Extreme Bachelor (40 page)

“Where’d you find her?”

“You were right. She hooked up with
someone.” The lie rolled easily off Michael’s tongue, just like the
old days when everything he said had been a lie. It made him feel
old.

Jack winced a little. “Sorry, bro. I know
you’ve got a thing for her.”

“Yep,” Michael said. “But shit happens.” And
with that, he walked away, unwilling and unable to speak of it any
further.

He walked along the edge of camp, far enough
out where he wasn’t easily noticed in the night, and therefore
wasn’t forced to talk to anyone, but close enough that he could see
everyone in camp. He had a destination, of course.

Leah was sitting out around a small fire
with Trudy, Jamie, and Michele. Leah was doing the talking for
once—the others looked spellbound by whatever tale she was telling,
her hands flying and punctuating the air with the sketches of her
words. Michael wondered what she’d told them about her absence
today, if she’d used the same lie he’d used. Rex had impressed upon
Leah the need to stay silent about Juan Carlo’s true motives until
they had charged him. If ever.

He stood in the shadows, watching her for a
long while, but all he could really see was her hitting him this
afternoon, telling him sorry wasn’t good enough. After all he’d put
her through, Michael believed he now understood—he couldn’t just
pick up where they’d ended things. It just wasn’t good enough
anymore. He’d come around to his feelings far too late—the damage
had been done, exacerbated by an absolutely surreal experience with
Juan Carlo.

After a while, he turned
and walked back into the shadows, away from that end of the camp,
knowing that he really
wasn’t
good enough for her—hell, he didn’t even know how
to talk about what had happened. He had no idea how to pick up the
pieces. And frankly, he had his own shit to work through. At the
moment, his relationship with the one woman he had ever really
loved seemed like an insurmountable mountain.

THE next day, the group packed up and headed
to Bellingham to get settled in before filming began on Tuesday.
T.A.’s plan to unite the women and reward them with the rafting
trip seemed to have worked—they were in good spirits, a tight
group. For the first time since they’d begun training the women,
the guys felt optimistic that they could and would pull off a
war.

For two days since the incident at the
cabin, Michael had not spoken to Leah. She hadn’t spoken to him,
either. It was as if some huge wall had suddenly been erected
between them that neither of them could scale. On those few
occasions their gazes locked, she glared at him. She was, he
assumed, furious for what had happened to her, and he couldn’t
blame her.

As sorry as Michael was about it, he had
reached a conclusion. He couldn’t possibly apologize enough for who
he was or what he’d done, and frankly, he didn’t know if he should
even try. Yes, he’d made mistakes with Leah, huge, colossal
mistakes. But he wasn’t sorry for his service to the United States.
He couldn’t have possibly predicted Juan Carlo would reappear,
either. But that was the crux of the problem—he would never be able
to erase the things Leah wanted erased. Maybe what he had always
believed of himself was true. Maybe he was such a good spy because
he never had been able to form deep, committed relationships. Maybe
he was truly meant to be an extreme bachelor.

It was sobering, disappointing, and even a
little heartbreaking for a man who’d had such high hopes.

But it was real.

IN Bellingham, the soccer moms were put up
in a cheap hotel, two to a room. Of course Trudy and Leah took a
room, and managed to finagle an adjoining room with Michele and
Jamie. They thought it was funny that they had Starlets on one
side, and Serious Actresses on the other side, who actually lived
up to their moniker by posting times that everyone could run
through their lines each night.

The first call sheet listed all the soccer
moms, and when they arrived on set, the director explained that
they wanted to do all the ensemble filming up front and as quickly
as possible so they could send most of them back to L.A. and keep
down costs. The schedule called for them to wrap up the big battle
scenes in a week or so.

Michael, Leah noticed, was nowhere to be
seen as they began to stage the first battle scene. And it wasn’t
until they started filming that she did catch a glimpse of him,
standing behind the director, his hands shoved in his pockets as he
watched the run-through.

Everyone was very excited about the start of
filming. Charlene Ribisi handed out little gold soccer ball key
chains to commemorate the event. The crew had swelled to dozens,
and they surrounded the women and their battlefield. It was a
moment Leah had looked forward to all her life, a moment she should
have been absorbing through her pores.

But instead, Leah could hardly concentrate,
because she kept looking at Michael across the way standing with
the other T.A. guys, or laughing and smiling at some women,
wondering why he hadn’t tried to talk to her or at least try and
apologize since they had come down off the mountain, as she had
begun to think of it.

He should have at least
had the courtesy to explain it all to her. She had spent a
harrowing night and day in the company of an international
terrorist—perhaps not a very good one, but a terrorist
nonetheless—and she deserved an explanation. If the roles had been
reversed, and she had been in Michael’s shoes, she would have at
least apologized to him for his having suffered through it. And she
definitely would have owned up to the issues between them,
but
nooo
, Michael
did nothing like that. Quite the contrary—he seemed to be avoiding
her.
Avoiding
her! As if she was the problem. It infuriated her—she’d been
through the greatest trauma of her life, no thanks to him, and he
was treating her like she had the plague.

Damn
him
. Damn Michael J. Raney
anyway!

She was so infuriated that
when the director yelled
Places
for the first take, she scarcely heard him, and
therefore, missed her cue, started late, and ended up crashing into
one of the Serious Actresses and muffing the stunt. Even worse, the
Serious Actress took great offense to it and managed to elbow Leah
in the ribs hard enough to knock her down before Harry
called
cut
.

The T.A. guys trotted out to have a chat
with the women who didn’t get their stunts exactly right, and lucky
her, it was Michael who appeared at Leah’s side, his big hand on
her elbow, pulling her up.

“Okay,” he said, all businesslike, as if
they had never been anything more than a trainer with his soccer
mom trainee, “you remember the drills we did in boot camp? You want
to do a one, two, and then a big leap to time the contact just
right.”

“I
know
,” Leah said, shaking his hand
off her elbow.

“Good. Then you ought to get it this take.
No problem, right?”

“Yes. I will get it right,” she said
sharply.

Michael looked at her, his expression
maddeningly calm and infuriatingly kind.

“Is there anything else?” she asked, her
voice dripping with ice.

“Not unless you have a question,” he said as
the director yelled for everyone to take her place.

“Nope. No questions. It’s all pretty clear
to me,” she said, nodding emphatically.

“Great,” he said, and turned on his heel and
walked off. Just like that. Just like nothing had happened.

Leah was still fuming when the second take
was set into action, and took two huge enviable Superman strides.
So huge, in fact, that she almost overran her target, colliding
with the Serious Actress who had elbowed her, and spinning the
woman around and into the bushes exactly as she was supposed to do.
Perhaps a little too forcefully, but correctly nonetheless. When
the director yelled cut, Leah high-fived Jamie and did a rooster
strut off the battlefield.

By the end of the day, they had the first
battle scene in the can. And Leah had not required any more
instruction from the Extreme Bachelor, which was a good thing, as
he and Nicole were sitting under the awning yucking it up.

This was it, she figured. He was done with
her, moving on to the next conquest—not that anyone working this
film thought that Nicole was any sort of conquest. But it was just
exactly what she’d feared before the Adolfo–Juan Carlo thing, that
he would eventually move on to the next woman, because that is what
Extreme Bachelors do for a living.

“Good,” she muttered to herself. “Good
riddance.” She stalked off in the direction of Trudy, who she knew
would have something fun planned to take her mind off the extreme
bastard.

Trudy did have something fun planned: an
outing to Wal-Mart.

FORTUNATELY the shooting schedule was so
intense that the next few days flew by, and Leah had very few
opportunities to even see Michael. Most of the time he was holed up
with the T.A. guys, making last-minute changes to the stunt
choreography. But sometimes she’d catch him talking to another
woman, always in a deep conversation that made him smile
beautifully, and that made the skin around his eyes crease in the
way she loved.

But it wasn’t until the last day of filming
for her that she actually ran into him—literally, as it turned out.
The director told them to take ten, and Leah was jogging back to
the catering tent when she turned to shout at Trudy to keep her
paint gun. That was when she collided with Michael, who had stepped
into her path. He caught her by the arms and set her back. “Are you
okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, straightening her
camouflage jacket. “Sorry.”

“No problem. So listen, we were watching the
last take, and we think you need to adjust a little to the left,”
he said, pointing to a line of fake trees. “What we want is for you
to run and hit dirt right in front of that stand of trees, do the
tuck and roll, and come up firing at Mary.”

“Mary,” she said.

“Right. Skinny brunette.”

“I know who Mary is.”

One of Michael’s brows arched. “Okay. Cool.
So do you want to go over the stunt before we do the next
take?”

He had to be insane. “No, I don’t want to go
over it. I’ve been over it so many times that I can do it in my
sleep.”

The other brow rose up to meet the first.
“Good,” he said. “That’s what we need.” He moved as if he was going
to walk away.

Leah couldn’t believe this—almost a week had
gone by since the nightmare she had lived, and he had yet to say a
word to her. “Michael!” she cried before he could escape.

He paused. “Yes?”

He said it as if she were a lowly production
assistant, not worthy of his time. No wait, scratch that—he spent
more time with the P.A.’s than anyone.

“What is it, Leah?” he asked, clearly
impatient to be on his way.

It was not an easy question to answer,
because it was everything. “Where is Juan Carlo?” she demanded for
lack of a good jumping-off point.

Michael took a quick look around before
answering. “He’s locked up. But don’t worry—there is no way he can
get out.”

“And who were those guys who took him?” she
asked, folding her arms.

He sighed, shoved a hand through his hair.
“Leah . . . I think the less you know, the better.”

“Were they CIA?”

“Some,” he said, looking very uncomfortable.
“All government.”

“Can they just
do
that?” she asked,
both hands slicing the air now.

“Do what?”

“Do what? Jesus, Michael, do you have to be
so obtuse? Weren’t you in the cabin with me, or did I just dream
it? Can those men just sweep in and take someone away like that?
Just take him off and lock him up?”

For some reason, that made Michael smile.
“Apparently, they can.”

Leah sighed irritably, punched her hands,
encased in fingerless gloves, to her waist. “Just please give me
the bottom line, can you do that?” she blurted. “I don’t know what
any of this means.”

“You mean when the government steps in?”

“No, no,” she said with
great exasperation for his thick-headedness. “What it means
for
us
. Assuming
there was an
us
to begin with.”

He didn’t answer. He
studied her, his eyes roaming her face and his expression—she’d
seen that expression once before, a long time ago, and Leah felt
her heart slip in her chest.
I’m
leaving
. . .

“Honestly?” he said softly. “I don’t know
anymore.”

Her heart plummeted, her breath left her.
Whatever she thought, his response surprised her, stunned her. “So
. . . ,” she said, fumbling for words, fidgeting with her
fingerless gloves. “Then . . . I guess that means it was too much
to hope for, is that it?”

He shrugged, looked very uncomfortable.
“Maybe it was.”

Shit. As angry as she was with him, she
realized immediately that was not what she wanted to hear. She
glanced down at her hands, her fidgeting more frantic now. “Jesus,
I don’t know what to think anymore,” she said weakly, feeling
herself close to tears. “What was this all about, anyway, Michael?
Were you just hoping you could finally commit, but realized you
can’t do it? Or do you fear that more strange men will suddenly
appear out of the clear blue to terrorize your life?” She suddenly
looked up. “Don’t answer—you don’t need to answer, because the
truth is, I can’t handle it. I can’t handle the uncertainty with
you, Michael. I can’t handle the constant wondering, and the
uncertainty and the fear—”