I pointed to the same place I’d directed Cailin to a few minutes ago. “Over there. Near the old stables.”
She bounded off, and I spent the next few minutes dealing with other contestants who had myriad questions and demands of me and the other producers. One particularly awful woman, a tall and striking redhead named Anya, actually demanded that we immediately hire a contractor to pave all the dirt areas around the old farm buildings, because in her words, ‘I can’t wear Manolos in the dirt!’
We just had to smile patiently, knowing that this was a good thing. If her claws were already coming out this early in the game, then she was a good candidate to be this season’s mean girl villain.
And every season needed a villain, right?
Once the introduction interviews were shot, the other producers and I helped our editing team condense them into shorter segments and narrow down any soundbites which could be used in either a positive or negative way, depending on how we wanted any given contestant to be portrayed. It was a long, tedious process, and by the time we were done, it was almost ten o’clock at night. All of the contestants had long since retired to their bedrooms.
“Okay, you all know what time it is! Who wants to play?” Candice called out as I stood up and stretched my legs.
One of the brand new producers turned to me. “What’s going on?” he asked.
I grinned. “It’s a little thing we do to unwind at the end of the first major day, after we’ve done all the introduction interviews. Candice will explain it all to you.”
Candice pulled out a bottle of whiskey and several shot glasses, and she smiled as she placed one glass down in front of each of us and filled them all. “Okay, here’s the rules of the game. We’re going to watch all the edited interviews. We all have a few girls each, and when their segment comes on, you need to take a shot if your girl says she’s ‘looking for her Prince’ or describes her ideal man as having a ‘beautiful soul’.”
The other producers and I snickered at those clichés. They were pretty standard here in the reality TV world. The ‘beautiful soul’ one was the most irritating—I bet hardly any of them would love a man with a beautiful soul if he also happened to look like the love child of Quasimodo and Voldemort.
“You also need to take a sip every time anyone says ‘soulmate’, ‘here for the right reasons’, ‘taking this journey’, and ‘connection’,” Candice added.
The new producer turned to me. “That’s practically all they say in those interviews!” he said. “We’ll be drunk as skunks by the end of it.”
I held up my shot glass. “That’s the point.”
“Let’s get started,” Candice said. “First up, we have Anya!”
There was a collective groan at the mention of her name; during her interview she’d well and truly established herself as this season’s mean girl. She’d given us one of those whole ‘I’m not a bitch, I’m just brutally honest!’ speeches, and in ninety-nine percent of cases, I’d found that people who said that were actually massive bitches.
By eleven-thirty, we were all well and truly tipsy, and I stumbled to my feet. “I’m gonna call it a night, guys. One more shot would probably kill me.”
“Wimp,” Candice said in a teasing tone, sticking her tongue out at me. “Night!”
I waved and bid everyone else goodnight before heading out of the editing room, and I took a right turn near the old stables to head towards the patch of land where all the crew trailers were. My head was spinning, and my eyes were slightly blurry, so I reached up and rubbed them. As I did so, I missed where I was going for a few seconds, and I walked smack bang into another person.
“Shit! Sorry,” I said automatically before looking up and realizing with a sinking stomach that the mountain of tanned muscle I’d bumped into was Troy.
Dammit.
“Eden! Nice night out, huh?” he said, his deep masculine voice sending unwanted shivers down my spine. “I thought I’d go for a late-night walk to stretch my legs after being cooped up in the villa all day.”
“Oh, so you actually know my name now?” I replied. I’d usually never speak to someone so rude and sarcastically, even someone I despised as much as Troy, but the several shots of liquor I’d had were currently fueling my rage towards him.
“Of course I do,” he said, his forehead wrinkling with apparent confusion. “How could I not remember you?”
“Funny way of showing it yesterday,” I said, crossing my arms across my chest.
His gaze lingered on my cleavage for a second, and then his eyes moved back up to mine. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I was being a jerk. I’m sorry, I didn’t want it to feel awkward in front of everyone, so I figured it was best if I acted like a stranger to you.”
“Right. Fair enough,” I replied. He had a point. What had I expected him to do yesterday when he arrived? Grovel on the floor and beg my forgiveness in front of the whole crew?
“I’m really glad to see you, though,” he continued.
I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes right out of my head. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because I wanted to see you. I saw your name on the credits for the show, you know. That sealed the deal for me coming on it.”
I narrowed my eyes. Was he seriously trying to say that he’d only come on the show to see me? What a load of crap. Why was he even trying this bullshit with me? Did he think that because everything between us happened so long ago that I’d just be magically okay with it all by now, and that I’d fall straight back into his arms?
“So what, did you finally manage to go through every single woman in Northern California, and now you’re cycling back through your old girlfriends, starting with me?” I said, giving him a scathing look.
He chuckled, obviously thinking I was kidding, but then he realized I was serious. “No, Eden, I just really wanted to see you again,” he said. “You’re a hard woman to track down; you don’t use Facebook or Instagram or anything like that. And then—via the show—I found out that we’ve both been living in San Francisco this whole time, and…I dunno, I felt like I needed to find you. Like it was a sign.”
“The only sign you need right now is a big red one that says ‘stop’,” I replied, holding my hand out to stop him from getting any closer to me. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get to bed. You should go too.”
“Eden, I…”
He tried to say something, but I was already stalking away from him, heading towards my trailer. I was proud of myself for sticking up for myself against Troy like that, rather than falling back into his embrace like he’d so clearly expected. Back in my earlier years, I might not have had the strength to defend myself like that, especially against someone so annoyingly sexy, but things had changed now. I was harder, more jaded, and I wasn’t going to let an asshole like Troy Ballard affect me like he used to.
If he actually thought I was going to be an easy lay for him during his time on the show, then he had another thing coming.
I wasn’t his anymore, and I never would be again.
Never.
Chapter Four
Troy
“Welcome to season eight of The Stud. Last year, our Stud Andrew and single mother Felicia found…”
“Cut!!”
The show host, Fabian—an overly fake-tanned, smarmy man in a suit—had been in the middle of saying his lines when Glenn screamed the order to stop, and he glared over at the crew. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“It’s not you, Fabian, it’s the girls. Hey! You in the red dress! You keep staring at your feet. You’re meant to be excited,” Glenn said, waving his hand at one of the many Stud contestants.
I was sitting in an idling black limo nearby, waiting to step out for my big reveal scene….only this time it wouldn’t be a big reveal, because this was already the fourth take. Glenn kept demanding that the scene be reshot because every time we attempted to do it, he had a problem with something.
Fabian, you aren’t smiling enough.
&n
bsp; Girl in the glittery blue gown, you look like you just smelled a fart. Smile, for Christ’s sake.
Troy…if I haven’t said it enough times to everyone else already…smile!
The scene started again, and Fabian plastered a big, fake smile on his face—Glenn looked very pleased at that—and began to say his lines all over again. “Welcome to…”
“Cut! For fuck’s sake!” Glenn shouted. “What’s going on over there?”
One of the women—a pretty blonde in a black dress—had begun to squirm uncomfortably in line, and the tall redheaded woman next to her called out to Glenn. “She has cramps! She needs an Advil and a tampon. We’ve been standing here for hours, stop yelling at us!”
“Christ… Eden, she’s your girl. Deal with it,” Glenn said. “Everyone else, take a break for five minutes.”
I craned my neck to see Eden racing over to the blonde girl and escorting her away from the courtyard, and then I stepped out of the limo to stretch my legs.
I had no idea why Eden had been so abrasive to me last night when I ran into her out by the trailers. Sure, I’d been a bit of a dick when I pretended not to remember her during the crew introductions, but I had a good reason for that. If I admitted I knew her, it would’ve been awkward in front of everyone, and on top of that, I didn’t need everyone knowing that I’d only come on this damn show looking for her, because it sounded insane…and I swear I wasn’t crazy, I was just still crazy about her after all these years.
Was my feigning ignorance of her really enough for her to be so nasty to me, though? After all, she was the one who dumped me back in the day by not showing up that morning and never contacting me again.
Maybe she’d recently been through a bad breakup, and seeing an ex like me had reminded her of the failed relationship, which was making her take out her bitter feelings on me. Or maybe she remembered the past incorrectly, and I was somehow the bad guy in all her memories.
Whatever the reason was for why she was behaving so nastily towards me, I intended to find out.
I made my way over to the crew to ask some casual questions about Eden, but I was intercepted by a woman stepping out in front of me; the same tall redhead who’d given Glenn shit a moment ago. I hadn’t actually been told any of the contestant’s names yet, so I wasn’t sure what hers was, but I had a feeling from her predatory gaze that she was about to tell me.
“Got a light?” she asked, pulling a cigarette out from the cleavage of her dress.
“No, sorry, I don’t smoke,” I replied.
“Really? Wouldn’t have pegged you as a non-smoker,” she said. “I’ve only ever seen photos of you out partying in the gossip columns.”
I chuckled. “I do like to have the odd drink now and then, and I do love parties, but you’d be hard-pressed to find many professional athletes who smoke. Er….sorry, what was your name?”
“Anya,” she said. Her voice was deep and throaty for a woman, and I had a feeling the show producers would be setting her up as the alpha bitch of the season.
“Well, Anya, it was a nice thing you did for that girl back there.”
She shrugged. “Not really. I made it up. I think she just needed to pee, but I wanted to take a smoke break, and nothing freaks men out more than the mention of periods. So I figured that Glenn douche would give us a break if I said that.”
I laughed at her brazen honesty. “Well, you were right.”
“So what’s your angle?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“Why are you here? Career gone to shit or something?”
“I don’t follow what you’re saying.”
She snorted. “People come on this show for one reason and one reason only, and it ain’t to find love.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, I gathered that.”
I would’ve felt guilty about coming on a show like this and leading these women on if it weren’t for the fact that they were all going to be leading me on too. Anya was right on the ball; people didn’t come on reality shows to find love. They only pretended to do so by leading each other on, all on camera, just to get publicity for themselves.
“They just want attention. For what…well, that could be anything. Could be to fix their public image, could be to advertise themselves. See that girl in the mint-green dress? She wants to promo her hair extension business to all the female viewers,” Anya said, pointing at one of the other contestants and confirming my thoughts. “And those three there…all swimsuit models hoping to gain publicity from the show for their careers. I could go on, but you already know what I mean. We’re all here for a reason. So what’s your deal?”
“I don’t have a deal.”
“So you’re telling me that you’re actually here to find love?” she asked, her eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, in a manner of speaking,” I said, looking over her shoulder at Eden, who had just returned with the blonde.
“Well, that’d be a first.”
“What about you?” I asked. “What’s your deal?”
“Actress trying to get publicity,” she said with a wry smile. “I’ve decided to play the role of the mean girl this season. I knew from the very first meeting with the producers that they were going to make me look bad like that, so I figured I may as well play it up. Get the claws out and so on.”
“Good luck with that,” I said.
She took a step forward and put her hand directly on the crotch of my tuxedo pants, and her voice took on a purring, seductive tone. “Anyway, if you don’t manage to find the love you’re apparently looking for, I’m always available for after-hours visits. Just promise you won’t cut me in the first few eliminations,” she said. “I’ve got your back if you’ve got mine.”
Jesus…what? She seemed fairly straight-forward and honest in our conversation a moment ago, but now she was sounding a little desperate. I pushed her hand away, and as I did so, I saw Eden casting a disgusted glance at me. Great…no doubt she’d misread the situation and thought I was already trying to sleaze onto contestants.
“You don’t need to do that,” I said, looking back down at Anya. “Look, if you can have a decent conversation with me every now and then, I won’t cut you anytime soon. But don’t feel like you need to fuck me to win.”
Anya’s eyes widened slightly, and she nodded. “Got it,” she said, a trace of surprise in her voice. She was a very beautiful woman; it was probably the first time a guy had turned down her advances. “I should get back to the lineup.”
“Yeah, I need to get back to the limo,” I replied.
I trudged back over to the car, and the scene restarted with Fabian saying his rehearsed lines for the sixth time.
“Welcome to season eight of The Stud. Last year, Andrew and single mother Felicia found love, and they got married in San Luis Obispo just last month. But where will love take us this year?” he said, before pausing for a second. “Get set to watch new romance blossom, right here on our spectacular estate out at Palomar Ranch and Horse Stud, as twenty-four beautiful women set off on their path to finding true love. After all the dazzling dates and sexy parties, who will be left standing at the final ceremony?”
The lined-up women behind him, all clad in designer gowns and high heels, smiled and tittered nervously, as if they had no idea who the bachelor this season was, despite having seen me several times now in the previous cuts.
“Now, the moment all you lovely young ladies have been waiting for…the arrival of this season’s Stud! Are you ready?”
The women all screamed with excitement, and I took that as my cue to step out of the limo again and head down the path towards the courtyard. To their credit, the women were able to feign excitement and shock all over again, and one of them even had fake tears of joy in her eyes.
“Yes, that’s right, this year’s Stud is Troy Ballard! You all know him and love him after last year’s NFL championship…now get ready to love him even more! Troy, would you like to say anything to these lovely ladies?”
I plastere
d on a toothy smile for the cameras and began my speech. “Firstly, I’d like to say hello, and I’d also like to thank you all for being here with me tonight. I can’t wait to get to know each and every one of you. I suppose you’re all keen on finding out why I’m here.”
I hesitated, and my gaze came to rest on Eden again. As a producer, she obviously wasn’t in the shot, but I could still see her perfectly, standing to the side of the contestants.
“I’m looking for love. True love,” I continued. “You all know I have a great career, and I also have really great friends and colleagues. But I’m missing something—a family. A wife, more specifically. I want to meet my soulmate; someone who is not only my best friend, but my partner in crime.”
As I said that, I winked at the camera and then looked back at Eden, and she rolled her eyes and walked away. I simply grinned and watched her go. She wasn’t making this easy for me, but I wasn’t going to give up on her, no matter what it took.
A woman like her was worth it.
Chapter Five
Eden
“Breathe. Just breathe.”
I lay a comforting hand on a tall blonde contestant’s shoulder and made soothing sounds to her to try and calm her down. Her name was Hayley, and she was one of Candice’s girls, but Candice was in the middle of dealing with a dress crisis—apparently someone had cut up a gown belonging to another contestant—so she was currently unavailable, and it was up to me or the other producers to help.
Hayley was freaking out because of the big group event which was about to start—the first cocktail party. There was always one at the start of a new season, and it was a lavish affair where all the women would dress up in designer gowns (again) and have the chance to get some one-on-one time with the Stud. Expensive champagne was always flowing freely at these parties in order to encourage loose lips and drama, but apparently, no amount of champagne promises could give Hayley the courage she needed to deal with the night.
“I just can’t do it,” she said, her voice wavering. “I don’t know why I ever signed up for this show. All these cameras everywhere, watching everything I do….I just can’t go into the party.”
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