Falling for Mister Wrong by Lizzie Shane Page A

Sort of a local girl makes good thing. Very
flattering.
    Horrifying.
    She wasn’t an idiot. She’d known this was
coming. She’d just indulged in selective amnesia to avoid thinking
about it.
    It had been easy while she was on the show.
Whenever she started to fret about it Daniel or Miranda or one of
the seemingly dozens of segment producers would be there to
reassure her that everything was going to be fine, America was
going to love her and all of this was going to be worth it when she
and Daniel were married and living out their happily ever
after.
    But now she was alone, engaged to a man she
could barely speak to and wasn’t allowed to see, and keeping the
biggest thing in her life a secret from everyone she cared about,
while everyone in America was free to speculate about her love
life.
    Caitlyn reached for the Tums as the clock
ticked over to eight and the red light fired on the DVR.
    It was on.
    She didn’t have to watch. If she didn’t look,
maybe she could pretend it wasn’t happening.
    Stalling, she turned her back to the
television, moving to the kitchen table to investigate the package
that had arrived earlier today with an LA postmark. It said it was
from Miranda, but if Daniel wanted to send her something, he
couldn’t very well use his own name. He’d sent her a text
earlier— the world stopped when I saw U, baby —but that
couldn’t be all the contact his fiancé merited on a day like
this.
    When the box had been delivered, she’d
handled it like it might explode, but now she grabbed some scissors
and began hacking at the tape. Anything to avoid looking at that
DVR light.
    The packaging came loose and she peeled back
the flaps of the box. Inside, an industrial sized bottle of her
favorite liquor was nestled in something white and gauzy, along
with a note. She plucked the note up, her heart picking up the pace
at the thought of reading Daniel’s words, his thoughtfulness.
Hidden beneath the note was a squishy maroon stress ball in the
shape of a heart.
    But it was Miranda’s name inside the note.
Miranda’s handwriting.
    Relax. It’s never as bad as it looks on
screen. P.S. The padding is from the props department. Everyone
sends their love.
    God. How terrible must she look if Miranda
had to send her an economy bottle of marshmallow vodka to dull the
pain?
    She pulled out the bottle and the stress
ball, investigating the loops of gauzy white material. It seemed to
be one long strip, winding around on itself. She hauled it out of
the box, hand over hand.
    When she realized what she was holding, a
strangled sound burst out of her mouth, half laugh, half sob.
    A veil. They’d sent her a wedding veil. The
kind that would drag the floor if she put it on her head.
    She bit back the urge to laugh again—afraid
if she started she wouldn’t stop and hysteria was probably a bad
way to start the night.
    Vodka, however, sounded like an excellent way
to start the night.
    No harm in it. She wasn’t going to be driving
anywhere. How much trouble could she get into sitting in her own
house, watching her own public train-wreck with a tall glass of
marshmallow vodka on the rocks?
    Caitlyn slapped the veil on her head and
reached for the biggest glass she had.
    #
    “ I’ve got thirty beautiful women just
dying to meet you. Are you ready for this, Mister Perfect?”
    Daniel chuckled and flashed his aw
shucks smile—and Caitlyn slammed her finger down on the pause
button, glowering at those pearly whites.
    It might have been paranoia, or a side effect
of the vodka she was slurping out of the giant plastic Rockies
souvenir mug, but she’d become more and more convinced as she
watched the scene over and over again that the perfect farm boy
smile was a lie.
    On her first viewing, she’d mostly been
relieved that she only had a grand total of about three minutes of
screen time. Her first meet with Daniel had been suitably
cute—though she hadn’t noticed any hearts or flowers exploding in
either of their