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Lady Avery!?Keaton thought he must have been hearing things. There was no way that Avery was going to be on the show.
The doors opened and Avery walked in wearing a blue dress that matched her eyes, offered just a hint of cleavage, and hugged her hourglass figure. Her red hair, which was normally wavy, was perfectly straight and hung down to her waist. And her lips had a sheer cranberry gloss that was calling to him like a lighthouse in a storm.
Keaton was wrong. He wasdefinitelygoing to be flirting with the new girl.
* * *
Avery felt like she was going to pass out as she walked into the room. There were bright lights, people staring at her and clapping, and cameras pointing in her direction. Being on the roof with Keaton had been living out her dreams. Being here was living out her worst nightmare.
She still wasn’t exactly sure how she’d let Sabrina talk her into this. The past twenty-four hours had been a blur. One minute she’d been at the community center telling her best friend there was no way she would do this and the next she was sitting across from a shrink answering how she would handle getting negative publicity from the show.
Then today, Sabrina had called in a favor with some designers she knew and Avery spent the day getting fitted for a new wardrobe. After that, she spent two hours in Jessa’s chair getting a new haircut and her makeup done. Then the next thing she knew, Maura was telling her when the doors open go in and walk to the first black X on the floor and stop.
So there she was. Her legs felt like Jell-O beneath her, and she was pretty sure she was going to throw up. She could hear that the host was talking, but it just sounded like the adults in Charlie Brown, “Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.”’
She wasn’t sure how long she was standing there, reminding herself to breathe when the whole room started spinning and the noise around her muted like she was underwater. She felt like she was floating away.
I’m going to pass out, she thought to herself when she felt a large hand on her back.
“Breathe,” Keaton whispered against her ear.
His touch, his voice, his presence brought her back into her body. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them she saw that the entire cast was gathered around her. She wasn’t sure how long they’d been there. They were all introducing themselves to her and Anton.
The second her legs were steady, Keaton dropped his hand and she instantly missed the contact. He stood beside her for a few moments before Zara placed her hand on his arm and the two stepped away as she whispered something to him.
“Hi, I’m Luca,” Luca introduced himself to her. I’ve seen you around.”
“Yeah, I um work here,” she said.
“Oh, I thought…didn’t they say you owned the castle?”
“Yeah, but, that sounds…I don’t know, pretentious, cringey.”
Luca laughed and she could feel the heat of Keaton’s stare boring into the side of her cheek. She wished she could talk to him, to tell him why she’d come on. But she’d signed an NDA that stipulated she was not allowed to tell the cast about the poison ivy or talk about anything else outside of the Fairytale Love bubble. She was mic’d so she knew that even if she got him alone, she wouldn’t be able to explain the situation.
Suddenly she understood why he’d been so desperate to talk to her down at the lake. Why he’d rattled off all that information so quickly because he didn’t have time. He was being watched, monitored at all times.
Luca continued talking to her and she did her best to pay attention to what he was saying. But being this close to Keaton and not being able to say what she wanted to say, to touch him, to even really look at him, was much harder than she thought it was going to be.
This was going to be absolute torture.
To her surprise, the cocktail hour went by faster than she’d expected it to. Before she knew it they were being separated to get ready for bed. As the men walked out to head to the north tower, Keaton’s knuckles brushed the back of her hand, sending a tremor rushing through her body and a tingle between her legs.
Then again, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.
21
Keaton stoodbeside Zara and glanced down at the end of the line where Avery was next to Anton. Today she wore plain yoga pants and a sports bra, like all the other women, but there was nothing plain about how she looked in them. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. The black leggings clung to her rounded hips and shapely thighs. A hint of cleavage spilled over the white sports bra. The two items of clothing hit her in the perfect spot to accentuate the hourglass shape of her bare skin between them.
Since she’d walked into the ballroom four days ago, he had been looking for any opportunity he could find to speak to her. But since she’d been announced as a new lady, they hadn’t had a moment alone.
He wanted to ask her what was going on. Why hadn’t she said anything about joining the competition when they were on the roof? Had she joined because of what had happened on the roof?
If that were the case, he’d be flattered. But he knew it wasn’t. That didn’t make any sense. There had to be a reason he wasn’t seeing.
They’d spoken a few times, but it hadn’t really been about anything real because they’d been mic’d up. They’d both tried to disguise what they were actually trying to say with coded language, but that was harder to do than you might think. Also, despite Zara instructing him to “flirt with the new girl” she’d been static cling film stuck to his side like a dryer sheet that he couldn’t get rid of. Every time he thought he’d extracted himself from her, she popped up behind him.
Being so close to Avery and only sharing stolen looks, secret touches, and coded words was frustrating, but it was also kind of hot. He felt like the past ninety-six hours had all been foreplay. The level of his pent-up, unreleased passion, need, and desire was hitting critical mass. He was about to explode and those yoga pants and sports bra weren’t helping his condition.
