Runaway Groom (I Do, I Don't 2)

“Powder.”

“No. You know the deal. Bare minimum of makeup.”

She gives an impatient huff. “And usually that’s fine, with your freaking Greek-god skin. Today, though, you look like hell.”

Raven’s gaze rakes over me in an impartial inspection, apparently not impressed that I was voted Sexiest Man Alive last year. And the year before that.

“He’s good enough,” Raven says. “I need him for sound check.”

Diana nods, but not before she sneaks in a quick swipe of powder over my cheekbones.

Raven crooks a finger at me and saunters away, clearly expecting me to follow.

I jerk out the bib-like thing that prevents the makeup from getting on my white dress shirt. “I gotta go,” I say to Dan.

I’m talking to silence. He’s already hung up.

“What’s with you today?” Diana asks, putting her tools back in her kit. “You look like shit. You’re in a shitty mood.”

“You talk to your girlfriend with that mouth?” I say with a smile, trying to lighten the atmosphere as an apology for taking my shitty mood out on her.

“Yes, and Christina likes it,” Diana says with a wink as she clicks the case shut.

She reaches out and touches a h

and to my arm, her blue eyes going slightly soft, a stark contrast to the three piercings in each eyebrow and the thick line of black around her eyes. “What’s going on, for real? You that pissed about the show?”

I rub a hand over the back of my neck as I stand. “Sure. Yeah.”

A lie. I mean, yeah, the fact that I’m about to speed-date twenty-five women sucks. But it’s that combined with the message from my brother four days ago.

I’m an uncle.

Jesus.

They didn’t even tell me Layla was pregnant, but she gave birth to a healthy baby girl. Clara.

I knew the name even before my brother told me. Layla’s always loved the name, always said that it would be the name of her first daughter.

The daughter I thought would also be mine.

“Barrett!”

I glance over my shoulder and see Raven giving me an impatient, get the hell over here look.

“I like her,” Diana says, patting my shoulder. “She doesn’t coddle the talent.”

“Shut up,” I mutter. Then I kiss her cheek to soften the blow. “See you tomorrow?”

“Definitely. Try to get some sleep. I’m a good makeup artist, but not a friggin’ magician. If those circles under your eyes get any darker…”

I lift a hand to acknowledge her protest as I make my way toward scowling Raven and the rest of the crew.

A quick scan shows that the female contestants are still being kept somewhere else. There’s been a lot of talk about the “surprise factor”—they want my first sight of these women to be captured on camera. As though I’m going to lock eyes with one and just fall all over myself. Because that’s what grown men who are trained actors do—wear their fucking heart on their sleeve.

Today’s the preliminary elimination round. It works like this. I sit here in a fancy Beverly Hills hotel lobby, sipping a drink, while they parade a shit-ton of hot, semi-sane women in front of me.

There are twenty-five in total, but only twenty of them will be going with me to Maui on Friday, when the real show kicks off.