Ник Сайнт - Purrfect Advice. Purrfect Passion. A Purrfect Gnomeful

He wasn’t an unpleasant guy, though, so she’d endured his company, but had steered the conversation resolutely away from the more romantic topics.

Jackie, meanwhile, hadn’t been as reticent as Odelia, and had stuck so close to two of the seducers she could have described their physique with her eyes closed. Tina and Joanna had also spent the evening being wooed, though Odelia doubted with much luck.

Francine Richter joined them at the campfire, which was actually a black metal terrace heater. She was clutching an iPad, a look of significance in her eyes.

For Passion Island aficionados this was the highlight of the show.

“So this is it, ladies,” said the show host. “Are you ready for the moment of truth?”

“Please tell me nothing happened,” said Tina, having transferred her chewing activities from her lip to her fingernails.

“You’ll soon find out,” said Francine ominously, and swiped the iPad with a long-nailed finger.

The screen flickered to life and footage of a similar nature to what had happened on Koh Samui appeared: over on Koh Phangan the four candidates were seated at the bar, Chase amongst them, and then the seductresses arrived and the party started.

Odelia’s shocked gasp echoed the gasps of the other three contestants when Gran and Scarlett suddenly appeared in the lineup!

“What’s this?” asked Jackie. “Is this a joke?”

“Um, in the spirit of diversification we’ve decided to allow women of all ages to compete for the candidates’ attention,” Francine said, clearly lying through her teeth.

Odelia had no idea how Gran had pulled this off, but obviously she had!

“Nick likes older women,” Tina said miserably. “In fact he loves them.”

Odelia doubted whether even Nick would fall for the charms of Gran or Scarlett, but she rubbed Tina’s back consolingly. The latter gave her a watery smile in return, then fixed her eyes on the screen again for signs of her future husband’s infidelity.

“What’s that cat doing there?” asked Joanna.

And she was right: a cat was prancing around in front of the line of seductresses. And it was a cat Odelia knew all too well. It was Harriet!

“Passion Island is really going down,” said Jackie a little angrily. “First those two old biddies and now a cat. If I’d known…”

Her words stuck in her throat as her boyfriend Gary came into view. The builder was busily examining the tonsils of one of the seductresses with his tongue, and only came up for air when the camera was so close to his face he could probably feel the static electricity.

“Bastard!” Jackie cried. “The cheating bastard!”

Her fiancé had the gall to grin at the camera like a boy caught with his fingers in the cookie jar, then simply picked up where he left off and went right back to his deep space exploration.

“I’ll get him for this,” Jackie growled, balling her fists. “I’ll teach him a lesson he’ll never forget!”

“Strictly speaking he hasn’t cheated on you, Jackie,” Francine said. “We don’t count kissing as cheating, remember. Only when we catch a candidate in bed with a seducer do we strike the gong.”

BOOOOING!

Suddenly the sound of a gong reverberated through the resort. Someone had been caught cheating, and judging from the pitch, it was one of the male contestants.

“Oh, he’s done it now,” said Jackie, getting up. Then she screamed at the top of her lungs, “I’ll get you for this, Gary Goulash!”

She stomped off in the direction of the plaza, presumably to drown her sorrow.

“It could be anyone,” said Joanna. “It could be my Arthur.”

“We’ll find out tomorrow,” Francine assured them. “At the next campfire.”

Which meant that all day tomorrow Joanna, Tina and Odelia would be held in suspense, not knowing whether their significant other had been unfaithful or not.

Though Odelia was pretty sure it couldn’t have been Chase. He wasn’t that kind of guy.

Or was he?

Spend long enough on Passion Island and anything could happen…

Chapter 22

The sound of the gong had also had a powerful effect on the other side of the stretch of water. The male contestants were all gathered around a similar campfire, only no Francine Richter was in evidence but George Foulard.

Like Miss Richter, Mr. Foulard was a veteran broadcaster, with a long pedigree as a show host. His gray hair gave him that respectful look, but it didn’t fool Chase. The man was as cunning and clever as they came, and as George looked up when the gong was struck, his eyes glistened mischievously.

“Oops,” he said. “Now who could that possibly be?”

It wasn’t hard to guess, as only one man had failed to show up for their campfire tryst, that man being Gary Goulash. As Gary had been playing tonsil hockey with one of the seductresses all evening, he probably felt it incumbent upon him to carry on his efforts in the privacy of his own bedroom, where Clint’s cameras had caught him in flagrante delicto, hence the sound of the gong.

It made for a welcome change, as the campfire hadn’t supplied its promised excitement: even though the women had engaged with the seducers, and had stood them a couple for drinks, no improprieties had ensued, and even Jackie, who’d seemed like the type of girl to whom fidelity was an elastic concept, had merely danced with but not kissed her prince for the night.

Chase had watched with a certain measure of disquiet how Odelia had chatted with not one but two seducers, and when one of the latter had placed his hand on her arm had felt his blood go to a boil. The sudden powerful urge to wipe the man’s smirk from his face by means of planting his fist in his mouth was so overpowering he was already calculating how long it would take him to swim to the other island, the talk of dangerous currents and undercurrents and even potential sharks having been wiped from his mind.

“Looks like we’re the lucky ones,” said Joanna’s fiancé, clapping Chase on the back. “Just look at my sweet baby girl. Doesn’t even flinch when that tattooed fool flexes his ridiculously pumped-up bicep in her face.”

Nick, too, looked relieved. “Tina would never go for a guy like that,” he said, indicating the screen. “She’s more into the intellectual type, like me.”

If Nick was an intellectual, Chase was RuPaul, but he merely smiled encouragingly and unflexed his fists. He wasn’t fully sanguine, though. He knew Clint would do whatever it took to make the women fall for their seducers. After all, that’s why Passion Island had become the network’s top-rated show.

“So… Gran is on the other island?” asked Dooley.

“Yes. And so is Scarlett Canyon,” I said. “And Harriet and Brutus.”

“But… why? And how?”

“I have absolutely no idea, Dooley. But I’m sure we’ll soon find out.”

Odelia had slept but fitfully, tossing and turning all night. Dooley and I, ensconced at the foot of the bed, as is our habit, had watched it with a worried eye. Apart from the fact that I don’t like it when Odelia moves around, afraid she’ll kick me in the snoot and send me flying off the bed, I hate to see my human troubled, and troubled she clearly was.

So far she hadn’t been able to chat with anyone from the production team, and it was exactly those people she needed to get close to if she was going to uncover what had happened to those other women.

Unfortunately Clint had instigated a rule that his staff refrain from getting too close to the candidates the moment the show started. In previous incarnations some of the cameramen hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to schmooze with some of the seductresses, and some of them had even hooked up. So this year the staff kept to their own villa, while the contestants stayed in their own little bubble with the seducers.