Falling Fast (11 page)

Alexa raised an eyebrow. “A little?”

Brandon grimaced. “Could I blame it on the wine?”

A giggle popped out before Alexa could stop it. What was wrong with her? She didn’t giggle! Intent on ignoring how much anticipation she was feeling, she conjured up her best no-nonsense voice. “So, why’d you lock us in here together?”

Brandon ran his right hand through his hair, ruffling up his dirty blonde locks. Alexa’s fingers itched to follow suit. She clasped them into a tight ball on her lap and waited for him to explain his strange behavior.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a moment, and then finally opened them again.

“Alexa, I was hoping this would be easier, but now that we’re finally alone, I have no idea how to tell you...” His stopped mid-sentence and rubbed his eyes.

Brandon began to pace back and forth. “Maybe I should just start at the beginning?”

Alexa nodded and waited for him to continue. The journalistic side of her brain went into overdrive.
Concentrate,
she told herself
. This could be the hook your story needs.

“I signed the contract for
Falling For Mr. Right
before I had really thought it through.”

Alexa tried to interrupt him and he staved off her question with a quick wave of his hands. “I know you’re wondering why I did that, but the reasons I agreed to be Mr. Right aren’t really important right now.” Looking increasingly uncomfortable, he sat down on the ottoman again, directly across from her. “The point is, once I saw you on the street last week, I knew I had made the wrong decision.”

“Are you feeling OK?” Alexa asked him. She wasn’t sure what she had been waiting to hear, but she hadn’t expected this. Frankly, she wasn’t sure she could handle it.

Brandon shook his head. “No. Yes. I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve...” His words drifted off as if he was unsure about how to continue. “The quicker the better, I suppose.” He reached for her hands and held them hostage in his. “I fell hard for you the second I met you, Alexa. And then all of a sudden you were gone. You hadn’t even told me your name. A thousand times I thought about leaving you a note at the bar. But what was I going to say? ‘Hi.

My name’s Brandon and I want to date you. By the way, I’ll be marrying someone I don’t know in two weeks on national TV.’ So I gave up. I figured I had made my bed and I was going to have to lie in it.”

Alexa wanted him to stop talking for a moment so that she could digest his words. No one had ever said, “I fell hard for you,” to her before. To her mother and sister, certainly. To people she had gone to school with and been roommates with. But to her? Never.

Brandon continued on, unaware of her bewildered – and pleased - thoughts. “And then you stepped out of the limo on Saturday. It was like all of my prayers had been answered. I know it’s not a coincidence, Alexa. I can’t believe how lucky I am to be given a second chance with you. And this time, I don’t want to screw it up. I don’t want to say something that’s going to make you run from me.”

Alexa had forgotten to breathe during his soliloquy and now she inhaled shakily. When she finally got her breath back, she said, so quietly that her words were almost taken away by the crackling of the fire, “But you don’t even know me.”

Taking one of her hands to his lips, he turned her palm up and pressed a kiss on to the sensitive flesh of her hand. “I know that every time I touch you, fireworks go off. I know that just looking at you makes me happy. I know that every time we talk I think you’re funny, and smart, and lovelier than ever.” He stopped to nip at her palm with his teeth. “Give me a chance to convince you that we’re meant to be together, Alexa,” he pleaded. “Just give me a chance.”

Alexa’s ribcage felt like it was going to explode, her heart was beating so fast. The room had started spinning, right around when Brandon said, “Just looking at you makes me happy.”

She tried to shake some sense into herself, and moved to pull her hand away from Brandon’s sensual onslaught, but he was true to his word and refused to let her go. In a husky voice that surprised her as it fell from her lips, she said, “What about the other women? Are you telling each of them the same thing?”

“No, Alexa. God, no. You’re the only woman I want to be with. That’s how I knew I had made such a huge mistake when I signed the contract.”

Alexa shook her head, trying to block out his words, trying to push away how happy they made her. What had she read recently?
A woman must depend on herself and only herself for
her happiness. Once a woman gives this power away to a man, she has lost it forever.

But instead of walking to the door and leaving her heart safe within the thick walls she had built up so long ago, she said, her voice thick with emotion, “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“Maybe this will help,” he said and leaned in to capture her mouth in a sweet kiss. Alexa didn’t know much about kisses – she’d hardly been kissed more than a handful of times in her life, including their kiss in the limo – but everything about Brandon’s kiss was full of yearning and promise.

Her brain was telling her no, but her body was screaming yes. Brandon braided his strong fingers through her hair and she instinctively leaned closer to him to give herself up to his kiss. All night, she had wanted to taste him again, and now she had her chance. Her tongue swept into his mouth and he growled deep in his throat.

A loud voice resonated through the door. “Brandon, Alexa, you need to open up the door, immediately! This is a direct order from the producer.”

Alexa looked about her in bewilderment. In a flash she pulled out of Brandon’s embrace and stood, shaking out her dress, trying to fix her hair all at the same time. “Does my makeup look all right?” she asked, desperate that no one should know what they were doing in the room.

Brandon sat back on his heels, looking disgusted. “I hate these damn cameras,” he said as another loud knock sounded on the door. “We’ll be out in a minute,” he hollered. “Do you have any lipstick in your purse?”

She nodded.

“While you put some on, I’ll help you untangle your hair.”

Alexa reapplied her lipstick, using the compact mirror to guide her actions. “I never thought there’d come a day when I’d be happy about having makeup on me.”

Brandon was about to finger-comb her hair when her words stopped him. “Haven’t you always carried makeup around with you?”

Alexa looked momentarily startled. Forcing a laugh, she said, “Of course I do. What kind of girl would leave the house without her lipstick?”

Brandon looked as if he wasn’t going to buy her act for a moment, and then he grunted and began to gently untangle her wild mane.

Alexa ignored the goose bumps his touch sent through her body. “What do we do now?

Say the door locked behind us and we were looking for the key?”

But Brandon didn’t answer her questions. Instead, absorbed with reiterating his intentions towards her, he said, “I promise you, regardless of the other dates I have to go on, I’m not going to fool around with any of the contestants. Just you.” He bent his head down to give her a gentle kiss.

And then, he took her hand, and together they walked to the door and back through it.

“Sorry about that, fellas,” he said to the cameramen with a cheeky grin. “The lady and I wanted a few minutes in private to talk.”

During their silent drive back to the contestant’s mansion, Alexa was plagued with conflict. On the one hand, she had a hard time believing that anyone, let alone a gorgeous guy like Brandon, could have fallen for her. Considering that no man had ever poured his heart out to her like that, or said that he thought she was beautiful, it was doubtful at best.

But another part of her, the part that wanted to believe Brandon did desire her, was racked with guilt. Because although she had to write her story for
ROAR
to further her career, she felt more and more like a terrible liar with every passing day she spent undercover.

If Brandon was telling the truth, if he really did have strong feelings for her, he was going to hate her guts when her story hit the press. It saddened Alexa to realize that the list of people she was going to have to betray at the end of the show was getting longer by the second.

Especially since it looked like she was going to have to betray her heart at the same time.

To make matters worse, the minute she had reentered the mansion, she had been bombarded with questions.

“What was it like being all alone with Brandon?”

“Did he kiss you?”

“What did you talk about?”

“Did you kiss him?”

Alexa had pasted a smile on her face then answered everyone’s questions in as forthcoming a manner as she could without divulging much of anything at all. Of course, she denied having kissed Brandon.

Finally everyone’s enthusiasm waned, and Alexa breathed a sigh of relief. Peeking her head into the refrigerator to see if there was any chocolate cake hiding behind the bottled water, she was surprised to hear a nasty voice behind her.

“I know you’re lying.”

Alexa spun around. Shelby stood next to the kitchen island, her hands in tight fists and her face pinched and tight.

“Excuse me?” Alexa said, trying to keep the innocent and open smile on her face.

“I said, I know you’re lying.”

Alexa refused to let the redhead get the best of her. Every movement deliberate, she closed the fridge and reached into the cupboard for a glass, then filled up her glass at the sink as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

“What exactly am I lying about?” Alexa said in a voice laced with humor, implying, in no uncertain terms, that Shelby was making up things out of jealousy. She kept her eyes wide and innocent. “How could anyone have a bad date with Brandon? He’s such a hunk.”

Alexa knew she was asking for trouble, but she couldn’t resist rubbing her solo date with Mr. Right in Shelby’s face. A face, she noted cattily, that looked considerably worse for the wear without its usual coating of expensive cosmetics.

Shelby took a step closer and pointed a glossy red nail at her. “You kissed him.”

Alexa smiled enigmatically. “Now what makes you say that?”

The redhead narrowed her eyes and took another step closer. “You better watch your back. Because I’m not going to let your slutty tricks get in the way of getting his diamond ring put onto my finger.”

Shelby stormed out of the kitchen. Alexa waved after her, calling out, “Good night, Shelby.”

When she was finally back in her room, she grabbed her contraband cell-phone and locked herself into one of the bathrooms.

“Jared, I’m so screwed,” she said when her friend picked up.

“You’re telling me,” he said. “Smooth move getting out of the limo.”

Alexa rolled her eyes. Was there anyone in the United States that hadn’t seen her trip like a moose wearing heels? “Jared, I have bigger problems than the fact that I’m a clumsy loser,”

she moaned, suddenly unwilling to spill the beans about Brandon’s kiss and confession.

“And I was totally rooting for you against that Shelby bitch on the beach. You nailed her ass to the sand in the obstacle course.”

Alexa groaned. “No more instant repeat. I can’t deal with it right now.”

“Sorry about that. You need to talk and I’m all ears,” her friend said, but suddenly Alexa was too tired to explain everything. Especially when she couldn’t explain her new feelings for Brandon even to herself yet.

“Never mind,” she said. “I’ve got to get off the phone before someone catches me and I get busted. I’ll call you later.”

Suddenly Alexa knew she had it bad—she couldn’t even talk to her best friend about her problems because she was afraid he might say something like, “No more kissing,” or “You need to stay out of Brandon’s way.” She wasn’t ready to make such iron-clad choices.

Not yet, anyway.

Alexa’s dreams were wild and colorful that night. She was on the chateau balcony with Brandon, and he was about to say, “I love you,” when from out of the blue, Shelby arrived and handcuffed herself to him.

Alexa woke up at 4am with a fine sheen of sweat covering her body. Quietly slipping out of bed, she threw on a sweatshirt and left the bedroom, tiptoeing out to the kitchen. Opening the fridge, she began her search for chocolate again in earnest and stuffed the slice of cake she found into her mouth with her hands even though she knew it couldn't possibly solve her problems.

As the sun began to slowly rise up from the ocean, she plopped into a chaise lounge by the pool, covered herself with a blanket she'd grabbed from one of the couches inside, and closed her eyes. But even as she tried to work out a plan of action to get back on track for her story, even as she vowed never to kiss Brandon again, she couldn’t stop reliving the passion that swept through her when she was in Brandon’s arms.

Brandon spent the next day acting as a San Francisco tour guide for the ten contestants in a luxurious tour bus. As they traveled from one scenic, famous landmark after another - the Golden Gate Bridge, Chinatown, Union Square, Golden Gate Park - Brandon made a sincere effort to get to know each of the nine other women.

Alexa hung at the back of the group, and Brandon was thankful for her understanding. It was as if she recognized that he needed the space to play his Mr. Right role for the camera. It was difficult to even be on the same bus as her, however. Every time she brushed by him, his heart started an up tempo beat.

He was pleased by how friendly and gracious Alexa was to the other women. Even though they were in direct competition with her for an engagement ring, she was happy to point out her favorite places, including a restaurant in Chinatown that had everyone groaning with pleasure after lunch.

By 8 pm Brandon was beat to the core. The muscles on his face were on the verge of cracking from smiling so much. It wasn’t that the other contestants weren’t nice. It wasn’t that they weren’t attractive. It was just simply that they weren’t Alexa. He was greatly looking forward to the next selection ceremony, so that he would only have to go through the motions with two other women, instead of nine. As far as Brandon was concerned, the sooner the show was over, the better.