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o you have to say to that, Pete?”
“My heart was involved.”
He was all tanned and healthy from his show in the Acapulco sun, where he got to pimp a whole new batch of women.
“It hurts,” he added.
If Lexie believed him for one minute she might feel bad, but they both knew the only thing she’d hurt was his pride. “I’ve apologized to Pete repeatedly. I know that an apology doesn’t assuage his pain, but I am very sorry.” There, that sounded sincere. And it was—mostly.
“I was there to find my soul mate,” he said. “All Lexie wanted was her face on television.” A smattering of applause broke out from behind the cameras.
That was true, but no truer for her than for any of the rest of them. Even Pete.
“You were on the rebound from your hockey player and you used me to get back at him. As soon as he showed up again, you went running back to him.”
“It wasn’t quite like that.” In fact, it was nothing like that. “I should have handled things differently. I wish I had.”
“Pete mentioned something that I wanted to get into with you, Lexie.” Jemma turned to her and said, “You told a Seattle newspaper that Sean Knox got a note to you moments before you were to walk down the aisle with Pete. If Sean hadn’t sent you the message, would you have married Pete?”
That was easy, since the message was a lie. “No. I knew I couldn’t go through with it before Sean contacted me,” she confessed, which earned her a wall of boos from the audience.
“Quiet down.” Jemma held up one hand. “Tell us where you went when you left the Fairmont.”
Yum Yum shifted in Lexie’s lap, and she ran a soothing hand over her dog as she repeated the story she and Sean had told the Seattle Times. When she was through, Pete looked ready to explode, and Jemma said, “We’ll be right back.”
The makeup artist appeared again and this time brushed Lexie’s hair as well as retouching her lips. As the woman worked, Pete’s wounded-guy veneer slipped and he laughed and joked with some of the crew. She had two more segments to go before the reunion was over. Two more segments that were bound to be worse than the previous segments combined. The cast only had twenty minutes to get in their last minutes of fame. They all knew the most outrageous behavior would be showed on commercial clips to hype the show, and she braced herself for the inevitable.
The first and second runners-up for the Gettin’ Hitched title were brought out next and sat next to Lexie’s bathtub in a pair of rawhide chairs. Cindy Lee from Clearwater, Florida, and Summer from Bell Buckle, Tennessee, cried huge tears as clips from the show replayed snippets of each woman’s private “dates” with Pete in the Pig Pen, and him leading each girl to the Hog Heaven bedroom. Lexie thanked God she hadn’t been filmed anywhere near Hog Heaven or the subsequent walk of shame the next morning. The clip ended with Cindy Lee’s and Summer’s tearful exits from the show.
“You didn’t choose either Cindy Lee or Summer,” Jemma pointed out to Pete when the camera returned to them. “They cared enough about you to sleep with you in Hog Heaven.”
Pete shrugged a nonchalant shoulder. “In the end, it came down to how I was raised. I’m an old-fashioned guy.”
“Are you saying you didn’t choose them because they had sex with you?”
“It was a consideration, Jemma. Someday I hope to have children, and wouldn’t want any of my future children to see their mother being promiscuous on television.”
The women beside Lexie gasped.
“I loved you,” Summer managed through her tears.
Cindy Lee crossed her arms over her chest. “I thought we had good chemistry.”
Lexie frowned. “You’re a jerk, Pete.”
Summer and Cindy Lee turned toward Lexie, and instead of agreeing, they turned on her. By the time the final segment started, Lexie was tired. She had a headache. Her face hurt from smiling and her stomach was twisted into a knot.
The other hitchin’ brides returned to their hay, and a crew member took Yum Yum to her pet carrier. As soon as the cameras turned off for the last time, Lexie planned to run as fast as her Manolos could take her, and put this chapter of her life in the rearview mirror.
“What are your plans now?” Jemma asked the other women. The first few cast members answered, but after a few minutes, the question got turned and twisted back on Lexie. She was called Lex Luthor and heartless and an entitled bitch, again. Davina threatened to smack her in the face and charged across the stage. A crew member detained her, and the audience cheered and booed at the same time.
“I’m not heartless or entitled.” Lexie put a hand on her chest and felt her heart pound. “I am comfortable with who I am, and if you think that makes me a bitch, that’s your problem.”
“No, that’s your problem,” someone countered, and the conversation warped into everyone’s problem with everyone else. Mandy and Desiree almost came to blows. Summer and Whitney cried big weeping tears, as Pete sat back, loving every last minute.
“Everyone calm down,” Jemma spoke above the bickering.
“Someday you’re going to get what’s coming to you!” Davina yelled, and even though Lexie knew it was all for ratings and an attempt at ten extra minutes of fame, her heart pounded and she swallowed hard.
