by Emily Bishop
“Um…” I rack my brain for the stupid show rules. I’ve worked for her for three straight seasons now, and it’s hard to keep all her random demands straight. I spent a year as her maid before she financed my cosmetology certification: never open this door, always let the machine answer this phone, stack the plates like this, not that. We spent last season in Maui: don’t go down to the beach after sunset, and no one is allowed to get food from local venders. The first season, no one was allowed to wear green. It was never explained, though I think it had something to do with special effects. We were also in Ireland, but that’s probably a coincidence.
“Okay, we’re not allowed to drink,” I begin, stalling. Just as I say the words, one of the gophers ducks around me and passes a shot glass of clear liquor to Blake, one inch crusted with salt and a wedge of lime on its rim. Ms. Madden opens her mouth, but before she can get a word out, Blake nods at the gopher and the shot is enthusiastically chugged.
Blake winces and beams up at her, victorious.
Ms. Madden shakes her head at him, then swivels back to me, counting the rules on her prematurely wrinkled fingers. “No wandering the grounds after dark. Don’t take any souvenirs from the property. I don’t even want to find a dead flower in anyone’s suitcase. No drinking on the job or the property, please. We have enough idiocy without alcohol. And don’t flirt with this one.” She claps a hand on my shoulder and pats it twice, then gives me an unnecessarily brutal squeeze. “Jenny!” she calls out randomly, taking off as quickly as she swooped in.
A girl scampers from the crew to join with her as she walks, scribbling in a small notepad. Jenny must be her new assistant. Ms. Madden tears through assistants like toilet paper.
“Does she always say ‘no flirting’?” Blake wonders.
“Roxy! Abs! We’re rolling at three!” Ms. Madden’s voice splits the crowd.
I twist to face Blake fully and command him to stand with my hands. He rolls his eyes slightly, but follows my semaphore and stands.
I kneel at his crotch, just beneath his abdomen.
Don’t be dirty. This is where I’m going to work. Please. This guy is one of the stupid billionaire bachelors. No way.
“Yes, she always says to not flirt,” I tell Blake, even though she has never told me not to flirt with a bachelor. Why would she ever need to tell me not to flirt with one? But that’s none of his business. He doesn’t need to know that Ms. Madden felt the need to single him out to me.
“That doesn’t seem a little fascist to you?” Blake wondered aloud. “Controlling whether or not you can flirt?”
“She doesn’t control whether or not I flirt,” I inform him. “I do.”
This sociopolitical, philosophical conversation is great, but this is my job, and we’re rolling soon. I start shading outside the taut line of his already defined oblique.
Blake gasps lightly and then laughs a soft, breathless laugh.
“What is it?” I ask, not stopping. “Ticklish?”
“Not ticklish,” he clarifies. Gooseflesh pricks along his skin, right beneath my fingertips, and I pause. My eyes flick up to him and he glances down at me. I know it’s crazy, but when he looks at me, another world opens up.
“Still feeling lost?” he wonders.
I force my eyes back down and continue shading.
“You remember,” I murmur. “How impressive.”
He’s one of the billionaire bachelors. Never gonna happen. He’s not even a regular guy. He’s a celebrity. A hero.
“I thought it might be you. You know,” Blake says to me, using a soft, husky whisper, as if we share a secret now, “the Japanese call this pressure point ‘the rushing door.’” His finger skates along the hollow outside his oblique, where I’m currently shading. “It is frequently used by lovers.”
“Fascinating,” I say, still shading his ‘rushing door.’
The crotch of his white linen pants stirs, and I force myself to focus on the oblique. Focus on the oblique.
His erection brushes the underside of my right hand, the one holding the palette. The blush thunders up into my cheeks so hard that I can physically hear it. Neither of us say anything for several beats, but my chest is rising and falling quickly, and I know he can see that.
I force my eyes to his abdomen, even though I can still feel his broad cock. I feel kind of dizzy being this close to it, like he’s giving off some sort of magnetic pulse, throwing my entire brain into disarray. I can’t focus. I can’t.
“Just meditate,” I command, brushing his ‘rushing door’ as quickly as I can. But that only seems to make matters worse. I see the way his abdominals flinch beneath his skin, delighted, exhilarated by the touch. He’s so hard by the time I finish.
“I like the new color,” Blake comments idly, fingers scooping down into my hair and fingering a solitary lock. I blink up at him, feeling naked. “Mm,” he murmurs, a deep rumble mostly expressed in his chest. “Very sexy.”
I gasp and drive myself off my knees, ashamed and amazed at how quickly the world just disappeared from around us, how quickly it seemed like we were alone, on our knees at the foot of a bed—but we aren’t. We stand next to my trailer, and people are all around us. People with recording devices are all around us. We don’t even know each other. He’s the star of the show. Anyone could look over here at any moment. This is the only job I have. What was I thinking? That I was just going to jack him off right here?
What is wrong with you?!
“Take a walk,” I snap at him. My heart hammers in my chest. This guy—this spoiled Billionaire Bachelor #6—is sexually harassing me with his throbbing hard-on! I don’t want to see his thick cock come to life for me. I don’t, damn it!
“Deal. Meet me in the hedge maze.”
And, with that, he turns on his heel and marches away, dividing a small cluster of milling camera people and striding completely across the property.
“Wh-where is he going?” Ms. Madden splutters loudly. She yells it to me through about twenty people. “Where is he going, Roxanne?”
“I don’t know,” I call back to her. I know exactly where he’s going. The fucking hedge maze.
“I don’t have all goddamn day, I’m melting out here,” Ms. Madden barks at me. “Go get him. We’re about to roll. Come on, people! Get it together.”
“Um, um, yes, ma’am,” I say, sprinting toward his mansion after him.
***
I get lost twice before I find the hedge maze, much less the center of the fucking hedge maze. By the time I find him, my hair looks like day two of being stranded on a jungle island, I smell emphatically of myself, and I have scratches on my fingers from clawing through two hedges as soon as I heard him. But I’m not going to lose my job over this little prep school fantasy Sir Blake Berringer probably has for punk girls. I’m not his road-less-taken, charity, five-minute finger-bang. Nope. Not me.
“Hey,” I call as I struggle through the stupid vines and leaves. I give a little roar as I come through the last bit, and a piece of one branch comes off in my hair. I struggle to liberate it as I storm toward him. “You can’t just walk off the set like that, Blake. This is serious. We’re paying these people for their time.”
Now I can see him clearly. He’s sitting on a wrought-iron bench, bookended by dark red rose bushes in full bloom. It’s kind of ridiculous. It looks like it is part of the My Billionaire Bachelor set, but it is part of his regular house.
I march on him, unswayed by the beautiful environment. The buzz of bumblebees. The thick aroma of flora. I’m totally unmoved. “I know money doesn’t mean anything to someone like you,” I snap at Blake, “but to someone like me, it means a lot, so can we please get back to that makeup chair?”
Blake lets his head fall to one side and examines me thoughtfully, like I’m some rare creature he needs to document. “Are we not even going to talk about what happened out there?”
“Your hard-on?” I scoff. “Right. Let me alert the crew. We need to get a slow-mo shot
of that boy, I think.”
“Not my hard-on,” Blake corrects me. “You. How I know you.”
“I assure you, you don’t,” I say, throwing back his earlier line in his own face. “Come back to the set before we have to sue you for breach of contract.”
“Roxanne.” His voice turned my name into a love spell. “You’re not going to sue me for anything. Why are you saying ‘we?’ You’re not the show. You didn’t integrate consciousness with My Billionaire Bachelor, did you?”
“That’s how poor people see work,” I inform him. “Yes, I say ‘we’ when I talk about this show, because it keeps me a-fucking-live. When I stop needing it to live, I’ll stop thinking of it as a part of me. Come on now, pretty boy. Let’s get back to the set.”
Blake and I stare back and forth at each other for a moment.
His eyes gleam unreadably, and his lips are slightly curved. Is he happy, right now, with me? When I first saw him—for the first time since 2013—I thought he looked older in more ways than just physically. His mouth and eyes seemed stoic and heartless. But right now, he looks young again.
He likes to mess with people, I guess.
“Let’s go,” I say again. Maybe he can use his quips and mystique on other billionaire women, but they won’t work on me. I need real things. I lean down and stretch my hands out to him, beckoning like he’s a dog. “Let’s get back to the set, okay? Come on boy!” I whistle for him and pat my knee.
“You don’t even want to acknowledge it?” His deep voice pitches high with disbelief. “You literally asked me if I was an angel.”
By complete coincidence, my necklace—Blake’s brass key on a slim brass chain—slides out of my neckline at that precise moment, dangling in Blake’s face.
His eyes brighten, and he snatches the key out of the air, incidentally tugging it and drawing my face to hover just above his, my breasts crowded beneath his nose.
“You kept it,” he realizes.
“Did you want it back?”
“No. No.” The key slips from between his fingers and topples back toward my breasts, where it is normally safely snuggled. I stand and slip it down the front of my shirt again, almost offended by the fact that he didn’t ogle me at all.
“Good,” I say. “We’re not supposed to take gifts from the bachelor, but gifts from before must be okay.”
“Oh, is that what I am now? ‘The bachelor’?”
I step back and turn, desperately gesturing for him to follow. I don’t have time to talk about how we met like we’re old friends or ex-lovers, because we’re not. Anyway, I saw the footage of him chasing down and whooping that kid with the camera. No, thank you. Ms. Madden was right. He is unhinged. “Yes, you’re ‘the bachelor.’ Come on.”
“Not until you break one of the Billionaire Bachelor rules,” Blake blurts from behind me. “Come on. You need to get out from under Candace’s grinding old thumb.”
“She told me you were bad,” I mutter, mostly to myself. He’s going to get me fired. I’m already standing at the hedge, waiting impatiently. “I don’t know why I didn’t believe her.”
“Just one,” Blake coos. He snaps a red rose off the nearest bush and stands, sauntering toward me. It twirls between his fingers, and his eyes dance. “A flower to die in your suitcase.”
I glare at the flower, then turn the same glare on him. “You’re going to get me fired.”
“Just break one rule, and I’ll come back with you.” He twirls the rose in front of my nose. “A souvenir for the first erection you ever gave me. Hopefully not the last.” He winks.
I gape into his arrogant face as I snatch the rose, smack it against his chest, and whirl. Typical bachelor.
“You’re such a spoiled brat,” I grumble, marching through the hedge maze.
“By the way,” he calls after me, “you’re going in the wrong direction.”
I storm past him and into the only other hedge maze corridor. I also crush his gift of the rose down into my pocket like it’s a crumpled receipt. That’s how little I care.
“By the way,” I call after him, mimicking his know-it-all tone perfectly, “I broke two of your hedges.”
Chapter 3
Blake
I ache to grab her. It’s my first and most natural response, but I know that I can’t…
We stroll the gardens, and Candace asks me soft questions about my family and our finances, how I became a ‘billionaire bachelor.’ This is a talk I’ve had a thousand times. They were members of the royal treasury during the reign of Bloody Mary. It’s the scandal of my family, but it’s also the wellspring of our fortune. She wants to talk about the charity work. We talk about the charity work. She wants to talk about the altercation with the photographer, and I thank her for her interest and pass.
They ask for some shots of me with my shirt unbuttoned, and it’s hard to keep a straight face. It takes a few tries, and finally, Candace decides, “You know what? I like the smile better anyway. We got it.”
I watch from the sidelines as they film Candace at the introduction of the show, alone poolside and walking expertly in snakeskin stilettos and a matching snakeskin cocktail gown. It’s too much.
On the patio, the eight pseudo-contestants all congregate in egg-shaped chairs, waiting for their scene. They’re inexplicably bikini-clad.
“We’ve selected eight wonderful women from the United States–hardworking, regular women–and we’re giving them the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to slip into the elegant heels of the date… with a billionaire bachelor.”
She strolls toward their side of the pool. I haven’t spoken to any of these women yet, and I doubt that I will, with the exception of our ‘episode’ together. It’s just not that kind of show. It’s meant to be goofy and pointless.
Right now, Candace is giving a short interview to a waitress from Florida. I suppose she’ll be one of my dates.
I hear the crunch of grass behind me, and then: “I have to ask you something,” a husky female voice murmurs.
Roxanne settles alongside me, and when I look at her, I have to pause.
That’s why she looked so different when I first saw her again–all the makeup.
Her face is clean and fresh now, dark hair pulled back in a loose clasp, and she seems ten years younger; she looks just like the girl I met on that yacht, but stronger. Much stronger. Her hair is wet from a shower and smells of pear blossom. She’s not wearing the show shirt anymore. She wears cloying black leggings and a sheer black camisole. I can’t see anything, and I won’t give her the satisfaction of crawling all over her with my eyes, but I am somehow preternaturally aware that she isn’t wearing a bra. I’m sure of it.
Her captivating eyes snap to me and crinkle with intensity, derailing my train of thought. “Where does my key go?”
I can see the key now, winking up at me from her chest, as if beckoning me to take it back from her.
I open my mouth and flounder for a second, as it occurs to me that the truth sounds wildly dramatic and childish. I can’t tell her the truth. “I don’t remember, really. A post office box, I think. Padlock, maybe. Ah, yes, that was it. Remember the story?”
“A prison can become a home if only you have the key,” she repeats my words perfectly. I’m a little impressed. That moment must have meant more to her than she’s letting on.
“Yes, yes,” I say. “That’s the key to the dungeon padlock. I remember now.”
I grin, happy to push her buttons, but Roxanne’s expression sours. She continues to toy with the key. “Come down to me,” she commands suddenly, guiding me first toward one of the lamps on the property and positioning me beneath it. Then she draws my face closer to hers and strategically dabs it with some cream-colored concealer and a blush brush.
While she works on me, I study her face.
There’s something so intent about her, something dogged and relentless. She refuses to even see me as anything but a part of her job, because her job keeps her alive. Her survival insti
nct is so strong now, especially compared to a girl once poised to throw herself into the ocean. That night, when I collected her off the stern of that ship, she looked like she could shatter at any moment. But this phoenix is a creature from another entire species, the way a butterfly couldn’t possibly emerge from the same cocoon that a caterpillar built. Yet they do.
“You’ve changed,” I tell her. “I didn’t even recognize you at first.”
She smiles a little as she gently flicks her blush brush along my cheekbones, my chin, and my nose. “You look a little different, too,” she says.
I grin down at her, tracking her movements closely with my eyes. She’s looking away, surprising me with her bashfulness, tucking a wavy lock of black hair behind her ear.
From the other side of the pool, Candace yells, “Let’s talk about our sixth season billionaire bachelor, America! He’s Britain’s bad boy: Sir Blake Berringer!”
“Time to go,” Roxanne whispers up to me, stepping back. I ache to grab her. It’s my first and most natural response, but I know that I can’t. “Bad boy,” she adds with a smirk, settling on her hip. I cringe at the way her ass pops in those pants. I cringe at the way she calls me “bad boy.”
“Heir to seventeen billion pounds in a banking fortune!” Candace calls, and I start thinking we might be in the middle of an entirely different take now. “Heir to a fortune which dates back to Queen Elizabeth the First!”
I bolt over to her and grasp her hand warmly. We make small talk, and I’m introduced to the girls. I think this is pure cake until she turns on me. “So, when are we going to talk about the fight, Blake?” Candace asks with a conspiratorial giggle, her voice low and almost commanding. “Everybody’s dying to get your side of the story.”
“I’m not as bad as they say I am,” I tell the camera, smiling into its lens. I know how these things go. I’m not going to fight with Candace, even if that is, deep down, exactly what she wants to film. “The media is insane, and it will do anything to a celebrity, whatever gets the most ratings. Let’s talk about the things that matter in my life, Candace. For example, I spend most of my time following several different passions. I spent a few years studying fighting in the East, mastering bagua and aikido, as well as other martial art styles.”