Ineligible Bachelor (10 page)

“Okay then, because I would hate to have the camera catch that and have America misconstrue what’s going on here.”

Freddy’s heartbeat rose. “There is nothing going on here.”

He leaned closer to her. “Too bad.”

“What—what did you say?”

“We could give this TV show a real twist if we wanted to.” He leaned closer to her. “Where do you think the cameras are?” he whispered.

She could feel his hot breath on her skin. “Don’t do that,” she said.

“Do what?”

He meant to tease her, and she knew it. But he couldn’t know what his nearness was doing to her.

“Don’t tempt me,” she managed to stammer. But he was doing much more than that. His lips, so close to hers now, were just begging for her to lean in and…

She felt something hit her in the arm. It stung.

“Got you!” a distinctive female voice said, right before Jade ducked inside the bunker.

Freddy looked at Jade for a second before looking at her arm. No paint. It was a bouncer. She grabbed her marker, pulled the trigger, and fired off a few shots. “No, I believe I got you, missy.” The paintballs splattered on Jade’s breastplate shield, making a graffiti pattern. “You should have made sure your round broke,”
she said, right before scrambling to her feet and getting off a few more shots for good measure.

Jade dropped her marker. She held her hands out to the side. “I feel icky.”

Freddy grabbed the marker from the ground. “You can clean up in the dead zone.”

“A little overkill, don’t you think?” Logan asked, rising and walking to Jade. “Are you okay?”

Jade nodded.

Freddy turned toward Logan. “Whose side are you on?”

“One shot would have been enough, Freddy.”

“Oh, you mean like this one?” she asked before taking aim and plastering Logan with a shot.

“You can’t shoot me,” Logan exclaimed, raising his own marker and just missing Freddy’s back as she grabbed the flag from its hiding place and ducked outside the bunker. “We’re on the same side!”

“Not anymore,” Freddy shouted before disappearing into the underbrush.

She ran until she was sure no one was following her, pleased with herself for a fraction of a second before she realized she had left Logan alone in a cozy bunker with Jade. She leaned against a tree and inhaled deeply to calm her racing heart, not knowing if the rise was due to her run or the situation in which she had left Logan.

Either way, it seemed she was way out of practice with this dating stuff.

A few hours later, Freddy stepped into the clearing and stared at a production set that could have been a postcard for the Bahamas. A large, brightly colored tent sat on what should have been the dead zone. Inside, she could see Logan lounging on a chaise and at least four of the ladies inside the tent with him. Tired and covered with a combination of dirt, leaves, and some goo she stepped in about a half mile back, she stormed right to it.

“I’ve been out there dodging wild animals and stepping in Lord knows what, and you sit here sipping umbrella-laden drinks in a cabana?” She pointed to the glass in his hand.

“I don’t see an umbrella in anyone’s glass,” Logan countered.

“It’s champagne,” Jade volunteered.

Freddy glared at Jade. “Whatever.” She turned back to Logan. “How long have you been here while I’ve been in what amounts to Seal training on the paintball course?”

A few of the ladies looked at her and snickered. Logan laughed. “Your own fault.”

“How so?”

“If you’d bothered to count, you would have figured out that you shot everyone hours ago.” As if on cue, the ladies stood and presented the parts of them hit by paintballs from Freddy’s marker. Logan stood and walked to Jade, pointing. “She took about twenty
of your shots, mostly to the breastplate protector, but one got her arm.” Jade beamed in response.

“That’s one,” Freddy conceded.

One by one, Logan pointed out smears of paint. “Leg, shoulder, thigh, calf, and poor Lori,” he waited until she turned her back to them, “the cruelest shot of all, her butt.”

Freddy felt herself fuming as Lori rocked her hips back and forth, the yellow splotch on her backside dancing with the movement.

“That makes six.” Logan’s face suddenly beamed with a look that could only be described as pure satisfaction. “No, I mean seven. You actually shot me, too.” He arched his arms around the two ladies closest to him. “I suppose that means I get to date everyone.”

Freddy corralled the urge to empty the rest of the paintballs loaded in her marker right into him. She turned on her heel and started walking away.

“Where are you going?” Logan called out just as she passed Roberto walking toward her.

“Back to the mansion,” she called back.

Roberto stopped her. “You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because we have to reshoot. You have to let someone get the flag.”

“No, I don’t,” Freddy countered.

Roberto reached into the briefcase he always carried and pulled out the script. “Yes, you do. It says right here, whoever has the flag gets the one-on-one date with Logan.”

“Let me see that,” Freddy insisted.

Roberto angled the paper toward her. Freddy raised her marker and dotted the paper with five shots dead center. “Sorry, can’t read it. There seems to be paint smudges across the writing.”

Stunned, Roberto watched her storm off into the woods before he could say another word. He turned toward Logan, openmouthed.

“Sorry, can’t help you with this one,” Logan said, laughing. “You’ll just have to figure out some sort of alternate end to the first episode.”

“But the script says the person who has the flag gets the date.”

“I guess by the rules that would be Freddy then.”

Roberto shook his head. “The executive producer isn’t going to be happy about this.”

Logan saw the last bit of Freddy disappear behind a clump of trees. “It doesn’t seem that Freddy is either.”

Roberto signaled to one of the production crew members. “You. Go get her. We have an elimination ceremony in two hours, and she needs to get back to the mansion for hair and makeup.”

Logan chuckled. “You should make her walk back and then go on camera in her paintball-spattered stuff. It would serve her right.”

Back at the mansion, Freddy shut the door to her room and pulled the red flag from her back pocket. In a fit of temper, she’d outsmarted herself by shooting everyone, including Logan, with the paintball marker. When Roberto caught up to her on the way back to the mansion, he informed her that because of her actions, she would have to hand the flag to one of the six ladies tonight for a one-on-one date with Logan the next day, as well as eliminate one of them. The elimination she could do—handing Logan over to one of the bachelorettes, not so much.

She walked to the bathroom, and for a brief moment, thought about flushing the flag down the toilet. But that would change nothing. In the morning, someone would be spending the day with Logan, and it wasn’t going to be her.

Or could it? Maybe she would just set Mr. Roberto back on the heels of his brown leather Berlutis and announce to the world once they were filming that she would be Logan’s date for the evening. If nothing else, it would make for good TV.

She blew out a deep breath. She couldn’t do that. This show could put Logan’s ad agency in a whole other marketing class, and maybe set him on the path to becoming a full partner. He talked about that a lot during the monthly get-togethers with their friends, especially lately since a junior partnership dangled within his grasp. He deserved the chance, and she could help give it to him.

A knock at the door stopped her anguish for the moment.

“Freddy?”

Logan. She needed no more torture today. She stayed perfectly still, hoping he’d go away.

He knocked again. “Fred. I know you’re in there. Roberto told me. Open up. I want to talk to you.”

She guessed she had no choice. “What do you want?” she asked after opening the door.

Logan had a sandwich and two vitamin water drinks on the tray he held with one hand. “I thought you might be hungry.”

She looked at the food. “Turkey?”

He smiled. “You talking about me or the sandwich?”

She smirked. “Take your pick.”

“It’s chicken.”

“I guess I could eat.” She stepped back. “Put it on the desk.”

“They’re not both for you.”

“Didn’t you fill up on the food in the cabana at the paintball field?”

He shook his head as he slid the tray onto the mahogany desktop like a peace offering. “Naw. Every time I tried to eat something, one of the ladies would ask me a question. It would have been rude to talk with my mouth full.”

“I suppose.”

He took one of the waters and walked to the leather couch against the wall across the room. After tossing one of the throw pillows against the armrest, he lay down and set the bottle on the floor. Stretched out across the sofa cushions, he took up the whole length of the couch.

Arms crossed, Freddy walked to a chair opposite him and sat. “Comfortable?”

He snuggled deeper into the deep brown leather. “Very.” He shifted to his side and propped his head up with one hand. “You didn’t get my message?”

The position accentuated his long lean lines. It didn’t help one bit that a lock of hair had fallen over one eye. “And what message would that be?”

“I asked Roberto to tell you I’d be in the pool if you wanted to join me.”

“How many of the ladies were in the water with you?”

“Three.”

She shook her head. “No, thanks. Not even at gunpoint.”

“I thought you might want to get to know some of them better, considering you have to pick one for me tonight.”

He smiled at her, and she pictured her hand squishing the grin right off his face. “I’ve already picked one,” she lied.

“Care to tell me who?”

“Nope.” She stood. Maybe for emphasis, she didn’t know.

“Come on, Fred. You tell me your plans, and I’ll tell you mine.”

“Your plans for what?”

“The date. Roberto left it up to me.”

“How about you go first, and lay it all out for me,” she said with a flourish of her arms.

“All of it?”

“Every gruesome detail.”

Logan sat up. “Okay, I’ll play along. I thought we’d do a little shopping on Main Street in Morristown first. Maybe I’ll buy a bunch of flowers so my date can press one in a book.”

“Right next to the prom corsage, I suppose,” Freddy snapped, wrinkling her nose.

He ignored the barb. “Then we’d have dinner in one of the little restaurants on a side street, a cozy, out-of-the-way local place. Then perhaps a midnight walk in the park with our shoes off. I’ll carry both pairs, of course.” He smiled as if in victory. “Good plan, huh?”

Freddy found it hard not to have imagined herself as the woman on his arm in the park with her shoes off. “Depends. Sounds a bit sugary-sweet to me.”

“You’re saying I’m not sweet?”

She dismissed the question with a swipe of her hand. “Yes. Right. Sweet like syrup. And knowing that, I have to factor in everything I know about you, your flaws, your weaknesses, and such, in order to match you up with someone who won’t take advantage of you.”

Logan furrowed his brows. “I have weaknesses?”

“Several.”

“Like what?”

“Look at the date you planned. You’re a moosh. If one of those banshees figures it out, you’re a sob story away from proposing.”

“Banshees?”

“Ladies. Whatever. You know what I mean.”

“Don’t think so.”

Freddy rolled her eyes. “I’ve known you since you were twelve. You asked nerds to dance during prom just because you felt sorry for them.” She snapped her head more fully toward him. “Do you know you never asked me to dance once?”

His eyebrows rose. “I didn’t?”

“Not once.”

“You weren’t a nerd.”

“Nice of you to notice.”

“You should have told me that you wanted to dance with me.”

“I didn’t think I had to.”

“I guess I’m not that great of a catch, so you don’t have to worry about the date.”

“Who said I’m worried?”

He stood and walked to her, then reached out and brushed the hair from her face. “I can see it in your eyes.”

She shrugged his hand away and sat back down. “I just don’t want someone to try to take advantage of the situation tomorrow night after having to endure a whole day with you.”

He smirked. “You mean take advantage of the moonlight.”

“It will not be moonlight in your face. It will be the camera lights.”

“Still.” He waggled his eyebrows up and down. “It could be very romantic.”

“I suppose, if you discount the millions of TV viewers who will be along on the date with you.”

“There is that.”

“So how romantic can it possibly be with all those eyes on you?”

He went back to the sofa and shifted to a position that looked like it belonged on a shrink’s couch. Reaching down, he twisted the bottle on the floor casually with one hand, a faraway look on his face. Then he glanced at Freddy through a fallen strand of hair. “Don’t be so sure about that. My date may forget all about the TV viewers. I can be very distracting. I believe you saw just how much when the lights went out the other day.”