The Cowgirl Ropes a Billionaire (16 page)

How to get things back on track?

He leaned back and considered this. What were his final objectives? He learned long ago that the best way to accomplish anything was to start with your goal and work backward. His first goal was to secure his control over his company. He’d prefer for Bella to be his wife for the year, but if it meant she’d hate him for all eternity there were other options. His second goal was to prove he wasn’t like his father. He wanted to show that he could be a good loser and that he understood other people’s dreams and aspirations were just as important as his.

His third goal was not to let Madelyn control the outcome of the show. If she stacked the contest against Bella, he could very well lose Bella for good. On the other hand, if he decided to throw the show and overtly tried to lose the challenges, both women would catch on, and he’d lose just the same. Madelyn would charge him with breaking his contract, and Bella would hate his guts.

Where did that leave him? Should he try to win and use the year with Bella to change her mind about him? Somehow he didn’t think that would work.

No, if he really wanted Bella in his life, he had to lose, and convince her to marry him just the same. Which meant he had to lose in such a way he looked like he was trying to win.

Okay, that was confusing.

He shook his head at the craziness of his situation, and puzzled on through the rest of it. From now on he’d make Bella go first when it came to the challenges so he’d have time to plan how best to lose inconspicuously. He needed to act angry when he lost, too—but not so angry he turned Bella off even more than his temper tantrum on the mountaintop had. He had to lose gracefully but realistically.

Hell, if he pulled this act off, he would deserve an award.

And if he didn’t pull it off, he’d lose Bella.

CHAPTER NINE

Several hours later, Bella slipped into the steaming pools of the Miette Hot Springs. They’d dined well but silently at a picnic area along the road while the cameras rolled, and were whisked here as an end-of-the-day treat. The hot water felt terrific, even though the evening was still warm. Her muscles relaxed almost immediately and after a day which had included a near-death experience and a kiss that rocked her to her toes, she was grateful to rest against the side of the large pool and merely float.

Unlike some hot springs she’d visited in her youth, these weren’t smelly little pools of sulfurous water. The Miette Hot Springs looked like any other public outdoor swimming facility, except the water was so deliciously hot—it felt like taking a bath under the open sky.

“Bella.”

She opened her eyes at the sound of Evan’s voice. “Leave me alone,” she groaned.

“I will in a minute. I just want to say that Madelyn’s right—we need to finish this contest before anything else happens between us. She’s right about what she said about me and the women I’ve dated, too. I’m not good at relationships. Hell, I suck at them. There’s a reason for that, though. I don’t feel like explaining it on camera, but maybe someday we’ll have the chance to talk privately about it. I hope so.” He swam a little closer. “My life is hectic. You wouldn’t believe how hectic it is. Taking a couple of days off without a computer or even a phone…” He made a face. “It’s like I’m seeing things clearly for the first time in years. And I don’t like what I see. I need to make some changes.”

“What does that have to do with me?” She tried to sound sharp, but in truth she was surprised. He sounded like he’d had a similar revelation to hers.

“Not much—not at the moment.” He smiled wryly. “We’re competitors and I still need a wife. I want it to be you. So I’m going to do my best to win this thing.”

“So am I,” she said, but his words made her insides dance with some emotion she couldn’t even fathom. He wanted her for his wife? That sounded close enough to real desire to make her sink into a swirl of feelings best left unlooked at. She leaned back against the edge of the pool. “I don’t want to be your wife. I want to be rich enough to make a difference to the animals who depend on me.”

He held her gaze long enough she felt the heat of it down into the deepest places within her. What was he telling her with his eyes? That he truly wanted her? That his kiss was for real? She was afraid of what her own gaze betrayed about her—that his kiss swept her right off her feet, that if he swam any closer she’d meet him halfway and betray herself and her furry charges for just a few more moments pressed against him. A smile curved his lips again and she knew he must have seen some of that in her expression.

“Fair enough,” Evan said. “Our cards are on the table. You know what I want.” He paused, his smile widening. “And I know what you want. May the best man win.”

“Best woman,” she called out after him as he swum away.

But she had a feeling he won that round.

* * * * *

The warm glow within Evan stayed with him until the SUVs dumped them at another campground—this one on flat ground. He stood next to Bella and eyed the small pile of equipment. She bent to pick up the tent.

“I think this is even smaller than last night’s,” she said.

“Yep.” Damn Madelyn.

She handed him the single, rolled-up sleeping mat. “Here—you might as well take this since I get the tent.”

“What do you mean?”

“We both know you can’t sleep all night in something this small—not with me beside you. That’s it, right—why you don’t stay with women through the whole night? They give you claustrophobia just like small spaces do?”

He hesitated, rattled by her insight, but shook his head. “Whatever. I’m sleeping in that tent tonight.”

“I’m not sleeping outside!”

“I didn’t say you were.” With more bravado than he felt, he flopped the ground cloth down, took the tent away from her and pulled it from its protective sack. He popped out the tension poles and threaded them through their sleeves. “Do those ends, will you?”

Together they lifted the tiny structure into position on top of the ground cloth.

“That’s got to be a one man tent,” Bella said disgustedly.

“Yep.”

It was getting dark, but well after they’d both brushed their teeth and used the nearby outhouse they sat on logs around an empty fire pit, saying little. The day crew packed up and left, and the night cameraman installed his tent-cam, and retreated to the edge of the clearing, his assistant in tow.

Was there any chance he’d make it through the night in that…cocoon…pressed up against Bella? Just the thought of climbing into that little orange nylon excuse for a tent made his hands sweat. He regretted now he’d never taken Amanda’s advice to find a shrink—a therapist—to talk about his claustrophobia. Maybe if he had he wouldn’t be sweating like a pig right now.

“I’m turning in,” Bella said finally. She crossed the campground, took off her boots and left them neatly side by side to the left of the door flap, before bending to crawl into it on her hands and knees. For several minutes he heard her rustling around. Then all was still.

Ten minutes later, he finally worked up the courage to approach the tent himself. Mimicking Bella, he shucked off his shoes first, and bent to unzip the flap. Taking one last deep breath of air, he pushed himself into the small opening.

It was worse than he thought.

Even on hands and knees his back scraped up against the fabric ceiling and the whole tent shook as he inched his way to a prone position beside Bella. She held up one side of the sleeping bag and he slid beneath it, almost instantly tossing it off him again as the familiar suffocating feeling descended on him.

He heard Bella’s exhaled breath. “You really have this claustrophobic thing bad, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Pretty bad,” he wheezed.

“Are you going to be okay?”

He curled onto his side, his back to her, arms crossed over his chest. “Probably not.”

“Look, you don’t have to prove anything to anyone. You can sleep outside.” She sounded like she’d prefer it.

“I kind of do,” he said, fighting to keep himself from tearing the tent apart with his bare hands—anything to get air into this tiny space. Any second the fabric walls would wrap themselves around him, tightening until they’d squeezed every inch of air from his lungs. He didn’t think he could stand it for another minute. But he had to.

“Why?”

“Because it’s true—I find it just about impossible to spend an entire night with a woman. It’s…really screwed things up for me. That’s not how I want to be.”

He felt her turn to face him, felt a tentative touch on his back. “If you have a phobia, it can take time to overcome. You don’t do it all at once.”

“What do you know about it?” Her hand felt good on his skin. She stroked him lightly and he wondered if she knew she was sending streaks of heat straight through him to his groin.

“Sometimes I work with people who are afraid of animals—usually dogs. There’s a counselor in town who calls me up and I bring a really gentle dog to her office when her patient is ready for it. At first I stand with the dog near the patient—just for a minute or two. In later appointments I bring the dog closer. Finally the patient touches the animal. It’s not all at once—it happens over time.”

Her touch mesmerized him, and in a moment he wouldn’t be able to leave the tent without shocking their national audience. He reached for the sleeping bag and covered his traitorous body. Thankfully, Bella didn’t stop her ministrations. “So you’re saying I should only stay in the tent for a few minutes.”

“I’m saying you shouldn’t feel bad if you can’t overcome a lifelong phobia in a single night.” She caressed his back, his shoulder, his bicep, running her hand up and down his skin until he wanted to turn over, scoop her into his arms and make love to her until the sun came up.

But he couldn’t. For one thing, there was a camera ten inches above his head capturing all of this, and it was bad enough the whole world would know about his phobia when these episodes aired; they didn’t need a front row seat to his lovemaking, too. For another, he never struggled to stay in bed with a woman while they were having sex. It was afterwards, when they snuggled up and he felt their desire to snare him forever, keep him tied to their sides, like his mother had all throughout his youth.

He thrashed to a sitting position. Bella’s hand fell away from him. “Sorry,” he said. Damn it, he could do this. He had to do this.

“It’s okay, Evan. Everybody has issues. You aren’t any less of a man because you’re claustrophobic.”

So why did he feel like a worm when he pushed his way out of the tent and went to sleep outside on the ground?

* * * * *

The pang of loneliness she felt when Evan fled the tent unnerved Bella. She supposed it was natural to bond to someone you’d just spent two straight days with—especially while being filmed the whole time—but she was surprised by the depth of his claustrophobia. While it had been funny on the tram, and giving him a hard time had definitely paid off in spades when she gained three points in the next challenge, watching him struggle against his fears right next to her in the tent made his pain too real to ignore. Evan obviously had demons. She wondered what made him so afraid to be close to people.

When Madelyn had taunted him about his inability to spend the whole night with a woman she thought he’d face her down by bragging about his conquests and claiming indifference to cuddling after the deed was done, but now she saw this wasn’t about machismo at all. Evan was afraid—no, terrified—of being close enough to a woman that she might take advantage of him when he was vulnerable. He couldn’t spend the night with a woman because that would expose him utterly. He couldn’t fall in love with a woman and get married in a normal way because that would literally tie him down and he couldn’t bear to be restrained or confined in such a manner.

She knew the textbook definition of claustrophobia, of course, but had always considered the fear to be based on a physical state. She understood why Evan freaked out in the tram car, for example; it was an enclosed space he could not leave while they were en route.

There was another aspect to Evan’s claustrophobia, though—he was just as afraid of close connections with people as he was of close quarters. If he couldn’t even date a woman, what did that mean for his other relationships? Did he have close friends? What about his family?

Strange to think that someone as rich and successful as Evan could be as damaged as someone as poor and dumb as her.

She woke hours later tangled in the sleeping bag. When she unzipped the tent flap, the cool air was a welcome antidote to her groggy mind, but when she looked at the sky, she groaned. It didn’t take a weatherman to know they’d see rain before the day was done.

“Morning,” Evan grunted at her as he returned from the campground outhouse. He looked disheveled, and when a crew member handed him a cup of coffee, he accepted it and paced to the far side of the fire pit to drink it alone.

* * * * *

“Good morning, contestants!” Jake said with an enthusiasm that made Evan want to belt him. What, exactly, was good about it? He’d barely slept for the second night running, and he was so stiff he felt like he’d aged a decade. Worst of all, rain was coming. Stomping around all day and getting soaked wasn’t his idea of fun. “Today we have a new type of challenge that starts now and will run for most of the day. You’ll each need one of these babies,” Jake handed them each a state-of-the-art GPS unit, “and a set of directions. You’ll be on your own today, however. You’ll each travel to your next destination by a different route.” Evan scowled. How was he supposed to clandestinely help Bella win if they weren’t even in the same place? “Along the way you’ll use your GPS units to discover ten geocaches. Each one will contain directions to the next one. You have until sundown to get all ten and navigate your way to the next campsite.”