Читать книгу The Dating Game - Shirley Jump - Страница 12

Mattie stood in the driveway, catching her breath. After a minute she got into her Jeep and turned the key. The engine made a sick “rew-rew” sound but didn’t get any further than that.

“Come on, baby, not now,” Mattie said. She turned the key again, whispering to the cantankerous ten-year-old vehicle. It didn’t turn over. It just let out a high-pitched moan like a donkey refusing to make that last trek back up the Grand Canyon.

Clearly, a little Jeep revenge for missing that last tune-up and oil change, since money had been so tight lately. What she wouldn’t do for a Jiffy Lube and a miracle.

“Damn!” Mattie smacked the steering wheel, but that didn’t do anything more than hurt her palm. She dug in her backpack and found her cell phone. Within a few seconds she was connected with her best friend.

“Hey, Mattie. Are you surviving okay?” Hillary’s voice traveled across the line, upbeat and positive as always. She could picture Hillary sitting at her desk at the Lawford Insurance Company, blond and fit, zipping through her day with the same enthusiasm she gave all her friends.

“Yes, but not on the show I thought.” Mattie gave Hillary a quick rundown of what had happened. “Now they want me to stay and be on Love and the Average Jill.”

“I saw the previews on the news this morning. Looks like a great one.” Hillary laughed. “And they asked you to do it? For real?”

“Yep. They’ve even got what I assume is a whole room of bachelors waiting for me, too. They said something about fifteen men. Fifteen! I don’t think even Cleopatra had that many at once.”

“Sounds like fun to me. A bachelorette party made in heaven.” Hillary laughed. “So why aren’t you in there?”

“Because that’s the last thing I need right now. I’m not interested in falling in love or getting married, especially in front of a bunch of cameras. I’m here to raise money for the Lawford Girls’ Soccer League. That’s why I wanted to go on the Survival Show. I bet this one’s “prize” is true love. I need cash for the league, not a man.”

“I love your altruistic spirit, Mattie, but you should think of yourself. How long has it been since you went out on a date?”

“What does that have to do with this?”

“Uh, excuse me? Did you not just tell me you’re standing in front of a mansion filled with gorgeous men who want to date you?”

“Yeah, but—”

“But nothing, girlfriend. If you have any brains at all, which I know you do, you’ll get back in there and get yourself one of the hot guys inside.”

“Hillary—”

“Don’t ‘Hillary’ me. You know I’m right. You’ve become a virtual hermit, pouring all your time into those girls’ teams. Now, I know what you’re going to say, so don’t interrupt me. The girls need you and the league needs you. Everybody gets to have you but you.” Hillary let out a sigh. They’d had this argument at least three times in the past six months, with Hillary always trying to get Mattie to go to a bar or a singles club or some other crazy thing that would take her focus away from her job and her girls.

She wasn’t going to do that. Mattie Grant needed a man about as much as a monkey needed a second tail.

“Right. That’s why this is a bad idea.”

“No, that’s why this is a perfect idea! It’s going to be on TV, so you can get plenty of publicity for the league. And if you stick it out, the exposure can help you get the money you need to get it back up and running, plus keep you employed. What’s not to like about it?”

“The dating part,” Mattie said, toying with the steering wheel of the silent, recalcitrant Jeep. “That’s not what I had in mind when I signed up for Survival of the Fittest. I was supposed to be out in the woods, trying to choose between poisonous and nonpoisonous wild berries, not standing in a mansion choosing a mate with all the forethought of picking a doughnut out of a box.”

“I’m saying this as your best friend, Mattie. You need a man. A nice one, preferably. And now you have fifteen at your beck and call.” Hillary laughed. “You are the envy of the entire female population of Lawford. So enjoy it while you can.”

“I’d rather be out building fires and roasting wild game.”

“If you’re lucky, you’ll get to do a little fire building still.” Hillary laughed again, then said goodbye, with a second admonishment to Mattie to get back in there and get herself a man to go with that money.

Hillary was right about one thing. It had been a while since Mattie had been on date. That didn’t make her a hermit, just—

Okay, maybe it did.

She took in a deep breath and looked again at the mansion. It was only a week. Surely she could last.

And besides, who said she had to fall in love, anyway?

David had watched Mattie Grant’s mad dash from the room with sympathy. If he’d had a choice, he wouldn’t be here, either, sacrificing himself on the reality TV altar, all to save his skin.

Actually, he’d had a choice, more or less. He could have kept his idea—which had seemed so sane at two in the morning when he’d concocted it after watching too many infomercials on how to get rich on hair removal products—to himself. But once he’d shared it with his editor, he’d been left with two choices: get the story or get another job.

Now he wasn’t going to leave. He had too much at stake to back out.

“Well,” Larissa said. “I’m sure she’s just a little nervous. She’ll be back.” Though the hostess didn’t sound as sure as her words.

David hoped Mattie would return. Having the star run out just before the show began would leave it a tad dead in the water. And would totally mess with his own plans to expose the reality show—and its competitors—for the crock of lies they really were. Happy endings and true love between strangers, matched up with an eye on ratings. Yeah, right. In the end, he’d expose the faux lovey-dovey characters as nothing more than people who were focused only on themselves…and the cash prize, of course.

Mattie Grant, however, wasn’t at all what he’d expected. He’d thought he’d be stuck here for a week with some washed-up beauty queen with nothing on her mind but marriage. He hadn’t been looking forward to that.

But Mattie…well she wasn’t a beauty queen. Though she had a killer smile, long blond hair and eyes the color of green gems. Okay, so she was a beauty. Just not a pageant kind of girl. She didn’t even seem the high heels type. And that made her interesting, more so than he wanted to admit.

He’d felt a spark—hell, a jolt—when they’d shaken hands. It was something he’d have to ignore, because involving his heart or any other part of his body in this show was not in the plan.

He wasn’t that kind of guy. He was good at staying uninvolved, uncommitted. In his twenty-eight years David had learned that even the people he thought could be trusted always kept something hidden, some nugget of truth they secreted away from others. It was far easier, he’d discovered, to pour himself into his work—the work of uncovering those lies—than to open himself up to others.

The door opened and Mattie came back in, a little paler than before. “My Jeep won’t start. I need a few tools to clean off the plugs and wires to get it going again, but Stone Man doesn’t seem to be anywhere around.”

A woman who fixed her own car? David gave her a smile of appreciation.

“Stone Man?” Larissa asked.

“The butler.” Mattie swung her backpack onto her shoulder. “You know, forget it. I’ll walk. It’s only seven or eight miles back to my apartment.”

“No, wait. Don’t go,” Larissa said, stepping forward. She seemed to be crafting a plan as she spoke. “You’re already here. Plus, you signed the release when you sent in your application, so you agreed to participate then.”

Mattie put up her hands. “Not on this show. I signed up for Survival of the Fittest. If you people don’t have plans for building a lean-to in the rose garden, then I’m outta here.”

“I don’t think you’re on the wrong show,” Larissa said, coming up and taking her arm. David thought it looked more like a vise grip than a friendly touch. She withdrew a walkie-talkie from the evening bag at her arm and pushed a button. “Get in here. We have a…new twist.”

“There’s no twist,” Mattie said, extricating herself from Larissa’s grasp. “I’m not doing this show. I don’t want to get fixed up or married. I want to prove my survival skills.”

Larissa didn’t give up easily. She draped an arm over Mattie’s shoulders as if they were old friends and confidantes. “Mattie, isn’t that what dating’s all about? Survival of the Fittest?”

When Mattie opened her mouth to protest again, Larissa turned toward David. “Don’t you agree?”

And then he knew for sure what Larissa was doing. Somehow, Mattie had been sent to the wrong address. Rather than try to find the real bachelorette, Larissa was working with what she had—a woman who seemed to truly fit the words Average Jill. Everything from Mattie’s tennis shoes to her backpack fell into that category, and yet there was something about Mattie Grant. Maybe the way she held herself or the defiant spark in her eyes. Mattie was as far from average as a woman could get.

Mattie Grant also didn’t seem the type to follow the rules.

He smiled. He couldn’t have latched on to a better story if he’d tried.

“Well, David?” Larissa prompted, clearly trying to get him to take sides. “Don’t you agree?”

Mattie scowled at him. David lobbed a grin her way, to show her that he had good intentions. She didn’t return the volley. “I agree,” David said to Larissa. “Dating is very much like a game sometimes. Sort of like doing crossword puzzles in ink.”

“A man who likes a challenge, huh?” Mattie said.

“Always.”

“With crosswords, you’re only competing against yourself. Are you afraid of losing?”

“Never.” David took a step closer to her. “Are you afraid of playing this game?”

Mattie’s direct green gaze met his. “Not at all.”

There was fire in her words—and a fire in his gut that hadn’t been there five minutes ago. David cocked a grin at Mattie. A challenge indeed.

The doors burst open and a chubby guy in a beige golf shirt and khaki pants, wired up to a walkie-talkie ear piece and cell phone, headed into the room. He held a large order of fries in his free hand. Twin globs of ketchup dotted the front of his shirt like crimson buttons. “What’s up, Larissa?” He halted, took a long look around the room, then blinked twice at Mattie. “Hey, who’s this? Where’s Miss Indiana?”

“This is Steve Blackburn, one of the producers for Average Jill,” Larissa explained. The she turned to Steve. “I don’t know where Miss Indiana is, but this,” she said, “is Mattie Grant.”

“Who? What? This is going to totally mess—”

“When I saw her, I realized Mattie is the perfect Average Jill,” Larissa went on, interrupting him. “A lot more perfect than a former beauty pageant winner.”

“Oh, no, I’m not,” Mattie said, backing away. “I told you, I’m supposed to be on Survival of the Fittest.”

Steve withdrew a fry from the bag. “What do you do for a living?”

“I chair the Lawford Girls’ Soccer League and coach two of the girls’ teams. But I do not date fifteen—”

“Nice PR potential with that. Philanthropy angle and all that,” Steve said, wagging the fry at her. Larissa murmured agreement. Then he turned to David. “So, you think she’s pretty?”

“Definitely.” Mattie had a natural beauty, unmarred by makeup or a frou-frou hairstyle. She had an unfettered, what-you-see-is-what-you-get-and-if-you-don’t-like-it-tough look about her.

That interested him. On a purely reportorial level, of course.

“Good. Get over there and stand next to her.” Steve gestured between them, using the fry as a baton. “Go on, she won’t bite. Will you?” He looked at Mattie.

“Of course not! What kind of person do you think I am?”

“I auditioned some of those girls trying out for Survival. They were a little, ah, hard core.”

David crossed to Mattie, as he’d been told. He figured it wasn’t a huge hardship to stand beside her and get a closer look at those bright green eyes. “Looks like we’re a twosome.”

“Not for long.” Mattie scowled.

The producer and Larissa stood together, conferring. “We get a dress on her, she won’t be so bad,” Steve said.

Mattie put up her hands. “I’m on the wrong show. Aren’t you people listening to me?”

The producer’s phone jingled and he answered it, juggling food and electronics and managing to munch as he multitasked. “Yeah. So she’s there now? How’s that going?” He laughed. “That’ll make good TV. Maybe serendipity had better plans than we did. Can you talk her into staying? Yeah we’re set here. Things are working out,” he eyed Mattie, “better than we expected.”

Mattie turned to David. “Ever get the feeling they’re seeing you as the goose who laid a ratings egg?”

“You going to stay?”

“Nope. This isn’t for me.” She swung her backpack over her shoulder.

She was going to bolt again. He needed to do some fast talking if he wanted her to stay, for the sake of his story.

“The prize money is the same, you know,” he began. “And you don’t have to eat bugs.”

“There’s prize money on this show?”

“Yep. Fifty thousand to the Average Jill just for suffering through all the dates and then a hundred-thousand-dollar purse for her to split if she falls in love and gets engaged at the end.”

“Another fifty thousand if she falls in love?” Mattie’s eyes grew wide. For a second David had to remember to breathe. It wasn’t fair that one woman should have eyes that captivating. “With who?”

“With me, of course.”

“You?”

He cleared his throat. Whoa. That hadn’t come out as he’d intended. In fact, he hadn’t even wanted it to come out. He wanted to last to the end of this game, to get the maximum bang out of his story, but he hadn’t planned on broadcasting his strategy to everyone, least of all Mattie.

Besides, he wasn’t here to fall in love. He wanted the story—not the girl. Work was what he’d always focused on, not relationships. Work was permanent, relationships were…not. “I meant with me or any of the other bachelors.”

“Do I have to date all of them?” She pressed a hand to her stomach as if she were going to be ill.

“Do you have something against dating?”

“It’s not something I do much of, as a rule.”

They had that in common at least, though he didn’t say it. “Why not?”

Mattie recovered her composure and parked a fist on her hip. “That’s none of your business.”

He grinned. “Well, it will be. Mine and, very soon, all of Lawford’s.” He gestured toward the doorway, where a cameraman stood, a camera over his arm. “Get ready for your moment in the sun, Miss Grant.”

This was not what she wanted. She’d expected to be in the woods somewhere, in a state forest or on an undeveloped lake, fending for herself with a group of other competitors, using the skills she’d honed over years of Girl Scouts, camping and cross-country bike rides.

She had lived this fancy life a long time ago, until she’d left home, and then her mother’s divorce had taken it all away for good. The mansion. The clothes. The silly focus on one’s self.

She would have preferred to be in the middle of a forest with nothing but a pack of matches and a working brain to rely on. But there was the money to consider. Not to mention the good she could do with it. She didn’t have to fall in love. She’d have fifty grand just for sticking it out.

It was survival, as Larissa had said. Just another kind. And besides, it appeared someone else had been sent to take her place on Survival of the Fittest, leaving her with one option.

Love and the Average Jill.

“Let’s begin.” Larissa moved to the center of the room, a wide, excited smile on her face.

“Already?” Mattie’s voice came out like a squeak.

“Don’t be nervous. You’re perfect. The quintessential Average Jill. So much better than the former Miss Indiana.” Larissa cupped a hand around her mouth and leaned toward Mattie’s ear. “Who was about as average as a hibiscus.”

Mattie wasn’t exactly sure that was a compliment. After all, if the other woman was a hibiscus, what did that make her? A weed? “What do I have to do?”

“Enjoy yourself. The cameramen will follow you around all day but we only show an hour of the day’s highlights each night and broadcast the elimination part live.” Larissa gave her a wide smile. “Stick it out for a week. That’s it.”

“No strings?”

“No, none at all.”

Mattie bit her lip. She glanced at David across the room, now talking to the producer. David hadn’t seemed so bad. If he was the type of guy she had to deal with for the next seven days, she could make it through.

Heck, she could start a fire without a match and concoct a meal out of wild vegetables. How hard could this dating game be?

If she had known they’d be sticking her in a chair and putting makeup on her, she’d have backed out. Two hours later, Mattie found herself surrounded by the show’s dream team—a hairdresser, makeup artist and clothing consultant, all assembled from the show’s “headquarters” in the pool house behind the mansion to take her from average to…

Well, not average.

“Ouch! Don’t do that,” she said. “What are you doing?”

“Tweezing,” the hairdresser, Pepper, said. He hovered over her with the torture implement, his bright-turquoise shirt and floral-pattern jeans a blinding combination. “Most men prefer a woman with two brows, you know.”

“I’m not that bad.”

Pepper took a step back, tweezers at the ready between his fingers, and analyzed her. “Not anymore, honey.”

“Isn’t this supposed to be about an average woman?” she said to Steve. He’d hovered in the corner the entire time, chomping on fast food and offering his input on everything from lipstick colors to heel height. “I’m not average if I’m all made up like this. Besides, this isn’t even me.”

And it hadn’t been, not for a long time. At eighteen, when she’d walked away from the life of Chanel suits and Lancôme makeup, she’d vowed never to return. And now, here she was, starring in a bad sequel of her own past.

“This is TV. No one wants to see the real you.”

“But—” Then she was cut off by Salt, the makeup artist and Pepper’s partner in business, who had honed in on her with eyeliner. “Isn’t this making me the exact opposite?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Mattie, do you think anyone is going to tune in every night over the next week to see some soccer player get hooked up with Adonis? You may be cute in your cleats, but that’s not what builds Neilsens.”

She started to add to her argument, but Salt was coming at her with an eyelash curler, clamping it onto Mattie’s eyelashes and warning her not to move.

She hadn’t bought this many cosmetics in her lifetime, never mind worn them. And the clothes…

She cast a glance at the wardrobe hanging on the silver rod to her right. Some minion of Steve’s had been sent scurrying to the Lawford Mall to come up with a bunch of suitable evening gowns when the producer had realized all Mattie had in her backpack was two pairs of denim shorts, a couple of T-shirts and a plain blue Speedo.

Apparently bachelors didn’t go for women in Speedos. They wanted hot pink bikinis. Strappy gowns. Glittery tops and silky pants.

In other words, everything in Marshall Fields that made Mattie recoil in horror.

She endured Salt’s eye makeover and told herself she could last through this. It was only a week. If she could stick it out until the end of this ridiculous dress-the-Barbie game, she’d get her money and she could finally take care of the people who needed her.

Then her mind went back to David Simpson. He seemed nice. Actually interested in her. As if he might want something more than simply winning the title of best bachelor and half the hundred grand.

Either way, if he, or any of the other guys, got any ideas about rounding any sexual bases, she had a way of taking care of that. When the men came on too strong—

She had a hell of a soccer kick to take them down.