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“DOES IT BOTHER YOU to kiss a man with twelve million people watching?” The question came from out of the darkness behind the camera.
Anda Weiss blinked against the harsh trio of stage lights trained on her. Then she blinked again, trying to buy a little time to figure out an answer that didn’t sound slutty or overly prim or out-and-out stupid. Nothing came to mind. Probably because over the last ten weeks she’d discovered that talking directly into a camera was hard.
Frustrated at the whole process, she twirled one long, dark wave of hair around her finger. For a second, Anda kind of wished it was her microphone cord wrapping around the neck of the bossy woman barking questions at her.
The red record light on the camera blinked off. The regular overhead lights came on in the small, and more importantly for filming, windowless hotel catering office.
Jenny Morton, whom Anda actually liked a whole bunch when not barking questions from behind the camera, drew her sandy blonde eyebrows into a frown. “Anda, quit playing with your hair. We talked about that. It makes you look brainless and indecisive.”
“Gee, thanks for the pep-talk. I’m sooo motivated to bare my soul now.”
Jenny walked around the tripod to crouch next to Anda’s chair. She stabbed at the bridge of her cat-eye glasses with one finger. “You know I’m only trying to help. Unlike most of the other women on this show, you’re smart and funny and have a future in front of you that doesn’t involve showing your boobs.”
“Thanks. Now I feel a million times peppier.”
Not really. A future where she got to keep her clothes on for a living was a pretty low bar. Jenny’s heart was in the right place, but she sucked at an inspirational speech. Not that it mattered.
Jenny’s job was to conduct these “confessional” interviews with all of the women on the hit reality show, Man of Her Dreams. Getting the women to talk was the tip of the iceberg.
Getting them to cry and curse was Jenny’s real objective. She actually got a bonus for every three sobbing breakdowns achieved per week. The fact that she’d paused recording to help Anda not look bad said a lot about the unauthorized friendship they’d struck up during filming.
After flipping off the overheads, Jenny hit record again. “Remember, the faster you answer these questions, the faster you can get back to the Man of Your Dreams.”
Okay. The thought of rejoining the man with dark, Italian good looks, piercing blue eyes and muscles that wouldn’t quit turned out to be all the inspiration Anda needed to get her mouth in gear.
She flashed a—hopefully—sassy smile. “Who says Chance DiMarco is the man of my dreams?”
“I do. America does. And you do, by not quitting the show. You’ve survived ten rounds of cuts by Chance, three of Internet voting, a horrible jellyfish sting, and worst of all, sharing a bathroom with five other women. Nobody puts themselves through that unless they desperately want the guy. Which brings me back to the question: does it bother you to kiss a man with twelve million people watching?”
If she opened up and answered honestly, this round of interrogation would end. So Anda closed her eyes and thought back to her first kiss with Chance.
He’d broken tradition—and pissed off the producers of the show—by refusing to wear a suit. Said that if he had to make a first impression on thirty women, along with the viewers, he’d damned well make a truthful one. And he only wore suits to funerals and weddings.
Anda couldn’t imagine any viewers complaining. He’d dried up the mouths—and moistened other parts—of every woman on the show the moment he stepped out from the French pavilion in the Denver botanical garden. They’d circled like sharks, waiting to take a bite out of him.
Chance had paired jeans with a black vest over a grey shirt, unbuttoned enough to show off his crisply curling chest hair. Oh, and his sleeves were rolled up just enough to reveal the veins and deep tan of his muscular forearms. It was impossible that a stiff suit could have made him look a single notch sexier.
She hadn’t expected to receive a kiss at that initial cocktail party. But she’d worried more than a few times in the run up to the first night of filming about what would happen if the casually cocky stuntman did decide to get physical.
“I thought it would be weird.” Anda shook her head. She’d been sure it’d be worse than that. “Definitely awkward. Uncomfortable. That I’d worry about sucking in my stomach, and whether or not our legs should touch, or how to react if he got all aggressive and tried to slip me tongue.”
Jenny let out a sympathetic giggle. “And?”
“And instead, it was pure magic.” Her eyelids drifted back open. Anda stared into the darkness, remembering how he’d pulled her behind a staircase and straight into his arms. “When Chance kissed me, I forgot about the cameras. No,” she corrected herself, “it was more that I wasn’t able to think about the cameras. Chance—his lips, our kiss, the surprising licks of desire that ran through me at his touch—became my whole reality.”
The record light flicked off. “You do know how crazy you sound, right?”
“Crazy about Chance, sure.” Anda slid off the chair and smoothed the hem of her tangerine tank over her matching capris. “Yes, it’s crazy to fall for someone this fast. But when it happens, it’d be even crazier not to hold tight and enjoy the ride.”
A loud gasp came from the darkness. And the record light winked back on. “Oh my God, there’s been riding? You guys ‘did it’ already and we missed it somehow?”
Anda couldn’t tell what Jenny was more worked up over. As a friend? That she hadn’t shared sexy secrets....or as a show staffer? Annoyed at having missed a potential ratings spike of an episode?
Sometimes Jenny straddled the line between loyal friend and loyal crew member in a very hazy way. Anda tried to overlook it because the show would be over in two weeks. Then she’d go back to her normal life and there’d be no remaining conflict of interest for Jenny to work around.
“No, of course not. You—and America—have seen everything there is to see.” How would secret sex even be possible? The contestants were miked and taped from the moment they woke up to lights out. Although Anda’s blood pressure spiked at imagining what it would be like to finally be naked with Chance. “No sex yet. I was talking about the wild and wonderful path I’m galloping down to falling in love.”
“That’s a much less interesting comment,” Jenny grumbled as Anda opened the door.
“Sorry,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m here to find the man of my dreams, not to keep you or America entertained.”
“Your priorities are skewed. And in no way in line with the contract you signed.”
Ordinarily, Anda would linger and chat until Jenny’s mood turned around. Cut off completely as she was from her friends back in Los Angeles for the duration of the show, Jenny’s friendship had been a bright spot amidst the unrelenting catfights with all the other contestants.
But right outside the door stood Chance. One look at him was all it took to send every single thought flying from Anda’s mind. Lust fogged over her brain as she slammed the door shut behind her. Not that it gained her a speck of privacy. In the hall along with her sort-of boyfriend were a sound guy, two cameramen and the director.
Anda gobbled Chance up with her eyes in great, greedy bites. His black curls were, as usual, a sexily tousled mess. One that her fingers craved to mess up even more. The black tee, with a faded logo of one of the hundreds of movies he’d worked on, stretched taut across his pecs and clung to his chiseled abs. Beneath black cargo shorts were long legs covered in dark hair. A few shiny white scars slashed around his left knee, and in two diagonal lines along his right calf.
Chance laughed off the scars, called them set souvenirs, even though the accident that caused them had put him on leave for months from doing stunt work. Anda refused to dismiss his daily heroics so lightly. Instead, she saw them as badges of his bravery.
“Hey, baby.” He extended an arm to pull her against his side. She fit snugly, like a puzzle piece. The same way each piece had a single possible correct fit, that was how perfectly Anda matched her curves and angles along Chance’s bulging musculature. “I missed you.”
It thrilled her to hear him say that. Especially since they hadn’t seen each other at all yesterday. When he’d been on a date with a different woman. One whom Anda was quite sure didn’t fit Chance nearly as well.
“Sorry. Duty—and Jenny—called.”
Chance ran a finger down the bridge of her nose. It was a playful gesture that turned incredibly sensuous as that finger slid lower to trace the shape of her lips. “Did you spill any deep, dark secrets about me in there?”
“Hardly. I don’t know any.” They were still learning about each other.
It was kind of a miracle how much they had managed to share so far. Despite the ridiculousness of group dates. Not to mention super active dates like ziplining and a fake Wild West shootout where Chance taught them a few basic movie stunt moves. Because nothing encouraged intimacy and romance like having wires slam you backwards into a rubber mattress at ten miles an hour, right?
Chance’s thick, black eyebrows waggled in an exaggerated leer. “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
He was so playfully sexy. Anda adored that side of him. It proved how much he wanted her, without any pressure. Chance let Anda—not his desire, and definitely not the pushy director or production assistants—set the pace for how physically intimate things got between them.
“Are we still talking secrets, or something else?” She let more than a little suggestion and throatiness color her voice.
Because while Anda was thrilled with Chance’s patience, she was becoming decidedly impatient to do more than the PG-rated cuddles they’d had so far in front of the cameras.
“Your call.” Chance tucked his hand into the back pocket of her capris. They started walking down the hall, hip-to-hip. “While you decide, are you ready for our date?”
Sooo ready. For their date... and a whole lot more. “I can’t wait.”
***
“ARE YOU SURE IT WAS safe for you to ride?” Anda hovered at Chance’s elbow as he pulled a blanket from the saddlebag.
“Want to see my doctor’s note?” He offset the automatic irritation in his voice with a smile.
Chance wasn’t used to anyone questioning his decisions, even out of concern. He had to remind himself that it was part and parcel of being in a relationship. It was sweet the way Anda worried about him.
These days only his manager worried about him, and that was only in pursuit of the almighty dollar. Nobody came to visit him in the hospital when he got hurt on set. His sister had diligently texted twice a day, but she had her own problems and flat out said he could flirt a nurse into taking plenty good care of him.
Guess it was nice to know she thought his game was so next-level as to impress a woman who changed his oozy surgical dressings...
Chance hadn’t wanted a cavalcade of casseroles hitting his freezer or anything. He was a lone wolf who did just fine without a pack. In fact, he avoided the stereotypical Hollywood entourages. Hard to focus on death-defying stunts if you got strung out every night partying and fixating on getting noticed by the paparazzi.
Still, he enjoyed Anda’s nurturing attention. The odd part was that he didn’t like it from the other women on the show.
Wait. Roll back that film.
Chance loved women. Loved the way they smelled and tasted and laughed and looked. He also loved the way it felt to have a two hundred horsepower engine bucking beneath him as he revved a motorcycle for a complicated stunt jump.
At the end of the stunt, he had no trouble leaving the bike in the studio’s garage. And at the end of a date, he had no trouble walking away from a beautiful woman.
When he spent time with Anda, though, he didn’t want it to end.
He wanted her to come back to the resort’s private cottage in the Colorado foothills. Maybe it was because, for once, he believed she wanted to be with him.
Most women Chance dated wanted to be with the muscles he flexed on-screen, not the man they belonged to. Or they wanted to use him as a stepping stone to directors, agents, and most of all, honest-to-God movie stars.
The women on this show were no different. They weren’t here to fall in love. They were here for their fifteen minutes of talk show rounds and magazine covers. Chance didn’t care. The only reason he was here was to earn some bank and beat back boredom while he finished his stint on the disabled list.
Most of the time he got paid to take a punch to the face instead of a kiss. This was an easier gig. Everyone was using each other equally. That’s what made it okay.
Anda, though....he closed the saddlebag and gave a quick stroke to the flank of his chestnut gelding. She didn’t have an agenda, hidden or otherwise. She seemed to simply enjoy being with him. Period.
Who knew such simplicity would be so addictive?
She feathered a hand over his shoulder, arm, then down to his hip. “I thought I saw a wince when your horse started cantering.” To his disappointment, her hand stilled. “Wait—which is faster? Cantering or trotting?”
“We barely hit a trot. This is your first time out. I didn’t want to go too fast.”
Her laughter pealed out, echoing down the hillside, across the crater of a lake and off the wall of mountains on the other side. “You’re actually trying to pin our slow going on me and Rosebud? You, the guy with three broken bones and so many stitches down one leg you look like a reject from Frankenstein’s laboratory?” Anda visored a hand above her forehead as if trying to spot something. “Could there possibly be cameras recording our every word? Trying to protect your manly image?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Chance caught the camera guy’s snicker. He’d better nip this in the bud.
Chance tucked the blanket beneath one arm. Then he swept Anda into his arms. Maybe he gave himself a mental pat on the back for not so much as blinking at the lance of pain through his all-too-slowly healing rotator cuff.
“I don’t need a horse between my legs to prove my masculinity.”
She squealed. Threw her arms around his neck and cuddled in close. Then laughed once more, but this time, in delight. “I love this!” Anda kicked her feet a little. “It’s even better than riding the horse!”
“High praise.” Point made, Chance took a handful of steps down the mountain before setting her on her feet. He wanted to save his shoulder for when he’d really need it. Which would hopefully be to hold himself above her—naked—once they hit the privacy of the Dream Suite on their next date.
If Anda agreed to it.
If she’d realize that he didn’t want her for ratings, or for the promised bonus if he proposed to one of the contestants.
Chance wanted Anda. Because she was sweet and caring and was up for trying anything. He wanted to be much closer to her than they could be on camera.
He wanted this damned show to be over so they could go back to real life. See if they meshed as well there as on this escape-from-reality show.
For now, he swallowed hard against his frustration at all the cameras and extra people cluttering up the date he’d personally planned for her. Chance winked. “That’s one for me, zero for poor old Rosebud.”
“No.” Anda barked it out like a command. “Don’t start that.”
“What?” he asked, spreading the blanket over the carpet of white and pink wildflowers. Spending June here in the Rockies was a ton better than commuting over L.A.’s baked asphalt.
“Keeping score.” Anda knelt to smooth the corners of the blanket. Brushed her fingertips against his in the process. With her head down, in a low voice, she continued, “They do that, you know.”
Chance sat to unlace his boots. Hoped it’d get her to slide off her own hiking boots so he could stroke her softness from pink-tipped toes all the way up to the stupid mid-calf hem of her capris. Women’s fashion was dumb some of the time. A genuine cockblock even more of the time. “Who does what?”
“The other women. There’s a whiteboard by the elevators, and a spreadsheet.” The contestants were packed onto a single floor of the resort, while Chance got a tricked-out cottage all to himself. “They all keep score of how much time we each get with you.” She wrestled with yanking off the boots and sat about as far away as possible from him on the big fleecy square. Didn’t look up at him, either.
His jaw dropped. “No way.” No way could they be that juvenile, that bitchy.
Anda’s neck cracked, she snapped it straight so fast to pin him with those velvety brown eyes. “There’s columns for hand-holding, kissing, private dates, stealing alone time with you in a group date, first base, second base—”
Chance cut her off by putting his hand over her mouth.
Brecken Daly, the show’s host, met with him every day. Asked for input on the planned dates, took his temperature on each of the women, and updated him on any drama that might filter into the group situations. Brecken hadn’t said a word about this idiocy, though.
Probably because he knew Chance would blow a gasket and throw everyone off the show.
They were all there to have fun. But a points system like that could end up making a woman feel bad about herself, and Chance wouldn’t stand for it. Bad enough that gossip rags and social media were flaming up over some of the woman. No way to control that. Chance damned well would exert his influence to stop this, though. They’d play by the rules, respect each other, or he’d kick them all off on the next episode.
Before dropping that ultimatum, though, Chance needed to do due diligence with Anda. He thought he knew the answer. But if there was one thing he’d learned in Hollywood—aside from how to leap from a ten-story building while engulfed in flames—it was to never make assumptions about people. Better to be safe than screwed over.
So, Chance forced himself to ask Anda, “Do you keep score?”
Her eyelids flared wide, and then narrowed to a pissed off squint. He got the message.
When he dropped his hand, she snapped out, “Of course not.”
Whew. “Good to hear.”
“My name’s on it, but I’ve got the least amount of points because I won’t tell anyone what happens on our dates. The only thing they can score me on is what happened on the first few group outings.”
Loyalty like that deserved to be rewarded. “Who’s in the lead right now?”
“Megan.” Her adorably tiny nose crinkled at the mention of the stacked blonde. “I think she’s at twenty-seven points.”
Ahh. Yeah, he’d kissed Megan. More than once. Rounded a couple of bases with her, too. After all, it was what he was paid to do on the show. Flirt. Make the viewers think all of this mattered.
But when he lay on top of his black satin sheets every night, Chance never once pictured Megan or her D-cups.
No, he drifted off to sleep replaying the way Anda somehow smiled with her whole face. The exotic tilt to her eyes she blamed on a mix of Korean, Irish and German ancestors. How her hair was even silkier than those damn sheets.
“You and I are going to keep score from now on. Just for fun, just for the two of us. And you’ll start with thirty points. Want to know how you’re going to vault into the lead?”
Her smile was tentative. But like always, Anda nodded, ready to do anything and everything with him. “Sure.”
“Like this.” Chance launched himself at her, keeping one hand beneath her head so it wouldn’t hit the ground. The hillside was uneven enough to put them both off-balance, and they rolled several feet before Chance dug his heels in to stop them.
He lifted his head to capture her breathless laughter between his lips. Slid his tongue right in on her gasp. Immediately, Anda softened against him. Her tank top and his shirt had both gotten pushed up. The smooth heat of her skin pressed on his bare belly. And the notch between her hips cradled his suddenly ultra-hard cock.
The slick sweetness of her mouth gave him so many ideas. The kind that couldn’t be carried out in broad daylight in front of a camera crew. Chance knew the smartest thing to do would be to keep rolling until they hit the icy cold glacial lake.
But he had to keep kissing her. Had to knead both of his hands on the most perfectly round ass he’d ever had the pleasure of squeezing.
Anda circled her hips against him. Tangled her tongue with his. And moaned, a dark, almost smoky sound that promised she’d be a passionate partner in bed.
Chance made up his mind, right then and there. The show could splice and dice footage however they wanted to keep the viewing audience guessing. But Anda Weiss was the only woman on this show he’d make love to. And he’d do his damnedest to make sure that happened as soon as freaking possible.