A part of Amelia wished she had gotten the conversation on film. When Natalia’s aunt, Yadira, had approached MET about getting the network involved with their lives, Natalia had already turned eighteen. So there wasn’t much that was known of her teen years.
“Stephen and I go back, way back,” Natalia explained as her heavy lashes fluttered dreamily. “He’s an ex who is practically Villa San Juan royalty. I was glad when his brother contacted me and said he needed to talk,” Natalia moaned.
“What happened?”
“Let’s just say if Tía Yadira had the ability to arrange a marriage, it would have been between us.”
“A marriage made in Puerto Rican heaven,” Amelia teased as her eyes glazed over, imagining the ratings they would have received. This would have been a perfect angle for a reality show for MET. A multicultural wedding was right up their alley. She pictured in her mind the memo she’d have written:
Dear MET executives,
We’ve watched her grow up; now let’s follow the road to the Ruiz wedding.
Sincerely,
Amelia
“Hey, didn’t a mass school shooting happen there about ten years ago?” Other than the tragic ending to a school year, Amelia had heard nothing but good things about Villa San Juan, the small island off the coast of Florida. It was on her lists of places to visit once she gathered some vacation time. Maybe once she made sure Grandmamma was okay, she’d check it out and come back to MET with a follow-up story on the tragedy. For a moment Amelia’s eyes glazed over. She wondered if anyone had done a follow-up story. Where were the students now? Had they gotten over the trauma?
“Thirteen years ago, and it was right after Stephen graduated, but his brother and cousins were affected by it. As for me and Stephen, clearly, things did not end well with us, and so I supposed he somehow blamed me for his mistrust in women.” Natalia went on about her relationship with Stephen while Amelia made a mental list of who to contact for a follow-up report.
“Oh, sure,” said Amelia, her voice elevated with sarcasm. “You’d never do anything to hurt a man’s feelings.”
Natalia rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Stephen happened before I became famous.” She added air quotes with her French-manicured hands.
“Well, don’t you have that effect on people,” said Amelia. “I’ve been producing you for a while now and you do have a way with leading men on for your own entertainment.”
“Speaking of leading men on,” Natalia said, blatantly averting the subject, “I may have told you I was taking a nap, but how did things turn out for you and Nate?”
As if a needle scratched an album off a record player, Amelia’s thoughts screeched to a halt. She cocked her head to the side as her heart slammed against her chest and the image of the one-night-stand hottie filtered through her head. Quickly, visions of the night she’d met Nate began to play like a movie on a screen. The ending became all too clear now. The only reason she’d gone down to the bar instead of hanging out with the film crew was because she’d given everyone the night off since Natalia had said she was going to bed. Amelia had gone downstairs to get a well-earned drink.
After years of following Natalia around, Amelia knew when the girl blurted out more than she wanted, especially when she pressed her glossy lips together as if to stop further words. To make things more obvious, Natalia clamped her hands over her mouth.
“I never said anything about who I was with.” Amelia raised a brow and crossed her legs in preparation of an interrogation. The gold flowers on her flip-flops caught the lighting in the room.
“Okay, fine,” Natalia huffed. “Nate Reyes met you on purpose. He knew I needed to speak with Stephen alone. I knew it would be impossible because of the crew but he helped me out.”
A sickening feel gurgled in the pit of Amelia’s stomach. The room became hot. The five-bulb vanity-mirror lights began to heat her face. “It was a setup?”
“No!” Natalia said, apparently panicking. “I mean. He was just distracting you for a minute.”
He’d ended up with a lot more than conversation over a drink. Amelia swallowed past the bile in the back of her throat. Nate used her. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Always around the glamorous Natalia, she might come off a bit of a plain Jane, but when Nate had picked her up in the bar, she’d felt like the star. Everyone in the bar, men and women alike, had stood taller at the sight of him. And now to learn he’d distracted her on purpose? The whole thing had been engineered. Because of him, she’d been suspended from her job. He needed to pay.
“So he’s from Villa San Juan, you say?”
Now Natalia cocked her head to the side as she spoke. “Actually, it’s kind of funny you mentioned your hometown. I swear he mentioned living in a Southwood but he never described it as drab as you have. Must be a different one.”
“Georgia?” Her mind recalled Nate asking her about her Southern upbringing and how he liked farms. Turned him on, didn’t he say?
“Yeah, but don’t take it too seriously if he flirted with you and bought you a drink,” said Natalia.
“Of course not,” Amelia mused. Her mind calculated how far her family’s farmhouse was from the downtown Southwood. Not far at all, she thought. Perhaps while taking care of Grandmamma, she’d pay him a visit.
“This is going to bug me. Let me find my emails.” Natalia reached for her phone in her pocket and began swiping across the screen, mumbling as she searched her listings. “Nate is a big ol’ flirt. He didn’t mean any harm, but as a matter of fact, I think his playboy ways are about to catch up with the green-eyed god. Oh, look! Southwood is saved in my searches. This is your hometown, right?”
Amelia leaned forward to read the location: Southwood, Georgia, population six thousand. She nodded.
“Cool,” said Natalia. “Look, he’s up for a bachelor auction. Karma is going to catch up with him because I am sure he’s got a handful of women down there. All his women are going to try and cash in.”
Seemed like the visit would be sooner than expected. For once Amelia couldn’t wait to get back to Southwood—population six thousand, or about to be five-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-nine.
* * *
Despite wearing a black tailored suit, a green Oxford shirt and argyle tie with various blends of green, Nate had never felt more naked than on the night of the bachelor auction. Women groped his pecs, his biceps, and he swore one of the church ladies pinched his butt.
The nightlife at the usual watering hole in Southwood had come out with a roaring blast. The community seemed to have pulled together for this charity event and crawled out of the woodworks at Southern Charm.
Who would purposely come up with the idea of a bachelor auction? If Nate didn’t know any better, he’d swear his brother had, just to piss him off. Some of the bachelors he met backstage were already set to be purchased by their wives. Briefly, Nate wondered if the wives did it just to ensure the tasks around their homes would be taken care of. Another part of Nate wondered if the women he’d spent time with in the last few months had gotten together to test his rule of No complications. With Southwood being such a small town, Nate understood gossip happened, but he always made sure he never gave the wrong impression. Maybe some of the women felt forty hours of time together could dissuade him. Thank God Pastor Rivers warned everyone about the sin of premarital sex. Nate wasn’t usually a religious man, but it was good to know his boundaries.
“Remember, this is for a good cause,” Lexi whispered, nudging her shoulder against Nate’s as he waited at the bar for the bartender to return with his longneck bottle of beer.
“I keep telling myself the same thing,” he said with a sigh.
The