Sidecar Crush

“Babe, you’re getting excited over nothing,” he said without looking at me. “We both knew they were going to make it look like you and Brock were flirting.”

“But we weren’t,” I said. “And I’m telling you, that fishing pole was rigged to break on me. I know how to fish, and they made me look like an idiot.”

“You looked great,” he said, flashing me a smile.

I looked down at my phone. The gossip columns were all buzzing over whether something was going to happen between Leah Larkin and Brock Winston on Roughing It. Would Leah tempt Brock away from his sweet-as-apple-pie wife, Maisie Miller?

It made me want to gag. Brock had seemed like a nice guy when we were filming, but even if we’d both been single, I wouldn’t have been interested in him. He was too flat. Too one-dimensional. He had a nice singing voice, but he didn’t write any of his own music. He wasn’t that creative. Having spent time with him filming the show, I wasn’t sure if he’d ever had an original thought in his head.

And Brock was most definitely not single. He’d had a very public romance with Maisie Miller when they were both celebrity judges on Talent USA. The entire country had been enamored with their sweet little glances and whispered flirtations in front of the camera. When paparazzi had caught them kissing in an out-of-the-way bistro one night, everyone had gone crazy. People had been rooting for them to fall in love, and when it happened, it was like the happily-ever-after the world had been waiting for.

Now everyone was predicting that I’d be the vixen. The woman to break up the perfect love story.

Well, I hadn’t. Filming had already wrapped on the show, and as far as I knew, Brock was back in L.A. with Maisie. They’d been quiet on social media, but all the cast members had. Our contracts stipulated what we could and couldn’t reveal before all the episodes aired, so the easiest thing to do was lay low for a while.

I glanced down at the ring on my left hand. I wasn’t single, either, although the world didn’t know. Kelvin had insisted we keep our engagement secret until after the season finale of Roughing It aired. I’d left my ring at home when I went to film the show, and we had yet to tell anyone, save my mom and stepdad. And they knew to keep it under wraps.

Now we were heading to my hometown to tell my dad.

I’d grown up in Bootleg Springs, West Virginia, and after my parents’ divorce, I’d spent summers there with my dad. I had so many good memories of Bootleg. Long days spent in the sun sipping lemonade and sweet tea. Jumping into the lake that was as warm as bathwater. Traipsing through the woods. Coming home at sunset, hungry, dirty, and tired.

I hadn’t been in Bootleg Springs since I was sixteen. That was the summer Callie Kendall had disappeared. She’d been my age, and spent her summers in Bootleg, too. As soon as my mom had heard about her disappearance, she’d insisted I come home to Jacksonville.

Not long after that, my modeling career had taken off. There were always auditions and casting calls, photo shoots and fashion shows. Things had moved fast, and my life had changed almost overnight. It had been easier to fly my dad out to visit me, wherever I happened to be, rather than make the trip to West Virginia.

But this year, Dad hadn’t been doing well. Although he’d quit smoking years ago, he had ongoing lung problems. Last winter, he’d been hospitalized with pneumonia and hadn’t bothered to tell me until he’d already gone home. I was still mad at him for keeping it from me, but he’d insisted he didn’t want me to worry.

He was my daddy. Of course I was going to worry.

I felt awful for not having come to see him sooner. But filming Roughing It had gotten in the way, and afterward I’d had a series of photo shoots to get through. But now my schedule was clear for the foreseeable future while Kelvin and I considered my next career move. With this rare time off, and our engagement, I’d decided it was time to visit Bootleg Springs again.

Although I hadn’t been here in a dozen years, the road was still familiar. And as we pulled into town, it was like stepping back in time.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Kelvin said, looking around as the first buildings came into view.