Walk of Shame (9 page)

I dropped in on the guys during
their breakfast. Never mind that production had already given the guys a head's
up and had told them to at least be downstairs by nine o'clock. Some of them
looked like they had just stumbled out of bed when I showed up. Meanwhile, I
had been up since six, ran out on the track with Goldie, showered, and had gotten
the hair and makeup onceover before coming here.

"We have a group date today,
guys."

"All of us?" the one
who I think was named Mitch asked.

"Nope, five of you. Liam,
Trevor, Drake, James, and Tyler. We're leaving in twenty minutes." I
picked a piece of bacon up off someone's plate, figuring to make myself at home
with all my new boyfriends.

"Where are we going?"
Liam asked, picking up a different piece of bacon from the same plate, and
winked at me.

I smiled at the mountain man,
thinking about how I'd never have a problem remembering which one he was. "We're
running away to the circus. I hope none of you have issues with heights."

Phillip put a plate of scrambled
eggs in front of me.
I could get used to this...

"Wait, we're going to be up
in the air?" Tyler asked.

"Some of us will, others can
opt to hang closer to the ground."

The five going
left the room to get dressed for whatever torture I might dish out. We managed
to leave right on time.

"Welcome to our beginner's
trapeze class. We'll be using swinging trapezes. However, as you can see, we're
going to be starting you out close to the ground and we'll be limiting the
range of your swing. You don't need any previous experience to participate.
This isn't your normal class, so we'll be watching each of you, and if you're
comfortable at the beginner levels, after awhile, we'll move you up and we'll
find out how much you can handle today," the instructor began.
"Everyone pick their trapeze, and we'll get started."

The group of men had mixed
reactions. Drake and James looked at the low-hanging trapezes with trepidation.
Tyler looked scared to death. Trevor and Liam, though, they went straight to
sizing the swings up, inspecting their construction.

"I'm pretty sure they'll
hold," I said as I went over and hopped onto one, immediately starting a
gentle swinging motion.

"Don't worry about
falling," the instructor said, seeing some of the reactions in the room.
"The floors are well padded."

"I think hitting the floor
would be more comfortable than sitting on this bar," Liam said after he'd
hopped on.

The instructor gave us all a slow
wink. "That's how we get the students to be willing to keep changing
positions and moving from one trick to the next. Otherwise, half of them would
freeze up on us once we got them up in the air."

The others finally managed to
mount their bars, and the lesson got underway.

The room was large enough to
house twenty trapeze students. We were a class of six, but with the camera
crews there to capture every triumph and failure, our number had doubled. And
even still, that shouldn't have been a problem. Except that the crews didn't
stay put, they moved around. And with so many staff in the room trying to
supervise us fools on the trapezes, the crews and staff got in each other's
way.

The instructor booted the crews'
butts back behind a blue line on the floor. "All spectators behind the
line. Your zoom lenses will just have to do."

Poor Tyler, the movement of all
the people around the room distracted him and he and fell to the padded floor. Tyler's
fall distracted Drake, and Mr. Too Smooth lost his balance on the bar and fell
off backwards, landing with a curse that I'm sure would be worthy of bleeping
out in the editing room.

I got as far
as hanging upside down by my knees. Trevor did some one-armed swing moves. But
Liam took the prize. He worked that bar like a champ. Grasping hold and
lowering himself under the bar, doing some one-armed and two-armed stuff, then
levering himself back up over the bar again. I guessed the mountain climber in
the group had some muscles that the rest of us didn't.

That afternoon we took over the terrace
of a local bar for our private party of six, plus the crew. The guys were more
enthusiastic about this venue than they had been about the last one.

"I figured that since I'd
made you all work up a sweat, and pushed some of you out of your comfort zones,
that we could all kick back with some beer this afternoon."

They cheered me. It was probably
more for the cameras than me, but whatever, they were happy.

And now it was time for my little
plug. "This place is famous for their tapas, their cigars, and their
selection of local brews. But I think we all know what that's code for, don't
we? It all makes for one hell of a happy hour!"

They cheered again, and the obligatory,
enthusiastic plug was complete.

"We've got the place for
three hours. Sit back, relax, and enjoy. Have a smoke, drink a beer, and then
each of you take a little stroll with me around the grounds. We should have
enough time for me to get to know everyone a little better before the limo
takes us back to the main house."

I managed to eat a small plateful
of food and drink one beer, all of which was absolutely delicious, before James
pulled me away. We took a walk around the gardens behind the bar so that we
could talk, apart from the other guys, with a crew doing their best to follow
silently ahead of us.

I have to say. This was the first
full day I'd spent with the cameras on me nonstop. It was tough. We weren't
supposed to talk to the crew or about the cameras anymore than was necessary.
But they wanted to know every move you made before you made it. So, you constantly
had to have a plan in mind. Structure, structure, structure. I thought dating
was supposed to be fun.

After James was Trevor, then
Tyler, then Liam, and then finally, Drake.

"How many laps around these
flower beds have you done?" Drake asked.

I chuckled. "At least
twenty." I'd ditched my heels after Tyler, and had sent my shoes back to
the terrace with him, since Liam had interrupted us in the middle of the
garden.

"Then I think it's safe to
assume you wouldn't mind finding a bench?" he asked, leading the way down
a little path, totally out of sight of the other men.

"I'd love to sit." I
headed straight for the bench that was hiding around the next bend.

He dug into his deep pocket and
pulled out a bottle. "I brought you a beer along," he offered.

I gave him a broad smile.
"Thank you! You guys have been eating and drinking this whole time and
I've been out here."

"I noticed that. We've all
kept you pretty busy."

"You guys
are like a day-long workout, let me tell ya."

I was so happy to see my little
pool house. The day had been exhausting and I was glad that I had the evening
all to myself.

I spent some time going through
and answering some emails. I checked my blog to make sure the program had
loaded the saved entry for the day onto the site. Then I made a salad and took
it outside to sit in a lawn chair by the pool and enjoy the sunset.

I hadn't seen Goldie anywhere. I
figured people around here, somewhere, were keeping her busy. If they kept it
up, the dog wasn't going to want to go back to living in fifth wheel with just
me.

The sun had just disappeared when
my cell rang. It was Chloe. "Hey, Sis, what's up," I answered.

"I want to hear about the
group date, duh. Actually, I want to know the rankings, post group date, I'm
thinking about keeping a chart."

"Would you be serious?"

"I am! How else am I
supposed to keep track of them? I had to take notes during our last
conversation, as it was."

I laughed in her ear. "Well,
Liam gets top ranking for handling the activity. But Drake gets top ranking for
being a gentleman and attending to my needs."

"How many were on the
date?"

"Five."

"Okay, so who else was
there?"

I heard what sounded like a
notebook page being flipped. "You're seriously taking notes?"

"Yeah. I just said that I
was."

I could only shake my head.
"Trevor takes the number three spot, I guess. He did pretty well with the
activity, and then there was the nighttime swim last night..."

She let out a soft squeal.
"Who snuck over to who?"

"He snuck over to me.
There's no way I could sneak over there and get away with it."

"So you two just swam in the
pool?"

"And talked. He seems like a
descent guy."

"Okay. So who are the bottom
two?"

"Tyler and James, I didn't
even mention them the other night. There's just nothing that grabs me about
them."

"They can't all be
winners."

"No, I guess I just hoped
that getting them into a smaller group would help. I talked to them both, but
I'm just not feeling it. I don't think circus stunts are their thing,
either."

"I can't say that I thought
they'd be your thing."

I shrugged. "It was
something that I'd never done before."

"Hey, do you remember-"

"Shhh!"

"What?" she whispered.

There was a noise out by the
connecting path again. I whispered into the phone, "I think one of them is
sneaking over."

"Why are we whispering like
you're about to be caught breaking curfew?"

"Shhh!"

The familiar figure stepped out
of the shadows and into the patio lighting.

I giggled into the phone.
"It looks like Trevor is trying to climb up the rankings again."

"Oh, he's such a little
cheater!" Chloe said.

"I know," I said as I
kept an eye on him and he crossed over to sit in the lawn chair next to me.
"But he's such a cute cheater."

Trevor raised an eyebrow.

"I gotta go," I told
Chloe.

"Have fun," she said
before I hung up.

"So," Trevor said,
holding up a small plate, "I know you got breakfast. And you had, what I'd
consider to be, appetizers for a very late lunch. I figured you'd be too tired
from your day to cook for yourself, so I snagged you a hamburger off the
grill."

"Hm, I did manage to throw
together a salad..." I eyed the burger on the plate.

"Not to throw the spotlight
on another guy, but Phillip cooked. If you don't eat it, you're missing
out."

I held out my hand for the plate.
I figured that if I ate one man's cooking while talking to another, I'd be
getting to know them both a bit better.

He smiled and handed the plate to
me.

"You kept your one-on-one
time with me nice and short today," I observed.

"Yeah, well, I figured after
talking to you last night, I'd let the other guys have a chunk of my
time."

"I'd like to think that you're
just trying to keep it fair."

"They know we already met.
If they found out I was sneaking over here, too, I'd be on their hit
list."

"Do they have a hit
list?"

"Not yet. Give them a few
weeks and I'm sure someone will pop up on everybody's radar."

"I hope you don't want to
swim tonight. Because I'm quite comfy where I am."

"Well, good. We were all
beginning to wonder if you ever wore out."

We sat and
talked, and tried to see the stars. Mostly we listened to crickets and the
shouts of the guys horsing around the big pool. He went back over after awhile,
and I went upstairs to fall into bed.

I slept hard and was slow to wake
the next morning. I kept hitting the snooze button on my alarm app. I took
solace in the fact that I'd be running later, so it really would be okay for me
to skip my morning workout.

It was week one, and already I
was having issues.

I finally rolled my butt out of
bed so I could grab a shower, throw on some workout clothes, and be over at the
house by nine.

I trotted over the path that
separates the houses and landed in their kitchen with two minutes to spare.
Ardent gave up his barstool at the island counter, and Phillip sat a BLT in front
of me. Drake poured a glass of juice and slid it down the counter to me.
Hey,
as long as I got those names right, then studying the pictures is paying off.

"I love coming here for
breakfast!" I said with a beaming smile.

"So," Mike asked,
looking over my outfit, "what are we up to today?"

"There's another group date
happening, but we have about an hour before we have to make the drive," I
answered.

"Which poor fools are you
going to torture today?" Liam asked with an adorable lop-sided grin.

"Phillip, Mack, Jared,
Mitch, and Ardent." Like yesterday, I'd memorized the list so I wouldn't
screw up the names by having to look around at faces and chance getting them
confused.

There were groans from the guys
I'd named. I didn't know if it was because they were stuck on a group date, or
if it was because they had rightfully guessed that I was going to give them all
a run for their money today.

A couple of them stood to go
change.

"I wouldn't wear anything
too nice," I warned.

They all
groaned again.

"A 5K Mudrun?" Mitch
asked, incredulous, as the van carrying all six of us crept through the crowds
and the large banner advertising the event came into sight.

"Can't handle it?" I
asked.

"I never said I couldn't
handle it. I just don't see this as being a date," he answered.

"I'm guessing it's a benefit
run. What's the charity?" Ardent asked.

"Cancer research," I
answered.

"Individual or teams?"
Mack asked.

"We're all a team," I
told them.

Jared clapped his hands together
and rubbed them in anticipation. "Let's get out and do this."

By the end of the run, I'd had to
give all the guys credit. They'd all made it through. Mack had slowed us down a
bit. The man was used to sitting behind a drafting table, working on whatever architectural
design he was aiming for at the time. The last hill threatened to do me in, but
Jared, our resident swamp boy, who was as happy as a pig in mud, picked me up
and carried me over his shoulder the rest of the way.

The ones I felt sorry for were
the two cameramen who had to trail behind us. They had to carry their cameras,
catch our antics, keep enough of a distance so that they wouldn't be caught in
the shots of the other cameras lucky enough to be stationed on the sidelines,
and still weave and wade their way through the course with us. I'm sure editing
was going to love trying to remove their voices and remarks whenever one lost
his footing or came up on an obstacle they'd have rather gone around than
through with a camera worth thousands of dollars.

A member from production waved us
over to the water trucks. I was handed a hose and felt a wicked gleam come into
my eyes. I had a ball hosing all the guys down. I tried to be thorough and
quick, switching to the next guy as the last one was turning to give me another
side to rinse. When they were fairly clean, Phillip took the hose from my hands
and turned it on me. I squealed, but started rinsing my hair out under the
stream.

We then climbed back into the van
and drove to the beach. We all changed into bathing suits and collapsed onto
the sand. I lay on my back across a beach towel and closed my eyes behind the
sunglasses wardrobe had packed for me.

"How is it that no one else
is out here?" Mack asked.

I waved a hand at the hotel
behind us without opening my eyes. "It's theirs. Production rented the
beach for a private event for the next couple of hours."

"Do we have food coming?"
Ardent asked from his facedown position on his towel.

"Pizza and beer, any second
now," I answered.

Jared chuckled as he continued to
sprawl in the beach chair he'd claimed. "I swear to God, if I'm still in
this at the end, I'll freaking propose. You're a girl after my own heart."

I opened my eyes to the sky and
laughed. "That would be the whole point to all this," I said as I
continued to chuckle. "I gotta find me a man who can keep up, but then
knows how to sit back and relax."

This group actually let me eat
and drink a full meal before anyone made a move to draw me away from the group.
Though, admittedly, I didn't know if it was because I'd worn this group out
more than the other one, or if they were just more considerate of my needs and
were milking it to gain my favor.

The cameramen on the sidelines
seemed glad for the reprieve as they, too, took turns sitting and eating their
pizza and drinking their sodas as quickly as they could. They had to be ready
to grab their cameras if we started to separate into smaller groups.

"Take a walk?" Ardent
asked as he held out a hand, once I seemed to be full and a bit rested.

"Sure," I said as I
took hold of his hand and let him pull me up.

Cameramen swung into action, to
make sure the guys staying put were covered and the duo heading away were
filmed, as well.

We'd walked a bit away from the
group before he said, "Glad to see you don't mind getting dirty."

I shrugged. "I don't mind
the dirt so long as I can get clean before bed. There's a reason why I travel
around with all the amenities."

He chuckled. "I can respect
that. I tend to shower at night, myself, especially after digging around in the
dirt all day. But I guess I figured you for the kind that holed up in the RV
day and night, parked somewhere pretty."

"Well, I do like to park
somewhere pretty," I admitted. "And I do spend a lot of days sitting
in the living area, on my laptop. That comes with the job. But I don't see a
point in parking somewhere pretty if I'm not going to go out and enjoy the
pretty. I write for a couple of travel companies, so I have to go out and
adventure a bit. I write reviews and articles of tours, events, and activities
in the area. I can't do that if I don't go out and participate."

Mack took his turn next, followed
by Mitch.

Philip went fourth, opting to
lead me out to wade in the surf, after we'd gotten a bit down the beach, away
from the others. "So, why cancer research?"

I shrugged. "They just
happened to be the ones hosting a Mudrun this week."

He pursed his lips and shook his
head. "I'm not buying it. Who'd you lose?"

I shifted my eyes away. "My
grandfather. And my Mom fought and won a few years back." I looked back up
at him. "How'd you know?"

He shook his head. "I
didn't. It's just that odds are we've all been affected in some way."

"So how were you
affected?"

He was quiet for a moment, the
sound of the gentle waves the only noise around us. "I lost my wife,"
he finally said.

"Hmm, I knew you were too
good to have gone this long and not have been snatched up by some intelligent
woman."

He smiled.

"Any kids?"

He shook his head. "We never
made it that far."

He walked me back up to the group
and Jared stood, ready for his turn. Jared took my hand and walked me in the
opposite direction than the others had taken me. "You're just a dirty girl
at heart, aren't you?" he asked with a grin.

I laughed. "Not really. But
I don't mind getting dirty, if there's a shower in my immediate future."

"But work hard, play
harder?"

I smiled at him. "My play is
work. I'll be writing articles about the Mudrun and yesterday's circus school
session. I'll leave stuff about the dates out of it and submit them to the
travel magazines I write for."

"The network is letting you
make money off things they've paid for?"

"Yes. Only because I'll
separate them out in my writing, and it'll give you guys all a feel for what
life with me will be like. Plus, they want me to write up blog entries for the
show's website, as well. And I know or a fact that the businesses are more
eager to accommodate us, the more advertising they get out of the deal. So I'll
be killing a few birds with the same stone."

"So, if you spent a few days
in the swamp with me..."

"I'd write about it. The
plants and wildlife, check out any swamp tours that might be around, that kind
of thing. My play is research for my work."

He nodded to himself, reached
down to pick up a perfect shell, and handed it to me. "Okay. Then maybe I
should give you a little insight into what it's like to live with me."

"Go ahead," I said with
a smile as I took hold of the shell.

"Water samples, sometimes
small animal life, and scientific equipment spread out on the kitchen table,
and stored on windowsills. And sometimes stranded baby swamp animals come into
the RV, until I can get them to a rescue."

I just nodded as I took a moment
to process that.

He chuckled at my expression. "You're
not going to start searching for a white flower to hand me now, right?"

"...No, I'm just trying to
wrap my mind around caring for an infant alligator while you go out and collect
one last round of water samples. And now I'm thinking about the turn my
articles would take."

"I could show you a couple
field magazines that you might start wanting to submit articles of our
adventures to."

"Hmm."

"You don't work at the
kitchen table, too. Do you?"

I shook my head. "Not
usually. I tend to set myself up on the couch where I can either put something
on TV for background noise, or gaze out the windows, depending on my mood. I
have one of those lift-top coffee tables to use as a desk, and a couple lap
boards to put my laptop on."

"Perfect."

I smiled as he led me back to the
group. We started gathering our stuff to go back to the houses. I was starting
to realize that while my immediate picture of hosting science equipment, test
tubes, and swamp creatures wasn't pleasant, I knew that was just this guy's job
issue. No matter who I choose, I'd be choosing to live with someone who would
be working out of the same small space I was. Each one of these guys would have
not only personal possessions, but stuff for their work, too.

It might be true that all I had
to have for my job was a laptop and an internet connection, but I also knew the
reality of what the living room looked like after staying put for a month.
Flyers for activities I'd found, pamphlets from places I'd gone and things I'd
done, and then there were the color-coded sticky note accumulations. Then I
pictured my rig that week I got caught in a blizzard. I had stuff for articles
spread out all over the bed, stuff for the novel I was working on spread out in
the living room, and then stuff for an upcoming book signing spread out in the
kitchen, I spent the week catching up on some things and preparing others ahead
of time. That's when I realized that there would be times that I'd be hard to
live with, too.

One thing was for certain, as we
drove back to the property. I was more curious than ever to see inside these
guy's rigs. Because, at least when I packed up to move on to the next place, I
had the ability to condense everything down to a notebook and a couple folders.
Now I was beginning to wonder if they all had room for me in the midst of their
own work paraphernalia.

I was glad to leave the guys at
the main house and go back to the cottage for the evening. For all my worry
about someone else's job boxing me in and limiting my nomadic life, I hadn't
thought about how his work would affect our home. And I should have. It was
such a glaringly obvious thing to consider.

My clutter was paper. After I
finished an article, I scanned a copy of the pamphlets and flyers and threw
them away. Any sticky notes I still had to contend with went into my notebook,
on pages labeled with whatever project they were a note for. Sure, I had a
sticky note program on my computer, but it was too basic for everything I used
them for.

The idea that whichever guy I
chose possibly not being able to condense their work clutter down was bugging
me simply because space in any kind of RV was at a commodity. How far spread
out did swamp boy's work get? Would that interfere with cooking in the kitchen?
The table was one thing, but did it spread over the countertops?

And right about now, in my mind's
rambling wonderings, I figured I was harping on the topic because I was so
freaking tired, though not as much physically as I was mentally. Trying to talk
and keep up with the flirtatious banter that some had thrown at me, and talking
about meshing two lives together that others had brought up, was exhausting.
Repeating myself about my life, because I was having individual conversations
about things they all wanted to know, was irritating as well. Relationships
took work, and I was trying to launch twelve of them.

I rolled my shoulders and stretched
my neck in an effort to shake off the thoughts circling around in my head. I
needed to get some notes down for the two articles, and write up a draft for
the blog on my week so far.

I worked for a
while, made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner, and climbed into the
bathroom Jacuzzi.  Later, I curled up in bed with a movie on the TV that I fell
asleep a quarter of the way through. At one point, I thought I heard a knock on
the front door. Production would have let themselves in and then called out for
me, but this person didn't. So I figured it was probably Trevor. I needed some
downtime, so I didn't climb out of the tub to answer the door.