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
