Make Me Over_ Getting Real - Leslie Kelly [41]
Tori gaped. “You serious?”
As the other woman nodded, Tori whistled a little. Then she figured it out. “You were on the set of Killing Time In A Small Time, the murder-mystery show, weren’t you?”
Again Jacey nodded.
“Wow,” Tori mumbled. “The right guy won for a change.” Then, thinking about who the winner had been, she asked, “Is Digg as much of a hottie in real life as he is on TV?”
Jacey didn’t answer right away. Instead she drained her glass, then stood and approached the bar to help herself to another. Finally she muttered, “He is.”
There was a story there, but Tori wasn’t about to pry to get at it. Prying in other people’s business left them feeling a mite bit too free to pry into her own. And as much as she was enjoying Jacey’s company tonight, she wasn’t about to forget the woman’s job was to try to find out every little bit of information she could about Drew Bennett and any potential lovers.
Of course, they weren’t lovers. Not technically, anyway. Though, she honestly had to say that any man who’d had his tongue where his had been had probably earned the right to be called a wee bit more ’n a friend.
“Ready?” Jacey asked, holding the bottle up.
Tori shook her head. She might have joined Jacey in another drink, but, truly, Tori didn’t have much of a head for bourbon. So instead, she moved right to club soda, which she sipped and nursed for an hour or more. As they talked, she began to really like Jacey. The other girl was caustic, with a kind of pull-no-punches wit that Tori had always admired in others. Though on the surface they had nothing in common, she found herself thinking she and Jacey could become good friends. Jacey even talked her into getting back to doin’ some drinkin’, and Tori was working on a nice little head buzz after another shot.
“So,” the camerawoman said after they’d discussed everything from their childhoods to the best—and worst—of the reality-TV craze, “tell me how you think it’s going.”
“What’s going?”
“This show. How will it go down in the annals of reality-TV history?”
Tori grunted. “No brainer. As a big lust-fest with an audience who hates every woman in this place and roots for the professor to tell all you TV folks to take this show and shove it when he finds out the truth.”
Jacey stared, her mouth dropping open. “Well, gee, don’t pull any punches. Tell me what you really think.”
“I call ’em like I see ’em.”
And she did. She wasn’t exaggerating one bit. She hoped when it came right down to it, and Drew learned he’d been misled and lied to, that he’d walk out of here without a backward glance for any one of them.
A twist of pain in her gut called her a liar, since she suspected she’d want a lot more than a backward glance. Tori chalked it up to the bourbon, refusing to allow herself to dream there was any possibility of a future between them.
“You really want him to walk away without falling in love?”
“He ain’t gonna fall in love with any of these women,” she muttered, dropping back into her Tennessee accent. “He’s smart and he’s well traveled and he’s drop-dead gorgeous. What’s a single woman on this set have to offer a man like that?”
Jacey stared her directly in the eye, her smile fading away. Then she leaned forward in her seat, dropping her elbows on her knees. “How about a great woman who’s funny and smart and brave as hell. One who makes him laugh and makes him hot and will make anyone with a brain and two good eyes root for her to succeed?”
It took Tori a second to realize who the other woman was talking about. When she did, she snorted. “Not a chance.”
“Yes, there is.”
“Uh-uh,” Tori said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Drew Bennett’s got about as much chance of falling in love with me as I got of being named lady of them all in some real-life fairy tale.” Tori flung herself back in her overstuffed chair, her legs sprawled out in very unladylike fashion in front of her. Miss Evelyn would likely have a conniption. But tonight, Tori just plum didn’t care. “Besides which, even if he did start caring for somebody, me or Ginny or you