The Bachelor by David Dower (read along books TXT) 📖

The anger he felt was out of bounds but he didn’t realize that just yet. His feet ground the sand with his purposeful stride.

Julianne spotted him first, her first instinct was to get up and rush inside the cabin, but second instinct came in just as instantly and she smiled and waved with her hand. She had a personality to keep up anyway.

Jack Carter paused from talking when he saw her waving, turned his head and sighed. “You’re liking him,” he muttered under his breath, only for her to hear.

“Of course not,” she said, her smile wavering when she noted Zach’s sour face. It couldn’t be the sun, she thought. “I’m doing this so he’ll go away,” she whispered.

Jack’s face lit up and he nodded, “The crew has been talking about the different attention he has been giving you and I think I understand why,” he looked at her before standing up.

“Yeah, right,” she groaned and followed, digging her hands inside her shorts pockets.

“I’ll see you around,” Jack nodded his head once and started walking, meeting Zach halfway. Julianne craned her head to the right to see what was going on when Jack stopped just a few feet away from Zach. They appeared to be discussing something, and then the two of them looked back at her, their expressions unreadable because of the sun. She saw Jack nod and then he was off once again to the direction of one camera man.

Zach continued his walk towards her and Julianne tried real hard to bring back the smile on her face. “Hey, Zach!” she greeted.

“What were you doing with Jack Carter?”

“We were just talking,” she shrugged. “He saw me walking down the beach earlier during his morning run. Going in?” she pointed her thumb at the cabin doors behind her.

“What were you talking about?” he asked, his brows knitted in a straight line.

“Nothing,” she replied. She found it easier to lie with her alter persona. She and Jack were actually talking about her real future job which she would get the moment she was sent home. And it was because of the man standing before her that she couldn’t get a hold of it. And her pretense went out of her mind for a short while at the remembrance.

“You know him personally?”

Annoyance started to creep up Julianne. “What’s with the questions? You know I know Jack Carter. I signed a contract with him, remember?”

“But do you know him personally?”

“You know what? I don’t even want to ruin my good mood this morning by entertaining your questions,” she said, turning away from him to enter the doors. “And don’t you dare hold my hand,” she added when she felt he was about to.

Zach took a deep breath, held it in for a while longer, and closed his eyes. He ruined a perfect plan for this morning because of something he saw which, as he now thought, was nothing. Jack and Julianne said the same things.

“Okay, I’m sorry,” he whispered behind her before she opened the door. “But I’m glad to have you back, Jules,” he grinned, smelling the scent of lavender in her hair under his nose.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said with a forced gentle voice.

“You mean you don’t remember?” he asked, frowning. And then he smiled, “You don’t remember you blurted out the reason why you suddenly changed into a stupid brat? God, you must really be so drunk last night.”

Julianne suddenly whirled around to face him, pushing him a step back away from the door and out of possible earshot. “Last night? What happened last night?”

“You don’t remember,” he stated matter-of-factly.

She eyed him with warning of impending doom. “Zach, what happened last night?”

He looked at her face in fascination, his anger completely gone being replaced by great relief for seeing the real Julianne. Yes, she might be looking at him furiously right now, but she was his Julianne and he was glad.

“Zach,” she said his name slowly, glaring up at him.

“I love it when you say my name,” he breathed out, his grin growing wide.

Her eyes lit up with irritation and he realized how he missed it. “Zachary, what happened last night?”

Zach shrugged, looked around feigning nonchalance, and said, “Nothing, you just said you had been acting like a brat because you want me not to notice you, but mind you, you failed anyway, and then you kissed me.”

Her eyes widened. “I what?”

Zach nodded vigorously. “You kissed me,” he said, and then his grin turned into a small grimace when he saw her face. “Okay, I kissed you first, but just like the first time, you kissed me back. Which pretty much told me you don’t hate me that much,” he finished and backed away one more step when her hands went on her waist.

“You’re…you’re…” her voice was infuriated as she searched for the right word, “impossible!” and then she turned on her heel and pushed the doors wide open, revealing a houseful of mess.

“Hey, Zach!” Vivienne greeted when she saw him from the living room, her hands holding a magazine.

“Hey,” he nodded, his eyes following Julianne’s back as she walked straight for the stairs. He remembered how Vivienne treated Julianne last night and he reminded himself once again not to give her a rose tonight. The thought led him back to his task at hand and he entered the cabin, kicking a cushion that seemed to have lost its way from the couch. “I have news, ladies,” he announced and her audience, the ones present in the room—which was almost half of everyone—looked up with their beautiful, perfect teeth all for him.

Julianne heard the news later that day from Pauline and Brenda.

“Chloe finally got the chance to get a one-on-one date with Zach,” Brenda shared, rolling her eyes and flipping her straight black hair.

“She’s been talking about it every minute she was waiting for him,” Pauline added. “You should have seen her. Barely got any cloth around her surgically fixed body,” her friend said with a chuckle.

Julianne smiled, and curiously asked, “Where’s the date?” She honestly tried to ask the question without much interest.

“At the other side of the island and aside from the camera guy, they will be completely isolated. Wouldn’t be surprised if they’re stripping each other’s clothes off by this time,” Brenda answered, munching on her cookie.

Julianne nodded, trying to erase the scene that Brenda pictured in her brain. She didn’t care what Zach and Chloe would be doing.

Or did she?

“And when they announced my name as the Homecoming Queen, I was really shocked. But then, so were the people who hated me,” Chloe chatted on, playing with her curly blonde hair.

Zach nodded and smiled, which was what he had been doing for almost an hour now since the topic about high school came up. And note that he had not said anything about himself yet.

But to be fair for Chloe, though she was obviously and completely narcissistic, she could gain half his attention which was not in the case with most of the other ladies aside for Julianne, of course, who always got his full attention from the very beginning.

Chloe was different from the usual sexy bitch he knew because she was intelligent and she was a good talker—aside from those moments that she would get carried away talking about herself. And yes, she was beautiful and she was sexy and hot.

But she doesn’t have Julianne’s eyes, he noted as he stared at Chloe’s blue ones. And her lashes are not as long as Julianne’s, he added.

Zach mentally shook his head and tried to give his full attention to Chloe. He was used to that before. You give women your full attention and they would pour over you like a good bottle of wine. You nod and smile and ask questions and they would do anything. Well, in his case anyway.

And you must be thinking about Julianne again. She was an exception at everything so don’t include her to the group. Zach knew that and he was walking down that thought once again, his mind filling up with thoughts of the only girl who seemed not affected by the attention he was giving her. As a matter of fact, she was the only girl who didn’t want it.

But Chloe did. And she was savoring it. She was gulfing the attention she thought she fully had.

“And who was the Homecoming King?” he asked when she paused to take a breath.

Her eyes rolled and she said, “Oh, Mike Taylor. The geek. People must have thought it would be a good laugh if they voted for him, which was true actually. But I didn’t like it that much. He ruined my picture,” she finished with a frown.

Zach just nodded and stretched down the sand. How did she expect him to answer to that? Hey, he may not have been the geek during high school, but he was way smarter than most guys during his time that he knew how intelligence could be a curse or not. He chose to hide that part of him because he was smart enough to know that if he didn’t, he would get the same treatment from people as Mike Taylor did. He didn’t appreciate Chloe talking about geeks like Mike Taylor. He was not that kind of guy, so cut some slack if you were thinking he was one of the handsome know-nothing bullies. He knew how to play his game even before he stepped inside kindergarten, and being an ass as bullying geeks was not part of that.

“So,” Chloe said, her tone turning into a purr, which he secretly despised ever since he heard the tone from Julianne, turning on her side and leaning on her elbow to look at him, “a really strange rumor has been circulating around the girls lately that I can’t stomach,” she said, trailing one finger down his bare chest.

His muscles tightened. Hey, he was a man and reactions always happen. But he didn’t want that for now so he caught her hand and held it tightly in his to stop her. The camera guy was far away, his camera obviously really good, but the microphone was just a few meters away to capture their conversation. He didn’t want the other ladies to see Chloe and him having too much of intimate moments.

Okay, scratch that, he didn’t want Julianne to see him doing what Chloe had in mind. Call him crazy, but it was Julianne’s face that crossed his mind when he felt Chloe’s touch.

“What story?” he asked, guessing he already knew what she was talking about.

“That you actually prefer Julianne than any of us,” she answered, rolling her eyes. So she was cute when she does that, but doing that with Julianne as their topic was not something he found to his liking.

“Jules?” he asked.

“And you call her Jules,” Chloe sighed and when he didn’t say a word, she frowned. “You like her?”

“I like all of you,” he chose the safest answer. “You don’t like Jules?”

“She’s weird,” Chloe groaned and pulled her hand from his grasp and laid her head on his shoulder. He thought it was safe so he let her.

“Yeah, she is,” he answered with a smile.

“And it looks like she doesn’t want to be here,” Chloe added.

“Yeah?” was the only thing he could say. Of all people, he was the one who knew that very well.

“Maybe it’s her plan,” Chloe said nonchalantly, studying her nails.

“Plan?”

“To gain your attention. She chose to be different so you will notice her.”

“I notice all of you,” he answered, pulling himself up, causing her head to fall on the clothed ground. He reached for the wine and said, “Let’s not talk about that. This is our date and I want to hear more about you.” His strategy worked and Chloe completely forgot about Julianne.

Zach didn’t though, his mind worried for Julianne.

She was not only struggling against him, she was obviously struggling against these women as well.

Julianne was working on her computer under her