Love in Reality: A Contemporary Romance (The Blackjack Quartet) (8 page)

There was no intro, just her sitting on a stool looking a little nervous.

“Hi, Lissa.” Rand’s TV voice always surprised him. It didn’t sound that smooth inside his head.

“Hi.”

“Tell us about yourself.”

“Okay. I’m twenty-four, I work as a bartender in South Philly, and I haven’t decided what I want to be when I grow up, I guess.” She grinned for a second, almost to herself, then looked back at the camera. “What else?”

“Why did you apply to be on
The Fishbowl
?”

She giggled. “For the money, of course.” There was that grin again. Rand always smiled when he saw her grin.

“Well, what will be your strategy for winning?”

“I plan to surprise everyone by being not quite what they expect.”

“What should they expect?”

“A player who’s not going to announce on TV what her competition should expect,” she replied.

“Don’t you worry that nice contestants get ‘fished out’ early and don’t make it very far in the game?”

“You’re thinking of stupid Fish. I’m fairly sure that smart ones can last a little longer,” Lissa shot back with a deadpan look.

Debbie turned toward Rand and he paused the tape. “Wait. Isn’t the whole idea that Marcy doesn’t know she’s smart?”

“Right. Only Marcy would never think that a contestant who believes herself to be smart actually is smart. It’s the perfect double-bluff,” Rand said. “And then, later, she can’t say she wasn’t warned.”

Debbie shook her head. “You’re either a bigger fool than I realized, or a total genius. I just wish I knew which before I trust you to pull this off,” she muttered.

Rand resumed the tape.

“Okay. Last question: What do you think is the key to winning
The Fishbowl
?” Rand asked this hoping Lissa wouldn’t give some candy-assed answer about being a good person.

“Three things. Physical conditioning is the most important, particularly a sense of balance, because so many of the challenges require that. Next, a good memory. And finally,” she laughed, “a cast-iron stomach. C’mon, you guys make the contestants eat some really nasty stuff!”

Rand paused the tape again.

“So what do you think?” he asked Debbie.

“No way Marcy is going to think she’s a ditz. I’m pretty sure even Marcy will catch on with this one.”

Rand shook his head. “Nope. Because of the way Lissa acts. Don’t you see? She actually giggled. It’s like she isn’t taking any of it seriously. She talks about the money, but she doesn’t seem to care. She’s thought how to play the game, but without the intensity of the others.”

Debbie shrugged. “I guess. You’re right about one thing—she’s not a bimbo.”

“Plus, Marcy’s going to see the boobs, the long legs, the glossy hair, and combine that with Lissa’s dead-end job as a bartender and come up with Loser with a capital L.”

“You’re playing with fire. Promise me you’ll go over it again and make her even ditzier.”

Rand scowled, then nodded. He didn’t like the idea of toning down Lissa’s vibrant spirit, but he admitted Debbie was probably right.

“Still,” Debbie said, gesturing at the screen, which had stopped with Lissa’s quirky grin, “I do see why you wanted her on the show. She’s downright fun to watch.”

“Isn’t she?” Rand said happily. “She’s the perfect ringer.”

He smiled at Lissa’s face, frozen in happy close-up on the screen. She was going to be great for the show and for his film script. He’d already started to flesh out the love interest character in the film. He wanted to combine aspects of Susie’s professional school ambitions with Lissa’s smarts. He was thinking of sending her character to medical school after a summer on
The Ant Farm
. That could give them a lovely bittersweet ending where she walks away from Brad, the doofus TV producer who tried to sabotage the show, because she has a real life to get back to.

He was really looking forward to the start of the season.

* * *

“Lissa?”

Libby was about to say that no, she was Libby, when she recognized the voice. “Yes?” she said cautiously. Her heart was pounding, presumably from fear of making a mistake.

“Rand Jennings. From
The Fishbowl
.”

It
was
him. His face flashed in her memory. She’d missed him at the Cork, which was crazy since he lived so far away. “Oh, hi,” she said slowly.

“I know this is no notice at all. I have a layover in Philly for a few hours and I was wondering if I could see you.”

Libby looked out the window at a crystal clear April afternoon. She was home for once, although she’d been planning to go into school to do some research on her Law Review note. “I guess,” she said. She was nervous for some reason, or excited—hard to tell the difference.

“Great. I’ve got your address, so I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

That explained the noise in the background—he was in a cab, already on his way here. “Okay,” Libby said, quickly scoping out what she needed to do before he got there. Tidy away her Corporations casebook, for starters. “See you then.”

Amazing how much could get done in such a short amount of time, Libby marveled as she answered his knock on the door. No sign of law books or, for that matter, the dowdy law student attire. A change of clothes, a quick application of makeup, jewelry and a hairbrush to remove the evidence of her habitual ponytail—instant Lissa. She’d even managed to pull out one of Lissa’s fashion magazines from the recycling and leave it artfully open on the coffee table.

“Hi,” she said as he walked in.

“Hi,” he smiled. He was casually dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and a light jacket over that. Very sharp and tailored. The epitome of West Coast chic, she imagined. Very Hollywood. His hair looked ruffled from the breeze and Libby wanted to smooth it back from his forehead.

“I’ll go make some coffee,” she said, already heading for the kitchen.

He followed her, having taken his jacket off. Yup, that T-shirt looked too good on him. He had a great figure, even if he wasn’t likely to appear shirtless on a romance novel cover. She turned back to the scoop she was holding and stared at it stupidly. Coffee. Right.

“So I just thought I’d come to tell you that you’re on the show,” he said calmly.

Libby managed to get the coffee maker started, then turned to face him. He was awfully close in the tiny galley kitchen. She could smell his scent even over the first wafts of coffee steam.

“Okay,” she said. Wait, should she act more excited? “That’s great!” she added after a beat.

Rand grinned at her. “I’ve really taken you by surprise, haven’t I?”

Libby closed her mouth when she realized it was open. “Surprised? Uh, yeah.” Not because of the show. Libby had a sinking feeling Rand took her breath away simply by being tall and gorgeous. Not handsome like Uncle Jack. Better. More like a human being, not so larger-than-life. She nodded, then turned to get half-and-half out of the fridge.

“Do you take it black?” she asked.

“Yup.”

She returned the carton, then remembered she used it in her coffee and took it back out.

“Am I making you nervous?” he asked.

“A little.”

He deliberately moved back so that he was half in the hallway. “Better?”

“Yup.”

They laughed, and Libby started to relax.

When they were sitting in the living room drinking their coffee, Rand explained what he was doing there.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “As you know, there’s often a twist in
The Fishbowl
. This year is no different. We’re asking two of the Fish to try to fool the other ten.”

“I’m one of the two,” Libby said.

He cocked his head. “Why do you say that?”

“If I were one of the ten, you’d have explained it differently. You’d have said something about how two of the Fish will be pretending. By emphasizing that you’re asking two Fish to fool the others, it’s clear I’ll be one of the two.”

Rand leaned back and laughed. “You’re right, of course. And you’ve managed to highlight my problem. I need you to be less smart.”

“Less intelligent?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t think I come across as particularly smart, but okay. What should I act like?”

“Yourself only ditzier.”

“Ditzy? Do you mean scatterbrained?”

Rand hesitated. “Do you watch a lot of movies?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Why? Is there a particular movie type you want?”

“Yeah. My boss wants someone who’s not dim, precisely, just not very intellectually organized. I’m a film buff, so I imagine Carole Lombard in
My Man Godfrey
—” he paused to check if she’d seen it. Libby shook her head. “—or Judy Holliday in
Born Yesterday
.”

Libby said, “Wait, is that the one where she’s dating some mobster and he thinks she’s stupid, so he hires a tutor for her, only she’s not as dumb as she looks, then she and the tutor fall in love?”

His face lit up like a kid watching Saturday morning cartoons. “Exactly. Broderick Crawford as the loudmouth millionaire and William Holden as the newspaperman he hires. It’s an excellent example of George Cukor’s work. Based on the play by Garson Kanin, who also—” He trailed off, probably because her face was registering her amazement.

“Sorry,” he said. “I get carried away.”

Now Libby knew how Lissa must feel listening to her twin describe an exciting legal argument. “That’s okay. I understand, I really do.”

He looked thoughtful, then glanced around the room. “I can show you what I’m talking about,” he offered, gesturing toward the TV.

He started explaining about how he could stream movies on demand. Libby didn’t bother to pay attention. She was too taken with the curve of his back as he leaned forward to tap something out on his laptop. His T-shirt had ridden up at the back, and there was a crescent of skin showing between the waistband of the jeans and his shirt.

When was the last time she’d touched a man there, at the small of his back? She wasn’t a nun, for God’s sake. She got asked out and sometimes she went. She’d even slept with a few guys, mostly during college. Touching a man’s skin just to feel the velvet smoothness? Libby couldn’t remember when that last happened.

Rand connected the laptop to the TV, something Libby had no idea you could even do, and before long,
My Man Godfrey
had started. Libby had to smile, as there were a couple of similarities between the father, Mr. Bullock, and Bill Pembroke. Of course, the mother in the movie was nothing like Mom, who was scarily on top of things. Still, the image of William Powell as a butler calming “the pixies” made Libby laugh out loud.

Rand had stretched out on the sofa, his left arm along the back. Before she knew it, she’d edged closer to Rand and his arm was behind her head. She felt too self-conscious to move away. She waited for Rand to increase the space between them. After a few minutes, she began to relax.

The movie gradually engrossed her. Libby could see where things were going with Powell’s forgotten-man-turned-butler really being a Boston Brahmin. Even so, the ending surprised her. When the credits finished, she turned to Rand with tears in her eyes.

His arm curled around her shoulders. He opened his mouth to say something, but never spoke.

They stared at each other. Libby thought about his skin, his golden-brown eyes, his lips.

He leaned in and kissed her. She lost herself in the moment, magical because of Godfrey’s savoir faire and the image of Rand’s skin. She let him deepen the kiss, pull her into his arms, tangle their tongues, and touch her back with a hand snaked in under her sweater. Everything he did, she reciprocated. When she got to pull up his shirt, the feel of his skin made her think about her bedroom not twenty feet away, just beyond Lissa’s roo—.

Lissa. He was kissing Lissa. Libby jerked back in an awkward move.

“I’m sorry. I just realized—” she began. Oh God, what could she say? “You—you’re not, I mean, you shouldn’t be kissing a contestant, should you?” A rhetorical question.

He removed his hands from her torso and pulled back a few inches. “No. I mean, yes, you’re right. I shouldn’t.”

Libby scooted away from him. She looked at the TV, now showing a blue screen. “I love the movie,” she said.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I got carried away.”

“The power of film,” she joked. Her voice sounded shaky, though, and it wasn’t even funny.

Rand stood up. Libby looked away to avoid staring at the crotch of his jeans. At the bulge in the crotch of his jeans.

“I should probably get back to the airport,” he said. He didn’t move.

Libby stood up. “Uh, look, I know you weren’t trying—I mean, I know you didn’t—you can’t make the game any easier for me. That’s not why I kissed you.”

His smile held real amusement. “I think I kissed you first.”

“You know what I mean.”

He laughed. “All too well.” He packed away his laptop. “So do you have a better idea of what a ditzy person is like?”

Like…someone who could fall for the one guy she can’t have—if for no other reason than he thinks she’s her twin?

Rand froze, one finger hovering over his mouse.

He couldn’t watch the raw footage he’d shot of Lissa again. With his luck, Marcy would walk up to his desk and demand to know what he was doing.

What was with this urge to watch Lissa’s tape over again? Every time he saw it he focused on now-familiar details like the way her hair flowed over her shoulder when she flicked it back, or that cute way she had of touching her teeth to her bottom lip just for a second, or the glow in her eyes when she was joking. Then he’d notice something new to add to his list of favorite moments. He was losing it, and he wasn’t even sure why.

He pulled up his spreadsheet of the competitions, but all he saw was Lissa. She obsessed him.

It couldn’t be the screenplay. He’d written as much as he could before the show started. He had an opening sequence that established his protagonist, Brad, as a dimwit in a seemingly glamorous job that turns out to be really boring. Brad’s boss, Nanci—with a smiley face to dot the i—is insufferable. Fun to write Nanci’s dialogue. Less fun but just as necessary had been Brad’s conversations with his best friends, one at work and one outside of work, telling him to quit. Rand thought he’d nailed Brad’s motivation for staying in the job. Maybe Brad’s father needed to show up sooner in the movie. Rand made a mental note to check that.