Falling for Mister Wrong (6 page)

“I’m not ready to bag and tag anyone. Let
alone mount them.”

Mimi’s face scrunched with concern. “Oh
honey. Did you really fall for Daniel? There are other fish in the
sea. And the best way to get over someone is to get under someone
new. That’s my motto.”

“You should get that embroidered on a
pillow.”

“Can you at least give me a ballpark of how
many weeks we have to wait before I can start pimping you out?”

Caitlyn couldn’t help it. She arched a brow.
“What makes you so certain he didn’t pick me?”

Mimi snorted and Caitlyn cringed, insulted,
until she said, “If he did, he’s smarter than I gave him credit
for. Those guys never pick the best girls. They pick the ones who
lead them around by their dicks. Obvious, sexy, forward girls who
give them wet dreams and cock-tease their way all the way to the
final ring.”

A vision of Elena flashed in Caitlyn’s mind.
Daniel’s runner up was indeed obviously sexy and not afraid of
using her sex appeal to manipulate men. Caitlyn felt a little
trickle of unease, before reminding herself that in the end Daniel
had chosen
her
, not busty obvious Elena.

She shrugged. “I guess you’ll just have to
wait and see.”

Mimi groaned. “I can’t believe you’re going
to make me wait it out with the unwashed masses. Me! I’m your best
friend in the whole wide world.”

“With the biggest mouth.”

“I resemble that remark.” Mimi snickered,
then sobered. “But really, you’re okay? No regrets?”

“None.”

She’d landed Prince Charming. What was there
to regret?

Chapter Six

Unfortunately, Prince Charming wasn’t
returning her calls.

He’d called once, on Christmas morning, but
cell reception was notoriously crappy at Mimi’s house and by the
time Caitlyn realized she’d missed the call he’d been off to
whatever important industry Christmas party he’d gushed about
scoring an invite to in his latest text. The message was short and
sweet – a breezy
Merry Christmas, baby. Miss you so much. Talk
soon, okay? Things are crazy here. Love you.

And then silence. For days.

She’d seen him on the Today Show and The View
and The Chew and she couldn’t check out at the grocery store
without staring at four different pictures of him smiling back at
her from the magazine rack. But he didn’t call.

It was New Year’s Eve. The night when
everyone had someone to kiss at midnight and here she was again,
alone in her pajamas at nine-thirty, sitting in her apartment with
all the lights turned off as she waited for the annual torch-light
parade of skiers and snow boarders down the mountain, followed by
fireworks—promptly at ten p.m. so it didn’t interfere with the
Lodge’s big New Year’s Eve Gala that got swinging around
eleven.

Caitlyn had been to the Lodge Gala before,
but the last thing she wanted tonight was to watch a hundred other
people kiss when the countdown ran them into a new year. Mimi had
invited her over to ring in the new year with her kids waving
sparklers in the backyard, but Caitlyn had used the weather as an
excuse to cry off. It had started snowing on Christmas Day and
hadn’t let up for more than an hour or two since.

Christmas had been lovely—filled with warmth
and family—and a constant reminder of all the reasons she’d gone on
the show in the first place. So the kids squealing with joy on
Christmas morning wouldn’t always be someone else’s. So the husband
sneaking into the kitchen to snitch ham and steal a kiss from his
wife would be hers for a change—not that she was likely to be
baking a ham. Caitlyn would probably set the house on fire if she
tried, but the thought was there.

She wanted domestic bliss, damn it. Every
freaking Hallmark Channel movie on the planet had conditioned her
to especially crave it over the holidays and she was supposed to be
on her way. She was engaged to Mister Perfect.

But now Mister Perfect was spending more time
talking to talk show hosts than her and all those idyllic moments
from the last three months felt like a mirage. All week she’d been
sneaking peeks at the Rock of Ages, tucked into her nightstand, as
if that would make her engagement feel real again. If it ever
had.

The first of the torches appeared at the top
of the mountain, wending their way down. The snow had let up enough
for them to hold the parade after all. Caitlyn burrowed into her
couch, curled beneath her favorite throw, and tried to bask in the
warmth of the season. If Daniel were here with her, she’d be
leaning against his side, his arm tucking her tight to him. Maybe
there would be holiday music playing softly over the stereo.

Her cell phone rang shrilly, shattering the
lovely little holiday dream and Caitlyn scrambled to untangle
herself from the throw to reach it before it shrieked again. It was
the Marrying Mister Perfect phone. Only Miranda or Daniel would be
calling.

Her heart leapt at the thought that it was
him, then she kicked herself for being so pathetically desperate to
hear his voice, then she kicked herself for being so cynical. She
was allowed to be happy to hear from her fiancé.

Fiancé.
It still didn’t seem real.

She punched the button to connect the call.
“Hello?”

“Baby! Happy New Year!” He shouted the words
above a roar of background noise.

“Daniel? Where are you?”

He laughed. “You’ll never believe it. The
network invited me to their New Year’s Eve—” The rest of the
sentence was lost in a sudden surge of cheering.

“I can barely hear you.”

“I know! It’s a mad house. I think it’s
getting louder by the minute as we get closer to the ball
dropping.”

Her heart clutched hard as she put the pieces
together. “You’re in New York?”

“Right in the heart of everything, baby! We
can see the crowds in Times Square. But it’s nothing without you,
baby. I wish you were here.”

I wish you’d stop calling me baby.
“I
could have been,” she said. “I have lots of excuses to be in New
York. My mom lives there. We could have had a quiet New Year’s Eve
together—nowhere public, but at least we could have been together,
if you’d let me know you were going to New York.”

“Oh, baby, I didn’t even think of it. Things
have been so crazy. I don’t even know my own schedule. The network
has a girl whose entire job it is to tell me when and where I need
to be places.”

She wanted to forgive him. If only he hadn’t
sounded so self-important. So pleased that he merited his own
scheduler. “I just miss you.”

“And I miss you. More than anything. This
won’t last forever. Once the show starts airing, the promo push
will die down after the first few weeks. Until the finale. And then
we’ll be together.” The background noise receded, like he had
walked away from the party, then dropped drastically, as if a door
had shut. “I wanted to talk to you about that, actually. We need to
give US Weekly and People an answer about whether we’ll both do the
cover feature the week after the finale airs. Obviously, we won’t
tell them your name just yet or that we’ll be married, but they
want confirmation that the winner will sit down for the interview
with me. Magazines like to line that stuff up way in advance and
we’d be the cover story, baby.”

Her stomach roiled queasily. “I thought the
publicity stuff was all you.”

“It is for now. But when you win, it will be
both of us. We’re America’s Couple, baby.”

For the love of God, stop calling me
baby.
“But we will have just gotten married. I thought we’d be
able to get away—”

“This would only be a short break before our
honeymoon. Two weeks tops. Then we can get started on our lives.
And trust me, baby, the money from the magazine spread will really
help a young couple starting out in the world.”

They’d never talked about money. She was only
a piano teacher now, but her parents had been very strict about
putting her concert earnings in a trust for her. She’d never told
Daniel about the trust. About the freedom it would give them so
they wouldn’t have to do publicity crap for money.

But he didn’t sound like this was just about
the money. He liked it. The attention. The fame.

All the things she’d walked away from.

Her stomach rumbled again. How well did she
know him? Two months of carefully crafted dates. Was that really
enough to build a marriage on?

“Daniel, I don’t know…”

“Just think about it. Think about our dream
house in Beverly Hills.”

“I don’t think my dream house is in Beverly
Hills.” Was he even listening to her? How wrong had she been about
him?

“Sorry, right. I know. I just get so carried
away. I want to give you everything, sweetheart. You’re my Miss
Perfect.”

In person she might have been taken in by his
tone, by his blue eyes sparkling with sincerity and sweet dimples,
but now all she could do was sit in her darkened apartment and
wonder if she was making the biggest mistake of her life. Was it
too late to back out?

“I don’t know, Daniel. Everything happened so
fast. Do you think we’re rushing it?”

“Hey,” his voice lowered from its excited
chirp, and for the first time she felt like she was talking to the
man who had wooed her. “I know all this is madness, but all of it
is about one thing. You and me. Through all the crazy distractions,
it’s always been you and me. Together. Right?”

“Right,” she echoed weakly.

“Watch the show on Tuesday. Look at my face
the first time I saw the girl of my dreams.”

“Elena?”

He snorted. “Funny. I love you, baby.”

“Love you too,” she echoed, ignoring the
growing certainty that she was lying with those words.

Or maybe he was right and it was just the
chaos of the last few weeks. The publicity nonsense. She would
watch the show. She would remind herself who he was and why she
loved him.

They said their goodbyes and Caitlyn turned
back to the window as Daniel rushed back to watch the ball drop
with his important people. The torchlight parade was over. She’d
missed it. Moments later, the first boom of the fireworks lit the
night. Midnight in New York. A New Year. A new slate. Full of
possibilities.

The year she would get married.

Her stomach roiled. She was going to have to
stock up on Tums.

#

Will collected the last of the LED torches
used in the New Year’s Eve processional each year, shoving off hard
and skating smoothly over the snow toward the storage locker where
the rest of the ski patrol guys were already stowing the other
torches and bragging about which of the out-of-towner snow bunnies
they were going to be kissing at midnight at the Lodge Gala.

“That blonde was giving you the eye,
Hamilton,” Ray Schaal said as he took the torches from him so he
wouldn’t have to pop off his skis and trudge down the snow bank to
the locker.

“She’s just a flirt,” he said, brushing the
comment aside even though he had no idea which blonde they were
talking about. He hadn’t really been paying attention to who he was
talking to as he handed out the torches at the top and collected
them at the bottom.

Ray shrugged and joined the others, comparing
the various attributes of the snow bunnies. There was never a
shortage of girls to kiss at the Gala, but the idea of flirtation
and forced laughter and barely disguised desperation to escape the
loneliness for a little while just made him feel old.

Which wasn’t far off the mark since most of
the ski patrol guys were barely old enough to drink.

He was supposed to be past that stage of his
life. Dating and playing romantic musical chairs. He thought he’d
found his chair. He’d been ready to sit there for the rest of his
life—and then his chair had knocked him on his ass and run away
with his best friend.

Okay, not the best analogy. But whatever. He
was too old for this shit.

He’d been busy since the snowfall had picked
up last week. Busy enough to avoid most of his family’s friendly
interference in his love life. Thank God they’d gotten enough snow
for the torchlight parade to go forward so he’d been able to say he
was working tonight and avoid any well-intentioned New Year’s Eve
set ups.

The other ski patrol guys invited him to join
them at the Gala as they secured the locker, but he waved them off,
pushing off and gliding over the snow toward his place, the lights
of the Lodge throwing his shadow across the snow in front of
him.

The one advantage to his tomblike apartment
was the ski-out deck and he slid onto it now, popping his skis off
and brushing loose snow off before resting them against the wall.
He leaned against the glass, flicking open the fastenings on his
boots and pressing down the tongues until he could slide his feet
out. Opening the deck door—which he really ought to lock one of
these days, but it was Tuller Springs so he never thought to
bother—he stepped from his boots directly onto the carpet inside in
thermal socks. Knocking the snow off his boots, he dropped them
next to the potbelly stove and tipped his head, automatically
listening for the music from above.

But there was only silence and the apartment
above had been completely dark when he skied in.

Even septuagenarian piano teachers had
somewhere to be and someone to be with on New Year’s Eve.

His cell phone vibrated against his
chest—still on silent from when he was working and he fished it out
of the inner chest pocket of his jacket. Probably Claire. Or Julia.
They didn’t know how to stop pushing.

But when he pulled out the phone, his
breathing stopped as the numbers on the Caller-ID screen slammed
into his brain like ice-picks.

He’d deleted her number, but he hadn’t been
able to delete the memory. He knew the damn thing by heart.
Tria.