Extreme Bachelor (13 page)

From: Lucy Frederick

To: Leah Kleinschmidt

Time: 10:56 pm

Would you PLEASE adjust the color on your
computer screen? That was gold! Sheesh!

Subject: Men of Mystery

From: Jack

To: Mikey

Time: 10:57 pm

Yo, we’ve got a problem.
Nicole doesn’t want someone named Amy on her side and has
apparently convinced the producers Amy should be moved, which means
we have to retrain about four women. Can you show up at 8 tomorrow
for that? Other than that, just wondering how the spy angle is
working for ya.


WHEN Michael arrived the next morning, he
was surprised to see Leah was one of the women switching
battlefield positions. She and Jack were already going through some
of the moves.

As she ran through a new obstacle course,
Michael got Jack over to the side and asked, “Of the twenty women
you had to move around, you had to choose her?”

“I had to,” Jack said, watching her closely.
“She’s one of the best we have and easiest to retrain, and we have
to get one of them trained on the rooftop-to-rooftop leap.” He
glanced at Michael from the corner of his eye. “Don’t worry. I
won’t let her hurt you.”

Michael snorted.

When it came time to do the
rooftop-to-rooftop leap— which was really done with cranes and
ropes and mirrors for the viewing audience at home—Michael moved to
help Leah up.

She gave him a quick, thin smile. “That’s
okay—I can do it.”

“It’s not as easy as it might look—”

“Really,” she said, cutting him off. “I can
do it.” Michael raised his hands in the air and stepped back, and
Leah scrambled up and away from him.

A moment later, she went tumbling off the
tightrope, her fall stopped by a harness around her waist and legs.
She hung there like a sack, bouncing up and down, her eyes as wide
as saucers. Below her, several women had arrived at work and were
peering up at her, asking each other what she was doing.

Michael strolled up to where she was
bouncing; her head level with his, only upside down. “That’s what I
was trying to tell you. It’s a little harder than it—”

“Shut up, Michael.”

He nodded. “Okay . . . but I think you
should pull your shorts down. People are beginning to talk.”

She almost killed herself trying to do that,
squealing and bouncing and twisting while the other women
laughed.

Michael couldn’t possibly have been more
entertained.

“Man,” Eli said, walking up to stand next to
Michael as Leah bounced. “That really sucks.”

Michael nodded and smiled up at Leah, who
gave him a murderous look.

“So we’ve got another small crisis,” Eli
said as they watched Leah struggling with her shorts. “You know the
gal who’s always got a problem?”

“Tamara?” Michael asked.

“Yeah, Tamara. She started this thing about
how a particular rope fiber—which we just happen to be using—has
been proven to cause skin rashes in some people, and the next thing
you know, half the soccer moms are up in arms. Someone has an
audition for a commercial and can’t allow her hands to have a rash,
and another one said she is extremely sensitive to certain fibers.
Lemme ask you,” Eli said, turning to face Michael for a moment.
“Have you ever once in your life thought about what kind of fiber
is in anything? We will never transform these women into believable
soldiers.”

“They aren’t supposed to be soldiers. They
are supposed to be women who think they’re soldiers. They’re
supposed to be a little clumsy.”

“A
little
?” Eli snorted. “We’re lucky
nobody has died yet.”

“It’s all going to work out,” Michael tried
to reassure him, but Eli stubbornly shook his head. “Give it a
rest, Pollyanna.”

“Ex-
cuse
me, is someone going to help me
down?” Leah shouted.

Eli sighed and climbed up to untangle her
safety ropes. Michael caught her when she came down. She landed a
little shakily, grabbing Michael’s arm to right herself. But then
she smiled up at Eli, one of those beautiful, nut-cinching smiles
that only Leah could summon, and she laughed, and her hands were
suddenly moving, pointing at the rope ladder and the cranes with
both hands as she explained how she had fallen.

That was something Michael had always
admired about her—she had that ability to shake off anything . . .
or at least he was sincerely hoping she still had it.

After the guys got her out of the harness,
Leah trotted over to the awning. Michael followed her.

She obviously didn’t notice him—she bent
over a cooler, fished out a bottle of water, then stood up and did
a weird little backward hop when she saw him. “Oh, hey,” she
said.

“Are you all right?”

“Me? Sure,” she said, nodding a little too
enthusiastically.

Michael couldn’t help it—he kept seeing her
bouncing on the end of the harness and laughed.

She continued to drink her water for a
moment, then lowered it and said, “What?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s clearly something.”

He shrugged, tried to keep the smile from
his face. “I was just thinking of the time we were in Aruba, and
you dove off the boat—”

“Shut up!” she exclaimed, turning red.
“You’re not supposed to remember that.”

“Oh, I remember,” he said, nodding. “A full
moon rising is hard to—”

“I can’t help that a rogue wave took
one-half of my bathing suit away.”

“A rogue wave? Like a tsunami, or what?”

“A wave. I told you it was a wave.”

“I think it was just sloppy diving,” he said
with a grin.

She gave a snort of laughter and didn’t try
to deny it.

“That was some fine rope work out there,” he
said.

She paused in the drinking of a long draw of
water. “Are you kidding? I almost killed myself?”

“Maybe so—but you looked good doing it.”

“Hey, Austin Powers!” a woman called, and
when Michael glanced over his shoulder, he saw Jill, jogging by on
her way to the tuck-and-roll clinic. “Where’s your groovy
sidekick?” she asked, and then laughed loudly, as if that was the
funniest thing that had ever been uttered by a human being.

Unfortunately, so did Leah.

Michael sighed wearily.

Leah screwed the lid on the bottle and
looked at him with sparkling blue eyes. “So, Austin . . . I had a
call last night,” she said, pushing her hair off her shoulder.
“Imagine, Mini-Me calling me out of the clear blue.”

“Imagine,” Michael said with a wry
smile.

“All right, so maybe you
aren’t as delusional as I thought,” she said. “Maybe you really
were a spy—oops, I mean
operations
officer.
”

“Senior operations officer,” he corrected
her with a bow of his head. “So you believe me?”

She shrugged. “I can’t help but believe
you—I can’t for the life of me imagine why three grown men would
make up such a stupid lie.”

Michael grinned broadly. He had just cleared
the first major hurdle. “That is about the best news I’ve heard in
years.”

“But now you’ve got that little secret off
your chest, we can put the whole thing behind us, right?” she said,
sweeping one arm behind her. “We’ll just be civil, like we said.
Right?”

No, not right, not even remotely right, but
he thought the better of making his case at the moment and merely
nodded. “If that’s how you want it. Civil.”

Her smile faded. “That’s not how I want it.
But that’s how I can live with it,” she said softly.

That stung, and Michael didn’t know what to
say to it.

“I better get back to work,” Leah said, and
ducked out of the tent before he could think what to say.

He watched her walk away, her hips swinging
just the way he remembered them. He had a peculiar discomfort in
his chest, like he needed a drink, or a smoke—and he didn’t
smoke.

Jesus, this wasn’t him, this guy who wanted
to smoke or squeeze the life out of something. He couldn’t remember
the last time a woman had gotten away from him as fast as Leah had
just done. But he damn sure could remember what it felt like when a
female was repulsed by him, and he didn’t like the feeling that
gave him in the least.

Leah’s aversion to him was enough to make
most grown men bow out, to turn around and walk the other way. But
it was having a curious effect on him. He was now more determined
than ever to win her over—he just needed a better angle. Plan A, in
which he had envisioned telling her the truth and watching his
second chance at happiness fall into his lap, had been a total
bust.

Therefore, it was time to move to Plan B.
He’d have to get right on that and come up with a plan.

But luck was with Michael, because he
inadvertently got a Plan A-and-a-half later that afternoon, an hour
or so after the women were released for the day. He’d stayed behind
to talk to the guys about some budget problems that were cropping
up, and they hung out for a while, running through some contingency
plans. When Michael left, the guys were still talking about
something the women had done that day that baffled them, but
personally, he didn’t want to rehash it—he had other things on his
mind.

As he walked out to his car he noticed that,
along with the autos of a few production staff stragglers, Leah’s
clunky old Escort was still at the far end of the lot. The hood was
up, and beneath the hood, bent at the waist, wearing a denim skirt
and a small T-shirt that didn’t quite cover her belly, was
Leah.

Michael stopped, glanced heavenward, and
grinned at the opportunity that had just been handed to him on a
silver platter.

He strolled up to her car, unnoticed by her,
primarily because she was talking on her cell phone and poking
around under the hood. “Stupid-ass car,” she muttered, and bent her
head at a funny angle, trying to see something beneath a couple of
cables. “Okay, I see the thingie you’re talking about. I think,”
she said, and paused, listening to the person on the other end.
After a moment, she said, “I hope you are right, because, dude,
there is no way I can afford the cab fare home—huh? The what? Hey,
wait,” she said, and grabbed something deep in the bowels of the
engine and made a strange grunting noise. “I wonder if it’s this
thing?”

“Maybe I can help,” Michael said.

She came up so fast at the
sound of his voice that she banged her head on the open hood with
a
thump
. “Shit!”
she hissed, and emerged from beneath the hood, one hand on the top
of her head where she had banged herself, the other still holding
the phone. Her eyes narrowed when she saw him. “Oh. Michael,” she
said, her voice gone flat, and repeated into the cell phone,
“
Michael
. Just a
guy I used to know.”

Ouch. “Looks like you could use some
help.”

“No, I’m—huh? No, Brad,
it’s too much of an imposition,” she said to the phone, dragging
her fingers through her hair. “He’s too busy and too . . .” —she
glanced at Michael from the corner of her eye, her gaze flicking
the full length of him— “
nicelydressed
,” she muttered
softly.

Michael ignored her and moved so he could
see under the hood. He could smell a mix of sweet soap and perfume
as he stood beside her, and wished to heaven that his body wouldn’t
react so quickly to just a scent. “I can take a look,” he said, and
leaned over the engine, bracing his hands against the frame of the
car.

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to help.”

Leah sighed. “Okay, he’s looking,” she said
into her phone.

Michael had no idea who this guy Brad was,
but he wanted to get rid of him as soon as possible. Fortunately,
he instantly spotted Leah’s problem—a battery cable was loose. A
good guy would fix it in about a nanosecond and send her on her
way. Too bad for Leah, because he wasn’t a good guy—he damn sure
wasn’t going to fix her car and send her off to Brad. So he didn’t
say a word, just poked around, inspecting the most obvious parts,
and then finally straightened up and sighed deeply.

Leah was standing completely still, like a
statue, staring at him and holding the phone to her ear.

“You have a problem,” he lied solemnly.

“He says I have a problem,” Leah quickly
repeated, her eyes widening with terror. “Okay,” she said, nodding
in response to whatever Brad had said. “Just a second.” She lowered
the cell a minute. “What is it?”

He made a grim face and looked down at his
hands. “Do you have something I could wipe my hands with?”

Leah instantly dipped down and retrieved the
backpack she had left leaning up against the tire of her car. She
dug inside, pulled out a bandana, and thrust it at him.

Michael took the bandana and methodically
wiped his hands. Leah’s gaze never left him, watching him closely,
as if she expected him to total the car on the spot. Which, if it
were up to him, he’d do in a moment. Leah deserved to be driving
something better than this piece of shit. “It’s the distributor
cap.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding.

“It’s cracked.” He winced
sympathetically.

Leah frowned and looked at her car. “It is?
I could have sworn I just had that checked.”

“Had what checked?”

“You know,” she said,
waving her hand. “Caps and all that stuff—oh,” she added, obviously
getting another message from Brad. Her brows dipped into a V. She
squinted at the engine, then at Michael. “But I thought you checked
that sort of thing—oh.
Oh
,” she said again, her frown
turning into a painful wince as Brad obviously explained to her
what it meant if her distributor cap was cracked. “Oh. My. God! You
have
got
to be
kidding!” she cried into the phone and threw her head back, eyes
closed, one palm pressed against her forehead. She groaned, “This
is the worst news ever.”