Page 72 of Bargain with the Bachelor
“Yeah. I do. Always have. And I’m not even sure it was unrequited. But I blew it. Things were going great the other night… and then I freaked.”
“The famous Hunter Bestia lost his ice-man control? Hey, I’m just kidding. The right woman can do that to you, and a little polar-cap-melting passion’s not a bad thing.”
I shook my head. “Some of the things she was saying about me… she thinks she knows me, but she doesn’t. She’s got me built up to be some kind of hero. I don’t want her to find out about my past… about my dad. And it’s inevitable. When she finds out, she’s going to be sorry she said those things to a white-trash nobody, a convict’s son, a—”
“Hold on there,” Reid interrupted. “You arenottrash. And you’re not your dad.”
“I could be—easily. It doesn’t matter how much money I make, how much power I gain. I’m still his son. When I saw him that night he got arrested, he said…”
My voice broke, and I stopped, shaking off the thought. “It doesn’t matter. Kristal was right—you don’t really ever change who you are at your core. You’re always essentially the same person.”
Reid’s hand on my shoulder clamped down harder.
“That’s right. And you’re one of the best people I’ve ever known, nowandback then. When Mara split, you were there for me—you’ve always been there for me and everyone else. You’re good to everyone—except yourself. And that needs to change. You need to let other people do things foryoufor a change. I’m going to start by helping you fix things with Kristal.”
“How? She’ll barely even look at me, much less talk to me. She said we were ‘better as friends.’ It’s too late.”
“Don’t worry,” Reid said. “I have a plan. First… we need to talk to Hap.”
Chapter Twenty
Good at Pretending
Kristal- Later that night
My gaze bounced from Hunter to Hap to Reid then made the rounds again.
“You want me to what?” I could hardly believe what I’d heard coming out of the director’s mouth.
“It’s just for the cameras,” Hap assured me. “The network looked at the dailies, and they like the show, but they want to see it ‘spiced up’ a little. They want an in-house romance. It happened naturally at the Boston Tech House, and they loved it.”
He’d been traveling back and forth between the houses, shooting in both locations to give the network an idea of how the competitive teams would look pitted against each other in separate houses.
Now we were all gathered in the great room of the Eastport Bay house.
“If we had another girl on the show, I’d ask her to do it, but you’re all we’ve got. And I’m afraid everyone here is firmly hetero, so there are no other possibilities. Come on—it’s all fake. It’ll be funny.”
I shook my head. “I said from the start I wasn’t doing this if it was going to turn into some sort of dating show.”
“It’s not a dating show. It’ll be just a few scenes here and there. We’ve come this far—might as well finish strong. And it’s just for a couple more weeks.”
I eyed him suspiciously. “Who would I be ‘involved’ with?”
“Well, I’m the director, so I’m out. No one would buy that you’d be involved with Josh or a grumpy sod like Reid.”
“Hey,” Reid protested.
“Seriously dude, you’re about as charming as a hemorrhoid these days—no offense.”
Reid squinted and gave him a syrupy grin. “How could I possibly take offense at being compared to a swollen rectal vein?”
“Paul is out because of the allergy issue,” Hap continued. “No fun kissing a guy who’s got to stop and blow his nose every few seconds. Tuck’s barely around, and when he is, he’s yawning the whole time. Aiden’s so shy he can barely look at you, so it won’t make sense if he suddenly turns into some kind of lothario. I mean, everyone knows reality shows are fake, but we can only strain believability so much.”
He paused. “That leaves Hunter.”
My reply was instantaneous. “No. It’ll never work. We have zero chemistry.”
Hunter narrowed those spectacular turquoise eyes at me, and my stupid heart responded, revealing my lie by flip-flopping vigorously.
