawing
straws sounds like a good idea."

"Okay. I didn't want to have
to do this, but I'm going to make this really simple for you."

"Oh, really. How?"

"If I asked you which one
you wanted to sleep with, you'd have a hard time deciding, right?"

"Um..." I thought about
it, trying to narrow it down to one. "Yeah."

"Okay. So say you could
sleep with four of them, which one would you chose to not sleep with? Who's the
last one on your list?"

"Oh... Oh."

"See? Easy, right?"

My smile bordered on the sad
side. "Right."

"Why is that a bad
thing?"

"Because I'll have to say
goodbye to him."

"But at least now you
know."

I sighed.
"Yeah."

The sun was just beginning to set
behind me, lighting the clouds in the sky with a myriad of colors. Sequins in
my gown were catching the light and sending out reflections onto the sand.

"Welcome to the
Walk of
Shame
," Troy greeted for the benefit of the camera. "It's been an
amazing week here on Lake Placid, in Montana. Emmaline has continued to learn
so much about each of you. But, the time has come, once again, for us to say
goodbye to one of the men." He paused to turn to me. "It's time for
you to make your choices for who is invited to stay another week." With
that, he stepped back.

I smiled at the group of guys.
"I appreciate all of your time that you put into planning your ways of
spending time with me this week. I'm so grateful that you would try so hard to
keep coming up with different things for me to do. And I appreciate, now more
than ever, that you're taking so much time away from your lives to see where
things with me can go. As you know, this is a near impossible decision for me.
That's why I brought out the big guns this week and invited Chloe along. I
don't know if she screened you guys so much as she helped me survive the
breakneck pace everyone set for me."

The guys all laughed for my
benefit, but they were obviously waiting to find out who was no longer
competition for them.

"Jared, I was wondering if
you'd like to continue for another week?"

Jared smiled and stepped forward.
"Absolutely," he said and moved to the line that had been drawn in
the sand along the side of the scene production had lain out on our small beach.

"Mike, I'd really like it if
you'd stick around."

"There's no place I'd rather
be," Mike answered and moved to the side.

"Liam, I want you to stay
around, too."

"You got it," he said
and walked over to take a place on the line.

And now I stopped and sighed. It
wasn't for dramatic pause, although I was sure it would be used as such. It was
that I didn't want to do this. As much as I wanted to get to the end of this,
to know who'd I'd end up with, saying goodbye to someone this week was just
something I didn't want to do. I didn't want to close a door with one of them.

The guys looked up at me
expectantly, pushing me to rip off the Band-Aid.

"Phillip, please stay with
me."

"Of course I will," he
said with a comforting smile.

Stephen forced a smile as he
moved to say his goodbyes before Troy could step forward to say anything. He
didn't want to linger, having people stare at him in sympathy. It was
embarrassing to be in front of the cameras when everyone knew you were the
unwanted one.

I hoped that either the crew
couldn't overhear the conversation Chloe and I'd had that morning, or they'd
choose not to air it. Because if Stephen knew what had been the deciding factor
in his exit, he'd be humiliated all over again.

I followed him over to the
awaiting limo. "Stephen..."

He shook his head and didn't
bother turning around to look at me. "I really don't want to hear
it."

"You surprised me at every
turn. I really did enjoy our time together, so much."

"You're really giving me the
'It's not you, it's me' routine?"

"It is me and not you,"
I insisted.

"Really? Because I didn't
think it was about you or me. I thought it was supposed to be about us."

That stopped me short.

"I thought we were making
strides."

"We were."

"I thought we had caught up
to your other relationships."

I sighed. "We were getting
there."

"Then what's the
problem?"

"I still feel like I know
more about the others than I do you."

"Current gossip round the
campfire is that Phillip was the one who threw you for a loop this week."

"Phillip only did one thing
that surprised me and put me on guard this week."

He narrowed his eyes in
confusion. "I put you on guard?"

"No. It's that when one of
the others surprises me with something, I can still see them as being the one
to do whatever it was. You, I just never see it coming. I think one thing, and
you hit me out of left field with something different. And while I like that
about you, I can't figure you out. And the fact that I can figure the others
out, almost always, but not you, it's off-putting."

"So I'm being penalized for
thinking outside of the box?"

"Look, I didn't want to get
rid of anybody. But I can't get away with that again, it's not fair to all of
you. I had to pick somebody. And at this point, I'm the least self-confident with
you."

He let out a noise of disgust and
got in the car, slamming the door.

I took a big breath and turned
straight to the camera. "Sometimes I think it's more kind just to let them
go. He may have been left to wonder, but at least he wouldn't feel insulted."

I returned to the guys, who were
off to celebrate with shots of vodka all around. The competition had just
tightened, but it seemed like they were content to worry about that tomorrow.

Troy interrupted their jovial
mood with some reminders. "We're packing up in the morning, gentlemen.
Finalize your plans with production on the exact location you want Emma to
arrive when your turn to introduce her to your family comes. And remember to
say goodbye to Chloe, she leaves in the morning, as well."

"Go change, princess,"
Jared called out. "Let's spend our last night all together just relaxing
and enjoying each other's company."