Free Follow My Lead by Lisa Renée Jones Page A

supposed her distraction meant that Blake had actually achieved success with his “deal” because she wasn’t thinking about camera nerves anymore. She’d been thinking of him then, as she was now.
    Darla shoved open the door and tugged her roller bag filled with clothing and a variety of other items behind her. The door slammed on the bag and she turned to free it. That was when the door to her left—Blake’s door—opened and she stopped.
    “Trouble already?” he asked, rushing forward to shove her door open and free her suitcase.
    “Yes,” she whispered furiously. “And you’re it. If you were going to keep me up all night you could have at least done it in person.” She wasn’t sure who was more stunned by those words—her or him. She froze. He froze. Silence expanded until she finally said, “I can’t believe I just said that. More proof that you are making me crazy.”
    He pulled her suitcase into the hallway and let her door fall shut. He was wearing faded jeans and a T-shirt with Stepping Up written on it in a deep blue that matched his eyes. He looked good. So very good.
    “ I’m making youcrazy?” he asked, turning the full force of those eyes—those wickedly beautiful eyes—on her.
    Darla silently declared it official. Every time he was near, without any effort he got her hot. “Yes. My God. Yes. You are making me crazy. You already know I’m a worrier, a fretter and an overthinker.” She’d come this far, she might as well go all the way. “Did you really think you could make a statement like ‘you know what I mean’ when I didn’t know what you meant, and I’d actually sleep?”
    “You knew— you know— what I meant.”
    “I do not know what you meant and I don’t—”
    He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers. “Now do you know what I meant?”
    Heat spiraled through the center of her body and spread like a wildfire. “Are you insane? Someone could have seen you.” But she didn’t pull away from him. She should have. She told herself to, but he smelled so darn good—all freshly showered and masculine.
    “If that’s your only concern about me kissing you then you definitely know what I meant last night. And if you spent the night thinking about it—you definitely knew what I meant. My question is—how do you feel about it?”
    Out of control. “We can’t do this.”
    “But you want to?”
    “We can’t do this,” she repeated.
    “Why not?”
    Why not? There were reasons. Lots of reasons. None of them seemed to come to mind. “You like questions, don’t you?”
    “I’m a television host. Of course, I do. Talk to me, Darla.”
    A million replies flew through her mind at once, things she’d said already, things she hadn’t. Because you’re my competitor. Because you scare the heck out of me for reasons I don’t want to think about right now. Because you’ll make me care about you and then you’ll hurt me. Finally she said, “You leave today.”
    “We both live in New York.”
    “I won’t be there for months.”
    “You’ll be back, and I’m not afraid of flying, not to mention you’ll have several weeks off when the filming moves to the contestants’ house.”
    “Only for two weeks and not for two months. Which doesn’t matter anyway. This was supposed to be…” A one-night stand. She couldn’t say it out loud despite the wild hair that had made her bold a few moments before.
    “I know what it was supposed to be, but it wasn’t and it’s not. It was never going to be, if we’re both honest with ourselves.”
    She suddenly knew what he’d meant when he said he wanted to come to her room “too much.” She liked him too much. Too much for all kinds of reasons. Namely, that no matter how much she didn’t want him to be her competitor, or the wrong guy she made the right guy, she really had no control over either thing. No control was bad when she was headed to the first day of a big career move that not only terrified her as much as he