But by midnight, most of them had fallen asleep on the couches and floor. One girl was even lying on the kitchen island. I didn’t want to risk anything, so I followed my bathroom escape plan. It was a low window, making it easy to get out.
I had a blanket wrapped around me, although I didn’t need it. It wasn’t cold. It would have been back in Colorado.
Dante was in the gazebo, lying on a blanket and propped up by a bunch of pillows. He had something in his hand that looked like paper. He stood up when he saw me coming and smiled, making my heart thud uncontrollably.
I am engaged, I am engaged, I am engaged.
Right when I got to him, I accidentally stepped on the edge of my blanket, propelling myself forward. He caught me, thanks to his athletic reflexes. And nicely formed biceps. And . . .
“Are you clumsy because you’re finally starting to fall for me?”
I straightened up, ignoring the jolt that made my pulse go haywire. As far as he knew, I had zero feelings for him. So presumptuous. A little bit right, but presumptuous. “As if. I am not clumsy—and how long have you been waiting to use that line?”
“A while now. You’d be surprised by how few opportunities I’ve had to use it.” He always managed to make me laugh, even when he irritated me.
“I got these photos for us to go through,” he said. He was holding a head shot of each remaining contestant. “It took some convincing, and based on the look I got, I don’t want to know what the PA thought I needed them for.”
He sat back down, and I took a spot across from him. Sitting next to him was just asking for trouble.
“First one. Jessica.”
“Jessica R.,” I corrected him. “She wants to be a model, and she’s on the show because she thinks it’ll make her famous. Even though it almost never, ever does. Every time somebody thinks they’re the exception I want to be like, Here’s a lance, there’s a windmill, have at it.”
“Literary humor,” he said. “I like it. So, not here for the ‘right reasons.’”
“Definitely not.”
The next picture was of the emotional Jen L. “Hair extensions. So fake.”
“If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle blonde.”
I hit him with one of the pillows while he laughed, fending me off. “I may color my hair, but it is all mine. It is totally different.”
“Oh, obviously,” he agreed.
“Next picture.” I ground the words out, ignoring his fading laugh. He held one up.
“Ashley S. She’s meaner than a skilletful of rattlesnakes. She keeps trying to insult me, but I don’t respond. I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed woman. There’s no sport in it.”
He looked puzzled. “But she always seems so nice.”
“I’m sure she does. She’s not.”
“And there’s the other Ashley.” I pulled her picture out of the group. “She giggles at all of your jokes, and we both know there has to be something wrong if someone laughs at your jokes.”
“You laugh at my jokes!”
Yes, and there was something very wrong with me because I was getting married in a few weeks and I was here at midnight with another man in a gazebo thinking impure thoughts, and having more fun and feeling more alive than I had any right to.
“Tiffany.” He held the picture up so I could see it.
“Let’s just say science isn’t her forte. Like Grandma Lemon would say, cute as a button, and nearly as smart as one.”
“You’re saying she’s dumb?”
That seemed so mean. “Dumb is probably too harsh a word. Suggestible, maybe? Logically flexible, perhaps?”
“Science isn’t my forte either. Our final year in boarding school Rafe took my final science exam for me.” I swear, half my holiday in Monterra had been filled with stories about all the times Rafe and Dante had switched places and the mischief they’d caused.
“Where were you?”
That devilish gleam was back. “Indisposed.”
Translation? With a girl. Of course. “It isn’t just that she isn’t great at science. If her brains were dynamite, she still wouldn’t be able to blow her nose. She literally thinks the moon is made of cheese.”