His face reddened too. "It was actually Ron's idea, not mine, but you're welcome."
I frowned, and he said, "What?"
"Ron said it wasn't his idea."
His flush deepened dramatically. "He did?"
I nodded.
"Well, you know Ron," he said with a forced laugh. "He likes to... um..." I could see him scrambling for a way to finish the sentence, and I knew.
"Kent."
"Yes?" His innocent tone only strengthened my conviction.
"Whose idea was it?"
We stared each other down for several seconds before he said, "Mine."
"Then why did you--"
"I don't want you feeling like you have to be grateful. It's my fault you're here, and--"
"Wait, how do you figure that?"
"If your name hadn't been on my list, you'd be on the normal show right now."
I nodded slowly, then surprised both of us. "I'm glad I'm not there."
"You are?"
"I'd have hated it," I admitted. "It's so clear to me now how horrible it would have been. Trying to connect with seven strange men? It's bad enough with guys I know, but new guys? I'm no Summer."
"Thank God for small mercies," he said, his tone casual but his eyes intent on my face.
I blushed but wasn't sure why. "And anyhow, if I hadn't put your name on my list, then you'd be on the normal show. So it's not your fault."
He pondered this. "Yeah, you're right, it's yours, Princess."
We laughed, and I took a mock swing at him, which he blocked easily. "Don't call me that. I'll push you right over this cliff."
"I'll behave. Look, what have you been up to? How's your dad? Work? Everything?"
From then on, we talked the afternoon away. He told me how his dad's retirement had driven his mother to a part-time job to get her away from his endless variety of new and strange hobbies. I told him how my dad had accidentally driven his prized garden tractor into the pond, not once but twice. When we stopped laughing, we moved on to work, people we both knew, and our favorite books, movies, and television shows.
We were as relaxed as we'd always been with each other and I loved it. I pushed the million dollars out of my mind; I was enjoying his company too much to think about anything else. The game could wait.
When the sun was heading for the horizon, I heard voices behind us. I leaned out and around my chair to see several women unpacking food onto the table.
"They're feeding us again?" I turned back to him. "I'm still stuffed from lunch."
"Consider it stocking up for the week ahead."
He got to his feet and held out his hand to me. I took it, warm and strong, and he helped me up but didn't let go. With his other hand, he touched my bruised cheek, so softly I felt no pain. "I guess you were surprised when you saw this."
The catch in his voice made my heart race. "You all said it was no big deal."
His fingertips lingered on my cheek, smoothing over my skin, tracing my cheekbone. "I wanted to tell you before you went into the shower but I couldn't figure out what to say. The medic seemed to think it was better if you didn't know, so I guess we went along."
"I could have handled it," I said, hardly aware of my words, his touch sending shivers through me and scrambling my brain. I'd thought I'd wanted Aaron, but that was nothing like this, every nerve humming, the air around and between us charged with power and possibility.
His thumb slid onto my jaw, multiplying the shivers to a nearly unbearable degree, and tipped my face up so our mouths were barely inches apart. "I know. I wanted to tell you." His darkened eyes searched my face for an eternity, then he brushed his fingers once more over my cheek and released my hand. "Should we go eat?"
He walked toward the table, leaving me staring after him. He'd been about to kiss me, I was sure, and I'd been more than willing. I shouldn't have been, but I had. And he must have known. What had changed his mind?
I'd never understand men, not in a million years.
Chapter Nineteen
At first we didn't talk while we ate. He'd gone silent and distant. Sorry for nearly kissing me, perhaps? Eventually, though, he opened up again, and I went with him because I so enjoyed talking to him. He had interesting insights on things, slightly off-center viewpoints, and I never knew what was coming next.
As the meal went on, and the wine flowed, we talked about our island lives, going deeper than we had before. I admitted how Phillip had made me exile him, not the exact words but that he'd brought up my sex life, and Kent's outrage on my behalf touched me. He then confessed that his exes had thrown the interpretive dance contest "because I sat with you after you fell."
"Not Summer, though, right?"
"No, she thought I'd done the right thing." He smiled, remembering. "She was so mad at them when we got back to camp. Couldn't stop screaming." His eyes danced. "Reminds me of someone else screaming at her team. Now, who could that have been?"
I slapped him lightly on the arm. "Don't! I should never have said all that."
"They deserved it, from the sound of it. How'd they react when you got back to camp?"
I shrugged. "They were glad I'd finally quit being so uptight."
He frowned. "What do you mean?"
My eyes focused on the table, I explained how Aaron had told me I'd been too hard to get to know and that I'd decided to make myself open up more. When I finished, Kent didn't say a word. After a few seconds I forced myself to look at him, and my heart fluttered at the emotions chasing each other across his face, disbelief and anger and something so tender it hurt to see it.
"I don't agree at all," he said, louder than he'd been speaking before, then picked up his wine. Setting the glass down without taking a drink, he said, "I hope you're not going to do it."
I swallowed hard. "Why not?"
He took my hand, his skin warm against mine. "That's what made you you."
"Hard to deal with and impossible to get to know."
He shook his head and held my hand tighter. "Not at all." He looked into my eyes then down at the table. "I knew stuff about you nobody else knew, and I liked it. Whenever you told me something else, I felt... privileged." He looked up. "I felt like I'd really won something."
Nobody had ever said something so lovely to me, and I didn't know how to respond.
He dropped my hand and leaned back in his chair. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. You don't want to hear it from me."
"I do. It's so sweet. Did... did you really mean it?"
"Every last word," he said, his voice low and intense.
"Then why'd you take it back?" The words squeezed past a sudden lump in my throat.
"I thought you didn't like it. You looked upset."
"I'm not," I assured him. "Really."
But 'upset' was a good word for how I felt. Upset, turned over, shaken.
"Okay," he said, looking as flustered as I felt. "Um, how's your rat?"
"My-- oh, right."
I'd finally remembered to complain to Aaron, a few days after my private lunch with Kent, about him claiming I'd named the rat. He'd stunned me by saying Kent had refused to let the women name the snake at their camp after me. I hadn't been able to make myself say Kent had said it was Summer, but I did question his statement and Jim confirmed he'd been told it had been Kent as well. Even after he thought I'd named the rat? Nice of him.
I didn't mention that to Kent, though. Instead, I told him about Aaron's attempts at taming it using scraps of fruit, and how the rat was proving itself smarter, or at least craftier, than Aaron. "Now it waits until he's not around then grabs the food and takes off. And how's the snake?"
He pulled a sad face. "We found it dead a few days ago. Summer was devastated."
"Why did you two break up?"
I hadn't even known the words were coming. "I'm sorry, it's none of my--"
"We were too different," he said as if I hadn't spoken. "She loves going out, parties, being the center of attention. You know how
she is. I was holding her back."
I sat silent, digesting this.
"By the end, we were pretty much doing our own thing, with our own friends and activities and stuff." His defeated expression brought the lump back to my throat. "I should have known it wouldn't work. She was too much for me. I know she's embarrassed you, but she really doesn't mean to. She just loves talking to people and being an open book."
He toyed with his fork. "After you, I obviously wasn't used to that, and I missed-- well, it seemed immature somehow. We even set up signals to let her know she was disclosing too much or asking the wrong questions, but she still did it. She called me her 'shy guy' to her friends, and I hated that she had to make excuses for me. Finally, she came home one day and said she thought we were stifling each other and we'd be better off apart."
I tentatively touched his hand, then wrapped mine around it. "I'm so sorry."
He squeezed my hand briefly before pulling away. "You and Aaron'll be fine, though."
I frowned, confused, and he said, "You're back together, right?"
"Not that I know of."
A flush crawled up his neck. "We assumed... he was so nice when you got hurt--"
So were you, I thought but didn't say.
"--and the 'baby' stuff."
"He's mostly doing that because it ticks off-- the other guys," I said, catching myself before naming Michael. "He has been good to me. But we'd never work out." I smiled, trying to lighten the mood. "He'd be dumping all my secrets on some guy he'd met five minutes ago, and I'd be hiding everything inside so he couldn't."
He didn't return my smile, which faded at the intensity of his expression. Then he said, "You've never forgiven me, have you?"
I couldn't look at him any more. Staring down at my plate, I gave my head the slightest of shakes. "I want to," I said, realizing just how much I wanted to. "I know now I handled it all wrong, and I hate it. I'm the one who needs to be forgiven, and I know it, but when I see you I remember and I can't let it go. I should, but I can't. I'm so sorry."
Kent took my hand. "That contest question, my biggest dating mistake? I said 'no comment' because I didn't know how they'd use the answer. But that's it. So stupid."
My throat tightened at the frustration and pain in his voice. Without looking up, I said, "But you were right, you knew..." I didn't want to say Ron's name. "...knew the other person involved and how he was and--"
"But I knew you and knew what you needed, and I didn't even come close to giving it to you. I maybe couldn't have fixed everything but I didn't even try. And I've been sorry every day since."
I entwined my fingers with his and a tear splashed onto our joined hands. "Me too. Thank you."
"You're welcome," he said, his voice nearly a whisper. I studied our hands, biting my lip to keep back the rest of the tears, and wished I could forgive him like I wanted to, could somehow delete the image of him not standing up for me and put another one in its place.
We sat in silence until he cleared his throat and withdrew his hand, leaving mine feeling cold and alone. "What really made you sign up for a dating show? I know you said you'd tried everything else, but reality TV's not exactly your style."
"No doubt." I sighed, and wrapped my arms around myself.
His eyes gentle, he said, "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
But to my surprise I did. "I was going to have dinner with my friend Nathan. Greg and I had broken up and I wanted the male perspective. He cancelled at the last minute, though."
I took a sip of my wine before going on. "He apologized so many times it got weird. Then his wife took the phone from him. They'd only been married a few weeks at that point."
A bigger sip. "She told me I couldn't see him, because I wasn't married. She said she knew how... how desperate single women could be and she wouldn't risk letting me near him."
Kent shook his head. "And you were just friends?"
"Yeah. And I thought we'd stay that way."
"But instead..."
Instead, I'd been stunned, then furious, then devastated, then very drunk, and when 'Find Your Prince' came on TV that night somehow I'd applied before I'd quite realized what I was doing. "I was sure the show would reject me, but they called me a few days later to get the details on my exes, and signed me up a few weeks after that. And here I am."
"Indeed," Kent said, giving me a smile full of sympathy.
"And you? I wouldn't have thought this was your thing either."
He shrugged. "When I felt ready to get back into dating after the divorce, I tried all that online stuff too but I hated it. Then Ron saw an ad for 'Find Your Princess' and signed me up."
I stared. "Ron signed you up. Weren't you mad at him?"
"At first," he said, punching a playful fist into his palm. I smiled. He smiled back, then went on. "But I probably did need a bit of a push."
"This is more like a battering ram, don't you think?"
We laughed, and moved on to safer conversational waters.
When we'd eaten our fill, the sky was ablaze with the kind of sunset I'd only seen in romantic movies or on postcards, far more dramatic than the one in my visualization. We left the table and stood in silence in front of our lounge chairs, drinking it in.
I longed to reach over and hold his hand, or at least stand closer to him, but I couldn't. I didn't have the right.
As the sun reached the horizon, Kent moved to face me. The last rays lit his hair to molten gold and turned his eyes a vibrant green, and all I could do was stare. I'd never seen a man so beautiful.
He took my face carefully in both hands, and we stayed frozen for a long moment, electricity snapping between us, before he said, "I'm not hurting you, am I?"
The roughness of his voice wrapped itself around my chest and squeezed the air from me. Not sure I could speak, I shook my head slightly within his hands, and he slid his palms across my face and down onto my shoulders, making a million heartbeats pound all over my body.
I took a step toward him as he drew me in, then another one on my own. We stopped there, so close but nowhere near close enough, while my heart raced and my mind swam, and then we both moved forward, committing at the same time.
Shimmering waves rippled through me at the feel of his kiss, at once so new and so wonderfully familiar. I wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing myself against him, and we began to relearn each other, gently at first then with increasing heat.
I clung to him, stunned by how utterly right it felt, and he deepened the kiss even more, tightening his arms across my back and holding me in place like he thought I might try to leave.
Not a chance.
*****
So many men would have made a joke after a moment like that so I'd know they weren't taking it seriously. When our kiss ended, Kent pressed his cheek to my head and held me without a word. Eyes closed, I breathed in his clean scent and luxuriated in his embrace, not letting myself think of anything but him.
Had I ever been kissed like that before? The aftershocks were still flashing through my body, leaving little sparkly places in their wake. It had been just like a movie.
The awful thought struck me that it probably had been a movie, or at least on film, and I tensed against it. They had almost certainly put a camera by our chairs, and I didn't want that kiss to be on the show for people to swoon over or mock.
I felt Kent loosening his hold on me and nearly begged him not to. I didn't, though, because what could I have said? Instead, I looked up at him, no longer set aglow by the sun but still gorgeous to me.
His fingers stroked my cheek, making me shiver. He took a breath as if about to speak, but then let it out slowly, smoothed my hair back, and stepped away from me.
I shivered again, with cold this time; without his warmth the night air chilled me at once.
"Can I get you a sweater?" His voice told me he'd been as affected by our kiss as I had, and the realization sent another flurry of aftershocks through me. I nodded, and he
walked away into the dark lit only by the candles on our table, returning quickly with his thick fleece jacket.
"I didn't think I should go through your stuff." He held the jacket so I could slip into it.
"It would have been okay, but thanks," I said, doing up the zipper and pulling the sleeves down over my hands. The jacket was far too big for me and I loved it. Kent didn't quite equal Sam in the muscle department, but he was no slouch.
He turned away and looked over the cliff into the blackness below. "I... MC, I should sleep over here tonight."
"You don't need to." The chairs were comfortable enough but that bed looked amazing.
"I do." He faced me. "I don't want to wreck your reputation."
"I've been sleeping with them all every night." Truth be told, I wanted to fall asleep with him beside me, wanted to wake up next to him, wanted one night to pretend I hadn't lost him.
"This is different, just the two of us. I don't want anyone thinking you did anything..."
He trailed off, but it was obvious where he was going. And oh, how I wanted him to go there. Our eyes met, the fire between us blazed to life again, and we threw ourselves forward.
Hands in my hair, his mouth hard and demanding on mine, the kiss so hungry my legs could barely hold me up as desire thundered through me.
When he jerked away from me far too soon I couldn't hold back a whimper.
"God, don't do that," he said, his breath coming in gasps. "I can hardly stop as it is."
"Then don't," I longed to scream at him. "Make love to me." I'd never wanted anyone so much, and as we locked eyes again and I saw the darkness and heat in his I knew he felt the same. But then what? It wouldn't fix our problems.
Not to mention I'd never really aspired to 'porn star' as a career.
I closed my eyes, pulling myself under control with an enormous effort. When I opened them again, he stood staring out over the cliff with his back to me.
Returning to my chair, I dropped down and took deep breaths. After a minute or so, he joined me, and we sat together without speaking for a long time. I wondered what he was thinking, whether he regretted kissing me, regretted stopping, what he thought would happen next, what he wanted to have happen. But I didn't have the words to ask, and he didn't volunteer.
Seven Exes Are Eight Too Many Page 18