‘Bachelorette’ Clare Crawley & Rumored Boyfriend Dale Moss Reportedly Won’t Say Exactly When They Fell In Love

The Bachelorette star Clare Crawley is reportedly already smitten with one of her suitors just 12 days into filming the ABC dating show, and now an insider says details are sketchy regarding her lightning-quick love connection.

Two weeks into Season 16 of The Bachelorette, an insider told Life & Style that Clare and contestant Dale Moss “won’t say exactly when cupid struck,” making it appear as though they may have some previous history together.

“People are wondering if it was love at first sight when she and Dale met up in Palm Springs two weeks ago?” the source questioned, in reference to the show’s quarantined location at La Quinta Resort & Club.

Clare, who at age 39 is the oldest Bachelorette star ever in the history of the rose-filled reality series, reportedly blindsided producers when she told them she had “already fallen in love” with the NFL player and wanted to stop filming. Even by Bachelor standards, two weeks is fast to fall head over heels.

To make matters worse, the leading lady then “refused to come out of her room” to continue on with her season, leaving producers in a panic.

While there is no doubt that Clare signed on to The Bachelorette for the right reasons, the fast turnaround and rumors that she has quit the show point heavily to the theory that she may have had contact with Dale prior to meeting him on-camera. In an unprecedented twist this spring, Clare found out the names and ages of her 32 original suitors when production had to shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Many of her suitors were recast during the shutdown – one, Matt James, was even named The Bachelor — but Dale was one of the guys who stayed on. He not-so-surprisingly received Clare’s first impression rose once production finally began last month, four months after it was originally scheduled to begin. That left a lot of time for off-camera contact, a theory that spoiler king Reality Steve is not quick to dismiss.

In a series of tweets, seen here, the blogger wrote the following.

“IF Clare is sprung on Dale & she wants to leave, I can’t for the life of me believe it was bc the first time they met and spoke was on July 18th, the first day of filming. Hell, I HOPE that’s not the case. Some sort of pre-show relationship is the only thing that makes sense to me.”

He later revealed that while he has “no idea” for sure if Clare and Dale had been talking pre-show, it is quite possible they could have been texting and even Facetiming going back as far as March, when production for The Bachelorette was put on hold.

If the rumors about Clare are true, it wouldn’t be the first time she quit a Bachelor-related series mid-production. In 2014, the California hairstylist quit the first season of Bachelor in Paradise after questioning her relationship with then-suitor Zack Kalter.