Romancing Miss Right (15 page)

“Is it? Says who?”

Marcy whipped around, her jaw dropping as
Craig dropped over the veranda wall and into her private garden,
stumbling on the pavers. She flicked a glance to the producer
running her confessional, who looked mildly panicked, but spun her
finger in a keep-going gesture, even as she quietly radioed for a
second camera crew.

Marcy sprang out of her chair. “What are you
doing? You can’t be here!”

“Why not?” he asked, strolling over to her
with a hitch in his usual cocky swagger. “Are you trying to hide
something from me? Because if you are, you might want to rethink
telling eleven million home viewers.”

“How did you find me?”

“Followed the lights. It wasn’t hard. Not
many of the resort’s guests are using industrial grade lighting on
their verandas tonight.” He grabbed one of the empty wicker chairs
and spun it to face the one she had been seated in for her
confessional. He twisted awkwardly, wincing as he dropped onto the
chair.

“Did you hurt yourself?” she asked, dropping
back into her own chair. “I should say it serves you right.”

He carefully straightened and bent his left
knee, poking at it. “I guess my landings could use some work.” He
jerked his head back toward the veranda wall. “I’m lucky I only had
about an eight foot drop. I probably would have killed myself if I
tried to do that back at the mansions.”

“You wouldn’t be the first ambulance called
after someone tried to scale it.”

“It’s practically a
Romancing Miss
Right
of passage.”

She groaned at the pun and he grinned.

“I’d planned to climb the wall back at the
mansions, but the exotic adventure portion of the program began
before I had the chance.” He leaned back in the chair, stacking his
hands behind his head like he was settling in to stay a while. “So
tell me, is Fiji the perfect place to fall in love? Or was that
Bora Bora? Or Vanuatu? We keep moving around so much, I can’t keep
them straight.”

“What are you doing here, Craig?”

“Tempting you to come over to the dark side.”
He wagged his eyebrows.

She frowned repressively, folding her arms
protectively across her middle. “Try again.”

Something flickered across his face, as if he
was trying to decide whether to go with another joke or try a
different strategy.

“You don’t have to be the funny guy all the
time,” she said.

“Don’t I?” he countered lightly. Always
light. Always surface. That was Craig.

She stared him down, willing him to give her
something more, something real. The cameras were still on them, but
this wasn’t an official date. It was as close to an unscripted
moment as they were likely to get.

For a long moment, silence stretched between
them, until she became certain he would break it with another joke.
But Craig always knew how to surprise her.

He shrugged, dropping his hands and his
cocksure pose. “When people tell you your whole life that you’re
the funniest guy in the room, you start to feel like you’re a liar
or a fake or a failure if you aren’t
always
the funniest guy
there. That’s all the world wants from me.”

Whoa. When he went below the surface, he
really went for it.

Marcy felt understanding shiver through her,
starting at her soul and working out through her limbs. She
swallowed. “My dad—I love him like crazy—but he’s always praised me
for being so clever. My sisters are the nice one and the
adventurous one, but I’m his clever girl. Over and over, I’ve heard
that, my entire life, and even though it’s a compliment, it feels
like this command hanging over my head.
Be clever, Marcy
.
Like there is always this expectation and when I’m not
clever—because no one can be clever all the time—then he’ll find
out that I was never the clever girl he thought I was and I’ll lose
all of his love and affection if I’m not always the clever girl.
Which is
stupid
.” She grimaced. “In my head I know it’s
silly and that my dad would never stop loving me just because I had
a dumb moment, but my heart and my gut are singing a different
song.”

He nodded. “It feels like you’re getting away
with something. Like they’re all going to find out one day that you
aren’t funny after all. And it will all be taken away.”

“By some man with a clipboard who arrives at
your door to check on your cleverness.”

“You can’t trust a man with a clipboard.” He
met her eyes—the man gave incredible eye contact. “So we’re both
screwed up.”

“We are. But maybe that means you don’t have
to be funny with me and I don’t have to be clever with you.”

“I like making people laugh.” His dark eyes
added,
I like making
you
laugh.

“And I like being the clever girl. But we
don’t
have
to be the funny one and the clever one. Not when
it’s just us. We can just be.”

He arched a brow at the cameras. “Is it ever
just us?”

“There won’t always be cameras.”

His eyebrows flew up. “Are we talking about
the future? Life after the show?”

“It doesn’t last forever. In a few weeks,
I’ll go back to being a happily-ever-after pimp and you’ll be on
your way to being the next Johnny Carson.”

Something unreadable shifted in his gaze.
There, then gone. Fleetingly, she wondered if that was how he
looked when he was lying—Craig who was always brutally honest.
“Yes, I will.”

Why would he start lying now?

Chapter Seventeen

Marcy flicked a glance at
the cameras. She knew she should send Craig away. The viewing
audience was going to be screaming at their televisions, telling
her what an idiot she was. She’d officially become that girl who
knew a guy was bad for her, but kept him around anyway.

There was just something about Craig.

He understood her, without even trying. The
conversation she’d just had with Craig, she could never have had
with Daniel. He wouldn’t have understood about that fear of being
found out, because he wasn’t self-aware enough to know how often he
was putting on an act.

Marcy cringed at the thought. That was
unkind—her mother would be ashamed of her for thinking it—but she
couldn’t bring herself to trust Daniel, who always seemed to know
the right thing to say. Craig was always honest with her, even when
she didn’t like what he said, but Daniel was a façade of perfection
and she couldn’t seem to stop searching for cracks, trying to see
the real man behind the mask even he believed was real.

The other Suitors were all just competing for
her. She could see she was a prize to them. A goal. They liked her
well enough, but the prospect of a future relationship never really
entered into it. Nice guys, some of them, and all of them gorgeous,
but they didn’t occupy her thoughts the same way. Really, even
Daniel didn’t come close to matching the amount of time she spent
thinking about Craig.

He frustrated her, but she couldn’t seem to
send him home. Craig Corrow, her favorite bad influence.

If she picked with her head, there was no
contest. It was Daniel every time. It would be a popular decision.
They would be America’s Sweethearts and live happily ever after. He
ticked all the boxes and then some. A real life, genuine Mr.
Perfect to her Miss Right.

But if she picked with her heart…

Her heart was an idiot and a masochist. It
kept leaping toward the man who had come right out and told her he
would rip it into tiny little pieces if it advanced his career.

Stupid heart.

Craig reached across the distance separating
them. The chairs were too far apart for him to play with a lock of
her hair like he usually did, but he grazed the back of one finger
along her forearm, making goosebumps jump out in stark relief.

“I was jealous today, while you were out with
Daniel,” Craig admitted. “I hated thinking of the two of you
together.”

Her epically stupid heart lurched eagerly at
the sign that his emotions were engaged—even if it was just
jealousy. “Is the great Craig Corrow admitting to having
feelings
?” she teased.

He shrugged and reached for her hand, tugging
her until she came out of her chair. “Possessiveness?
Competitiveness? Hell, yeah. I want to win as much as the next
guy.”

“So that’s all it is?” She resisted his hold,
forcing him to reel her in.

He pulled her down onto his lap, the position
playful and easy and in direct contrast to the dark challenge in
his eyes. “I told you I need to go farther in this
journey
to advance my career.” His arms looped around her waist, holding
just tight enough for her to know she wouldn’t be moving unless he
wanted her to. “And I want to make sure no goody goody farm-boy is
the one you’re having dirty dreams about tonight.”

“Craig…”

He stole whatever else she would have said
with a kiss that burned through her thoughts like a wildfire.
Something scratched at the back of her thoughts, trying to tell her
that this was a bad idea, but his lips coaxed and cajoled her past
good sense.

His hands, rough and deliciously masculine,
snuck beneath the hem of the light, loose blouse she’d worn for her
date with Daniel, skating up the length of her spine to tug at the
strings securing her bikini top. She moved restlessly in his lap,
caught between leaning into his touch and twisting away from it.
The firm ridge of his erection brushed her hip. One calloused palm
traced the path of her ribcage, his pinky teasing the soft skin of
her stomach while his thumb crept beneath the loosened cup of her
bikini top, stroking the under-curve of her breast.

She tangled her hands in his hair as the kiss
went on and on, an infinite feedback loop of lust and need. His
thumb advanced, teasing closer, until it rolled over her tightly
budded nipple and she shivered, his name tripping off her lips on a
gasp.

A footstep scraped over the pavers. A
whispered question. “Do we keep filming?”

Marcy choked and jerked back, shoving Craig’s
hands away from her and frantically checking her clothing. “Shit.”
Her gaze darted to the cameras and she tried to leap off Craig’s
lap, but he still had a grip on her and she fell back against him
when he didn’t immediately release her.

“Hey, take it easy,” he crooned.

“Let me up,” she bit out through her
teeth.

He held his hands above his head, like a
hostage at a stick-up. “It’s fine. No one saw anything they
shouldn’t.”

She hoped like hell that he was referring to
the fact that her blouse had concealed everything his hands were
doing and not saying the cameras should be able to watch him get to
second base. She scrambled to her feet and retreated to her own
chair, but her agitation wouldn’t let her sit. She circled it until
the chair was between them, a physical barrier lest he reach for
her again.

“Was that for me or the home audience?”

Something flashed across his face, too fast
for her to read, and then he lowered his hands, spreading them
wide. “Can’t it be both?”

Wrong answer, asshole
. “I think you
should go.”

In that moment she wasn’t certain whether she
meant he should go back to his room or he should just go home.

He rose, sobering, seeming to realize he’d
pushed her too far. “Marcy, it was a joke.”

“Just go.”

He nodded, moving toward her suite rather
than the wall he’d scaled before. “I’ll see you Tuesday.”

Tuesday. The Elimination Ceremony. The last
one before she went home to meet the Final Four’s parents. She was
tempted to tell him to go right now. To do it before the temptation
to keep him around overruled her good judgment again. But she said
nothing as he moved past the cameras who had recorded her latest
lapse in good sense and through the veranda doors out of sight.

There was a pause—far too short a pause—once
he was gone and then Avery sidled forward cautiously. “Marcy? Can
we get a reaction reel?”

Her hormones had just made an idiot of her on
national television and they wanted her to tell the cameras how she
felt about it. Of course they fucking did. She gave Avery a look
that could melt steel. “No. You can’t.”

Avery flushed. “Right. Let’s pack it up,
people. Miss Right has an early morning.”

An early morning. An early date. With Aidan.
Who never tempted her. Never made her feel wild or on the brink of
losing control. She shuddered, watching the crew efficiently gather
up their gear and leave.

Thank God for Aidan.

#

“Where the fuck have
you
been?”

Craig cringed as his attempt to stealthily
re-enter the suite he was sharing with Aidan was foiled by the man
himself.

Fucking Aidan.

He’d hoped the man would already be catching
his beauty sleep for his dawn date the next morning, but no such
luck.

If he’d snuck over the wall back at the
mansions, he would have been screaming the news to the rafters,
trying to use the information to psych the other Suitors out, but
he was already walking a fine line with Marcy at the moment. He
didn’t need to look like the kind of guy who bragged about his
conquests on top of everything else.

But he was caught now. If he made up some
story, it would be too easy for Marcy to contradict it and getting
caught in a lie always felt worse than owning his actions.

He was boxed in. So he did what he always did
when he was out of options. He cranked up his confidence to eleven
and put on his cockiest grin. “Where do you think?”

Aidan’s expression instantly darkened and
Craig almost regretted the words. He liked Aidan. They’d actually
developed a friendship of sorts as they were whiling away the
endless hours of waiting for Miss Right. That should be the name of
freaking show.
Waiting for Miss Right to Make Up Her Fucking
Mind
.