Big Wild Love Adventure Read online

  COPYRIGHT

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2022 by Julianna Keyes. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher at [email protected]

  Visit our website at www.juliannakeyes.com.

  Cover design by Ana Chabrand Design House

  www.anachabrand.com

  ISBN 978-1-7772697-2-2

  First Edition June 2022

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  BIG WILD LOVE ADVENTURE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  THANK YOU!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BOOKS BY JULIANNA KEYES

  BIG WILD LOVE ADVENTURE

  After being ditched at the altar, Emmy Shaw’s heart, like her dented food truck, is definitely not open for business. Deeply in debt to her parents and evicted from her apartment, she takes a friend’s drunken dare and fills out an application for a new dating-adventure reality show. She never expects to be chosen—or to get a chance at the show’s huge cash prize, which could put her life back on track.

  But when she’s abandoned in the middle of the jungle two months later wearing only a bathing suit and a backpack, she questions if being on the show might be even worse than the #emmytrashtruck hate brigade she left back home. Then she meets her fellow cast members—including sexy, inscrutable Wes—and starts to reconsider, wondering if maybe money’s not all she stands to gain from this experience.

  After a year of abysmal failures, this summer of cave treks, jungle hikes, impromptu talent shows, and a sexy flirtmance turns out to be just the thing to help Emmy rebuild her shattered confidence. She signed up for the show to hide from the mess her life had become, but this escape from reality might be just what she needs to find herself.

  Chapter 1

  “My hand,” I groan, counting out bills as I make change for a twenty. “My poor hand.”

  “Use your other hand,” Bailey suggests.

  “It’s also sore.”

  “Use your teeth.”

  “Okay.”

  She laughs as I pass money and two banana caramel cream puffs to the customer waiting in line at my dessert food truck. We sell one unique dessert per day, made solely by yours truly and her two cramped hands. My box supplier had a printing issue so they’d sent me five hundred boxes sans logo, and I’d been up past midnight writing Emmy’s Treat Truck on the lids in my best third grade penmanship. Not only is the name tattooed on my rib cage, it is, thanks to this particular exercise, now tattooed on the inside of my eyelids. Then, this morning, I’d gotten up at 5:00 a.m. to begin putting the cream puffs together with the components I’d spent yesterday afternoon preparing after we’d sold out of triple-decker ice cream sandwiches.

  “Your desserts are amazing,” says the next customer in line, passing me a ten-dollar bill. “I come here far too often.”

  “We appreciate it.” My smile is genuine even though my face muscles wobble with exhaustion. “It means a lot.”

  And while the words are true, I’d never be able to express how incredibly heartbreaking it is to have a smattering of die-hard fans say how much they love your work and then it just...stops there. My desserts make people happy, but not enough people. Not enough to pay for the truck and the permits and the ingredients. I’d already had to give up the small prep kitchen I was renting and now make things in my pint-sized apartment kitchen, my body host to countless bruises courtesy of banging my hips and elbows on sharp counter edges and cupboard doors.

  I try to pick up two boxed cream puffs for the customer, but my hands are now locked in a claw-shape and I can’t seem to uncurl my fingers.

  “Here.” Bailey reaches past me to fork over the treats. “See you tomorrow, Flo.”

  Flo beams and leaves with her snacks, and Bailey grins at the next customer as I dunk my hands in a pot of warm water loaded with Epsom salts, something that’s become far too necessary far too often.

  “You’re overdoing it,” Bailey says out the corner of her mouth. The twenty-three-year-old part-time food truck worker/full-time fashion design student also fancies herself a bit of a psychiatrist and we’ve had this conversation a hundred times.

  “I’m a small business owner,” I reply through a grimace. “That’s all I can do.”

  Using my toes, I adjust the sheet of plywood that covers a human leg-size hole in the floor of the food truck. I really can’t afford another accident. Or a new truck. My landlord’s been semi-forgiving with the rent because she knows how hard I’m working, but she can only make half the income from her income property for so long.

  “You know what you should do,” Bailey says when there’s a lull in the line.

  “Don’t say go on TV and marry rich.”

  “You don’t have to get married. Just go on a reality show and get famous.”

  “Oh, I thought you were going to say something ridiculous.”

  “I saw a casting call for a new show,” she says, reorganizing the last dozen cream puff boxes into a pyramid. “I’m going to apply.”

  “How many shows have you applied for now? A hundred?”

  “At least. But it takes practice. You have to know how to work the system. What to say on your application. Are you the underdog? The villain? The girl willing to do anything for true love?”

  “Ew.”

  “Anyway, this one’s a hybrid dating-slash-adventure show.”

  “Like The Bachelor meets Amazing Race?”

  “No idea. But I’m going to get drunk and fill out an application. You should join me.”

  “No, thanks.” I lift my claw hands out of the pot to see that my fingertips have already started shriveling into ghostly white raisins. “I’m obviously a real catch and they’d pick me right away. Then who’d watch the truck?”

  “No one. You’d go on the show, win a ton
of money, and come back and push this ancient death trap off a cliff. Then you’d buy a new truck with no holes in the floor. And air-conditioning. And two working doors.”

  “Technically, you just need one working door.”

  “Technically, but not legally.”

  “And it’s not ancient. It’s vintage.”

  It’s actually pink and sea foam green with white trim, and someone with money and taste might know how to make it appear vintage and not merely old, but mostly it was what I could afford with my entire life savings.

  Bailey sells four more cream puffs and the pyramid gets smaller. My thigh muscles quaver until I give up and sit directly on the floor. The truck’s undercarriage whines, but doesn’t give out.

  “The show says everyone has a chance to win money.” Bailey adds another five-dollar bill to the jar as she passes out a cream puff. “Not just the winner. And the last couple standing gets half a million.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “That’s enough for a new truck and an apartment with a big kitchen and some proper advertising,” she counters.

  “I don’t need—” I break off as the truck begins a sudden descent on its back left side. “Not again,” I moan.

  “Flat tire,” Bailey announces. “Cream puffs!” she hollers out the window. “Get your cream puffs while you still can!”

  “I’m about to get the deposit for the influencer wedding on the fourteenth,” I remind her. “I’ll use the money to fix the truck.”

  “Uh-huh. Which part?”

  I glance around at all the parts that need fixing, unsure where to begin. And then, as though to nudge me along with exactly zero subtlety, the truck gives a final, exhausted lurch, wheezing as it slopes sharply to one side. The pot of water I’m using to soak my hands was already too full, and now it tilts and dumps water into my lap, drenching my jeans. It’s early April in Philadelphia and today’s high is 54°F, which means I’m now somehow hot and cold at the same time.

  Bailey tosses me a towel and I dry off as best I can before mopping the floor. Using a cracked mug, I casually begin scooping water and pouring it out the front passenger side door of the truck, the only one that technically opens.

  A guy approaches with a twenty, eyeing the five remaining cream puffs. “I’ll take all five,” he says. “For twenty bucks.”

  Bailey glances at me, my torso hanging half out the truck door with my wet jeans and my claw hands and my chipped mug.

  I sigh. “Take ’em.”

  Chapter 2

  It’s after ten o’clock that night and I’ve just barely gotten my kitchen into some semblance of non-disorder. The mini pavlovas are resting on the counter, the custard is made, the kiwi-strawberry blend is macerating, and there’s a stack of two hundred boxes waiting for me to label on the card table that serves as my home office. Next to that is my draft menu for the upcoming influencer wedding, the biggest opportunity of my career to date. A local foodie with a seven-figure social media following stumbled across my truck in downtown Philly, liked what she tasted, and gave me the job. It was the best day of my life. Getting paid in two weeks will be the next best day of my life.

  I swipe a hand across my forehead, knocking loose a stray curl that had been plastered there with egg white after a tiny setback with the stand mixer a few hours earlier. Fortunately, my sweat prevented the egg white from turning into super glue, and now I peel off the thin white film and re-tie my sloppy topknot, squaring my shoulders as I prepare to tackle the final task of the day.

  Emmy’s Treat Truck has been my dream since I was a five-year-old frowning at the uninspired lemonade stands in my suburban neighborhood before selling my own gourmet lavender lemonade for twice the price. I’d saved my money and eventually bought a juicer, selling ginger-turmeric shots in the winter and green juices in the summer, and by middle school I was supplying high-end snacks for school dances. I made gourmet birthday cakes on the side in high school, and by the time I graduated, I was able to pay my culinary school tuition in cash.

  You’re so ambitious, Emmy.

  You’re so talented, Emmy.

  You’re so focused, Emmy.

  You’re so tired, Emmy. Turns out, sometimes talent and ambition and blood, sweat, and tears and everything else you throw at your dream just isn’t enough. Sometimes you’re twenty-eight, in a shoebox apartment, spending more on flour than you do on skincare, and wondering where you went wrong.

  A knock at the door makes me jump. I hardly have time for a social life; my last relationship ended—extraordinarily badly—last August, and since then, I’ve poured every ounce of myself into the food truck. I glance around the small apartment, straighten the single throw pillow on the threadbare couch, and use my foot to shove a bag of cornstarch behind the stack of cookbooks that towers precariously on the floor.

  I smooth my shirt and exhale, trying to appear friendly and totally on the brink of financial freedom when I face my landlord to explain that I know I’m late on rent, but once I get the wedding deposit, I’ll pay her, replace the tire on the food truck—again—and have just enough left over for eggs and milk and then...

  “Emmy? Are you alive?”

  “Bailey?”

  I open the door. Bailey stands in the dim hallway, a brown paper bag clutched in her fist, her cheeks flushed from alcohol.

  “Good,” she says, slumping against the frame. “You’re home.”

  “Where else would I be?” I hear how tragic that sounds as soon as I say it.

  She pushes past me into the apartment, swaying gently on her feet. “We can help each other,” she announces.

  “Maybe you should sit down.”

  Wobbly stools flank the card table, and Bailey balances unsteadily on one, setting the paper bag at her feet and pulling out a bottle of sambuca, still three-quarters full.

  “Did you drink the first quarter?” I ask. “You weigh like, a hundred pounds.”

  She hiccups. “A hundred and twenty. And according to Jayden, that’s too much!”

  Jayden is Bailey’s latest boyfriend, a day trader who wants to work in porn and whose Instagram bio reads “Will smash for cash...if you want.” Bailey swears he’s “mostly worth it.”

  “He’s an idiot,” I say, the way I’ve said about every guy she’s dated for the nine months I’ve known her. “He doesn’t deserve you.”

  She pulls out her phone. “Know who does?”

  “Don’t DM Chris Hemsworth.”

  “But he’s so strong.” She pushes the bottle toward me.

  “And he’d be lucky to have you, but do you really want to be put in Twitter jail again?” I glance longingly at the bottle, and then shake my head. “I can’t drink. I have to write Emmy’s Treat Truck on two hundred boxes and finish a menu plan.”

  “That’s where I come in.”

  Bailey reaches for a marker, but I stop her. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “You know what is?”

  “Leave Chris alone. You already got a cease and desist letter from his lawyer. Next time, they’re really going to—”

  “Adventure Love Big Wild.”

  “What?”

  “No. Big Adventure Love Wild?”

  “What’s happening right now?” I don’t know if I’m too tired to understand or Bailey’s spewing gibberish again. I eyeball the bottle of sambuca before deciding a sip wouldn’t hurt. It might actually help me decode her slurred words.

  She taps on her phone and then brightens. “Big Wild Love Adventure!”

  “That made nothing clearer.”

  “It’s the show I was telling you about. I’m going to apply and I need you to help me sound smart. I’ve already tried being the villain, the slut, the virgin, and the comp beast, but it hasn’t worked. Now...I’m a genius.”

  I try to keep a straight face. “You’re very smart, Bailey. But maybe you could apply tomorrow. Without the sambuca.”

  “Midnight tonight is the deadline. I put off applying because I t
hought Jayden might be the one—”

  Now I cannot keep a straight face.

  “—but after finding pictures of two hundred naked women on his phone, I don’t think he is.”

  “Hmm.”

  “So!” She smacks her hand on the table and half the boxes fall off, revealing the draft menu for the wedding dessert table for five hundred guests.

  Bailey scoops up the stapled pages. “Is this for the wedding?”

  “I’m still brainstorming.”

  “Chocolate cherry cheesecake brownie napoleon?”

  “It’s in the development stage.”

  She flips through the lengthy collection of overly ambitious recipe ideas. I have to send them to the happy couple for approval by the weekend and I’ve been using every free second I have to dream up the most photogenic and post-worthy desserts. This wedding could be my ticket to finally finding a big audience, getting regular customers, and one day being financially sound. For now, however, I’ll settle for fixing the truck and paying my landlord three months of late rent.

  “How much time have you spent on this?” Bailey asks in shock.

  I flush and scoop up the pages. “It’s important.”

  “You know what else is important?”

  “Stop saying reality television.”

  “Let’s call it a reality opportunity. The wedding has, what? Five hundred guests? Well, guess how many viewers the show will have? Five hundred million.”

  I laugh. “That sounds like a lot.”

  Bailey’s cheeks are flushed. “I’m positive it’s correct. Now, you help me apply for Big Wild Love Adventure, and I will finish your menu.”

  “You’re pretty drunk. Also, you’re a fashion design student, not a baker.”

  “Don’t worry, I already filled in the basics about my name and age. I just need help with the rest.”

  I take her phone, frowning as I spot some of her earlier answers. “Bailey, you said you’re blond and blue-eyed.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “But you’re a redhead with brown eyes.”

  “Contacts and hair dye, Emmy! I’ve applied as myself too many times without success. People lie all the time. Well, guess what? It’s me. I’m people.”