Chapter 15: Damsel In Distress

Cora belted the white terry robe around her waist and wrung the excess water from her hair. She wouldn't bother blowing it dry tonight. The humid ocean air would leave it frizzy in the morning, but she didn't see what difference it made. She could have the best hair day of her life, and it still wouldn't make her attractive enough to qualify as reality-TV worthy.

The bathroom mirror had fogged up from her long shower. Cora wiped it with her towel to reveal the misty reflection staring back at her.

She wasn't unattractive by any normal standards, although her complexion tended to turn pasty over the winter months. The light suntan she'd acquired the past two days suited her, complimented by the honey-colored highlights in her hair.

Honestly, she considered her lack of stunning beauty a blessing. Excessively good looks would only be a nuisance, given her resolve to avoid romantic entanglements for the rest of her life. Much easier to glide through the world with a slightly above-average appearance that didn't attract too much unwanted attention.

But unwanted attention was exactly what she had attracted—in the form of television cameras. She'd somehow tricked herself into believing she belonged here on this beach, or at least that she didn't look ridiculous.

Until this afternoon.

The memory brought a sour taste to her mouth. It was all fun and games until the winner of the art contest had been announced and the prize revealed: Camilla, the 24-year-old surfer who looked like she'd just stepped out of an old episode of Baywatch.

The sight had hit Cora like a bucket of cold water to the face, not unlike the sensation of being bowled over by the ocean waves half an hour prior. Talk about a wake up call. The girl on the poster belonged on a show like this, prancing around in a bikini all day long. Cora? Not so much.

What was she thinking? Normal beauty standards didn't apply here. Her face was pretty but not model pretty—and that wasn't even considering her "Grecian urn"-shaped body. Of course she stood out. She couldn't hold a candle to any of the other cast members on a show like this, including her co-star on the other side of the bathroom door.

She never should have been cast in the first place. And she only had one person to blame for getting her here.

"Thank you so much," she muttered in the direction of Jamie's bedroom door.

Cora closed her eyes. She wished herself on an airplane, headed home. Or headed anywhere else. Anywhere besides this beach, inside this bungalow.

A gentle knock sounded from the door, startling her out of her thoughts. Cora scowled.

"Come in," she called.

Jamie had changed out of his swimsuit into a t-shirt and a faded pair of jeans. He'd showered before her and left his dark hair damp and  disheveled. He didn't need to blow it dry either, Cora thought bitterly. Good hair would only serve as an exclamation point on his baseline level of TV-worthiness.

He held the liner bag from the ice bucket, filled with the slushy remnants of the ice he'd been using on his ankle. He poured the bag out in the sink.

His limp had improved over the course of their evening, to the point that Cora had forgotten about his injury. But he'd made a beeline for the ice bucket the moment the crew left for the night.

"Do you need more ice?" she asked. Not that they had any means of acquiring any more before morning, abandoned by the crew in their bungalow for the night.

"No need. It's feeling much better." He lifted his bare foot and rotated it in a circle by way of demonstration.

She nodded. Had he come in here to talk to her, or only to use the sink?

He lingered longer than necessary, watching her as she turned her attention back to her own reflection and ran a brush through her hair. He came to stand behind her. She met his eyes in the mirror and he raised his eyebrows. But still he didn't speak.

She set the brush down on the counter. "What?"

"Aren't you going say anything?"

"What would you like me to say?" She dispensed with the pretense of grooming and turned to face him.

He shrugged. "Nothing. Never mind." He turned and headed back toward his room.

Cora considered letting him go and seeking the refuge of her own closed bedroom door. That would be the wisest course.

She heaved a sigh. How quickly the tide had turned. She'd spent the better part of the day looking forward to this moment, alone with Jamie at last. She'd been counting down the hours until the sun went down and they could finish what they'd started the night before.

But the art contest had changed things.

"I'm sorry Cora. Your journey with us ends here..." Cora hadn't seen that plot twist coming. It had knocked her off balance and left her feeling a half-step behind. She hadn't understood exactly what was happening when Jamie reacted to the news. He'd put his arm around her waist and claimed her like some marauding pirate claiming a fair damsel as his hostage.

"I have all the power," he had said. "You'll have to be much nicer to me now."

Cora had done her best to play along, her mind spinning to catch up with the unexpected turn of events. She didn't have time to respond before the host, Danna Morton, turned away and bellowed, "CUT!"

Apparently, Cora wasn't the only one thrown off by Jamie's ad-libbed flourishes. Danna had transformed in the blink of an eye from her robotic on-camera persona to a fuming rage. She'd turned to the producers and unleashed a torrent of expletives, while Jamie had kept his arm firmly around Cora's waist. "Don't say a word," he'd whispered in her ear. "Let me handle it."

She should have extricated herself then and there. She could have told him his heroics were unnecessary and walked off the island with whatever dignity she had left.

Instead, she'd frozen. Why?

The confusion of the moment got the best of her. That was all. Not because of the stab of white-hot fire in her belly from the way he claimed her and pulled her close. Cora didn't want to acknowledge that sensation. Despite all her talk of feminism and independence, deep down she still had that primal longing to play the fairytale princess, the damsel in distress.

It didn't mean anything. A neural pathway, hard-wired into little girls at a young age by patriarchal Western culture. It hit her so fast and strong, it stole the breath out of her lungs and the words out of her brain. So she followed his instructions and held her tongue as Danna turned her wrath on Jamie's head.

Mel argued they couldn't re-shoot the scene without the reactions looking fake, so Danna called for the pair of them to be cut together. "Edit them both out! Get him out of my face. I'm not here to play fucking improv games with the eye candy!"

Cora wondered for a moment how Jamie could have triggered such an extreme reaction, but she'd understood as Danna continued her rant. Jamie must have had forewarning about the coming elimination. He'd disobeyed his instructions from the producers, and Cora wasn't the only one he left at a loss for words. The host had been too stunned to speak—and that was the worst crime you could commit against a television spokesperson.

Now Jamie wanted her to thank him. That's why he had lingered, eyeing her in the mirror. He'd played the knight in shining armor, done battle with the fire-breathing dragon, and now he was waiting for the fair damsel to fall into his arms.

He'd be waiting a long time.

She let her hairbrush clatter onto the countertop and turned to follow him through his bedroom door.

"You didn't have to do that," she said by way of opening, not even attempting to keep the irritation out of her voice. "You should have let them send me home."

He sat sprawled on top of his bed with his back propped against the headboard. "Is that what you would have wanted?"

"I only came on this show because you begged me! Your career was at stake. Blah blah blah. What happened to that whole sob story?"

Jamie slouched down further and lifted his arms behind his head. His face registered no reaction beyond mild surprise. "Quite. You saved my neck. I thought I owed you something."

"Well, you didn't. And don't blame me if you're limping around now," she pointed at his ankle. "You shot yourself in the foot with the dragon-lady host."

He smiled at her, and the aching heat in her belly flared. Her foolish neurons didn't know any better. Neurobiology could be truly maddening sometimes.

"Wait," he said. "Are you angry with me?"

Cora made an effort to modulate her tone. "I'm annoyed."

He arranged his features into a picture of contrition. "Sorry. I thought you should have some say in the matter. That's all."

"So you spoke for me."

"I meant to discuss it with you first, but you distracted me by breaking my leg."

That injury had been self-inflicted too, as much as he wanted to blame her. So what if the ocean knocked her on her ass? No one asked him to rescue her from that either. "Maybe stop being such a hero and worry about yourself."

He nodded blandly. "That would be my usual inclination, yes. Self-sacrifice is not my strong suit."

His agreeable tone only added to her annoyance. She was itching for him to argue with her now—or to grab her around the waist again.... One or the other. She couldn't say which. Possibly both at once.

He wouldn't give her the satisfaction of doing either one. He just sat there with his lazy voice and his perfectly fitted t-shirt that somehow managed to look relaxed and still show off the muscles of his shoulders every time he moved his arms.

The most irritating man! Too aggressive when she wanted him to be passive, too passive when she wanted him to fight. Cora rolled her eyes and turned to leave the way she had entered, dissatisfaction churning in her veins.

He let her get as far as the bathroom door before he called after her. "Hold on. I'm not finished yet."

She leaned against the doorframe, half in and half out of the room.

Walk away, said the little voice of reason in her head. Forget him. Go to bed. But the voice of reason tended to get drowned out by more insistent neural pathways.

Cora spun around to face him. She wasn't finished with him either.

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