Falling for Mister Wrong (23 page)

“To which job offer? EP of
American Dance
Star
or your mistress?”

“You weren’t my mistress,” he snapped.

Well, she hadn’t been his lover.
Love
was in the freaking word and he wouldn’t say it.

She just looked at him.

“Both,” he growled.

“Thanks for the offers, Bennett. You’ve given
me a lot to think about.”

She waited for him to say something more—to
tell her that he wanted more from her than a qualified producer and
a willing bed warmer. To say he needed her mind and her heart and
her
as his equal in every way. But Bennett just nodded,
albeit reluctantly, and turned back to his run.

Leaving her with her thoughts in knots and
her heart in shambles.

Chapter
Twenty-Six

“
Oh Caitlyn, oh baby…”

Caitlyn watched herself making out with
Daniel on the television, mildly nauseated. She couldn’t help the
sickening sensation that she was cheating.

Cheating with Daniel, the man she was still
at least nominally engaged to, on Will, the man she hadn’t done
more than hold hands with on Saturday.

When did this become my life?

It didn’t help matters when Mimi tilted her
head to the side and asked, “Have you noticed that he calls all of
you ‘baby’? It’s like his go-to endearment.”

Caitlyn was going to explode.

Daniel was avoiding her calls—doubtless
convinced that she would watch tonight’s episode in Barbados, where
they danced under the stars and made out like teenagers, and all
would be forgiven. Will had been swamped with work—apparently the
shots of the two of them in gossip rags all over the country had
made Tuller Springs into a tourist destination and the mountain was
doing better business than it had in years. Which meant more ski
patrol hours, more lessons, and, for her, less time with Will.

He’d held her hand the entire way back on
Saturday. Even when she dozed off against the window for almost an
hour, when she woke up, he still held her hand, tucked safely in
his. It was probably the single most romantic moment of her life,
waking up with her hand in his like that—and that included the
moment of Daniel’s proposal.

They were so different, Will and Daniel. Even
the way they talked about how they’d found their careers. Daniel’s
story was touching—a teacher changed his life by helping him
overcome his dyslexia and now he wanted to do that for other
children—but he’d told it so many times by now that it sounded like
a line. There was nothing real left in the words. They’d been
trotted out too many times.

But Will’s story, it was just the story of
him
. A story of stumbling around and piecing it together and
there it was, take it or leave it. He wasn’t trying to impress
anyone. He didn’t
expect
anyone to be impressed or moved. He
was the man he was. And she loved…

That.

Not him. Goodness, it was far too early to be
thinking the L word about him.

Wasn’t it?

She was simply tired of the image games.
Tired of rehearsed speeches. Tired of being put on a pedestal.

And she was going to
explode
if she
couldn’t talk to someone about her crazy messed up life.

Caitlyn leaned over to the remote in Mimi’s
hand and punched the pause button, making the screen freeze with
Daniel’s hands grabbing her ass.
Lovely
.

“Will took me bull riding on Saturday.”

“Okay.” Mimi gave her a look. “Is that a
euphemism for something?”

“No, like actual bull riding. A mechanical
bull. I was awful. It was incredible.”

“Okay.” The cautious
my-best-friend-is-a-crazy-person look stayed firmly on Mimi’s face
as Caitlyn stared at her, a little manically. The truth was
bubbling up inside her, pushing, pulling, screaming to get out.

Five bajillion dollar lawsuit, here I
come
.

“Mimi, I have to tell you something.
Something that I absolutely cannot tell you, but I’m going to
explode if I can’t talk to someone. Swear secrecy. You can’t even
tell Ty.”

Mimi’s eyes got huge. “Are you pregnant? Is
it Will’s? Or, oh my God,
Daniel’s
?”

“Swear!”

“I swear, I swear! On my kids, I’ll never
tell a soul, I promise!”

Caitlyn’s held breath whooshed out. And the
all of the words chased that breath out on a rush.

“I won. Daniel picked me. He proposed and I
said yes, even though I was panicking and I’m pretty sure the only
reason I agreed to marry him is some sort of modified Stockholm
Syndrome that happens during the show, but I did it, I agreed, and
now whenever I try to break it off with him, he’s changing the
subject or dodging my calls and he wants to get married
on
the show, in front of the world, not later, but in less than two
months when the live reunion special airs. And he said before that
he just wanted to be a normal elementary school teacher from
Indiana, but now he’s living in LA and he wants me to move out
there and he’s been talking to my mother who’s been talking to the
LA Philharmonic about me being a resident artist or something and
they both want me to get back into performing which sounds like
death
, but he isn’t listening to me and I’m starting to
wonder if he ever did or if he just built this image of me as the
delicate flower who needed the sunshine of his support to flourish
as a performer again or something—that analogy didn’t quite work
the way I wanted.”

Mimi gawked, mouth open, eyes wide. “No
wonder you set your house on fire.”

“And then
Will
. Oh God, I am so
freaking crazy about Will. But if I have a public relationship,
then I can be sued for breach of contract for more money than I’ve
made in my entire life. And I’ve told him that, but when he holds
my hand all I want to do is jump on him and ride him like a
mechanical bull—only for longer since I fell off after like two
seconds. And of course he has no idea that Daniel picked me and
wanted to marry me and that I, kind of, you know,
did it
with him, though it was only that one time and it wasn’t very good
and I hadn’t even
met
Will yet, but now I feel like I
cheated on him with the guy that I’m engaged to and every time I
see an episode where Daniel is all romantic toward me and I fall
for it like a sap because I was completely caught up in that crazy,
stupid world, I am terrified that
Will
is going to see what
an idiot I was and decide I’m not worth the trouble and dump me
even though we aren’t even dating because I’m still technically—I
think, I’m not entirely sure—engaged to someone else.”

Caitlyn fell back, deflated after all the
words poured out. “So that happened.”

Mimi blinked at her, bug eyed. “Do you have
any more of that vodka?”

#

Caitlyn and Mimi sat side by side on the
floor, propped against the couch, not far from where she’d lain on
top of Will the other night when she’d felt like all of her
erogenous zones were eagerly reporting for duty. The vodka
bottle—not quite empty, but close—was wedged between their legs and
they took turns refilling the glass tumblers Caitlyn had grabbed
from her cabinet. The glasses had started out filled with ice, but
it had long since melted and now they were sipping the sugary
liquor neat.

“I wonder if this is what Daniel feels like,”
Caitlyn mused.

“Drunk?”

“No,” she elbowed her friend. “He has all
these women competing for him and he gets to pick which one he
wants, but if he doesn’t pick the right way at the right time or
whatever, he could lose the one he really wants.”

“
You
were the one he really wanted,”
Mimi reminded her.

They’d watched the remainder of the show in
bits and pieces, pausing whenever Mimi had a question or Caitlyn
had one of her dubious epiphanies. Now she rolled her head back to
rest on the edge of the couch and stared at his face where they’d
frozen it on the screen. He really was handsome. And earnest.

“Do you think he’ll be sad when I break it
off with him?”

“Didn’t you already break it off?” Mimi
slumped down more, blowing at her bangs and watching the neon
purple strands flutter back down toward her face.

“Sort of. I think I’m going to have to be
more firm. He’s slippery.”

“Did you love him?”

“Will?”

“No, Daniel. Wait.” Mimi’s hand slapped down
on her knee. “You’re in love with Will?”

“Shhhhh! He could be home.” Her head swung
around as she stared suspiciously at the floor. She knew he could
hear her play. She’d never asked if he heard more than that. “I’m
not in love with Will. I barely know him.”

“You like him! You totally do!”

“Shhsht! We were talking about Daniel. And
how heartbroken he’s going to be when I break it off with him
because he loves me. Though it never feels like he loves me. It
feels like he has this idea of me and he keeps trying to shove me
into that box.”

“I can’t believe he wants you to leave Tuller
Springs,” Mimi said indignantly. “
I’m
here. Clearly you have
to stay.”

“I would have left anyway if I’d gone to live
with him in Indiana.” She wagged her feet on the rug, distracted by
her toes. “Do your toes feel weird?”

“No. But my lips are numb. Look.” Mimi
smacked her lips at Caitlyn and giggled.

They might have gone overboard on the vodka.
A fact she was probably going to regret in about seven hours when
her first lesson of the day arrived.

Mimi’s cell phone rang and Caitlyn heard her
answer it, as if from a great distance. “Ty! I’m drunk! Come fetch
me.”

“Your husband is going to think I’m a bad
influence,” she said when Mimi hung up the phone.

Mimi patted her arm, missing the first time,
but managing a few good pats after she finally made contact. “He
knows me better than to suspect anyone is the bad influence but
me.” She frowned. “Did that make sense?”

Caitlyn sighed, gazing at the undeniably
pretty face on the screen. “Do you think he really loves me?
Daniel? After that scene with Elena…”

She didn’t have to say which scene. Mimi
grimaced.

Daniel hadn’t precisely trash talked the
other girls, but he’d made it clear that Elena was the sex goddess
and he felt nothing for any of the other women that could remotely
compare to the pure passion he felt for her. No wonder Elena had
always looked so annoyingly confident at Elimination
Ceremonies.

But the moment that had really made Caitlyn’s
stomach churn was when Daniel asked Elena not to say anything to
the others about his lack of sexual feelings for them. Their little
secret.

“Was he lying about not having sexy feelings
for me? I mean he lied to everyone. By omission. And yeah, he had
to because of the rules of the show, but he asked Elena to lie for
him too. Which is skeezy. Unless he was lying to her? But why would
he do that?”

“That wasn’t Daniel talking. That was
Daniel’s Little Friend. And men’s penises lie.”

“So his heart could love me while his penis
loved only Elena?”

“Hey. You’re hot. His penis may have grown to
love you.”

“You’re right. He could have had a change of
heart. He might really love me. And I’m being awful and unforgiving
if he loves me, aren’t I? I should give him another chance,
shouldn’t I?”

“If he truly loved you, he would never ask
you to leave me.”

“What if he came here? What if we bought this
house and lived here forever?”

Mimi pursed her lips. “I don’t think Will
would like it.”

“No. But what if Will doesn’t really want me?
We’re just friends, you know. And he saw me when I almost set my
hair on fire with the veil. Why would he want me?”

“Because you’re
awesome
, obviously.”
Mimi slung her arm around Caitlyn’s shoulders, a move that only
worked because Caitlyn was three-quarters of the way to laying on
the floor. “Don’t worry about Will. Just worry about telling Mister
Perfect there that you don’t want to get married and move to
Tinseltown. The rest will sort itself out.”

Caitlyn nodded, the weight of Mimi’s wisdom
making her head feel heavy. It would all work out.

Chapter
Twenty-Seven

“Never again.”

Caitlyn woke with a groan and her second
Wednesday-morning hangover of the month.

She was still on the living room floor,
though some kind soul had shoved a pillow underneath her head and
set a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin on the floor in front
of her—just far enough away that she wouldn’t knock it over in her
sleep. Ty probably. She didn’t remember him coming to collect Mimi,
but he must have at some point since her friend was not sprawled
out beside her in a similar state of post-alcohol remorse.

Caitlyn groped for the water and the aspirin,
grateful when her stomach didn’t roil too much. It was mostly her
head that felt like it was packed with cotton and acid.

Shower. Clean clothes. Tidy up the evidence
of last night. Get some food in her stomach. Then she’d be ready to
stagger her way through today’s lessons. So long as everyone played
very, very quietly. She didn’t think she could take
fortissimo
today.

An hour later she was back to almost
completely human—with a solid half hour to spare before her first
student arrived. The pounding in her head had even reduced to
ignorable levels. Thinking back, she decided she must have had less
to drink than she thought—probably as drunk on the idea of being
able to finally spill the truth as anything else. She had a text
from Mimi waiting—
Don’t worry, even drunk I didn’t tell Ty.
Taking it to the grave. XOXO.

Caitlyn felt a weight she hadn’t been
conscious of lift, but another remained. She remembered almost all
of their conversation. And what they’d agreed she needed to do.