The cameras were everywhere, filming women with their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, hamming it up for their big shot at reality television. Men with cameras walked around, filming candid shots of the soccer moms. The caterers were busy laying out what looked like a feast, and a bunch of guys, who Jamie instantly termed River Rats, were preparing the boats for the next day’s rafting trip, but their eyes were definitely on the actresses.
When they were joined later by a slightly stoned Michele, the four women were comfortably buzzed, and set up camp chairs in front of the two tents they’d snagged, sipping more vodka drinks, remarking on how much of a vacation the whole thing felt like. Michele was reciting a list of clothes she had brought with her when a sleek Cadillac Escalade slid to a stop next to the campsite, and from its very plush interior, four men who looked like wannabe rock stars stepped out.
“Oooh, look at the eye candy,” Jamie said.
Michael was the last to step out, looking so damn sporting in his hiking pants and boots, an all-weather shirt, and a baseball hat on backward.
“Oh my,” Trudy drawled, checking him out over the rim of her strap-on sunglasses. “Look what the cat dragged in,” she said, wearing a wolfish smile, as Michael, who had been intercepted by Ariel, smiled charmingly at her as he took whatever it was she handed him. “He’s so pretty,” she sighed.
Leah looked away. She wasn’t really sure what she thought at the moment—other than she had the potential to be a total, locked-up whack job—and thought maybe that was better left unsaid. But she glanced back again, dying to know what he was doing—and Michael chose that precise moment to look up and around the camp, his gaze catching Leah’s before she could look away. The pinprick of heat was suddenly a rash, spreading all over her skin.
But then Ariel returned to the scene. “Her again,” Trudy said. “She never lets anyone else near him.”
“Great,” Leah muttered, and watched Michael and Ariel walk away, disappearing behind the cabin.
“Probably going for a quickie,” Michele said with a dreamy smile. “You know how these co-ed trips can be.”
“I’m going to get another drink,” Leah said, standing up. “Anyone else?”
When she had drink orders, she wandered off in the opposite direction of Michael and Ariel and whatever they were doing. If they were doing anything. Part of her actually believed Michael. Another part of her wondered why, if he was not a big fan of Ariel’s, he had to wander off with her at all. And then a third part of her—the chunk made up of equal parts bad judgment and just general idiocy—wondered if he would even seek her out, or whether she’d taken care of that by declaring she intended to date other people.
Later, after the food was served—and what a zoo that was, with half the actresses complaining about the cuisine—Trudy, Michele, Jamie, and Leah nabbed a fire ring before the Serious Actresses took them over and turned an otherwise pleasant evening into a long boring discussion of craft, which they’d heard them doing earlier.
Leah stuck close to Trudy, which turned out to be a huge mistake, because Trudy wanted desperately to keep an eye on Jack, because she hadn’t quite given up on him yet. But when Jack wandered through the camp, he was waylaid by some Starlets who were wearing very skimpy little camisole numbers under their baby-doll jean jackets—seriously, the jackets were so small they looked like they’d been made for baby dolls. “Oh hell no, they are not going to win by dressing like sluts,” Trudy avowed, and went after them in tight velour pants.
With Trudy gone, Michele in a post-high funk, and Jamie telling her entire life story to one of the Serious Actresses, Leah kept her gaze steady on the fire, nursing yet another vodka drink. She had a better than average buzz, and frankly, in that slightly weakened state, she feared that if she looked at him, wherever he was, she’d find a reason to talk to him. And if she talked to him . . . Well. She just couldn’t, not until she’d figured some stuff out for herself.
But she was so certain she was going to make eye contact or somehow unwittingly invite him back into her life that she left Jamie in the middle of her big crescendo on the life story (which was, apparently, getting this job), and turned in.
MICHAEL was thinking he was going to kick some serious Jack Price ass when this whole thing was over with, because he could not shake Ariel to save his life. He walked out of the T.A. cabin, and she was there. He got in line at the mess hall, and she was there. He walked around the camp looking for Leah, and who should he literally bump into, as in collide with when she darted out from behind a tent, but Ariel.