Love in Reality: A Contemporary Romance (The Blackjack Quartet) (14 page)

Alan was still laughing at the end. “That’s brilliant. Do you want me to talk to anyone about this? Harvey? Saul?”

Just like that, Rand’s good mood popped like a squeezed balloon. He turned to his mother. “Sorry, Mom, I gotta get back to work.”

“But it’s a Sunday,” she protested.

Rand stood. “Anyway, thanks for brunch.”

As he walked across the lawn toward his car, he could hear his father’s voice complaining. “What did I say
this
time?”

* * *

Back at the studio, Rand ignored the other contestants as he watched Lissa lounging next to the pool. If anyone noticed that he never looked at anyone else, he’d be in for a lot of ribbing. By himself, behind one of the smoky glass windows, he should be safe. His shift hadn’t started, so not even Marcy was expecting him.

Lissa was so pretty. She had on short shorts and one of those cute little T-shirts that women wore. She was leaning back on her elbows, so the T-shirt was riding up above her waist. Compared to the Vixen and the Cougar, it was actually a fairly modest display of skin. Didn’t matter. He barely glanced at anyone else. Lissa’s skin was pale by Southern California standards, but she didn’t look pasty. She looked—

Wait. He wasn’t looking at her the way a producer should—the way he looked at the other Fish—and that was dangerous. He wanted to date her, sure, maybe when the show ended. He couldn’t even touch her, so he really should cool it, walk away, go do his job.

Rand leaned his hip against the window, taking care not to bump the static camera next to him.

Looking at her lounging by the pool, her face turned to the sky, he remembered their chat the night before, and their other conversations, and how she looked in her audition tape, and their kisses. Just like that, Rand was right back to wanting her.

Even working on the screenplay led back to Lissa. Scenes between Brad and Jenna thrummed with sexual tension, leading Rand to imagine things he and Lissa might get a chance to do. While that was gratifying in some situations—at home, alone—he had trouble getting those images out of his mind. When he got to the set and tried to do his job, seeing her as just another Fish seemed impossible. Particularly when he thought about Lissa’s skin…

He clearly needed to cool off. Reluctantly, he left his observation post. Time to get his head screwed back on and check in with the editors to hear what, if anything, had happened overnight.

Bob greeted him as Rand walked into the Control Room. Bob was working the board, or, rather, he was lounging back, his eyes half closed. Directing
The Fishbowl
most days wasn’t difficult. The live shows were the real directing job. On tape days, the loggers and editors had the hard job of picking out the best bits for Marcy to make her final cut.

Rand walked through to Editing. A few of the editors were already sifting through the material the loggers had culled from the overnight feeds.

“Hey, Rand,” Jamie said. As the newest hire, she sat at the far end of the editors’ monitors. She was also the first to say hi. Rand suspected she had a little crush on him. Everyone else ignored him. Nothing personal, Rand understood—a visit from a producer often meant more work for the editors.

“Anything good from overnight?” he asked.

“This early in the competition? Huh. They still don’t know each other’s names,” Don, one of the veteran editors, said as he tapped to mark a tape. “The Vixen just called the Cougar Janine,” he said.

“Be fair, Don. We don’t know their names yet, and we’ve been working on this cast list for months,” Rand protested.

“You may have been. I first set eyes on them yesterday. I’m a quick study, though—I, at least, know that the Cougar’s name is Diane.” He motioned to the tape, which he’d stopped just as the Cougar opened her mouth to protest. He hit play and pulled out his earphone jack. The Cougar haughtily told the Vixen that her name was Diane, thank you very much.

“Good for you, Don. One down, eleven to go,” Rand joked. He glanced at a sheet of paper tacked to the wall.

“Looks like this year’s pool is well funded,” Rand said. There was a chart showing each crew member’s guess for the order the Fish would get booted off the show.

“Yeah, even Marcy made a pick,” Don said.

“How many years and she still thinks no money’s involved?” Jamie asked.

Don thought about it. “Seven? And I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. We play for bragging rights. Plus, the winner gets taken out for drinks when the game’s finished.”

Rand smirked. It cost $25 to enter and the pot was already over $1,000. Marcy was right about one thing, though—if no one won by guessing the exact order in which the contestants got fished out, the pot was used for a blow-out session at their favorite neighborhood bar. In seven seasons, no one had won yet. Rand was convinced that if someone did win, they’d still spend the money on the blow-out. To which Marcy and her pet interns were, mysteriously, never invited.

Rand flipped the papers back in place. “What’s the betting on who’s out first?”

“Most people figured the Ditz would go first—isn’t she one of yours, Rand?—but I picked the Goth, and it looks like I’m going to be right there. She’s ticked off a lot of people, so your girl is looking a lot safer,” Jamie said.

Rand opened his mouth to protest that Lissa wasn’t his girl, then closed it.

“But hoo bubba, is she a ditz,” Don said. “She’s talking to them just fine and then boom, she zones out. Either she’s really ditzy or she’s playing a great game, ’cuz no one is paying the least attention to her.”

“I like her,” Jamie piped up from the end of the room. “Lissa, I mean. She’s low-key, sure, but she’s nice. You can tell.”

Don grunted. “Jamie, honey, all Fish are money-grubbing lowlifes.”

Rand smiled as Jamie stuck up for Lissa. “No, really. She was nice to Jo—the Goth—this morning. Jo’s boyfriend ditched her as soon as she got on the show, and you could tell Lissa got super annoyed on Jo’s behalf.”

Nick, the quietest of the editors on this shift, spoke up. “She may be nice, but she’s thinking naughty thoughts,” he crowed, pointing to a close-up of her torso he’d cued on his monitor.

Rand glanced at the screen, then looked away, aroused and annoyed. It took him a moment to identify his reaction. He was jealous. Which was crazy on so many levels he couldn’t count them. Which Fish had she thought about to cause that reaction?
Don’t let it be that asshole, Dylan
.

Jamie was the only woman in the room, so she cleared her throat loudly and changed the subject. “You guys lay off her. Go pick on the Vixen, why don’t you? She actually wants you to stare at her, the way she’s got her tatas on display.”

“Well, the Shark Fight is coming up. We’ll know a lot more about them after that,” Rand said. “I gotta go work on it.”

He returned to his “office,” which was a desk in a room with too many people and not enough air.

Debbie poked her head over his shoulder. “You got the Shark Fight questions ready for the Monster yet?”

“She’s seen them, but she wants me to redo Jeremy’s intro. She okayed the questions.” Rand lowered his voice. “It’s too soon for her to weight the competition. She just likes to see the Fish squirm.”

“She thinks the Ditz is going home first.”

“Really?” Rand found this odd. “Not the Goth?”

“I overheard her telling the twink intern that Lissa was going home.” Debbie dipped her head so she was talking to the laminate surface of Rand’s desk. “Can she make that happen?”

“I don’t see how.” Scary thought. “Let me get the intro to her. I’ll see if she lets anything slip.”

Rand struggled to make the introduction to the first Shark Fight sleek enough for longtime fans of the show, while getting the essential elements clear for first-time viewers. Rand tweaked it until finally he ran out of time. Marcy screamed from her office that if it wasn’t in her hands in two minutes, she’d fire the next person she saw.

Once he’d turned in the intro, questions and format to Marcy for final approval, Rand stuck around. He didn’t normally watch the Shark Fight. Before the editors got to it, it was a slow and boring process. Jeremy read the questions as though it was a fast-paced, high-stakes contest, when actually he was sitting in a sound booth wearing shorts and a polo shirt, sipping sparkling water and reading the racing reports from Hollywood Park in between takes. What with Jeremy’s flubs and various technical hitches, a competition that lasted less than ten minutes on air could take up to an hour from start to finish.

But with Lissa competing, Rand wanted to watch. He observed it from the Control Room, disguising his interest and nerves. He wasn’t sure if he wanted Lissa to win. If she did, she’d be immune from elimination this week, which would be good, but she’d be moved from her bedroom into the Shark Tank and be the focus of a lot more cameras. That meant she’d be a lot less accessible to him for late night chats. If she lost she’d probably be short-listed as one of the Fish to be “caught.” At least that’s what the editors and crew thought, and they were more aware of what the other Fish were plotting. If that was the choice—Lissa being the Shark for a week or going home—he wanted her to be the Shark.

The Fish were called out into the garden and told where to stand and what to do. Rand had written the first Shark Fight as a quiz game masquerading as high drama, enough to satisfy Marcy’s blood lust. The Fish stood behind booths cunningly fabricated to look like those stupid miniature castles that decorate tropical fish tanks. Rand considered them idiotic—six feet tall and painted in watery pastels. Every year, though, he got requests from friends—could he steal one for them, or smuggle them onto the set and photograph them making fish faces framed by an oversized toy castle?

Jeremy explained to the Fish through the loudspeaker that he would be asking them questions about prior seasons of
The Fishbowl
. The first three questions were fairly easy and only knocked out the Jock, the Goth, and the Band Geek. Rand had made sure the next three questions were tougher, and sure enough they knocked out everyone but Lissa, the Codger, the Sophisticate, and rather surprisingly, the Vixen. The Sophisticate lost next. Rand was watching Lissa. She looked vaguely bored in between questions. As her fellow Fish were knocked out, Lissa would smile in sympathy, then tilt her head in confusion, as though it was sheer luck that she hadn’t lost too. As soon as Jeremy asked another question, though, Rand could see that Lissa was quite intent on the electronic screen where the contestants wrote their answers. Unlike the other Fish, she didn’t pause or hesitate, and never needed Jeremy’s chiding, “We need your answers, Fish.”

The three of them—Lissa, the Codger and the Vixen—all got the next four questions right. In a live competition, they would have gone to a tie-breaker question by now, but since this Shark Fight was being taped, Rand had written a lot of multiple choice questions. He just made sure they got harder as the competition went along. Finally, one of his trickier questions caught out the Vixen, who tossed her hair in disgust as Jeremy announced that her answer was wrong. Rand could see on Camera Two that Lissa looked up as usual, smiled at the Vixen as she flounced past Lissa with obvious contempt, as though she should have outlasted an obviously weaker player. Camera Two caught Lissa glancing over at the Fish who’d been eliminated. Something about Lissa’s gaze suggested she knew exactly who was left.

When the next question was read, Lissa looked confused and uncertain, hesitated, then wrote her choice on the screen. Rand wasn’t surprised when her answer was wrong. When the Codger also got it wrong—w
ere they both trying to lose?
—they advanced to the next question. Lissa went through a similar routine of seeming perplexed before answering. This time Jim answered correctly and she managed to lose. Her shoulders sagged in relief as Jeremy announced, “Jim, you are the Shark!”

That night, Jim was called first as the Shark’s prerogative and Lissa was again called last to the Journal Room. After Rand asked her the scripted questions and got the expected answers—“I was surprised I made it as far as I did in the Shark Fight, actually, but Jim just outplayed me in the end,”—he asked Dave to turn off the camera feed. After enduring Dave’s leering in his headset, Rand let Lissa know they were alone.

“Why did you throw the quiz?” he asked her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, feigning innocence as she settled back against the cushions and put her feet up on the coffee table. She was still wearing those shorts. Her legs glinted sleek and smooth under the lights of the Journal Room.

“Remind me to play poker with you someday, Lissa,” he teased. “You have a tell.”

She sat up. “I do? What is it?”

“You looked all vague and smiley as the other Fish lost, but very focused on answering the questions. I don’t think Camera Two got a single good reaction shot of you when a question was pending. Then, as soon as the Vixen—”

“Who?”

Oh, crap. What was her name again? He looked at the cheat sheet taped to the wall next to the smoked glass window. “Arielle.”

“Hunh. The Vixen. That figures,” Lissa said. She grinned at him. “Which would make Jim the Old Guy, and um, Bryce is the Jock?”

“I’m going to plead the Fifth,” Rand protested with a laugh. “Forget I even used the word Vixen, okay?”

“Okay, if you promise to forget you saw me throwing the competition,” she bargained.

“Ah, so you admit it!” he said.

Lissa shrugged. “I’ve seen all the episodes and I have a good memory. It’s like remembering the regulars’ orders at the bar, that’s all.”

He smiled. “That still doesn’t explain why you let him win.”

She paused, then looked down at her hands smoothing out the hem of her shorts. “This, I guess.”

Did she mean—? His pulse quickened. Was it the sight of her fingers brushing along the top of her thigh or…

“Talking to you, I mean,” she continued without looking up. “If I’d won, I wouldn’t be invisible anymore, and you and I couldn’t take this extra time.”