Walk of Shame (13 page)

Phillip and I rejoined the group
a few minutes later. I slipped and slid down the hill a few more times, as
though I'd never been drawn away. But then I spotted Jared by the coolers,
looking all hot and sexy, and I made my way over.

Jared had been about to close the
lid, but held it open for me when he saw me coming.

I reached down, grabbed a bottle
of hard lemonade, waited for him to let the lid drop, and took five steps into
the shadows. I turned back to find him watching me, gave him a head-nod toward
the house, turned away, and started walking.

My feet had hit the steps in the
stairwell before I heard another set of footsteps in quick pursuit. I led the
way all the up to the fourth floor, and down the hall to find the last set of
stairs. Up one more flight we went, opened a door, and entered onto the rooftop
balcony. I went over to stand at the railing that overlooked the group on the
hill below. I unscrewed the cap on my drink, laid it in the railing, and took a
swallow.

The cameraman slid around Jared
to pick his prime position on the darkened balcony.

Jared, however, remained glued to
his position beside the door for a moment. Eventually he popped the tab on his
beer can open as he drifted over to stand beside me at the railing. "What are
we doing up here?" he asked.

I shrugged and turned to look at
him. "I heard this was up here and I wanted to check it out."

He turned his back to the
railing, and propped his elbows on it as he leaned back. "If you look out
from the other side, you can see the ocean and a beach down past the trees a
bit."

I walked over to that side and
looked out. "Pretty."

He followed me over and the
cameraman quietly switched positions.

"Why did you bring me up
here?" he asked.

"Because I didn't have
enough one-on-ones this week to suit me. So I'm stealing one."

He moved closer to me. "And
did you pick me because I was the first one you saw an opportunity to sneak off
with?"

"You weren't the first one
in that position. You must have missed the one who pulled me away for a few
stolen moments."

"Emma, you know what I'm
asking. Am I up here because you're not fully sure of me and are trying to
figure me out, or is it because you are so sure of me that you wanted me up
here with you?"

I sidled closer to him and began
to whisper. "Right now, at this moment, in this stage of the game, you are
my frontrunner. And I pulled you up here to find out if spending some alone
time with you would change that, or solidify it."

He'd started smiling at the word
'frontrunner'. He pulled me in for a kiss. He walked me backwards, crowding me
into the corner of the balcony as he continued to kiss me.

We heard the music cut off and
the group below got louder. I pulled out of Jared's arms and looked over the
railing. "Oh, crap. They're all coming in."

He chuckled. "Afraid we'll
get busted?"

"I'm all for breaking the
rules, but I don't want them all to know when I'm doing it."

"Why?"

"Because, if they find out I
stole time with you, then they'll all be expecting me to steal time with them.
And then when I don't, they'll start analyzing what it means and why didn't
they get time while someone else did."

"They'll put it together
that we both disappeared."

"But if they didn't see us
leave together, and don't see us return together, there's an element of them
still wondering if we actually were together. Maybe they'll kick the idea
around that I just got too tired and stumbled down the path, back to my
house."

"So, we stay up here until
they are all settled in for the night. Should take maybe an hour."

I gave him a mischievous grin. "Okay."
I turned to him and gestured to the reclining chairs, "You up for drinking
our drinks and watching some stars?"

"Sure." He took my hand
and led me over to one. He sat down, scooted back in it, and pulled me down to
sit in front of him, leaning us both back.

We cuddled and talked. We spoke
about our favorite places we'd visited with our jobs, places we still wanted to
go see, our families and such. We'd had a good time, and as the clock ticked on
by, I'd learned that not only did his accent help to make his voice sound like
warm melted butter, but hearing it rumble through his chest as I cuddled
against him was even better.

It was three in the morning
before we decided the guys had enough time to get all settled and sleepy. I'd
expected Jared to walk me through the dark house and to the door, but I hadn't
expected him to follow me outside.

"A real man always sees his
date to her door," he whispered.

"I thought it was a proper
gentleman who did that," I whispered back.

"Being a proper gentleman
from time to time gets a real man invited on a second date," he said as he
took my hand to lead me down the path and through the brush to my house.

He leaned down and kissed me
goodnight before leaving me at my doorway.

I'd been told that there was
nothing pressing on this morning's docket for me.  Production was going to
spend it torturing the guys. So, I'd slept in, ate some fruit salad they'd put
in my fridge, and completed my workout in the upstairs gym so I wouldn't run
into any of the guys just yet.

By noon, production was calling
me to get me to come down to one of their trailers. It was primping day. They
waxed any hair re-growth they didn't care for, gave my hair a hot oil treatment,
discussed the state of my fingernails, had me try on outfits for the coming
week, dressed me up and sent me to another trailer for some photos to be taken,
and then released me to Troy.

He and I sat in a room in yet
another trailer, designed for its intimate atmosphere and acoustics. He showed
me some clips from one of the dates and then asked me interview questions,
expecting me to give answers. Long ones. I couldn't just say yes or no, I had
to explain myself, and my thinking, at each stage of each of the dates.

"I hope this gets
easier," I said after we'd finished with the last of the formal questions,
but were still sitting in the interview trailer.

"Which part?" Troy
asked.

"This part, right here. So
much has happened, and there were so many little moments, it all starts to
blend together. This last week was busy and flew by fast, but the memories seem
like a month ago. It's like you're asking me what I had for lunch on Tuesday,
three weeks ago."

He chuckled. "That's why we
show you the video clips, hoping to get the memories flowing. But, yeah, once
the guys dwindle down, you'll spend more time with each individual one and your
impressions of them will more readily stick to the forefront of your
mind."

"Who were the guys talking
about on the tennis court? Who's having issues?"

Troy just smiled at me.

"If whoever it is can't
handle being here..."

"Production is watching him.
We're trying to figure out what the deal is. Maybe it's just the stress. Maybe
he's just naturally loud in his private life, and he's struggling to keep the
volume down twenty-four/seven. Maybe whatever this situation is triggering is a
sign of an issue he needs help with. But maybe what's beginning to show is
violence simmering under his layer of control. Whatever it may be, we're trying
to see if it's something to be concerned about or not."

"Why won't you tell me who
it is?"

"Because that would be us
interfering with your choice, and we promised to help facilitate, not
interfere."

"But if he's getting
violent, or yelling at people without good reason-"

Troy raised a hand, "If he
turns violent or abusive in any way, we will pull him from the house and show
you the footage of his outbursts. But we don't want to do that without just
cause
for it. We'll see how it progresses as the population in the house begins to
dwindle. But, rest assured, we do not intend to let you be in harm's way. Even
if he were to sneak over to you and dodge cameras on the property, one scream
and a dozen people would come running. You know that."

"Yeah, okay."

"In the meantime, the
evening is scheduled free for you and the guys to catch up on whatever
individual business matters you all may have to deal with, phone calls and emails
and such."

"All right."

He handed me a folder.
"Everything is set for the group date tomorrow. If you'll just look
through this and pick your one-on-one destinations, and let us know who is
going on which date, I'd appreciate it."

"I'll send out an email
tonight."

"Excellent."

I left the trailer and made my
way back to the cottage. I tried to put matters of the guys out of my head as I
walked. After all the talking and reminiscing about the past week, I had to
wonder how this was all going to end. There were so many fears in my doing
this. Sending home the right guy because you were so overwhelmed by the mass of
men that you couldn't see your should-be husband standing in front of you, that
was the main one. Being handed sixteen men, all matched up just for you and not
finding a true keeper among them, that had been my other major fear. But the
one I hadn't considered, thinking that I'd found the one, getting engaged,
moving in and merging lives together, and only then realizing the man harbored
a dark side and I'd made the biggest mistake of my life, that was the one I
should actually be afraid of. And it didn't have to be the one people were
talking about. Who knows how all these guys acted in the privacy of their rigs,
parked out in the middle of nowhere, with no cameras or other people to be
conscientious of?

I took a deep
breath and pushed the pessimistic thoughts aside. I was going to walk into my
cottage, go into my office, and submerge myself into the familiar world of my
writing life. Maybe then, my head could clear and I'd be able to re-center my
perspective.

Morning came, I ran, I showered,
the MA tortured my face and hair, and off I went in search of breakfast with my
boyfriends.

And here's what I loved, they'd
left a seat at the kitchen island empty. A place was already set and juice had been
poured, and they'd saved the spot for me. If this is what I could expect when
they knew I'd be coming in the morning, I'd have to make plans to show up here
more often. My plate was whisked away as I sat, and it returned with yummy food
on it.

"What tortuous activities do
you have planned for us today?" Trevor asked.

"No torture. We've rented
out a yacht from noon until sunset. We'll be cruising the harbor, looking for
sea life, swimming, some jet skiing, and whatever other trouble we can find
before they feed us dinner at sunset. Relax, play, be inside the cabin, or
outside on one of two decks, whatever you want."

"Who all gets to go on this
one?" Tyler asked.

"You, Trevor, Mitch, Liam,
Mike, Stephen, Phillip, and Jared."

"Eight? Can you handle us
all?" Liam asked.

"That's why they rented an
entire yacht. There's enough room and activities that we can spread out. And
we'll be gone for enough time that I could, in theory, spend an hour with each
of you out there."

"Mini-date marathon?"
Mike teased.

I took a look around the room,
trying to gauge expressions. "Hey, I'm flexible. If you guys want one big
group date, so be it. If you guys want to do back-to-back, hour-long,
mini-dates, so be it, but I don't want to hear any arguments over who gets me
during the dinner hour. If you want to split it up, some large group, some
shorter individual times, fine. You guys plan it. And plan what each of you
will do with me, once you have me."

I finished my juice and stood up.
"We don't have to leave until eleven. In the meantime, I have a couple
personal things to see to. I'll be back."

Ardent winked at me on my way to
the door. It hadn't been lost on him that he'd scored a one-on-one date this
week. I glanced back at Drake and realized he was probably doing the math, too.
I gestured at them both to follow me.

The cameraman tailing me started
talking into his headset about how the princess was going rogue again.

I smiled to myself and led the
way out the front door and down the driveway.

"What's up?" Drake
asked.

"Nothing in particular. I
just figured you two might not want to hang around as the guys plot their
day," I answered.

"Where are we headed?"
Ardent asked.

"My fifth wheel." In
the silence following behind me, I figured the two men had shared a look with
one another. "There's something I want to grab for a little adjustment I
want to make in the cottage. Besides, I was told there had been packages
delivered here for me. They didn't know what they were, so they stashed them in
my rig. Production didn't want personal packages cluttering up the house if
they weren't necessary."

We'd reached the parking lot
where everyone's RVs were stored. I stopped in my tracks. "Who's
hog?"

"Trevor's," Ardent
answered.

"Ah, that makes sense. I
just didn't know if anyone else had hauled a motorcycle here and had gotten it
down to ride during our off hours."

"One of the other guys has a
motorcycle here, I've seen it around," Drake said.

I made a mental note and
approached my fifth wheel. I got out the key to unlock the door, but the door
was already unlocked. That threw me for a second, but I went ahead on in. I
spotted the second cameraman before I even stepped foot all the way in. I was a
week into this, and while I'd begun to learn to tune out the actions and sounds
of the crew, I still wasn't used to them trying to do everything they could to
stay one step ahead of me.

The guys followed me in while I
made my way to my small craft supply stash I kept and fetched my jar of rubber
cement.

Drake took a seat in one of the
recliners in front of the rear window.

Ardent was taking a closer look
around. "You've got a fair amount of bells and whistles loaded into this,
don't you?"

"Yeah, I do. I wanted my
home to feel like a home."

"You've got a washer/dryer
set up in here, too, right?" he asked.

I reached over and opened a
cabinet to show him. "All the comforts of home."

"Well," he said as he
dropped down onto the couch, "this is certainly an upgrade from the travel
trailer I tow out to dig sites."

"Yeah," I responded,
"but you also have an apartment to go home to in between your fieldwork
stints, I don't have that."

I grabbed a small knife from a
kitchen drawer and cut the tape on the boxes that production had set on my
kitchen island.

"Business or pleasure?"
Drake asked.

"Business," I answered,
pulling open the flaps. "These are the proof copies for my next book
release," I said as I pulled the paperbacks out of the box. "And
these," I said as I stared at the contents filling the second and third
boxes to the brim, "are press kits I agreed to put together and send to
one of the others on the team."

"Team?" Drake asked.

"Yeah, I'm be missing a big
RV convention that one of the travel magazines I work for decided to join this
year. So I offered to handle some of the grunt work for them, to try and balance
out my not being there to man the booth."

Drake got up, moved to pull out a
backless barstool from underneath the front half of the island, and sat down. "Put
one together and show me how it's done."

"You're going to help me put
the kits together?"

"Sure, I have nothing else
better to do today," he said.

Ardent pulled out the other
remaining barstool. "You might as well show me, too."

We spent the next hour compiling
sheets of informational handouts and coupon flyers, folding pamphlets from the
magazine and its sponsors, placing them inside folders, putting the logo
sticker on the front of the folders, and repacking them into the boxes. It was
nearly eleven, and I had to get back up to the main house.

They told me
to go, that they would finish up and use the included shipping labels to send
them back out through production. I figured leaving two of them behind would do
well enough to keep them from snooping through my stuff too much. They could
watch each other, and if they started conspiring, the cameraman would kick them
out before things went too far, I would hope.

The crew was still loading their
equipment into the luggage areas under the charter bus when I came running
around the front of it, thinking to see if production had brought down my bag.
If not, I'd have to run back up to the cottage and grab it before coming back
here and greeting the guys.

I rounded the front, right
quarter panel and ran flush up against a Highland wall.

Liam's arms clasped around me.
"A mite bit eager to get started, are we?" He then lifted me up and
carried me to the bus door, placing me on the first step up.

Oh, my God.
I totally had
an awestruck, giggly girl moment.

He winked at me and lowered his
voice, "You can crash into me anytime."

Some amused/embarrassed noise
came from me as I spun around and rolled my eyes at myself before climbing the
next two steps. I gathered my wits enough to remember to look for my bag, which
I found sitting in the front seat. Troy was sitting in the seat next to it,
waiting for me, grinning like a simpleton at my moment of fascination with the
mountain man.

I blocked out the guys boarding
the bus behind me as I gave Troy my full attention and slid into the space to
stand in front of the seat with my bag before dropping the jar of rubber cement
I'd brought back with me into it. I wasn't trying to ignore the eight reasons I
was here, I was trying to regain my composure by going into business-mode.
"I didn't think you were coming along today."

"I'm not," Troy said.
"I was just waiting to speak to you for a moment, on behalf of production.
I knew I'd have time while they figured how to get everything loaded. There're
too many decks and angles they need to cover on the boat today."

"Uh-oh. Have I been a bad girl?"
I asked before batting my eyelashes at him.

A hand landed on the small of my
back and I turned to see that Jared was paused by my seat. "I think we're
all finding out that you can be a bad girl."

"And let's not forget
dirty," Mitch called out from a few rows back.

The guys laughed as I looked
around and gave them all a rueful smile. I flipped my hair back over my
shoulder, moved my bag to the floor, then sat and turned towards Troy, hoping
to have more of a private conversation. I dropped my voice to a whisper, "What
did I do now?"

He smiled. "If you want to
be the one who keeps throwing the guys curve balls and stealing additional
time, so be it. Keep these guys on their toes all you want. But it leaves
production scrambling. They were pulling people out of bed the other night when
you decided to go on the rooftop. And we weren't prepared to keep a camera on
you earlier when you grabbed two guys and took them off to visit your
home."

"You said as long as I
followed some basic boundaries and procedures, I could handle this however I
wanted."

"And you can, that's not my
point. If you want to throw a pamphlet folding party, go right ahead. We can't
use much of any of the footage anyway, because it'll speak directly to one of
your jobs. And we can't cross into the line of promoting the company, past
having you on the show and speaking in vague terms about it. But you were
trying to give those two guys a glimpse into what life with you would be like.
And I encourage you to let them see who you are, but give production a head's
up."

"It was an impulse moment.
There was no planning ahead in my mind. The thought occurred and I extended the
invitation."

"Understood. Pull a
crewmember aside, tell them what invitation you're about to extend, then ask
the guys to follow along. At least then, as they're calling in additional
personnel, they'll know what direction to send them in."

I nodded. "I can promise to
try and keep that in mind."

"In the meantime, if you can
manage to think ahead a bit, tell them your ideas. Use them to set it up for
you, like the waterslide party. If you had thought ahead about the stolen time
with Jared, we could have lit up some candles, had some drinks on ice waiting,
set the mood a bit."

"Yeah, but then it wouldn't
have been stolen. There was something to standing in the shadows, then sitting
in the dark and watching the stars. It was simple, and felt more real."

"I get it. Just try and meet
them halfway, okay?"

"I'll give it a shot."

"All right. Production will
sit up front here and keep a camera aimed at you guys. So pick a seat halfway
back or so. Now let me out."

I stood, grabbed my bag, and
moved into the aisle to resettle somewhere else.

"Hey, Em!" Mike called
out as I found an empty seat in front of the guys.

"Hey, what?" I answered
back as the bus finally pulled away from the curb because production had
finally managed to make all of their equipment fit.

"Do you always live in your
bikini? Because every time I see you, it seems like you're just waiting to take
off your clothes and go swimming."

Laughter filtered around me from
both the front and back of the bus.

I smiled back at the guys. "I'm
not usually around the ocean and this much gorgeous weather at the same time.
I'm trying to take advantage."

"Where do you usually park
yourself?" Phillip asked.

"I prefer to be along lakes,
on islands, or near mountains."

The faces looking back at me
either smiled or frowned in accordance with their own preferences and lives.

I turned around, sat down, but
then turned sideways with my back against the window and my legs resting across
the empty seat next to me. I checked for emails and such while the guys around
me talked with each other.

After a few minutes, I began
sending out emails to Troy. Each one tagged with a subject line of one of the
many ideas that had crossed my mind in the last week. If they wanted to be
prepared for me, so be it. I wanted a bonfire down on that stretch of beach
below the main property. And seriously, there was a movie that had debuted in
the theaters last Friday night that I wanted to go see before I missed it
because I was tied up doing this. Those were the two items that would require
me leaving the property. I tossed a couple other ideas out there to him to pass
along, as well.

"Are you writing one of your
novels sitting there, or what? You just keep typing away," Stephen asked.

"Oh, I'm just plotting some
things, that's all," I replied.

Jared chuckled. "Plotting
your novel, or plotting against us?"

I moved a foot under me so I
could sit up higher and see them over the back of my seat. "Maybe I'm
plotting against production," I said with a wink at them.

We reached the harbor and the
driver took us as close to the docks as he could get us. The crew all piled out
and began unloading and hauling their gear to the boat on carts. We sat back in
our seats and watched them.

"You'd think they'd have
sent the crew and equipment over early," Tyler remarked.

"The boat crew doesn't come
into work any earlier," I told them. I stood up, "So what are your
plans for me?"

"We figure to get on, let
them go through whatever explanations and procedural drills they have to do,
and when they dismiss us to enjoy the ride, we'll do the marathon mini-date
thing," Trevor said.

"We figure to each take
thirty-five, forty minutes. That should give us all about two hours for dinner
at the end of the day," Liam added.