Chapter Seven
Vivian leaned her elbows on the railing of the main lodge deck. The boards were damp. Her hair too. But she didn’t care. The air had finally cooled to a more manageable temperature, and she wasn’t sweating from every pore. That had to count for something.
She stared ahead. The valley looked scrubbed clean after the storm. The acacia leaves glistened as if they’d been polished, puddles mirrored the now blue sky, and the air had that sweet, heavy scent that came after rain.
It reminded her of summers in Florida when she visited her grandmother as a kid every Sunday.
They’d stand outside, collect rainwater in two old buckets that her grandmother then used to flush the toilet.
Whatever was left, they would use to water the army of houseplants scattered throughout her modest three-room house.
For as long as Vivian could remember, her grandmother hadn’t had much money.
But as it turned out, when she had died, she actually had plenty.
And all of it had been left to Vivian. Which was how she’d managed to move to Los Angeles and rent a little one-bedroom apartment off Franklin Avenue with a view of the Hollywood sign.
Well, she could see it when she craned her neck from the balcony.
She had stood staring at that sign as she’d promised herself she’d become a star.
Hosting a sapphic dating show wasn’t exactly what she had in mind.
But then again, just because you had a dream to walk out of the ocean in a bikini like Halle Berry—Halle was Vivian’s first girl crush—with all those cameras fawning over her in Die Another Day didn’t mean it was going to happen. She had learned that the hard way.
“Girls are off at the spa,” Elise said, sidling up beside her.
She gathered her curls in a bun but then gave up halfway and just ended up shaking her head until they fell freely onto her shoulders.
“Everyone else is in their tents winding down before tonight’s ceremony.
Sara wanted to do some shots of them at the pool, but I shut that down.
This show isn’t some frat boy’s Instagram feed. ”
Vivian nodded. She agreed. The Sapphic Match was supposed to be glamorous.
It was supposed to empower women—though often times she wondered how making women compete for love counted as empowerment.
And it was supposed to remind every lonely woman out there that love was possible if you just took one gigantic leap.
Elise sighed and flopped against the railing. She draped her arms over the wood like a kid who wasn’t tall enough to see the view on the other side. Which she wasn’t. Elise barely scraped five feet three inches.
“What’s going on with you?” Vivian asked, frowning.
They didn’t usually chit-chat like this. On a good day, Elise was bossing Vivian around, and Vivian was either rolling her eyes or cursing her behind her back. Something was going on. But what?
“Nothing,” Elise said so fast she snapped upright. “I’m perfectly fine. Everything is going just as expected. Tonight we’re doing the first rose ceremony. You know how it is. You hope the right girls stay and the sparks keep sparkling and Sienna doesn’t send home the fan favorite on night one.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes,” Elise said, nodding. “What else is there?”
Vivian didn’t believe her. But she couldn’t prove it either, or push for details, because suddenly Maurine came charging through the open doors onto the deck.
She was squat and stocky, with salt and pepper hair she liked to keep short.
She was dressed in faded blue jeans folded at the hem, a plain white T-shirt, and bright red Converse All-Stars on her feet.
Over her shoulder hung a battered brown medical bag with a small rainbow flag sticker in the bottom right-hand corner that was beginning to peel.
“Where’s the spa?” she barked, scanning the deck as if she hoped it would materialize right in front of her. “This place is a fricken maze.”
Vivian leaned back against the railing and didn’t mind the wood poking into her spine.
“What happened?” she asked, feeling just the tiniest pang of worry deep in her stomach.
Maurine was the show’s resident doctor, and since she only ever came out of hiding when there was trouble, someone was either hurt, sick, or dead. There was never an in-between.
“Hot stone accident, apparently,” Maurine said, walking toward them. She exhaled loudly and squinted against the sun that somehow seemed brighter than ever.
“Who?” Vivian asked, and then suddenly she was imagining Sienna lying face down on the massage table, naked, with four neat little smoking holes scorched into her back.
She shuddered. Then she told herself it could be any of the other contestants.
Accidents happen to everyone, not just to clumsy people.
But then Maurine said, “The bachelorette.”
Vivian swallowed down a groan. “You’re joking, right? First the head thing and now this. What’s next fo—”
“How did it happen?” Elise interrupted. She was all business now, her producer voice kicking in.
Which made sense. The last thing they needed was a lawsuit.
Or an ambulance pulling up in front of the lodge.
Although Vivian had a feeling the only way to an emergency room was to be airlifted there.
At the rate Sienna was going, they might as well ready the choppers.
Maurine ran a hand across the back of her neck. She pressed her already thin lips even thinner. “Apparently, she accidentally bumped the temperature dial on the stone heater. Turned it all the way up. The therapist didn’t notice until she started setting the coals on her back.”
“Were the cameras rolling?” Elise asked.
“What does that matter?” Vivian asked before she could catch herself.
Elise ignored her, which Vivian found deeply aggravating, especially coming from someone short enough that she could easily rest an elbow on. “I just need to know how bad this is,” she said tightly. “Because if we have the footage—”
“You’re not going to use the footage, are you?” Vivian interrupted.
“Of course not,” Elise snapped, but the look on her face said otherwise, and Vivian, frankly, wasn’t convinced Elise wouldn’t use the footage.
Which was why she very nearly launched into a speech about basic human decency and the exploitation of a woman’s suffering for ratings, because come on, Elise, nothing ever justified turning someone’s first-degree burns into prime-time content.
But then Maurine cut in. “Can someone please tell me where the hell I need to go. Where’s the spa? And don’t say it’s back in there,” she jabbed a thumb toward the main lodge doors. “Because I just came from in there.”
“I know where it is. I’ll show you,” Vivian said before she could think of any reason not to. Although once the words were out, she could think of several reasons she shouldn’t follow Maurine to the spa, and one of them was the way Elise was suddenly looking at her, like she was wondering why.
“Bless you,” Maurine said, and then she headed toward the stairwell. Vivian caught up in two quick steps and steered her back toward the lobby before taking a right that led to a long, bright corridor decorated with the same art as in the lobby.
Less than a minute later, they stepped through an arched doorway into a room that could easily have been ripped straight from a wellness brochure Vivian had glimpsed in the airport on the way here.
Everything was beige. Beige walls. Beige towels.
Beige flower pots holding spiky aloes and low clusters of wild sage.
Both plants didn’t care if it rained or burned with heat.
The air smelled like lavender and eucalyptus oil.
The lights hanging from the ceiling were teardrop-shaped glass pendants, each suspended from a thin bronze cord.
The windows were wide and low with a view of the bushveld.
Beside the window was a bronze table holding three carafes of water, each infused with something different: cucumber and mint, orange and thyme, and the unique combo of strawberry and basil that nobody had touched.
When they turned the corner, Vivian spotted Lucille and Imani sitting in reclining chairs, holding half-drunk glasses of bubbles, looking like someone had died.
She wanted to head over to them, get a scope of just how bad it was, because surely a simple burn didn’t warrant such a reaction, but then a woman in a white tunic came running toward them. “You’re the doctor, right?”
Maurine, who looked as out of place in there as a lemon amongst a basketful of muffins, nodded. “I am.”
“Thank goodness,” the woman said, looking relieved. “We’ve applied a cool compress in the meantime. She says it doesn’t hurt, but it’s already blistering, so I have to disagree.”
“Tough cookie,” Maurine said. “Or just embarrassed. Point me in the right direction.”
“She’s over there.”
Maurine immediately walked off toward the small room the woman had just pointed to, and Vivian stayed rooted to the spot.
She’d done what she had needed to do. She’d shown Maurine where the spa was and therefore had no other reason to be there.
She should leave. She had a dozen other things to do.
But then her feet moved her forward instead of backward, and before she knew it, she was gliding across the space until she was standing in the doorway of the treatment room.
Sienna sat on a spa plinth, looking down at her lap.
She was wrapped in a towel so oversized it looked like it had eaten her.
Her bare shoulders gleamed under the soft yellow lights, and her back was exposed down to the dip of her spine, while her hands clutched the towel’s top edge, covering her breasts.
Maurine hovered behind her. She applied something to her back, which made Sienna flinch so hard her knuckles went white, and Vivian’s heart did something unexpected.
It flapped. Wildly. Like a red-backed shrike caught in a crosswind. Vivian had done some birdwatching this morning while the contestants were out on the walk, and that was the one and only bird she’d spotted and marked down on the guide she’d found in her villa.
“How bad is it?” she asked, her voice coming out way higher than she’d intended. She cleared her throat just as Sienna snapped her head up.
“What are you doing here?” Sienna asked. Her brows squeezed together so tight Vivian wasn’t sure if it was from the pain or the fact that Vivian was standing there watching her get treated when clearly she wasn’t meant to be there.
What was she doing there? Why hadn’t she left yet?
Why did she feel so desperate to see Sienna and make sure she hadn’t been maimed?
Then again, why shouldn’t she check on her?
Surely, checking on the bachelorette after an injury fell under the umbrella of host duties.
She was just doing her part. There was nothing more to it.
“Maurine couldn’t find the spa,” Vivian replied. Her voice still didn’t sound right. She cleared her throat again. “I’m glad to see you’re in one piece.”
“Barely.”
“You’ll survive,” Maurine said. “The skin’s blistered, so we’re dealing with a mild second-degree burn. It’s not too deep, but it’ll be tender for a few days. You’ll need to keep the dressing on and avoid direct sun exposure. And no swimming or sauna in the meantime.”
Sienna groaned, “Great. Everyone must think I’m a walking hazard.”
“Well, you did warn them,” Vivian said, smiling.
“I did,” Sienna said, letting out a breathy laugh. The towel slipped a little, and Sienna’s hands shot up to clutch it just above her breasts. And for one heart-stopping second Vivian wondered what would’ve happened if the towel had slipped completely.
No. No. No, she thought. Nothing would’ve happened because she would’ve diverted her eyes before it could. But what if… maybe…
No! Vivian shook her head visibly and then caught herself doing it. She had to get the hell out of there. Seriously. Before she embarrassed herself. Before she waited with bated breath for that towel to shift again.
“I’ll see you tonight,” she said quickly, then turned and walked off before either Sienna or Maurine could respond.