Chloe exhaled. “Oh, good. I want to hear al about it, but now’s not a good time, okay? I’l cal you right back.” Grabbing the white gown to shield herself, she clicked off the phone and tossed it on the washstand. She held her hand up toward the video cameras. “Stop the cameras! What the—”
Another guy materialized with a headset over one ear, an iPhone in one hand, and an iPad in the other. Al plugged in, just like her ex-husband.
“Great line,” the guy said in a juicy English accent. “What you said about letters. Romance. Could you say that again, please? On camera?”
Chloe stepped back, from the sheer panic of the moment, the intense spotlights, or possibly his manner of speaking. It couldn’t have been his cropped auburn hair topped with a pair of sunglasses or his snug-fitting jeans. She was, after al , a raging Anglophile who could crush on any guy with an English accent, and this was the first male one she’d heard since she arrived. Al this started with Disney’s Christopher Robin when she was what—six?
The accent threw her, but only for a minute. “Excuse me?! What’s going on?!” She clutched the white gown in front of her. It felt like a fine cheesecloth or voile, and she realized, despite her confusion and rage, that it must be muslin, that delicate Regency fabric she had up until now only read about. She softened her grip, but raised her voice. “Cut the cameras! Can’t you see I’m half naked here?”
“I can see you’re exactly what we’re looking for. Spot-on.” He extended his hand. “George Maxton. Producer. Pleased to meet you, Miss Parker.
You can cal me George, but once you get on location, everyone’s a ‘mister’ and a ‘miss.’”
Behind the gown, Chloe buttoned her blouse single-handedly, a skil she’d mastered while breast-feeding nine years ago. She glared at George Maxton and the crew.
He gave up on the handshake. “Bril iant. You’re gorgeous.”
Gorgeous? Cute, maybe. Nobody had cal ed her gorgeous since—wait a minute. The nerve! “George, cut the cameras NOW.”
He eyed her from the top of her disheveled hair to the tips of her unpolished toes. “You do realize, Miss Parker, that this is a reality show?”
Something plummeted inside her; she struggled to speak. “You mean ‘immersion documentary.’”
“Documentary?” He laughed. “Now, that’s the stuff I’d love to shoot. No money there.” He pointed to the two cameras as he said, “This, my dear, is a reality dating program, and you’re going to be a bril iant contestant.”
She couldn’t breathe. Her mouth went dry and her heart pounded. Was she hyperventilating? “Dating—what?! There must be some mistake—”
“No mistake. It’s set in the year 1812. Cameras are on twenty-four /seven. Everything’s historical y accurate, Miss Parker, and I do mean everything. You wil be pleased with that.”
The lights blinded her. Her bosom heaved, and not in a good way. Dating show? She didn’t want to date anybody—she hadn’t had a date in four years! No, it was more than four years, because Winthrop, her ex-husband, was out of town so much they never could manage a date night. How could
She paced the floor, her gown dragging on the floorboards. She caught her breath and began speaking a mile a minute. “I demand some answers here! What changed between the moment I signed the contract and now?”
“Not much, real y; we tweaked the concept a bit to make it more marketable, but relationships and courtship were always part of the equation.
You did read the paperwork and contract we sent, correct, Miss Parker?”
“I auditioned for a public-television documentary—I’d never sign up for a dating show—I expected Jane Austen trivia contests—I certainly won’t participate in any antics with hot tubs and bikini-clad massages and . . . and . . .
“For a person who’s so above reality TV, you seem to know a lot about it,” George quipped.
And he was right. “Unfortunately you can’t have a pulse on this planet without knowing about reality television, especial y if you don’t have cable like me. Why can’t you just film something tasteful?”
“Do you real y think people want to watch you sit around in your gown sipping tea and taking Jane Austen quizzes for three weeks?”
Chloe felt the sting of her naivete, and once again she lived up to her name, Chloe, which meant “young green sprout” in old Greek, and she felt grass green, despite her age.
A log fel in the dwindling fire across the room, sending sparks flying and a wisp of smoke curling into the air.
Then it hit her. “I must be cast as a doting aunt or chaperone, right? A thirty-nine-year-old in 1812 would be strictly on the shelf, not making her bal room debut. And couples didn’t date in the nineteenth century anyway.”
“You’re absolutely correct, Miss Parker, on two counts. Regency couples didn’t ‘date.’ Men courted women, and that sounds so much more refined, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to educate the public on the intricacies of Regency courtship? There weren’t any hot tubs in 1812, so you needn’t worry about that. To accommodate you we’ve bent the age rules, making you a bona fide contestant, Miss Parker. You’re much too young by today’s standards, and feisty enough by any standards—to be on the shelf!”
Chloe stomped her bare foot. “This can’t be legal.” She tried to be rational. “You misrepresented the show. Is there real y any prize money? I need to cal my lawyer.”
“You’re free to cal your lawyer, but nothing was misrepresented. You wil be partaking of historical y appropriate tasks, in an 1812 setting. There is a one-hundred-thousand-dol ar prize, and I wil explain al that.”
He kept checking his iPhone, and looking up when he could. “But even you, on your audition video, referred to
