All in the Game by Barbara Boswell Page B

woman, enjoying a taste of fun-filled celebrity, want to make room in her life for him?
    He might use the name Hale, but Shannen knew the disreputable truth about his family. Jessie Lee had been right on target when she’d said that nobody in their right mind would want to carry the burden inflicted by the scandal-ridden, joke-provoking name Howe.
    Not only was Shannen in her right mind, she had done quite well without him since they’d parted.
    And now, just as their relationship was heating up, the game was ending. Their time together on the island was drawing to a close.
    Would she agree to even see him, when the game was over?
    Possibly…if she lost. Fame was fleeting and fickle when it came to winners and losers. If she were merely one of the losers, instead of The Winner, he would at least have an opportunity to convince her that she wanted him— Tynan Hale —in her life.
    If she won…
    Ty thought of all the new people she would meet, the new men she would meet. Men who hadn’t called her “white-trash jailbait”—a slur she clearly couldn’t forget; men who didn’t come saddled with a name and family eponymous with corruption and public disgust.
    If Shannen won Victorious, she would be lost to him again, this time forever. The more he considered it, the more Ty was convinced that was true.
    No more contact between us. This is over. I mean it, she’d said tonight, and though he’d glibly replied that he heard her, Ty knew he hadn’t, not really, not until right now.
    Now the impact of her words reverberated within him. She was ending their relationship before it had a chance to evolve into intimacy, exactly what he had done nine years ago. He hadn’t relented then; he couldn’t have. Didn’t she understand that?
    He mentally argued his case against making love to a seventeen-year-old girl. Maybe if he’d been a seventeen-year-old boy, the playing field would’ve been even, but he had been a responsible adult….
    So he’d stuck to his decision back then.
    Suppose that Shannen stuck to hers, whether winning or losing this game. And just in case that wasn’t torment enough, he could also ponder the timing of her “no more contact” edict.
    She had issued her decree after he’d informed her that he was no longer rich. Suppose he had said yes, his inheritance remained intact, and that due to savvy investing, he was even richer today than he had been nine years ago? That he worked as a cameraman because it was interesting and challenging, not because he needed the job to pay his bills?
    Would she have been open to “more contact” if she’d known that?

Five
    â€œT y, what’d you think about that shocker revelation last night? You know, that Jed secretly slept with both Keri and Lucy and then voted against them, like it meant nothing to him? Which it probably didn’t, the rat!” By the sound of her voice, production assistant Heidi was highly indignant.
    Ty was testing camera angles, adjusting light filters while waiting for the twins to emerge from their tent. Heidi flitted around him like a manic mosquito, talking nonstop, holding his coffee for him.
    He said nothing, hoping she would take the hint and keep quiet. It was barely dawn—he’d slept about a total of an hour last night, and he hadn’t given a single thought to the “shocker revelation” about Jed, Keri and Lucy.
    With a long-suffering sigh, he reached for his coffee. Heidi handed it to him, chatting all the while. He’d obviously been too subtle with his hint; she hadn’t picked it up.
    â€œThe other PAs, Kevin, Adam and Debbie—think it’s possible that Cortnee made it all up, to turn the othersagainst Jed,” continued Heidi. “I mean, the fact she’s still in the game when she’s never been able to do anything to help win a single contest, and that she seemed like such an airhead