Page 83 of Hold Me Today

I toss the water bottle into the open trash can near the ladder, then begin to pace. Dragging my palms over my face, I twist around and square off my hips. “For the record, I’m not engaged.”

“I’d hope not,” Mina says all prim and proper, “since I let you fuck me. Three times now.”

Herdon’t-fuck-with-metone brings a smile to my face. She’s feisty as all hell and I love it. “Not engaged,” I repeat more for her benefit than mine. “I went on the show because I wanted to find someone. I wanted someone tolove, the way my mom loves my dad and Effie loves Sarah. By that point, Effie had forced me into all the usual outlets after everything with Brynn—online dating, blind dating, literally dragging me into a coffee shop and shoving me into a seat with the first random woman she saw.”

“She was married, wasn’t she?”

I bark out a laugh. “She sure as hell was. We ended up talking about the Patriots before I darted the hell out of there.” Glancing at the half-painted wall to our left, I go on. “So Effie surprises me one day with this crazy, big news. Tells me all about how it’s this huge opportunity that I can’t pass up.”

“She got you on the show . . . you said that before.”

Nodding, I look back over to Mina. “She sent in my bio, some newspaper clippings of recognition Stamos Restoration has received over the last few years . . . and the video of Brynn telling me at the altar how she’d fallen in love with her boss.”

Mina’s hands come up to cover her mouth. “Oh,Nick.”

My smile is a little weak this time around. “Yeah, I know. Awkward, right? Effie and I had a long chat and she knows if she ever pulls another stunt like it, I’ll tell Sarah about how she used to wear her underwear over her head until she was eleven. But I guess the idea of a guy like me showing up on a show likePut A Ring On Itwas too hard for them to pass up. I was golden-boy material.”

Mina’s smile matches mine, turned down at the edges and completely somber. “Good, ol’ Saint Nick.”

“Yeah.” God, how I hate that nickname. “So, I went on with high hopes. Or, at least,reasonablymediocre hopes because clearly I was having no luck on my own. The producers . . . well, they also pushed a hard bargain during the audition process. They told me all the things I wanted to hear—that they had done compatibility tests based on our personalities, and that Savannah and I were a perfect match. There was other stuff that I know now was bullshit, but yeah, they got me, hook, line, and sinker. I was tired of going on dates that led to nowhere, even more tired of myyiayiaasking when I was giving her grandbabies, and I thought—stupidly, maybe—that letting someone else choose for me might be for the best.”

“And you liked her?” Mina asks. “Savannah Rose?”

“I liked her, except that it never went further than that, not for me. I kept pushing at first because I know I’m not the most social guy. Maybe the chemistry wasn’t there because I was—”

“Being surly?”

I let out a low chuckle. “Calling it like it is—I expect nothing less from you.” When she opens her mouth to protest, I hold up a finger and cut her off. “But, yeah, surly. Rigid. However you want to put it. Savannah and I ended up getting along wicked well. We’re more alike than I think either of us realized at the beginning of the show. Boston construction guy meets Southern, aristocratic socialite. The producers fucking loved the idea of it, and the thing with TV is, they manipulate shit all the time. For all I know, they could have been pressuring her to keep me on for the sake of ratings.”

Mina’s mouth purses. “I won’t lie about the fact that I’ve watched every season ofThe Bachelor, but still . . . that seems wrong to me.” And then, good soul that she is, Mina yanks off her gloves, puts her hands on her hips and says, “If that’s the case, I feel bad for her. TV or not, no one should be forced into something they don’t want. It’s not right.”

Her righteous sense of justice has me crossing over to her, clamping my hands down at her side, and lowering my mouth to hers. She exhales into me, and I swallow the breath to keep as my own. My cock twitches in anticipation, the greedy bastard.

“What was that for?” she whispers.

I brush another kiss over her mouth, this one lighter. “For being you.” One more kiss because I can’t help myself. “Butyou’re right. It’s wrong. There’s only one time I can specifically recall Savannah putting her foot down and telling the producers to fuck off. It was the first night and we’d all just hauled ourselves out of the limo. What viewers don’t realize is that process takes nearly six hours. It’s brutal.”

“It sounds awful.”

“I never want to see the inside of another limo again—at least not when it’s jampacked with eight other dudes.” Narrowing my eyes, as though that’ll bring me back to that moment when all I could smell was cologne, booze, and B.O., I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth. “There was this one guy. Owen. He was all tatted up—you could see the ink at the collar of his dress shirt and down to his fingers. We sat in that limo for long enough that I could start reciting the guys’ family members by name, but he never said a single word.”

Mina touches a finger to my loose T-shirt. “Maybe he was nervous.”

“I think he was. I was already in the house by the time he met Savannah outside, but then shit hit the fan. I heard her talking to one of the producers in the bathroom. She was, ah”—I scratch my jaw—“demanding that he be sent home before the ring ceremony. She didn’t want him there and she made it known.”

“That’s . . . uncomfortable.”

It’d been the sort of TV drama producers only wish they could manufacture—and it’d been completely authentic. From the way Owen stood like a granite statue as Savannah asked him to go, to the way he’d reached for her, with a look on his face I’d understood instantly.

He’d looked at her the way I’d stared at Brynn, right after she dropped the bomb of all truth bombs.

I don’t know how Savannah Rose and Owen knew each other, but it was clear that they did. And it was clear to me, even if not to anyone else, that she wouldn’t change her mind about keeping him around. The sound of the door slamming shut behind Owen had reverberated through the house, shocking every contestant into silence.

I clear my throat. “Maybe, subconsciously, I realized that they had some sort of unfinished business. She kept me around, and I kept hoping that this wasitand I’d wake up one morning and realize I loved her.” Snorting derisively, I fold my arms over my chest. “That didn’t happen. I demanded to talk to the producers, then the director. I wanted to tell Savannah, privately, that I wasn’t the right guy for her. They wouldn’t let me. We were in different housing complexes and they kept her in this . . . bubble, almost, where they plucked her out for dates and ceremonies and put her back when she wasn’t needed. So I did what I had to do.”

“Nick . . .”

I look her in the eye. “It seemed cruel to dump her on TV when I was meant to be proposing. So, I let her reject me.”

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