Falling for Mister Wrong (7 page)

Six months of nothing and now she was calling
him on New Year’s Eve? What the fuck?

He stared at the phone, debating whether to
answer it and tell her to go fuck herself or ignore it. He waited
too long and it went to voicemail—the little missed call icon
popping up cheerfully on the screen. As if that one call hadn’t
shattered him.

Fuck. Fuckety fuck fuck.

He waited, but no message appeared in his
voicemail. Whatever she’d wanted, she’d wanted to speak to him
personally. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to leave a recording, proof
that she’d called. Maybe she was tired of Andy already and looking
for someone to cheat on him with.

The thought made his dinner lunge up toward
his tonsils.

Maybe she wanted to beg forgiveness again. Or
bitch at him about the lawsuit he’d filed to get the money he’d put
into the house back.

She wasn’t supposed to call him. The lawyers
didn’t want them talking to one another directly.

But Tria had never been very good at doing
what she was supposed to. Case in point: The Wedding That
Wasn’t.

The piano upstairs began to pick out the tune
of Auld Lang Syne.

Should old acquaintance be forgot…

If only.

Chapter Seven

By eight o’clock on Tuesday, Caitlyn had
thrown up from nerves twice and switched to an all chewable Tums
diet. Her mouth tasted like she’d been licking a chalkboard, but at
least her stomach had stopped doing backflips.

Mimi and Ty had come over that morning to
install a DVR—just in case reliving the horror once a week wasn’t
enough for her. Mimi had wanted to stay and watch with her, but the
idea of Mimi watching her watch herself had sent her running for
the Tums and thankfully Ty had managed to drag Mimi out.

It was bad enough knowing the entire town
would be watching. There had been an article in the paper that
morning. Sort of a local girl makes good thing. Very
flattering.

Horrifying.

She wasn’t an idiot. She’d known this was
coming. She’d just indulged in selective amnesia to avoid thinking
about it.

It had been easy while she was on the show.
Whenever she started to fret about it Daniel or Miranda or one of
the seemingly dozens of segment producers would be there to
reassure her that everything was going to be fine, America was
going to love her and all of this was going to be worth it when she
and Daniel were married and living out their happily ever
after.

But now she was alone, engaged to a man she
could barely speak to and wasn’t allowed to see, and keeping the
biggest thing in her life a secret from everyone she cared about,
while everyone in America was free to speculate about her love
life.

Caitlyn reached for the Tums as the clock
ticked over to eight and the red light fired on the DVR.

It was on.

She didn’t have to watch. If she didn’t look,
maybe she could pretend it wasn’t happening.

Stalling, she turned her back to the
television, moving to the kitchen table to investigate the package
that had arrived earlier today with an LA postmark. It said it was
from Miranda, but if Daniel wanted to send her something, he
couldn’t very well use his own name. He’d sent her a text
earlier—
the world stopped when I saw U, baby
—but that
couldn’t be all the contact his fiancé merited on a day like
this.

When the box had been delivered, she’d
handled it like it might explode, but now she grabbed some scissors
and began hacking at the tape. Anything to avoid looking at that
DVR light.

The packaging came loose and she peeled back
the flaps of the box. Inside, an industrial sized bottle of her
favorite liquor was nestled in something white and gauzy, along
with a note. She plucked the note up, her heart picking up the pace
at the thought of reading Daniel’s words, his thoughtfulness.
Hidden beneath the note was a squishy maroon stress ball in the
shape of a heart.

But it was Miranda’s name inside the note.
Miranda’s handwriting.

Relax. It’s never as bad as it looks on
screen. P.S. The padding is from the props department. Everyone
sends their love.

God. How terrible must she look if Miranda
had to send her an economy bottle of marshmallow vodka to dull the
pain?

She pulled out the bottle and the stress
ball, investigating the loops of gauzy white material. It seemed to
be one long strip, winding around on itself. She hauled it out of
the box, hand over hand.

When she realized what she was holding, a
strangled sound burst out of her mouth, half laugh, half sob.

A veil. They’d sent her a wedding veil. The
kind that would drag the floor if she put it on her head.

She bit back the urge to laugh again—afraid
if she started she wouldn’t stop and hysteria was probably a bad
way to start the night.

Vodka, however, sounded like an excellent way
to start the night.

No harm in it. She wasn’t going to be driving
anywhere. How much trouble could she get into sitting in her own
house, watching her own public train-wreck with a tall glass of
marshmallow vodka on the rocks?

Caitlyn slapped the veil on her head and
reached for the biggest glass she had.

#

“
I’ve got thirty beautiful women just
dying to meet you. Are you ready for this, Mister Perfect?”

Daniel chuckled and flashed his
aw
shucks
smile—and Caitlyn slammed her finger down on the pause
button, glowering at those pearly whites.

It might have been paranoia, or a side effect
of the vodka she was slurping out of the giant plastic Rockies
souvenir mug, but she’d become more and more convinced as she
watched the scene over and over again that the perfect farm boy
smile was a lie.

On her first viewing, she’d mostly been
relieved that she only had a grand total of about three minutes of
screen time. Her first meet with Daniel had been suitably
cute—though she hadn’t noticed any hearts or flowers exploding in
either of their eyes.

The show had put each girl in a setting
designed to demonstrate her particular talents—the LPGA golfer
putting in a ball gown on the lawn, the bakery owner in the kitchen
icing cookies—so of course Caitlyn had been at a piano. Thank God
her fingers knew how to play through nerves. She’d dashed off a
quick Bach Prelude…and then she’d had to face him.

She hadn’t jabbered incoherently, which was
good, since she hadn’t been able to remember a single word of what
she’d said. She didn’t really remember the first time she saw
him—just that she had been so nervous she’d been worried that her
shaking knees would be visible through the flowing skirt of her
gown. No grenades of true love exploding in her heart and reshaping
her world. No symphonies in the air. Just nerves.

There was no evidence that the world stopped
for him either. If it was love at first sight as he had professed,
he was doing a good job of slow playing his hand as he told the
cameras that she looked like an angel—too pure and sweet to
touch.

Elena however was very touchable.

Caitlyn tried not to fixate on the way his
tongue had practically fallen out of his mouth when he’d walked
into the dance studio and seen the Latina beauty, or the guttural
whoa
that he’d practically groaned as she glided toward him
oozing sex. She’d pulled him into her arms to teach him a basic
tango step and the cameras had begun strategically filming from the
waist up—
it’s a family show, folks.

Apparently there were angels and then there
were sex goddesses. And Caitlyn fell squarely on the “cute” side of
the spectrum. Damn it.

She watched the rest of the show, dreading
seeing her own face again, but she had stayed clear of most of the
first night drama, trying to fade into the background during the
infamous challenges, and so there wasn’t much footage of her. Other
than the Elimination Ceremony, where Daniel offered her the fourth
ring, she was invisible.

Thank God.

But even as she’d grown more and more
relieved by her lack of notoriety, something else began to bother
her. Tickling at the back of her mind, a little scratch of unease,
fueled by marshmallow flavored clarity.

His smile.

His familiar
aw shucks
farm boy
smile.

She’d restarted the show, watching back
through it for the smile. And there it was. Beaming back at her.
All teeth and folksy charm and sparkling eyes.

So why couldn’t she escape the thought that
it was a lie?

Did it look too smug? Too self-important?

The cell phone shrilled.

Caitlyn jumped, sloshing the smooth, sweet
vodka of the heavens, and dove for the phone. “Daniel?”

“No. Miranda. Sorry.”

Caitlyn slumped against the kitchen counter,
miscalculated slightly and slid down the cabinets to plunk on the
floor. She may have had slightly more to drink than she thought.
“Miranda! Hey. Did Daniel’s smile always look like that or did you
edit it?”

A low chuckle hummed against her ear where
she’d pressed the phone a little too tight. “I see you received the
vodka.”

“I did! And thank you. It’s my favorite.”

“I remember.”

“Veil was a nice touch.” She set the vodka
against her leg, dipping a finger into it and lifting it to her
lips to lick off the drops of sugary goodness.

“I’m glad you found it amusing. How are you
coping?”

Caitlyn waved a hand in a so-so gesture, then
realized Miranda couldn’t see her. “He really likes Elena’s boobs,
doesn’t he?”

She imagined she could hear Miranda’s
grimace. “We have him on camera saying flattering things about most
of you ladies, but we’re trying to create drama and Elena’s overt
sex appeal is going to be a major point of conflict for some of the
girls in future weeks so it got a lot of screen time.”

“Yeah, no, I get it. They’re awesome boobs.”
She squinted back toward the television—the screen wasn’t large,
more a glorified computer monitor than the fifty inch mega-screen
most people seemed to have these days. Normally she liked that it
was small, easily ignored, but now she was irritated that she
couldn’t see his questionable smile clearly from the kitchen.

Miranda was speaking. Something about plastic
surgery. Caitlyn made what she hoped was an appropriately
interested noise in reply.

Miranda paused. “You should get some sleep.
It won’t look so bad in the morning.”

Caitlyn hummed agreeably and thumbed the
phone off after they said their goodbyes. No texts from Daniel. No
call. Nothing to reassure her that he liked her boobs too.

They were nice boobs, dang it. Not as big as
Elena’s, but at least Caitlyn wouldn’t have back issues later in
life from carting around cantaloupes on her chest.

She used the counter to lever herself back to
her feet, nearly rolling her ankle before she found her balance on
the little red high heeled sandals she’d decided completed her show
watching ensemble. After collecting her Rockies cup of vodka, she
made a remarkably steady crossing to the television.

Daniel was still smiling.

Maybe it was the lighting that made him look
fake.

More light. Then she could see him better.
Caitlyn turned, kicking aside the veil, and charted a course to the
wall switch behind the potbelly stove.

She flipped the switch. Sparks crackled and
sprayed, shooting out of the switch.

Oh shit.
Caitlyn yelped and flung the
liquid contents of her glass at the sparking switch.

For a moment nothing seemed to happen, then
whoosh
. Fire burst in her face, eating up the wall, heat
slamming into her face like a slap. She screamed, leaping
backward.

Or attempting to leap. Her heel caught on the
train of her veil and she tumbled to the ground, landing hard on
her butt. The Rockies cup plinked to the ground and rolled away
from her hip. She tried to scramble backward, crab walking away
from the flames as they traveled eagerly up the wall, but the veil
tangled around her limbs, clinging and cloying.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Her house was on fire and
her brain couldn’t seem to catch up. What was she supposed to do?
She knew throwing water on grease fires was bad, but what were you
supposed to do with electrical fires?

Obviously not throw 90-proof liquor on them,
but she hadn’t been thinking. Her hand had jerked out throwing the
alcohol before she’d even registered what she was doing.

Daniel had poured wine over a brazier in
Spain to smother the fire and it had worked like a charm. Maybe
there was something about the percentage of alcohol?

The flames roared and crackled.

Shit. Her apartment was on fire and her brain
was jabbering about alcohol content.

Think, Caitlyn
. Call 911. Find a fire
extinguisher. Save the piano.

Priorities.

A rain of thunder pounded against her door.
“Ms. Gregg?” a deep voice bellowed through. “Are you all
right?”

Oh thank God. Help
.

But was she supposed to open the door?
Adrenaline wasn’t burning away the alcohol fast enough and she
couldn’t think. Something about oxygen feeding fires and not
opening doors and windows?

The fire spit and sprayed, raining flaming
embers of wall down onto the gauzy kindling of the veil. The tulle
went up in flames.

A scream ripped out of Caitlyn’s mouth.

The door exploded inward.

He was huge. Magnificent. A dark god storming
down from Olympus. This was no angel, no savior. This was Mount
Freaking Doom coming calling. The entire world went into slow
motion. She could see each individual particle of ash floating in
the air as he loomed there, framed by the doorway. Her jaw dropped,
what remained of her mental functions abandoning her, leaving only
one word echoing in the empty cavern of her mind.