Page 20 of Most Eligible
“Sorry,” I murmur against Roland’s lips. In answer, he gives my thigh a reassuring squeeze and moves so he’s shielding me from the cameras. It’s so unexpected that my body melts into him with gratitude. After a few more seconds, when Lainey yells “Cut!” he plants one last kiss on the corner of my mouth and winks at me.
I’m immediately pulled out of the hot tub by Jules, who wraps me in a towel. Lainey directs cameras at me for an interview as my legs shiver. We’re not alone, but it’s the closest I’ve gotten so far. She asks me what it felt like kissing Roland—if sparks were flying.
“It was hot,” I say. My anxiety breaks through the dam I’vekept it behind, and I let out an ungallant giggle. Better than vomiting all over the cameras. “Hopefully my last first kiss—but only time will tell.”
Lainey nods, checks the footage, and stalks away to repeat the process with Roland. I take a long breath and some of the tension leaves my body. I guess I’ll face Lainey another day.
I wave goodbye to Roland as I head to the waiting SUV, but he’s already interviewing with Lainey, distracted from the real me by the idea of me. Rhett is off to the side, waiting for his turn in front of the cameras. As I pass, he doesn’t spare me a glance. It leaves me cold in a way that has nothing to do with the water still clinging to my skin.
In the space of a few short minutes, I’ve been reduced to a pair of lips, a few sound bites. Even if I made it to the end and married Roland, that’s all I would be—a hand wearing his ring, eyes watching him on the court, a body to call his wife.
Once I’m tucked in the car, I lean back and watch palm trees whip past the windows.
My first kiss with Roland. Monumental, life-altering, perfect—just some of the adjectives that should be buzzing in my head, except none of them are accurate. The phrase that comes to mind is “technically proficient,” but has any great love story ever started like that?
The intimacy was so manufactured it could have shattered like glass. But the little touches under the water, the way he put himself between me and the cameras—that had to be real, right? The thought makes me shudder.
I breathe in and out, trying to focus on Roland’s lips. But when I close my eyes, it’s not Roland’s face that surrounds those lips.
His kisses may have been sweet and soft, but they didn’t light my body on fire, and I know it wasn’t just the cameras that made the situation feel wrong. It wasn’t my hidden motivations.
It was Rhett.
Tune in tonight to see the shocking finale of Rhett Auburn’s season. Will he choose Cassidy, the blond from Boston, or Katie, the surgeon from Seattle?
#LoveShack #AmericasSexiestBachelor #RhettAuburn #Season18
[Image description: Rhett Auburn in a dark gray suit, looking pensively at the ocean and holding a ring]
—@LoveShackOfficial, Instagram, two years ago
Chapter Nine
I’m up at dawn the next day. I dress silently—jean cutoffs, lacy white tank top, a silk paisley overshirt Serena tried to talk me out of bringing—and slip out of the bunk room before the others wake up.
Since I’m going off on my own, I leave my body mic lying on my bed—conspicuous enough that I could have just forgotten it when I went downstairs for breakfast.
My mission is simple: Find Lainey. If she lives on the property like Rhett said, she can’t be far. She can hardly hang upside down like a bat whenever the cameras are off.
I head downstairs, my flip-flops thwacking on the tiled floor. The silence in the house is eerie. As I walk through the empty living room (pillows thrown on the floor, call sheets crumpled in the corner, shades hanging half down from the windows), I trip over a pair of feet sticking out from behind the giant sofa.
Kevin,Love Shack’s balding bartender, is face down on the plush carpet, snoring like his life depends on it. I pull a blanketoff the couch and drape it over his body, then step over his legs and make my way to the mansion’s front doors.
When I push them open, the sun hits me with full force. I squint against the glare, but I don’t have time to go back in and get sunblock if I want to spy on Lainey before the others wake up.
I head in the direction of a shady path on the left of the sloping lawn. There are more trees here than I’ve ever seen so close together in Southern California, and vines catch on my arms as I step between them. I know I’m on the right track when I hear a softputt-puttnoise from down the hill.
“Thirty-love,” a man’s voice calls. Roland, if I’m not mistaken. And Lainey wouldn’t let him out of her sight for too long.
A few more yards down the winding path, a clearing opens before me, complete with a tennis court and, off to the side, a little cabana with a thatched roof.
I hover behind a tree, looking down at the court to get my bearings. On the side closest to me, raising his racket to serve, is Roland. He’s wearing all white, a sweatband pushing his dark hair back from his face. This is the only way I’d seen him before my first night in the mansion: sweaty and focused, lunging across a dark green court.
He brings his racket slashing down and the ball whistles over the net, ricocheting off the chain-link fence. As he bends down to adjust his knee brace, a twinkle of light catches my eye: a camera, swinging under the eaves of the cabana to film Roland’s every move.
Then I see Lainey stretched out on a pool chair in the shade. She raises her sunglasses to look at Roland.
“Do you want to stop and ice it?” she calls. “Do you need to take something?”
