if I did, that thug isn’t going to get him out of it. He’s like . . . an animal.”
“A dirty, hot animal. Mmm.”
“Nee! Put your tongue back in!”
Joe gets the autograph and stares at it like it’s his most prized possession as he continues to talk the dirty guys’ ears off. I try to walk as close as I can to the people in front of me so that I can get as far away from the thugs as possible. I open my book and read.
“That’s a mighty big book for a little girl like you.” The voice comes over my shoulder, breath tickling my ear.
I nearly jump.
He smells good. Why does he smell good? I grit my teeth and push my glasses up on my nose. “I’m not that little.”
I’m really not. I’m almost five seven. Compared to him, though, I guess I am. He’s a beast.
“You studying for some test or something?”
I roll my eyes. “No. Just reading for fun.”
He laughs. “You find reading fun?”
Ugh. Yes, I do find reading fun, as opposed to what he must find fun, like shooting up or biting the heads off chickens. I decide I won’t answer and maybe he’ll get the picture that I’m not interested in talking to him.
I don’t know how I manage it, but I ignore him the rest of the time. Two hours later, we make it to the check-in desk, take numbers, and then we’re ushered into a part of the convention center with tables where we can sit. I try to sit as far away as possible from the yeti and his famous friend, but unfortunately, Joe drags us so that we’re sitting at the same table, all the while acting like the YouTube star’s groupie.
A voice over the loudspeaker says, “Number 4,322.” I look at mine. 5,696.
Blah.
An older man in a baseball cap waves his number and runs toward the stage. A woman in an MDM polo nods at him, and he follows her out the door.
A second later he appears again, looking kind of angry. I guess he didn’t get chosen. He says something to his girlfriend, and the two of them leave, giving the woman at the door the middle finger.
Nice.
She ignores them and calls the next number.
At least they’re moving fast.
“I’ll be pissed,” Courtney says with a sigh, “if I spend all day here just to be in with them for only five seconds!”
“Yeah,” I mutter. I’m kind of embarrassed to be here to begin with. Did I really think this was going to be my ticket? I’m not unique. And I’m not adventurous. I’m sure as hell not going to get married to just any old guy for television ratings. And Courtney’s right. This totally isn’t my scene. The people here probably have a collective IQ of ten. When I leave here an hour from now, completely empty handed, I’m going to have to get real and get a normal job, like everyone else in the world.
Which is probably why I haven’t left.
I bury my nose in the textbook and try to ignore the conversations going on around me. People are still theorizing about what this Million Dollar Marriage show is, and the whole place is on the verge of explosion from curiosity.
When I look up across the table, the yeti’s eyes are on me. Penetrating, dark, possessive.
Okay, I see what Courtney means. He is attractive, in a bad-boy way. If I liked those things, I’d probably be interested. But I don’t. I like clean. Intelligent. Cultured.
So why do I feel heat between my legs?
I swallow and lower my eyes to my book, but I wind up reading the same sentence about a hundred times.
I look up again. He’s still staring at me, his gaze as heavy as a brick, trapping me. I’ve never been stared at like this before.
“What?” I snap.
He shakes his head almost imperceptibly. “I just like looking at you.”
Great.
I grab my book off the table and turn away from him, propping it up on my knees. So you can just like looking at the back of my head.
I do manage to finish the chapter on Mencius, still feeling prickles on my neck from where I think his eyes may be boring into me. God, he has crazy, hot eyes, unblinking, like he’s marked his prey and is readying to pounce. But eventually I hear him talking to his friend the “star,” so I relax a little.
The loudspeaker goes off again, and Courtney jumps up and