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“I’m making you crazy?” he asked, turning the full force of those eyes—those wickedly beautiful eyes—on her.
Darla silently declared it official. Every time he was near, without any effort he got her hot. “Yes. My God. Yes. You are making me crazy. You already know I’m a worrier, a fretter and an overthinker.” She’d come this far, she might as well go all the way. “Did you really think you could make a statement like ‘you know what I mean’ when I didn’t know what you meant, and I’d actually sleep?”
“You knew—you know—what I meant.”
“I do not know what you meant and I don’t—”
He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers. “Now do you know what I meant?”
Heat spiraled through the center of her body and spread like a wildfire. “Are you insane? Someone could have seen you.” But she didn’t pull away from him. She should have. She told herself to, but he smelled so darn good—all freshly showered and masculine.
“If that’s your only concern about me kissing you then you definitely know what I meant last night. And if you spent the night thinking about it—you definitely knew what I meant. My question is—how do you feel about it?”
Out of control. “We can’t do this.”
“But you want to?”
“We can’t do this,” she repeated.
“Why not?”
Why not? There were reasons. Lots of reasons. None of them seemed to come to mind. “You like questions, don’t you?”
“I’m a television host. Of course, I do. Talk to me, Darla.”
A million replies flew through her mind at once, things she’d said already, things she hadn’t. Because you’re my competitor. Because you scare the heck out of me for reasons I don’t want to think about right now. Because you’ll make me care about you and then you’ll hurt me. Finally she said, “You leave today.”
“We both live in New York.”
“I won’t be there for months.”
“You’ll be back, and I’m not afraid of flying, not to mention you’ll have several weeks off when the filming moves to the contestants’ house.”
“Only for two weeks and not for two months. Which doesn’t matter anyway. This was supposed to be…” A one-night stand. She couldn’t say it out loud despite the wild hair that had made her bold a few moments before.
“I know what it was supposed to be, but it wasn’t and it’s not. It was never going to be, if we’re both honest with ourselves.”
She suddenly knew what he’d meant when he said he wanted to come to her room “too much.” She liked him too much. Too much for all kinds of reasons. Namely, that no matter how much she didn’t want him to be her competitor, or the wrong guy she made the right guy, she really had no control over either thing. No control was bad when she was headed to the first day of a big career move that not only terrified her as much as he did, but meant as much to her family as it did to her.
“No. No. This is bad. This—” she waved a finger between them “—is not smart.” She grabbed her bag and tried to move around him. It caught on something, her own foot probably. She stumbled and fell forward and, once again, smack into Blake, just as she had done on the red carpet. His strong hands went to her elbows, his long, hard body catching hers. The concern in his blue eyes stirred a tidal wave inside her. She wanted this man in a bad way, but it was so much more than that. There was this warm feeling in her chest that seemed to expand and do funny things to her stomach.
“It appears the universe is conspiring to throw you into my arms,” he suggested. “Maybe you should listen.”
The door across from them opened. “I guess I know what ‘truce with benefits’ means,” came a female voice.
Lana. The warm spot in Darla’s chest turned to ice. “It appears,” Darla said, replying to Blake, “that the universe has a wicked sense of humor.”
Darla pushed out of Blake’s arms, and with no plan, turned to face Lana. She wore a black sweatsuit, her red hair falling in contrasting silky waves around her shoulders. She wore no makeup and she looked fabulous. Darla wilted, unable to find her voice.
Blake came to the rescue, quickly explaining away their behavior. “The only ‘benefits’ being received this early in the morning are my personal baggage boy services.” He grabbed Darla’s suitcase and walked toward Lana, who had one as well, and motioned to her to hand it over. “I’ll take yours, too. You can both thank me by not giving me a hard time on camera later.”
Lana’s lips lifted, and Darla couldn’t help but envy how pink and perfect they were. “There’s nothing wrong with a scandal,” she said. “It’s good for ratings. In fact, it’s job security.”
