Make Me Over_ Getting Real - Leslie Kelly [2]
A fancy estate during the holidays. Bubbly hot tubs. Red wine in front of a fire. A bunch of busty bimbos in search of a little class-i-fication. And a hunky-as-heck brainiac doctor.
“I’ve got an idea,” she finally said. “I think I just might have come up with a way for you to take this boring makeover show of yours and turn it into a bona fide hit.”
Burt sat up straight, immediately interested. “How?”
“Well,” Jacey replied smoothly, “it’s simple. You don’t make the women compete for money or to be named Grand Duchess of Poobah because her pinkie stays the highest during a tea party.”
Her father huffed.
Leaning close to his desk, Jacey crossed her arms on its wood surface and met the old man’s stare. Once she was sure she had his complete attention, she tapped the photo on the back of the book with the tip of her nail.
“You make them compete for him.”
1
H E’D STUMBLED into a hooker convention.
Arriving at the Vermont estate to which he’d been directed, Dr. Andrew Bennett immediately suspected he’d made a wrong turn somewhere. Because this had to be a group of hookers raucously making themselves at home in the tastefully decorated library of a fabulous New England mansion. Either that or someone was filming an episode of Girls Gone Wild.
From the two brunettes and the redhead sitting on top of the bar doing shots—to the trio of blondes dirty dancing around a hapless waiter serving hors d’oeuvres—to the tall one lying on her back in the middle of the floor attempting to guzzle a yard of beer—to the petite, washed-out girl demonstrating pole dancing against the floor lamp, every woman in the room looked about as raucous, uncouth and outrageous as could be.
He’d asked for women with little education or social skills. Not the entire mud-wrestling team from Big Al’s Slaughterhouse in Bangor.
Drew wished he felt elated to have such raw material to work with.
He didn’t.
He wished he could muster some enthusiasm about the daunting task of overseeing the transformation of these, er, ladies of the evening into real ladies.
He couldn’t.
He wished he’d turned around and left the minute he’d seen two of the women competing in a spitting contest into the fireplace.
He hadn’t.
He wished there was some legitimate reason he actually had to participate in this reality-show nonsense, rather than just let his book be the basis for it.
There wasn’t.
He wished he could change his mind.
Too late. He was stuck. Here. With the rollicking house full of…test subjects.
One-on-one he could have handled. Frankly, he would have relished the opportunity to show the world what he’d learned from his own research…from his own life. Genetics or upbringing didn’t determine the capacity of a person’s success. Education did.
Education. Resilience. A modicum of social ability…they could overcome nearly any hurdles mere birth could bestow. Hadn’t his transition from homeless kid of a flighty mother to college professor illustrated as much? God knew, if he, Drew Bennett—former thief and con artist who’d once picked pockets in Miami Beach to feed his kid sister—could make it from the back seat of an ancient, rusty VW Beetle to the podiums of Georgetown University, anyone could.
A crash jerked his attention back to the women in the room.
“Wooo, girl, you’re gonna have to pay for that!” someone shouted as a redhead giggled over the vase she’d just knocked off an end table.
“Maybe they’ll take it out in trade,” the pole dancer said, sounding weary and jaded.
Drew blew out a long, frustrated breath.
Why he’d ever thought this reality-show idea might actually do some good, he had no idea. Back in September when he’d first been approached by the TV people, he’d refused. Not only because it seemed a silly idea, but also because he simply didn’t have the time to deal with such nonsense. He’d already had to take the semester off teaching anthropology and sociology at Georgetown because of the insanity of book tours and publicity associated with being an overnight bestseller. Throw in his next