Love in Reality: A Contemporary Romance (The Blackjack Quartet) (16 page)

Libby was pleased Kai won the next Shark Fight even if they didn’t have an explicit alliance. After Jeremy had signed off for the episode—it had been a live Shark Fight—the Fish trooped, one by one, to the Journal Room. With each name, Libby allowed her hopes to grow that she’d be called last. After returning from the Journal Room, everyone else drifted up to Kai’s Shark Tank. They presumably wanted to suck up to Kai, particularly as she hadn’t made any alliances yet. Maybe Rand would be able to talk longer. Even if her absence was noticed, it could be explained away as sour grapes for nearly being fished out.

She was thrilled to hear Rand asking her the questions—it had been a couple of days since she’d talked with him—but she played it cool until he told her it was safe.

“You are blowing the pool, you know,” he told her.

“What pool?”

She laughed when he explained that the crew and production staff all chipped in $25 to pick the order in which the Fish got sent home. “At least half the entries had you going first, so people here are annoyed you pulled off your little ploy.”

“Did you pick me to leave first?” she asked playfully.

She could hear him chuckle. He sounded happy. “Why would I do that?”

“Oh, hedging your bets maybe. You know, a win-win situation—if I stay, we get to keep meeting like this, but if I go, you increase the odds that you win the pool.”

“Well, I hate to disappoint you, but no one ever wins the pool—we just take the money and have a huge party at the end of the season.” There was a pause. “Also, I am pretty casual in my choices, so I had Diane going first.”

“Yeah, well, I think she’s in an alliance with Tommy Son-of-a-Gun and Friendly Puppy Chris,” Libby said.

“What did you call them?”

Now it was her turn to be embarrassed that she had pet names for the other Fish. “Okay, you caught me. ‘Son of a gun’ is one of Tommy’s folksy expressions. And Chris is like an exuberant puppy, jumping up and begging you to play with him. It’s like he’s on springs. Can we, hunh, can we? Hunh? Hunh?”

“Okay, now I have to know. What do you call everyone else?”

“Promise me you haven’t turned the cameras back on?” This would make good tape.

“I should. But no, I haven’t.”

“Okay. I call Kai Kai because she’s too elegant and wonderful for a nickname. Same thing with Jim. But the rest of them? Gym God Bryce, Headshot Dylan, Forty-is-the-New-Twenty Diane, Sgt. Pepper—that’s Greg, Cutesie Susie, and uh, Ariella De Vil.”

He laughed. “Ariella De Vil—that’s priceless. I should make you repeat those for the camera tomorrow night—they would completely change how people see you here.”

“Oh, yeah, I know. I’m Listless Lissa or something. Whatever.”

“Something like that,” he admitted.

Libby nodded. “I could claim it’s all a ruse to get people to underestimate me, but you already know I’m not trying to win. I want to be thought just a bit too boring to be worth anyone wasting their time gaming me. And I don’t want to be part of a tight alliance.”

“Why not?”

She stared hard at the smoky glass. “It would be just another lie, wouldn’t it? The others would think I was making all my choices based on my allegiance to them and my own desire to make it to the finals. They’d be wrong on both counts. I’m here for my own selfish reasons, true, but they have nothing to do with money. It just seems simpler to keep myself to myself. And the best way to do that is to seem like a weak link.”

Libby was lying to everyone—the other Fish, her family and friends, even Lissa, and now Rand. Libby found it hard to relax with so many lies piled up. The strain of being the frothy, happy Lissa all day ebbed only when she got to the Journal Room. She could be herself here, even if that self was its own sort of lie.

Still, she must sound like such a whiner. She began to say, “I’m sorr—” just as she heard Rand say something. She started. Her heart thumped wildly. “What did you say?”

“I said, ‘I want to kiss you.’”

That’s what she thought he said. She forced herself to keep breathing. She got up and walked a little closer to the vague dark shape behind the glass. “I want to kiss you too,” she whispered.

“Stay right there,” he said in a muffled tone. Libby stopped in the middle of the room, unsure what she was waiting for. For Rand to appear—?

The rust-brown wall to her right moved. That was the door, a nearly invisible outline of a rectangle covered with the same soundproofing material as the rest of the wall. She turned to the darkness beyond the door, and then there was Rand in rumpled chino shorts and a T-shirt that read, “The Other Venice Film Festival.” She started to move toward him, but he held a finger to his lips.

He put his lips to her ear, sending tiny spasms down her back. “We can’t make any noise,” he breathed. “Your mike could go back on at any time, and I won’t be able to tell.”

She nodded slightly, terrified to move too much in case it would make him leave. She was so happy to see him. She could touch him, real and very warm. She leaned in to press her face against the heat of his neck. She wanted to shimmy with joy even as she felt tears prickling her eyes.

Rand put his hands on her shoulders, hugging her, then pushing her a few inches away. “You’re so beautiful,” his lips said. She shook her head no, and pointed to him instead. He was the beautiful one, at least to her. She could feel the rumble of his silent laugh. She grinned at him.

They leaned into a kiss, whisper soft. Libby was conscious of her breathing, trying to keep it steady and normal, but then Rand shifted his mouth over hers and the kiss deepened. She could only feel him, his heat and hands, the press of his chest against hers carefully angled not to rub against the lav mike.

Slowly, carefully she ran her fingers up his back, snagging the hem of his T-shirt and slipping inside to touch bare skin. She couldn’t reach as far as she wanted but the muscle and bone contours of his back were as real as the kiss. Familiar and unexplored territory. Her caress was cautiously abandoned, intimate but risky. A recipe for frustration.

They couldn’t kiss enough and gradually, reluctantly, they stopped trying. She rested her head against his shoulder as he nuzzled her hair. He leaned slightly and whispered against her ear.

“Is this better or worse?”

A rhetorical question. Libby was back to fighting tears and laughter. She shook her head. I don’t know, she mouthed.

He pulled back more and looked at his watch, the universal sign for I should be going. She understood and stepped back. Tomorrow? she asked silently.

He nodded and kissed her once more before disappearing behind the padded door. Libby didn’t wait for him to say anything, just turned and left. She was confused by those embraces. It had been dark magic—and changed everything.

Kai put Diane the Cougar and Dylan the Headshot Hunk on the hook. Seemed fairly obvious to Rand—this was a two-pronged attack on the strongest alliances. Kai and Jim were holding their own against the hotheads who spent all day scheming to very little effect. Rand’s quartet of ringers were exceeding even his expectations for them.

Cutesie Susie—he caught himself using Lissa’s nicknames and twice had to shrug when Debbie looked at him funny—won the Get Off The Hook and rescued the Headshot Hunk, who was in her alliance. Kai put up the Band Geek Sgt. Pepper, and the Cougar went home. None of the Fish had much liked Diane, it turned out, a sentiment shared on his side of the windows. Diane had definitely been a preener in the Journal Room. Rand wouldn’t miss her self-absorption.

Two weeks into the show. Some of his colleagues had started to get invested in the Fish and their pressurized drama. Rand was barely listening to the ’Bowl-related gossip at dinner one night as he picked at the Mexican food provided by craft services.

“The women always make the fatal mistake of leaving the men in place too long—happens every season,” Debbie said. “They never make an alliance of the girls against the boys, and by the time they figure it out, it’s too late and the guys win all the physical challenges.”

Dave shook his head. “Then why is it five of the seven season winners so far have been women?” he demanded.

Debbie scowled at him. “Because as stupid as the women are, men still think with their dicks. Someone falls for the pretty chick and lets her slide into the finale.”

“I think the Jock has it bad for Ditzy Lissa,” Charlie volunteered.

Rand forced himself to keep playing with the tamale on his plate and
not
glare at Charlie. Finally, he glanced up. “Really? Did I miss something new?” Charlie and Dave were on the day crew, just getting off their shift. Rand still had six hours to go.

“Jamie in Editing says Bryce tried to put the moves on the Ditz this morning in the gym. Normally, Lissa’s up early with Jim, but Bryce must have set an alarm ’cuz he was already pumping iron when she got there.”

“Oh, that is just stupid,” Debbie said. “I don’t think our Ditz is going to fall for that. Bryce has about three functioning synapses, and two of them are focused on maintaining muscle mass. No way is she falling for that lunkhead.”

Our Ditz
? Nice to think his friends in production liked her as well.

“Well, what did Lissa say to him?” Rand asked finally.

“I dunno,” Charlie admitted. “You know how she is. She talks to everyone, but when you review the tape, there’s nothing usable there. Jamie says other than that masterful way she outfoxed the Vixen, they struggle daily to find any tape of Lissa playing the game. Thank God she’s a good mimic.”

Rand grinned. “Did you see her impression of the gone-but-not-mourned Goth?”

Debbie laughed. “They were playing it on a continuous loop in the Control Room—she did this thing with her hair so it completely covered her face. It was hysterical. I think Editing is saving that up for a tribute reel when the time comes. It just doesn’t advance any of the story lines Marcy wants us working on.”

Rand nodded. Marcy had a lot to say about how the raw footage got edited. She was hot on the possibility that Ariella De Vil and the Headshot Hunk would get it on, even though it was laughable with two narcissistic divas. They were more likely to be caught kissing their reflections in the bathroom than each other. Luckily they flirted just enough to give Marcy some raw material for her fantasy hookup.

“Okay, people, back to the salt mines,” Charlie said as he carried his tray to the trash barrel.

Rand was about to head back to his desk when he felt Debbie pull at his arm.

“Hey, look, none of my business and all that, but everyone kinda knows that you’re into Lissa,” she said tentatively.

He waited. Admit nothing, that was his current strategy.

“Yeah, so Manuel told us you chat with her after the Journal Room thing, you know, with the camera off.”

Rand shrugged. “She’s fun to chat with.” No big thing, his body language said.

Debbie looked at him. “I know. We all know. And Marcy doesn’t know, more to the point. But I have to ask. You’re not uh, not—” she trailed off.

“Deb, what are you worried about?” he asked. “You know I’ve got my eyes on the prize. Screenplay, baby, and I’m outta here.”

“Yeah, but you
like
her.” She made it sound like a gypsy curse.

“And in the screenplay, Brad, a lowly producer on the cheesy reality TV show
The Ant Farm
‘likes’ Jenna, the waitress who’s working to put herself through medical school,” Rand explained carefully.

“The Ditz is going to med school?”

“Not our Ditz. The Ditz in my screenplay. I mashed together Lissa and Susie.”

Debbie nodded. “Right. But it’s Lissa you
like
.”

There was that curse again. Rand flapped a hand at her in frustration. “So?”

“You aren’t helping her win, are you?” Deb bit the words off in an icy whisper. She refused to meet his eyes.

“God, no,” he said. “We never talk about strategy, apart from the stuff she says for the tape.”

She looked at him, hard. Waiting.

He fidgeted. Debbie’d asked about Lissa before, forcing Rand to duck her questions. He felt awkward talking about it. Not because it was breaking who knew how many rules, but because it seemed far-fetched. Still, best to come clean. “I know this sounds stupid, but she’s not on the show to win the money. She wants to get to know me.”

Deb laughed. She put her hands on her hips. “You bought that? C’mon, Rand—what’s the first rule of reality television?”

He rolled his eyes. “Contestants Will Do Anything,” he recited.

“Exactly.”

How to convince her? The mother of a teenager, Debbie wasn’t going to buy “No, really” as evidence. “Look, Deb, you and I—hell, everyone—we all know Lissa has zero chance of winning. She’s not even a hardcore gamer. You’ve seen the raw footage. She’s barely interacting with the other Fish. No one has ever won without being in an alliance.”

He watched Deb consider this. He pushed on. “So ask yourself two questions. First, is that how a Fish would act if she were gaming me? And if I were trying to help her win, don’t you think she’d be performing a wee bit better? I don’t even think she’ll help me win our side bet on whose six Fish do better.”

“She’d better not. I’m counting on that spa day if I win.”

“Trust me, she’s unlikely to make it another couple of weeks,” Rand lied.

Debbie relaxed her posture a little as she thought. She processed his argument, which even he thought was convincing. Finally she said, “Are you
sure
she’s here just to get to know you?”

He shrugged sheepishly. “We had a moment, back in Philly.”

“You slept with her?!” Deb asked in a shocked whisper.

“No—that’s the point. We barely got anything started. We kissed. I left.” He folded his arms. “I won’t deny there’s chemistry.”

Now he could tell he’d really captured Deb’s attention. “Oh. My. God,” she breathed. “What have you been doing in the Journal Room?”

He grinned. “Not as much as I’d like. You know I won’t see if the Control Room checks her mike.”

Deb slumped against the wall. “Oh, this is rich. Entirely against the rules.” She laughed. “So of course I have to help. Who’s in on it?”