One To Watch(89)
Bea stepped forward and took Wyatt’s hand, and he pulled her into a tight hug.
“I’m gonna miss you,” he murmured into her hair.
“Not as much as I’m gonna miss you.”
He kissed her forehead, and with a small wave, he turned and walked out of the room.
“Wow.” Johnny guffawed, trying for levity. “That was a first.”
But no one laughed—the room was still in a state of stunned silence.
“Well, Bea,” he went on, “I guess that leaves us with one order of unfinished business.”
“Oh,” Bea said, realizing. “Right.”
She turned to Luc, suddenly filled with trepidation. She’d just rejected him on television—would he even want to stay another week, after all that?
“Luc, I owe you an apology,” she said softly as he approached her.
His expression was something she hadn’t seen from him before, a mix of his usual mischief with something earthier, more sad.
“You see?” he said, taking her hand and kissing it. “I told you that you were the one in control, but you did not believe me. Perhaps now you understand?”
“So you’ll stay?” she whispered. He nodded, and she threw her arms around him, unable to fathom that just a few minutes ago, she’d been ready to send him away. Yet here he was—not punishing her, not sulking. Just rubbing her back. Just making her feel loved.
“Why are you so good to me?” she intoned, burying her face in his chest.
“You know why,” he murmured.
She kissed his cheek, and he went to stand beside Sam and Asher so Johnny could bid them farewell and they could finally wrap this shoot. Looking at her three remaining men, Bea felt good, felt right. This was what she was supposed to do, this was how she pushed herself to find something real, to overcome the loneliness that she had mislabeled, for so many years, as safety. For the first time all day, Bea started to relax.
It was almost enough to ignore the dark look that briefly crossed Asher’s face as Luc took his place beside him.
EPISODE 7
“REVELATION”
(3 men left)
Shot on location in épernay, Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, and Amboise, France
Everyone on Earth has a happy place. For Beatrice Schumacher, that place was France.
Bea couldn’t quite trace the origins of her Francophilia, though she had a shameful suspicion it had something to do with childhood viewings of the movie Sabrina (and the remake at that) on cable TV. Paris is always a good idea, she’d repeat, emulating the titular character and imagining herself being swept away along the banks of the Seine. She thought the story was so romantic—a shy duckling who grows up to be a sophisticated swan, changing from someone you don’t even see into a woman you can’t stop staring at, with handsome men battling one another for her affections, breaking her heart over and over in the process.
As the Main Squeeze crew touched down in Paris for Bea’s week of three overnight dates, Bea found herself wishing that perhaps her Sabrina fantasies hadn’t turned out quite so literally.
Juggling relationships with three men was one thing when Lauren and the other producers were supervising every moment, but this week was set to be something else entirely: For the first time (save Luc’s little Moroccan escapade), Bea would have the option to share a hotel room with each of her remaining suitors. Away from the cameras. With the expectation that if they were serious about their relationship, they’d have sex. Bea hadn’t spent the night with a man since Ray, and on one hand, she was buzzing with excitement—but on the other, she was terrified to be completely vulnerable with three men who still had the capacity to hurt her so much, and so publicly.
Bea thought again of Wyatt, how courageous he’d been to share the truth about himself with an audience of millions, even if it meant risking alienation from his family. There was so much Bea hadn’t told Asher, Sam, and Luc for fear of being judged or rejected. But she knew that if she had any hope of finding a real relationship with one of these men, she needed to follow Wyatt’s example.
Her first date of the week was with Sam in épernay, at the heart of the Champagne region of northeastern France. They met at the Avenue de Champagne, the grand boulevard in the center of town. Set against rolling, vine-covered hills, the avenue was upright and stately, but not overly stuffy. Gray paving stones were arranged in graceful arches, and the road was lined with beautiful brick buildings with gated courtyards, all perfectly painted and landscaped, showing the pride these houses took in their centuries of tradition.
“Bonjour, Sam!” She waved when she saw him, and he rushed up to greet her.
“Enchanté, chérie.” He bowed dramatically.
“Wow, your accent is so bad.”
“Wow yourself, I was trying to be romantic.”
Bea laughed and walked with him into the house of Mo?t & Chandon, where they were to have a private tour of the cellars. A deadpan young woman led them through a vast system of caves where thousands of bottles of champagne lay in various stages of the aging process.
“Do not touch these,” she said, casually waving toward a wall full of bottles.
“Why not?” Bea asked.
“If you were to drop one during this stage of fermentation, it would explode with the force of a small bomb. Glass would be everywhere, very messy.” She clicked her tongue and kept walking.