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“Voting someone off the first night?” Eloise scoffed and rolled her eyes. “This is why a seasoned bachelorette would be the thing to do. A mature woman would never do something so impulsive.”
He’d heard her pit this argument before. Eloise had insisted changing things up and doing a season with an older woman as the bachelorette and having handsome, established men rather than young bucks would cause a stir and give people something to gush over. Hunter disagreed.
“I told you, that’s not something I’m interested in doing. Besides, why shouldn’t she vote off someone like Tys?” Hunter hadn’t much liked Tys’s behavior either. It was refreshing to have a woman set boundaries the way she had. Snow was the kind of role model he wanted for his daughter, Kassie.
“He passed all the screening tests. He was told not to get explicit on the screen.”’
“He hadn’t gotten explicit,” Eloise argued.
Hunter gestured to the screen showing the bachelors all talking together. “His behavior was bad enough, and Snow sensed it. He should never have been allowed on.”
“Having a range of bachelors keeps things interesting.”
Hunter couldn’t believe this. “Don’t tell me you wanted Tys to stay. Not after the way the creep acted toward her on live TV. Besides, look at the approval rating Snow is getting for telling him where to go. Look at this comment—” Hunter read the woman’s statement aloud: “Glad to have a strong woman setting a good example from the get-go.”
“That’s great,” Eloise said, though her tone implied she didn’t believe her own words.
“I need you to be on her side,” Hunter said.
Eloise sniffed. “There’s something I don’t like about her.”
“What is it? You know, that doesn’t matter at this point. She’s already the princess of the show. And she knocked her introduction out of the park.”
“She’s too pretty,” Eloise said again.
“This isn’t about her looks,” Hunter said for what felt like the hundredth time, though he had to admit, Snow was a knockout. Her face was lovely, her skin could rival anything they airbrushed for the magazine, and she had the figure to top it all off. Not only that—Hunter couldn’t shake off the way being near her had made his insides flicker. He’d done his best to keep the reaction to himself when they’d met last night.
If she wasn’t completely off-limits to him, he might have considered doing something about it, but that was out of the question. Not only would his standing as the show’s owner make any kind of relationship completely inappropriate, but he’d been burned. No woman was ever worth burns he’d endured in his last relationship, so he let the issue slide.
“She’s fine,” he said. “Tell me you can handle working with her.” The last thing Hunter needed was conflict between his executive producer and the star of the show.
“Or what?”
Did she really forget the threats they’d received so easily? “We’ve never faced a threat to our security like this before. If it were up to me, we would have cancelled before this began. You insisted we continue, so that means I need you. I need someone who can see us through this season until I can discover who’s sending the letters.”
Hopefully nothing would come of the threats, but they would be stupid to ignore them completely. They were scanning everyone who entered the building. They’d done background checks on all the contestants. He and the other security guards kept a sharp eye on the feed and stayed in touch with the police. That meant he needed Eloise to play her part too.
“I need you to play nice. Got it? You breathe a word about your dislike to her—”
Eloise lifted her chin, staggered her feet, and stared him down. “I don’t like threats.”
“I don’t like sabotage.”
“I’m not sabotaging anything.”
“Good,” Hunter said. “I’m paying you a lot to maintain rapport with her, Eloise. Don’t forget that. First this letter that came as a threat to the show—I need Snow to feel secure until we see who’s behind it. I’d suspect Tys if he’d been kicked off the show a little sooner.” He retrieved the threatening letter from his breast pocket and showed it to her for an additional reminder.
Cancel or be cancelled.
“Then you don’t know who sent the one-liner notes you’ve been getting?” she asked.
“I don’t yet. But as long as they remain idle threats, we won’t have to worry about it.” He hoped that was all it was.
No specifics were mentioned. The police could trace no fingerprints or saliva on the envelopes. That meant whoever this was, they covered their tracks well. He may be overreacting, but the last thing anyone wanted was a gun or bomb smuggled into the studio.
The threats had been pieced together with letters cut from magazine articles, and Hunter suspected the articles had come from Heartthrob Magazine itself.
Heartthrob had started as a magazine, something he’d inherited from his grandparents. The show featuring bachelorettes had only taken place for a few years now as an attempt to bring more readers to purchase a subscription.
