Love in Reality: A Contemporary Romance (The Blackjack Quartet) (20 page)

“I feel a bit underdressed for the party,” Libby said. Her pleasure to be with him started to outweigh that lingering fear that something must be wrong.

Rand laughed. “Don’t worry. Compared with what Arielle used to parade around in, you look like a nun.” He gave her body a leisurely, appreciative look. “Okay, not a nun. But not bad at all.”

Libby thought she heard the woman behind her snort. She had to be one of Rand’s colleagues. Older and more down-to-earth. Under the fluorescent lights, the woman’s hair appeared to be the color of polished brass, sleek and tidy on her head. Libby glanced back at the other guy, who looked young and a bit nerdy with oversized glasses. He gave her a huge grin and a jaunty thumbs-up. Libby smiled at him politely.

In a summer full of surreal moments, this would still make her shortlist of oddest situations she’d been in. She shook her head a little as she padded along, her hand warm in Rand’s. Whatever was happening, though, if it meant they could hold hands, Libby was okay with it.

Their procession arrived at metal doors with push-bars across the middle. The woman pushed on the left-hand door and held it open as they walked outside.

“Okay, Rand, she’s yours for—” she checked her watch. “Three hours. Not a moment later. Think of this as Cinderella’s ball, and you have to get her back before we all turn into unemployed pumpkins, okay?”

Three hours? Had she heard that right? She wanted to hug this woman, and even the nerdy guy. Somehow they’d sprung her from
The Fishbowl
.

“Thanks, Deb,” Rand said, kissing the woman on the cheek. “And A.J.—thanks, man. That’s one awesome sleeping body.”

The man nodded, clearly pleased with himself. He kept his voice modest. “Hey, all I had to do was clean off the blood and stick on a wig.” He smiled again at Libby. “I’m rooting for you on the show. Dylan’s a dickhead.” To the others he said, “I’ll be back here at five, okay? Have fun, kids.” Then he climbed into a van and drove off.

Libby looked at Deb, whose voice sounded familiar. “You’re the other person who asks us questions in the Journal Room, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, that’s me. I don’t blame you for not recognizing me. Unlike this one,” she jerked a thumb at Rand, “I don’t make personal appearances.” It sounded like she was scolding him, but the look on her face was very affectionate.

Libby enjoyed their banter, but even if three hours sounded like a lifetime, it was only three hours. She shifted a little, anxious to get someplace private with Rand.

Deb was about to walk off when she thought of something. “Rand—just make the most of this, okay. We’ve really tweaked the dragon’s tail on this one, so I expect you to be all smiles tomorrow. Sleepy smiles, but smiles. Got it?”

“Got it,” he said, and curved his arm around Libby’s waist.

Deb watched them and then nodded, satisfied. She strode off.

Rand led Libby over to a dark car parked by the doors. “In you get,” he said, opening the passenger-side door for her. She slid in and watched as he came around to the driver’s side. Three hours. Alone.

She waited until they drove away from the studio before turning to him. “What have you done? Why am I here? I don’t know if I should yell at you or congratulate you,” she said.

“Yell at me? Why would you do that when I’ve just sprung you from jail?” he asked. “But you heard Debbie—we’ve got less than three hours.”

Libby sighed. “It’s just such a huge risk.”

“Risk? For three hours?” he teased. “And not just three hours. Three hours of privacy.”

She chuckled, relaxing a little. “I think I’m starting to see the benefits.”

“Not as many I’d like yet. I have to get you to a room for the full benefit package,” he said.

That got her skin tingling. “Where are we going?” she asked. She didn’t know enough about L.A. geography to tell where they were.

“I wish we had time to go back to my place, but if we got caught on the 101, we’d be screwed. And even at one in the morning, accidents can happen. So I got us a hotel room.”

“Rand, I can’t walk through a hotel lobby looking like this,” she protested.

“There are some clothes for you in the back,” he said.

Libby twisted around. There was a shopping bag on the back seat. She snagged it and pulled it over her shoulder. Inside were some yoga pants and a loose, long-sleeved top. There were even some zoris at the bottom of the bag. She’d look like a native. She started to wriggle into the pants.

“Oh, and wear the hat,” he said. She checked the back again. There was a smaller bag with a baseball cap in it. She pulled it out. “Tuck your hair up, if you can,” Rand said.

“Okay, but why a hat in the middle of the night?”

“I don’t want someone recognizing you from the show, that’s all,” he explained.

Libby hadn’t considered the likelihood that people would know her from TV. She’d forgotten that millions watched the show each week. That was going to take some getting used to.

After she’d bent herself into a series of pretzel shapes to put on the clothes, Libby leaned back and exhaled.

“I’m really out of
The Fishbowl
, aren’t I?”

Rand chuckled. “You are indeed. Even the pervs watching the 24-hour Internet feed won’t know the difference. We pulled off the heist of the decade.”

“So explain this to me. How’d you manage it?”

“It was all Deb’s idea. She knows A.J. from the CSI franchise. He’s a model maker. He’s the go-to-guy when they need a plausibly-human dead body. She told him what we needed, your measurements, hairstyle, and that it had to be breathing but asleep. That was the tough part, of course—his creations never need to be alive for the show. But work is light for him at the moment, so he was psyched by the challenge of making the chest cavity breathe. We got the Control Room to turn off your bedroom cameras for a few minutes, put the model in, and it was done.”

“Wow. All this so you and I could disappear for a few hours?” Libby was amazed. “They must love you a lot to do this for you.”

“I told you, it’s a game. We’ve pulled off the ultimate coup with this one. Marcy would never believe anyone could be smuggled out of the ’Bowl.”

“What did Deb mean when she said you’ve pulled the dragon’s tail? Was she referring to Marcy?”

He didn’t answer her right away. “You know that conversation you had with Greg this evening?” he asked slowly.

It took Libby a moment to remember. “Oh, wow, yeah. Wasn’t that amazing? He’s gay? I totally didn’t see that one coming.”

“Yes, that was one of the revelations in there, but that wasn’t the thing that got us worried,” Rand said.

His tone of voice was too grim for someone heading to a hotel with a girl. Libby tried to replay the Shark Tank conversation in her head. “Susie,” she said. “Susie’s comment that I’m in the Journal Room too long. Oh no. Please tell me that Marcy hasn’t asked about that. I mean, she doesn’t review every last minute of tape herself?” Libby felt ill at the thought of what Rand’s boss would say.

“The problem is, every conversation in the Shark Tank is important. It’s where a lot of the plotting goes on. Plus, Marcy would normally love to know a character was gay.”

Libby closed her eyes. This was so much worse. She could imagine Marcy’s screaming for Rand’s head. “I hear a ‘but’ in there?” Libby said, her voice rising on a tendril of hope.

“But…Debbie’s the one who found our Sgt. Pepper in the audition stage. He didn’t tell her he was gay, so Marcy doesn’t know he’s gay. Deb’s convinced it’ll hit the fan if Marcy finds out now, because the season is half over and a closeted gay guy was never cued up as a pet story line. So we’ve buried that tape. Which is good for you and me because—”

“Because otherwise Marcy would demand to see all the footage of your Journal Room interviews with me and she’d see that they aren’t any longer, so why does Susie think they are, and I’m not as stupid as a box of rocks, so why did I tell Greg that lie, etc., etc.”

Rand nodded. “None of us wants to lose our job.”

“Then take me back,” Libby cried impulsively. “It’s not too late.”

Rand pulled the car into the parking lot of a large hotel. He parked the car, but before they got out, he swiveled toward her. “I want this night for us. I want to talk with you and kiss you and get us both naked and feel safe when I close my eyes for a moment. Trust me, I’ve considered this carefully and I think—I
know
we can pull this off.”

He was so generous. She ached to be with him, but she kept thinking of the risk he was taking.

“I worry you’re committing professional suicide to be with me,” Libby said finally. “But I want to trust you. I want this time together. So if you say it’s safe, we’re doing it.”

He looked dead serious. “It’s safe.”

“Then let’s go,” she said and opened her door.

They walked into the lobby hand-in-hand, Libby trying hard to look as though she’d been there before. As they passed a bored night clerk, she asked Rand, “Uh, I can guess why you would want to pull this off, but what’s Deb’s stake in this?”

“Oh, mostly the chance to screw with Marcy’s universe. And she likes me. And I’m guessing she likes you.”

Of course. The crew must know the Fish well by this stage. They liked her? That’s nice. Still, she knew the risks they took were all for Rand. She squeezed his hand. Easy to see why people trusted him.

In the elevator, she pulled him toward her. Their first safe kiss in months—she melted in his embrace. It hardly seemed possible.

They got off on the fifth floor and Rand let them into the hotel room. There was a suitcase against one wall, the small kind with wheels and a telescoping handle. At most it would hold Rand’s change of clothes.

The rest of the room was basic hotel room decor—function over form. The curtains were open. Libby could see the boulevards and lights from nearby business districts. Odd to be standing there in strange clothes. After nearly six weeks of
The Fishbowl
, freedom from the artificiality of reality TV was disconcerting. She glanced at Rand, who walked over toward the bed. They were finally going to get past third base.

Libby kicked off the zoris, pulled off the hat, shook out her hair, then shucked the yoga pants and top. She was back to her underwear, in effect. Despite all the cameras and other Fish wandering around, it was the first time this summer she was aware of how close to nude she actually was. What a great feeling.

Rand switched on the light by the bed, which had been turned down and had a chocolate on the pillow. He looked nervous too, which reassured her. The setting had changed, but this was still Rand. The man she—

He interrupted her thoughts. “Lissa, look,” he began. “It’s been a crazy night. Deb only announced that she’d gotten that animatronic figure from A.J. this afternoon. I—uh,” he hesitated. “I didn’t have a chance to discuss it with you. But I figured we could just talk, you know, if you didn’t want—”

Libby stared at him. Could he actually be worried she didn’t want to have sex with him? That was the one thing she wasn’t nervous about. Her heart swelled with her desire to comfort him, but she kept her tone light. “Silly man. Of course I want this. You weren’t the only one getting frustrated with all that foreplay, you know.”

His solemn face belied the heat from his eyes. Why wasn’t he jumping her bones? Did he still need something from her, a green light, assurance that she wanted this as much as he did? Libby ached to hold him, stroke his hair, tell him how pleased she was to be here with him. She wasn’t nervous about sleeping with him, but she had to guard against making a big deal about it. She couldn’t get emotional. No matter what happened after the show was over, her feelings for him were private until then.

“Come on, stop looking like you’ve abducted me,” she teased. “If I can let go of the fear I’m costing you your job, you can stop worrying that you’re violating my rights or something.”

He took a deep breath. “Okay.”

She did a little twirl to celebrate her freedom. “This—this feels wonderful. No microphone, no cameras, no need to keep a mental clock ticking down our time together.” She held her hands out to him. “Dance with me,” she urged.

He hesitated.

She stopped. “D’you know what’s the best moment of my day?”

He stepped closer to her, close enough that she could feel his heat. “No.”

His smile was invitation enough. She said softly, in a near-whisper, “It’s that minute when the interview’s over and the hidden door opens. I get this chill and then I go hot all over. As wonderful as it is in your arms, that split second when I know what’s going to happen is so vivid. Anticipation is a very powerful aphrodisiac.”

He was right in front of her. She could feel the press of his chest against her breasts, the brush of his thighs against her hips. She wound her arms around his neck and smiled. “Dance with me,” she murmured. She tucked her head in the crook of his neck, nuzzling him.

She started to hum a tune as they shuffled their feet in no particular rhythm.

“What is that?”

“A Dire Straits song,” she said. She could feel the bass drum of his heart. “I never knew how much I would miss music. I’ve been replaying songs in my head for weeks now. I didn’t realize until Greg told me that I’d been humming out loud after my times with you.” She started humming again.

“It’s nice to hear you happy,” he said.

Rand’s arms tightened, pulling her against his body. She could feel his erection, familiar—only tonight she’d get more…so much more. Her nipples brushed his chest, her hips bumped against his legs.

Libby throbbed in time with the tune. “It’s the sexiest song I know.”

Of all the ways Rand had imagined this moment, dancing with Lissa hadn’t made the list. The reality, though, was exquisite pleasure. Eyes closed, shuffling around a hotel room knowing no one could hear or see them, and picturing the next step—getting naked—and the ones after that. Bliss.

Swaying with her in his arms, he felt himself relax. As much as he wanted to move things along, he mustn’t. After weeks of waiting on him, it was Lissa’s turn to set the pace.