She did not share his elation.
“Yep.” She nodded.
Her mind was scrambling to come up with how she was going to get out of this. She hadn’t signed anything yet. Technically, she hadn’t even given her verbal agreement. Gavin had interpreted her “Oh” like it had been touchdown and spiked the ball when really they were still at the fifty-yard line and the game was far from over.
Brian stared at her in disbelief, shaking his head before saying, “Man, this is perfect.” Then he picked up his fork and started shoveling food into his mouth like he didn’t have a care in the world.
Seeing his face void of worry and turmoil, and that his appetite had not just come back but it had come back in full force, Becca knew that there was only one thing to do—pack the clothes she had just unpacked yesterday. It looked like she was going to be spending three weeks filming a dating reality show.
Chapter Eight
Brian leaned to the right as he took the sharp curve at a cautious twenty miles per hour even though the posted traffic sign suggested thirty. He straightened the car out and glanced over at Becca, who was seated beside him in his Jeep, white-knuckling the windy drive up to Whisper Lake. Literally¸ he could see the whites of her knuckles as she gripped the door handle.
When they’d received their contracts with all the filming details, his first reaction to seeing that they’d be filming up at Whisper Lake was nostalgic. He’d spent most of his summers up here, either with family and friends or at camps.
His second response was, Oh shit,—because Brian knew all too well how much Becca hated the windy, narrow, two-lane road that was the only way in and out of Whisper Lake.
His third thought was that they’d be returning to the scene of the crime—if you considered the kiss they’d shared criminal. Which, in Brian’s opinion, that indiscretion had been so hot that, if it weren’t illegal, it should have been. He still felt guilty over it. That was for damn sure.
Becca hadn’t just been tipsy—she’d been toasted. Not three sheets to the wind either. It had been more like thirty sheets. But when she’d started kissing him, he hadn’t been able to pull away from her. Even if he’d just been a passive participant, he might not feel as bad as he did about what had happened. But he’d been engaged in that kiss from the moment her soft lips had touched his.
Brian reminisced about the way that she’d slumped against him. He’d wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close to him. Her soft body had sunk into the hard planes of his body, and his planes weren’t the only things that were hard. He’d gone to full mast in a matter of seconds, and once she’d opened her mouth and her sweet, wet tongue had swept across, licking his bottom lip, Brian had defied the laws of physics and grown even more rock hard. Something had snapped inside of him, and as his tongue had plunged into the hot suction of her mouth, sensations he’d never felt before had rocketed through him to the point that he’d thought there’d been a very real possibility that he was going to explode in his pants.
Even now, six months later, he could still taste the sweetness of the girly drinks Becca had been drinking the entire night, which had led to her intoxication. He could still feel her lips pressed against his, her tongue meeting him lick for lick, her fingernails digging to the point of stinging through his dress shirt on his back. She’d kissed him like she needed him more than she needed oxygen. She’d clung to him as if he’d been the only thing she’d ever had or ever would need.
He hadn’t ever messed with drugs after his short stint during his freshman year of high school, but Becca’s kiss had made him higher than anything he’d ever smoked and drunker than anything he’d ever had to drink. Her kiss was potent.
Shifting uncomfortably in his chair and looking down at his lap, he saw the fairly impressive—if he did say so himself—bulge that was pressing behind his zipper. Brian hoped Becca wouldn’t glance over and notice the visible proof of what he’d been thinking about. Not that she’d know what he was thinking about. Damn. The last thing he wanted was for her to think he got his kicks from driving on winding roads, which he was sure was some people’s thing, but not his.
“What did your mom need?” Brian asked, hoping to distract his raging hormone soldiers from their march down south. He needed his troops to stand down.
That question was the first thing that had popped (no pun intended) into his head. They’d stopped by Mr. and Mrs. Sloan’s house on the way out of town because Mrs. Sloan had called and said that she’d needed to see Becca.
“Oh.” Becca looked startled as she turned to him.
Great. Here he was fantasizing, daydreaming, obsessing over a moment they’d shared together and she’d forgotten he was in the car. Perfect, just perfect.
“She had some pictures to give me that she found on her I-will-have-a-clean-attic mission that I guess she’s been on the past year.” Even though he knew that Becca was trying to be present, she couldn’t have sounded more preoccupied.
“Pictures of what?” Brian knew that it was a stupid question and he was grabbing at straws here. He figured they were more than likely pictures of Becca growing up, but he wanted to keep her talking so his mind didn’t have the chance to mutiny with more boner-inducing thoughts.
“I haven’t looked at them yet.” Becca’s voice sounded distracted.
He heard her take a deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth before she, once again, turned and stared out the window.
Maybe she was just stressed out about the drive she hated so much. Maybe she was nervous about shooting the show. Actually, the more Brian thought about it, the less it made sense that she’d agreed to do it in the first place.
When he’d been packing yesterday and tying up some loose ends, his mom had come in to let him know how his dad’s doctor’s appointment had gone—which, knock on wood, his dad was still getting stronger by the day—and he’d told her the news that not only had he gotten the show but Becca had as well. His mom had immediately jumped to the foregone conclusion that Becca had turned down the opportunity. Even after he’d explained that Becca was, actually going to do it, his mom had just stood in his doorway shaking her head, looking slightly horrified.
After she’d asked her son several questions, the first one being, “Why? Why in the world would Becca do that?” Brian realized that he had no idea. Honestly, as much as he’d tried to run the breakfast, when they’d gotten the calls, over and over in his head, he couldn’t for the life of him remember how her conversation had gone. He didn’t recall her actually agreeing to be on the show.
He’d just assumed that she would say yes; which was insane when he thought about it. Becca hated attention in any form. She liked to be the observer—behind the scenes. Unlike Brit, his baby sister, Becca did not suffer from YSS (youngest sibling syndrome), which was a term he’d coined to explain his little sister’s constant need for attention and approval. She’d pretty much grown out of it once she’d hit high school, but every once in a while, it would rear its ugly head.
“Are you nervous about filming?” Brian asked in a pathetic-slash-generic attempt to open up a dialog he should have had with her yesterday, at the table, before he’d grossly taken for granted the fact that she’d hop on board the crazy train at Reality Show Station and he would no longer be the lone passenger to whatever the destination might be.
“Are you?” she snapped back, being uncharacteristically defensive.
Brian’s eyes cut to hers for only the briefest of moments, because he really did need to keep his eyes on the road, but he was also trying to gauge where this out-of-the-blue reaction had come from. She did not look happy. In fact, if Brian were pushed to classify her mood, he would have to say that it was downright pissed.
Okay.
“Not really,” Brian said, trying to answer her question in the most benign way possible. He didn’t want to say anything wrong and agitate her any more than she so obviously was.
He could have sworn that he heard her
mumble, “Of course not,” under her breath.
When he glanced quickly over at her, she immediately masked her facial expression to neutral.
“Oh, that’s good,” she said with what he easily read as forced sincerity.
To say that Brian had been up in his own head since finding out the news yesterday would be like saying that Chicago was breezy—true but a severe understatement. Only now was the last twenty-four hours coming back to him like a fogged bathroom mirror clearing when you blast it with a hair dryer. It started out with a tiny circle of realization and quickly spread until the entire memory reflection became crystal clear.
Becca hadn’t agreed to participate on this show. In fact, if anything, she’d been trying to turn it down. At the very least, she’d been on the fence, but she’d had one foot on the not-doing-the-show side. So why, why, had she agreed to do it?
Shit. Brian’s jaw tensed as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. It was because of him. As the mental puzzle pieces in his mind locked into place, he was able to see the big picture.
Brian had been stressed, upset, and the second he’d found out that Becca had been cast, the dark cloud of doom that had been hanging over his head had instantly disappeared. Not having to leave Becca to go on this insane adventure had been like hot rays of sun-hope. In his mind’s eye, he could see the moment that the indecision clouds had parted from Becca’s stunning, blue eyes. It was when he’d reacted like she was going, not even waiting to see if she actually wanted to do this. Because she’d seen how happy and relieved the thought of her being on the show had made him, she’d resigned herself to doing exactly that.
That was Becca. His Beckles. She always put the needs of others before her own. Especially his.
He had to fix this or, at the very least, acknowledge her selfless sacrifice. He should make sure that his Scooby Doo detective skills were actually sniffing out the right conclusion to the why-is-Becca-doing-this mystery. He figured the direct approach was the best.
“Why did you decide to do this?” Brian asked, having a pretty good idea that her answer was going to land him in the totally-insensitive-ass category.
But if the category fits…
* * *
Becca’s heart began pumping so fast that you would have thought it was a sprinter in the Summer Olympics going for the gold. What—in the name of all that is holy—was she going to tell him? One thing was for sure, it wasn’t going to be the truth.
If she did that, then Brian would feel responsible for her decision. And she couldn’t let that happen. Brian had enough weight on his shoulders between his parents’ health issues and Brit’s tuition needs. Not to mention that, if this show didn’t go well (meaning Brian didn’t win), then he’d have to officially bury his dream where dreams go to die—in the responsibility graveyard under the no-options soil.
No, she needed to come up with some other reason why she’d made the decision that was making it feel like she had an ulcer the size of a grapefruit eating away at the lining of her stomach.
Biff’s voice from Back to the Future popped into her head. “Think, McFly, Think.”
“Same as you. The money,” Becca lied through her teeth, staring straight ahead, careful not to look to see if Brian ‘bought’ it. That would be a classic liar’s move.
If lying were an art form, growing up, her sister Krista would easily be a master in its practice. Her redheaded older sister didn’t lie often, but when she did, it was truly something to behold. Most of her sister’s tall tales had centered around trying to spend alone time with her then high school boyfriend, now fiancé, Chase.
Whether her sister was saying that she was going to be spending the night at a friend’s house, when really she was going camping with Chase or that he hadn’t been in the house when their parents had been gone, the key Becca had observed to pulling off a whopper of a fib was to have total, complete, and unwavering confidence in what you were saying. Basically, you had to subconsciously convince yourself that the words you were saying were true.
Becca didn’t think she’d be able to pull off that master level of deceit, but she was hoping to at least reach believable status and squeak by without any more questions on the unwanted topic of her motivations.
“The money?” Brian repeated, clearly not picking up what she was laying down.
“Move along. There’s nothing to see here,” she heard the Stormtrooper from Star Wars say.
Why couldn’t he just drop it? She knew the answer to that; because it was Brian. That’s why.
“Yep,” Becca confirmed, nodding for emphasis. Then, even though she knew she shouldn’t elaborate, she continued, “Stanford is not cheap, and my parents have already ponied up a lotta dough putting Haley, Krista, and Jessie through school. I’m not trying to win this thing. Obviously, I’m rooting for you to win it. But the guaranteed twenty Gs will help.”
Becca forced herself to stop talking. First, she wasn’t talking like herself, which was her biggest ‘tell’ when it came to lying. “Ponied up,” “lotta dough,” and “twenty Gs”? For some reason, whenever Becca lied, instead of growing a long, wooden nose like Pinocchio, she would try to sound “cool” or “hip” and end up sounding like an idiot. She wished her nose would just get larger. It would have been much less embarrassing.
“Beckles.” Brian’s voice was soothing and calming, the way it always was when he was trying to talk her off the ledge.
She couldn’t count the number of times she’d heard that tone. And each time, whether it was because she was sure she was going to bomb on a huge test, scared to get on a plane, or afraid to walk on the stage at graduation to deliver the valedictory speech, it had had the desired effect. Becca would immediately feel centered, calmer, steady.
More than once, she’d told Brian that he should consider being a hostage negotiator for the police. She felt a little guilty that his talents were wasted on her. He could probably talk jumpers off ledges and convince hostage-takers to surrender.
He didn’t need to say any more. The rest was implied. Becca knew that he was calling her on the fact that there was no way she was doing this for the money.
Okay…what would Brian believe? What…what…what…
Winner, winner, chicken dinner. She had it.
Becca’s hands grew damp as she began the big-fat-whopper-of-a-lie story she’d come up with on the fly. “I just… I always do what everyone expects me to do. I don’t ever take chances or…go out of my comfort zone. I thought that, even though, or actually because, this scares me like nobody’s business, I should do it.” Taking a breath, she paused and looked over at Brian’s profile.
He was listening, and she saw that his shoulder’s had relaxed. Whenever he was worried, they tensed up. Yes. Hook. Line. And big-fat-lie sinker.
Figuring she was on a roll, she kept on rolling like Tina Turner. “I mean, let’s be honest. My life has a fairly predictable path. After I graduate and complete my residency, I want to start my own, settle down, and have a family. When would I ever get the chance to do something like this?”
She was still turned, looking at Brian when his eyes cut over to her. She didn’t look away, even though that was exactly what she wanted to do. She held her lying ground like a pro. Krista would be proud. She, however, was surprised that her pants hadn’t spontaneously caught on fire because she was definitely a liar, liar.
Brian looked back at the road in front of them. Becca hoped it was because he actually believed what she had told him, but it could just be that he needed to keep his eyes on the road. Either way, she thought that this would be a good chance to change the direction this conversation was going.
“Is your mom excited that you’re going to be on a reality show?”
Maggie Scott, Brian’s mom, loved reality television. Growing up, Becca always remembered Maggie talking about her ‘shows.’ She’d loved Days of our Lives, General Hospital, and One Life to Live. But when reality shows splashed onto the scene, Brian’s mom h
ad definitely caught that wave and ridden it.
“Yeah, she is.” Brian smiled, a real smile, and Becca realized that it was the first one she’d seen from him since he’d picked her up at the airport the day before yesterday.
She loved Brian’s smile. It wasn’t just because of the deep dimple in his right cheek. It was also because of the way his eyes lit up with joy and no matter how old—or manly—he became, when he smiled, Becca still saw the four-year-old boy who had saved her from certain embarrassment when she’d gotten her dress stuck in the slide in pre-kindergarten.
The first day of pre-K, Brian had been coming down the slide right behind Becca when she’d gotten stuck. Instead of crashing into her, he’d stopped himself by positioning his gym shoes on the sides so he was wedged in place. Then he’d gently held her arm so that she didn’t slide any farther down the slippery steel slide and carefully pulled the hem of her dress from the crevice it had gotten stuck in. Once they’d slid down, she turned to tell him thank you. The sun had shone through his long, straight, light-brown hair, and he smiled at her and told her that it was no problem, that it was his job to help because he was a ninja. Then he asked her if she wanted to swing. She wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to swing with a ninja (her own personal hero!), so she happily agreed. It had been one of her ‘handful’ moments.
They’d been inseparable since that day.
Until they’d left for college. That first year, she’d honestly thought that the hardest part of being away from home would be that she’d miss her family. Which she had. A lot. But to her surprise, the thing she’d cried herself to sleep at night over, had felt like an open space of deep ache inside of her chest, had caused her to totally lose her appetite, had been the fact that she’d missed her best friend. She’d missed Brian so much more than she’d ever known it was possible to miss someone.
And that was before she was head over heels in love with him.
Or was it? Becca thought.
Fairytale Love - Becca & Brian Page 9