I giggle to try to soften the awkward news, but he doesn’t react at all how I expect. Instead, his eyebrows draw together. A smile still highlights his perfect cheekbones and insanely blue eyes, and my God, why does he have to be so attractive?
“Holley,” he says then, acknowledging that he did, in fact, hear me say my name correctly, but taking it no further.
“Right,” I confirm. “Holley Fields.”
He shrugs and settles his hands on his hips, calling my attention to the line of muscle that scoops down on both sides and points to the glorious world under his bathing suit.
“I work for the SoCal Tribune,” I say, elucidating even further.
He nods as if it’s all the same to him. “And I have a construction company.”
I start to open my mouth when it finally fucking dawns on me. He has no freaking clue about me. He doesn’t know that he’s meeting me here or that he’s been selected for Bachelor Anonymous or anything. He probably never paid attention to my name on the submissions, and his daughter obviously didn’t relay the message. She wrote it down on some notepad and moved on with her life. I know how teenage girls work—I was one once.
Oh, hell’s bells, he must think I’m insane.
“Uh, I’m just now realizing that maybe we’re miscommunicating a little bit. I spoke with your daughter last night—Chloe. About your Bachelor Anonymous submission. You were selected, and she assured me she’d let you know and that I should meet you here this morning, but I’m guessing you didn’t get the message…?”
“What?” he says, his tone unmistakable. It’s the tone every dad in the natural world invokes when they’ve just found out their kids have done something like taken their autographed sports memorabilia and flushed it down the toilet. I suddenly feel very protective of the unknown Chloe. I don’t want to be the reason she gets in trouble.
“Honestly, we probably got our wires crossed. Or maybe she didn’t get a chance to get the message to you. It’s no big deal—”
“Sorry, Holley, but it is a big deal,” he insists. “For you and me. Because I don’t have a single clue what Bachelor Anonymous is, and I can assure you, if I did, I’d never sign myself up for it.”
“Oh shit.”
He nods. “Oh shit, indeed.”
I follow closely behind him as he turns on his heel and heads for a pile of stuff about twenty feet away. I have to assume it’s his. Either that, or the news of his involvement in the contest has inspired a robbery of some kind.
Still, I prefer to bank on the latter.
Sand sticks to my feet and nags on the back half of my body as I trudge behind him. He’s focused, though, and doesn’t seem to notice me—the sand yeti—at all.
He digs in the front pocket of his bag and comes out with a phone. His fingers move over the screen.
“What are you doing?” I ask, a boldness I’m not entitled to somehow taking me over.
“I’m calling my daughter,” he answers matter-of-factly. “She has some explaining to do.”
“Maybe she didn’t have anything to do with this? Maybe someone else submitted a personal ad for you?” I offer, and he targets an incredulous yet stern look directly at me.
“Holley, with all due respect, I know my daughter pretty fucking well,” he responds, and his jaw clenches a little. “And I’m one-hundred-percent certain she’s the culprit.”
Uh oh.
I wince, feeling seriously sorry for the unknown teen now. “Maybe you should…calm down,” I suggest.
Unimpressed with my brazenness—which, quite frankly, I can’t blame him for…I don’t know where it’s coming from!—he spears me with a glare, and I try like hell to speak in coherent sentences as I attempt to explain myself.
“I just…maybe you should read the ad first. Get acquainted with the whole situation before you…” I pause as I backpedal away from saying the words rip her a new asshole. “I have it in my bag.”
Without speaking, he holds out a waiting hand, and I don’t hesitate.
Quickly, so quickly I’m huffing, I run through the thirty feet of sand back over to the spot I left my purse, grab it, and jog back over to him. I open the top flap, dig around, and finally pull out the edition of the paper in which the ads ran for the contest.
Through all of this, he never puts down his hand.
I slide the paper between his fingers, which clamp down immediately, and he begins flipping through the pages furiously.
“It’s on page six,” I say, trying to be helpful.
Clearly, I just can’t help but butt in today.
Once he gets to the right page, the ad is easy enough to find. I have it circled in bright-red pen.
I glance at the paper, and my eyes widen. Okay, so that’s not a circle. How in the fucking bejeezus did I not remember that I put a heart around it?