Walk of Shame (29 page)

"Sure. But it's not always
the exact same group of guys. Plus, I can't guarantee compatible ages. I don't
know who will or will not have kids when we do."

"Still though, it would be
good that they'll have other kids they know onsite."

"There are a few singles
that work the circuit, but there are some others that bring their families
along. And still others who do half and half, the family comes depending on the
area we're working in."

"That's cool."

"Yeah, we have a little
community going on. Which can mean babysitters for us to have a night out or
watch during the workday when you have an event to be at and I'm stuck working.
And, when you have to go do a convention or something when I'm onsite, you can
either take the rig and truck and leave me the motorcycle and tent, before we
gave the kids. Or, load up the truck and do the hotel thing wherever you have
to go, leaving kids with me. The beauty of towing the motorcycle is that we'll
have two vehicles."

"That sounds like a
plan." I beamed him a smile. "You just took away all my excuses for
not picking you."

"You had excuses for not
picking me?"

"Hey, I'm looking for
excuses to ditch anybody. If it comes down to logistics, so be it."

He leaned back in his chair and
stretched his leg out under the table, considering me for a moment. "You
can't possibly be in love with all five of us."

"Truth?"

"Please."

"I'm in the process of
falling, but I haven't fully fallen for anybody, yet."

"Anything in particular
holding you back?"

"Fear."

"Of what?"

"Of choosing the wrong one.  But
before this week, I was focused on weeding through the masses and testing
connections to make sure they were real. Now I'm trying to transition into
pushing those connections and seeing which ones fall short."

"You have no direction to go
in for Sunday, do you?"

"Do you honestly want to go
down this particular path with me? Do you want to hear about how I'm dreading
Sunday to the point where I'm refusing to let it enter my random thoughts
because for the first time, I don't have a preconceived notion as to who I'm
getting rid of?"

"Yes, I do. I might be
impatient for a final decision, but that doesn't mean I don't want to
understand what's happening on your end."

"Okay. I thought I had this
week figured out. There was one that I thought I was sure was leaving and that
the one-on-one with him would confirm it. But, I promised myself that I'd go in
with an open mind and he managed to impress me by reinstating a connection with
me that I hadn't felt since the beginning. Now I can't get rid of him. Because
what if he's the right one for me, but I was about to miss out on him because I
was blinded by having too many other guys to see his value."

He gave me a sympathetic smile.
"You're not going to make us pull names out of a hat, right?"

"It's a thought that's
crossed my mind."

Lightning lit the sky behind us.

"That's over the mainland,
right?" I asked.

He stood up and drifted across
the balcony to get a better look. "Yeah. The storms weren't supposed to
get into the area until morning."

"And how good are you at
navigating through a storm?"

He studied the position of the
storm in the distance. "If I were more familiar with the area, I might be
willing to chance it. But, it's dark, the water's sure to be choppy. That's an
electrical storm, too. I'm not sure I'd get us back into the right dock. I
don't want to be out in that storm, searching the coastline for it, either. And
I'm not trusting GPS signals to be instantly right on point, with that cloud
cover."

I looked over to the camera crew
and gave them a questioning look.

"We're not going to try to
navigate it. We aren't from around here, either. And there's no cell phone
service this far out," the camera guy said.

"Hold on," the sound
guy said. "I think there's a satellite phone packed in our gear on the
production boat. I'll call in and see what they want to do." He put his
equipment down and went inside.

I turned to Mike. "You
planned this, didn't you?"

He grinned. "No, I'm afraid
I wasn't the one who thought to blow the storm in hours ahead of
schedule."

I feigned a look of
disappointment. "You mean you don't have that kind of power?"

He laughed.

I turned and started gathering
dishes from our dinner and Mike joined me. We carried things down to the
kitchen, where the guy from catering told us he'd handle dealing with the
dishes and leftovers.

The sound guy came back in.
"They don't want boats coming in or going out of port with this storm.
They said they could get a chopper from outside the range of the storm to fly
over and pick some of us up and then drive us back into the city, but it might
take them awhile to find a company willing to do that, since this isn't an
emergency." He stopped talking but he looked like more was said than just
that.

"Spill it," Mike said.
"What do they want us to do?"

He shot us a look. "They
were quick to point out that the house has three bedrooms and two
sleeper-sofas."

"And?" I asked.

"And that it wouldn't be a
bad thing for ratings if you two got stuck here and the guys realized you two
really did spend the night away from the house together," the sound guy
said.

"Does your job ever make you
feel dirty?" I asked him.

He nodded. "Sometimes, but
then I get over it," he answered with a wink.

I laughed and nodded as I turned
to Mike, "How much do you want to bet that production planned this. They
are a thorough bunch, they had to have been keeping an eye on the weather and
they made no moves to alert us, so that we'd head back in time."

"Well," he said with a
nod of agreement. "We can either spend the evening bashing production. Or,
we can embrace the evening and enjoy being here and away from the whole drama
factory."

"There'll only be more drama
tomorrow."

"How much do you care, right
at this moment?"

"A lot. But I've been so
relaxed for the last couple of hours that I don't think I care about how much I
care."

Mike laughed. "I was told that
set of floor to ceiling windows we saw on the side of the house is where the
master bedroom is."

"Oh, hell. I should sleep in
that room. I would care about caring even less."

"It's yours."

"We should go check it
out."

We inspected the rest of the
house, and found a Jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom, in full view of a wall
of windows and large skylight. Someone from production, who'd staged the house
for us, had placed bathing suits, candles, and two bottles of champagne in ice
buckets, with two pieces of stemware.

"Setting the stage
much?" I asked.

"I swear I didn't ask them
to do this. Otherwise, I would have suggested coming up here instead of
exploring the island earlier, because I sure didn't know the storms were coming
early."

"You didn't?" I asked
with a raised eyebrow.

"No. While I enjoy every
minute I spend with you, I have no desire to deal with those guys tomorrow morning.
I'm all about heading back as soon as those storms clear out. And I'll be
sneaking back into the house, so I'm in my room come early morning. Those are
questions I don't want to deal with."

"Well I'm all for changing
and getting into that tub, for now."

"Let's make that
happen," he said with a grin.

We changed, lit candles, settled
in, and watched the lightning play in the distance. We drank champagne, we held
each other close, and we kissed until we were a panting mess.

Later, wrapped in fluffy robes, we'd
stretched out across the California king-sized mattress in the master bedroom,
while continuing to wait for the storms to leave. The camera guys had come in
and filmed us from time to time, but kept drifting out of the room because all
we were really doing was talking.

It was getting late, and the
storms weren't yet clearing out. Sleep was rapidly becoming the next logical
pastime. We'd decided that I was going to sleep in the master bedroom, because
I was the pretty, pretty princess in this scenario. He was going to be sleeping
in one of the other two, smaller bedrooms. The show's crewmembers would be
keeping an eye on the weather for us so we could leave as soon as it cleared
out. The current estimates, according to the National Weather Service, were
that the storms would remain in the area until around three a.m.

"It won't be long before
we're headed into the final stages of this," Mike said in a low voice as
we were winding down from our long day.

"I know, for as hard as this
is getting, I'll be glad to finally get you guys out of town. I think you're
right about all you guys together in that house. That's probably why production
starts to separate everyone. They can't keep their dreamy, romantic image alive
if the guys all start beating the shit out of each other," I said with a
teasing smile.

He gave me a sad smile in return.

"What's the matter?" I
asked.

"The twenty-four hour lockdowns."

I kept silent.

"We cuddle in a bed and your
shirt comes off, which I enjoyed, don't get me wrong. But these twenty-four
hour lockdowns put you in a room with only one bed in it at the end of the
day."

"Yes, they do."

"Look, I'm going to sleep in
the other room because I know damned right well that if I climb under the
covers in this huge bed for the night with you, we'll end up naked."

I nodded. "Which is why I
didn't argue with you when you volunteered to take another room."

"Right now, I'm behaving
with the hope that you're behaving across the board and not getting naked with
anybody, except for maybe the friend your sister sent you."

I smiled.

"But I can't promise to
behave without your insistence while sharing a bed with you, when the
time-crunch really hits. There'll be a feeling of it being the last chance to
make an impression and spend time together. It'll be a conversation you'll have
with all three of the guys you choose."

My gaze drifted back to the
windows. "I know it will."

"I'd like to register a
request," he said with a nod.

I forced my eyes back to his, but
kept silent. I feared he was going to ask me to promise not to have sex with
any of them, and I wasn't willing to commit to that kind of agreement when I
had no idea where my heart would be with who by that point.

"If you are going to choose
me to be one of those guys, if I'm a serious contender for your heart, let me
have the last of the three lockdowns."

"Okay." It seemed like
an easy enough request. I'd figure out how to make it work out with production,
should it become an issue.

"You don't even want to know
why?"

My eyes glanced over to the camera
watching us and then darted up to the microphone hanging from the sound guy's
stick.

"If you want to tell me, yes.
But you don't have to." Or, you could tell me on our next run, when the
cameras aren't in our faces.

"I don't like the idea of
sharing you. You know that."

"Right."

"If we do sleep together
that night, and then you sleep with one of the others, and then choose me, and
I find all that out, I know myself well enough to know that I'm going to have a
problem with that. A big one."

I just looked at him, trying to
figure out how I wanted to respond to that.

"Look, I know I have no
right to tell you what you can and can't do on your dates with the others. And
I'm not trying to, as much as I wish I could. I'm just saying, in order to
prevent a problem between us down the road, let me have the last
lockdown."

"How will that have made
whatever I may or may not do on the first two lockdowns okay for you?"

"Because I'll have been the
last one. And you'll not have slept with anybody else after sleeping with me."

"And you'll be okay with
that?"

"Yes. That, I can make my
peace with."

I nodded. "Okay."

"Well, okay then. I'll head
into the other room. If we're going to have to be up so early, you should get
some rest now. You have another big date tomorrow and I don't want to be blamed
for your being cranky."

"All right. Thanks for the
head's up."

"Thanks for listening."
He gave me a hug and left the room, with the camera crew following behind him.

Finally alone with my own
thoughts, I took off the robe and settled into the comfy bed. I was going to
have to come to terms with the idea that I was rapidly getting to the point of
holding all of their hearts in my hands. I had known that the further I delved
into this, the more everyone was going to become emotionally involved. And
while I struggled to narrow down whom I liked and enjoyed the best, they were
investing every piece of this into just me. They were more involved and focused
on me at this point than I was on them, simply because my attention was so
divided. This had just moved into the realm of my needing to be more than fair.
I needed to treat them with care. I'd seen the hurt on Drake's face last
Sunday, and regretted being so nonchalant with him.

Of course, when it comes to
dumping somebody who's so invested in the relationship, there is no way to
break up with them and have them not be hurt. I rolled over with a sigh and
stared out the tall windows. The deeper into this I got, and the more I
narrowed the field down, the more complicated it all became.

I'd drifted in and out of sleep
throughout the short night. I didn't like the idea of breaking four hearts. And
yet, I didn't see any way around it. And that, coupled with the very real
possibility that I'll end up with nobody and there'll be a total of six broken
hearts, was enough to keep me tossing and turning.