“What are you doing here at eight in the morning, Megan?” I half-growled as she entered my house. “I thought our meeting was at twelve o’clock.” Rubbing my eyes, I tried to focus on her as her heels snapped with efficiency down the hallway and into the living area. She looked way too ready to start her day, where I was still hoping to get rid of her quickly so I could get back to bed.
“You haven’t been online,” she guessed correctly and dropped her purse on the ottoman.
“I was sleeping, Megan. In fact, I’m still sleeping. Can’t this wait until our meeting?”
“I’m afraid not.” Bending, she fished her phone out of her bag. “You might want to put something on. Not all of us want to see you half-naked in the early morning.” She waved her hand at my body dismissively.
I yawned and looked down at my naked chest.
“What is this about? I’m still keeping it in my pants if that’s what you came here to check.”
She texted someone on her phone, put it down, and picked up another one of her phones. It was too early to handle her.
“Tom will be here in a few minutes,” she said, not looking up from her phone.
“Great,” I yawned again. “Just what I needed at this hour, both of your faces up in my—”
“Stop whining and go change while I make a call. I’ll let Tom in.”
“The bastard already has his own security code; he can let himself in. He better be bringing me some coffee and breakfast.”
“Tom said he’d call Alvin over, he’ll bring whatever it is that you like to have.”
“Now you are handling my own assistant, too, Megan? You don’t have enough people around you to control?”
She gave me a hard look, dismissing me without another word.
“Just great,” I muttered under my breath as I left her to do whatever the hell she was there to do.
When I emerged out of my room, freshly showered and properly clothed as per Megan’s wishes, Tom and Alvin had joined Megan in the living room and were having a quiet conversation.
“What is this emergency that couldn’t wait a few more hours?” I asked no one in particular as I sat down right across from them.
“We have to make a statement,” Megan started as she crumbled a muffin and took a small bite. Alvin handed everyone their coffee. After thanking him and picking up my own blueberry muffin, I tried to give all my focus to Megan. “I didn’t want to say anything without talking to you first.”
“Then why are Tom and Alvin here? And a statement about what?”
“I thought Tom would want to be in on this convo.” She gave a small shrug, keeping her eyes away from Tom. “And you trust his opinions.”
“You haven’t been online yet?” Alvin asked, hiding a smirk behind his coffee cup.
I raised an eyebrow.
“And I was the one who called Alvin since if you give the go ahead, he’ll be one of the few people who is in on this,” Tom said as he gave Alvin a hard stare.
I glanced back at Alvin, but he gave me a shrug that clearly said, ‘I have no idea what’s going on either.’
“Are you about to tell me I’m going to die or something?”
Megan and Tom shared a look I couldn’t even begin to decipher. Taking a sip of my black coffee, I waited for them to spill whatever it was they couldn’t wait to tell me.
“I think we found your girl,” Megan finally announced. Tom was still avoiding my eyes.
“This is about that?” I scratched my stubble and leaned back in my seat. “I thought someone else had come out claiming I had sex with them in the elevator or something like that. What’s online then?” I asked, relaxing into my seat even more.
Megan tilted her head as Tom sighed. “Is there another girl about to come out and claim that, Jason?”
I gave her a grin. “I don’t think so.”
She raised an eyebrow and waited for something that wasn’t coming.
Tom broke our eye contact by repeating her earlier words.
“She is right, Jason. I think we found the right girl for you. This is the perfect opportunity for us to use. We can’t miss this.”
“I believe that’s something I’ll decide, not you, and certainly not Megan. And what opportunity are you talking about?”
Megan powered on her tablet and looked me square in the eye. “You need to think about this before you make a decision. We couldn’t have spun a better story than this and we didn’t even do anything. This is pure, organic PR. If you think about it, you’ll see that yourself. This is the perfect solution, Jason. All I’m asking is for you to think about this. Do you understand me?”
I looked at her unblinkingly and said, “I can see that whoever this girl is, the idea of her being my doting wife is exciting you for some reason, but I told you before, Megan, I won’t marry some girl and haul her around to events to get her noticed. If I’m about to share a house with her, I should at least get along with her as a person.”
Tom smiled. “I don’t think that will be an issue with this girl.”
After rubbing my temple, I sighed and extended my hand to Megan. I had dug my own grave, and now it was time to lie in it. “All right, give it to me.”
Wisely, she handed me the tablet without saying another word.
When I saw the first photo of me kissing Olive’s temple, I looked up with a frown on my face.
“What is this? Someone took Olive’s picture yesterday?”
“Keep scrolling down,” Megan said.
I scrolled down as she’d instructed, and all I could see were pictures of Olive and me from the day before. Before we headed into the building as I was jogging to her side, me kissing her temple, a zoomed in photo of her closed eyes—in a damn red circle—as I was kissing her temple. It didn’t end there. There were the pictures of her after she had changed into my shirt. As my anger started to rise, I was thankful that they hadn’t managed to get any shots of her while she was half-naked in her bra, but they did have shots of me caressing her stomach as we clearly stood a little too close to each other. I hadn’t noticed that I was standing inches away from her lips.
They weren’t the best quality, some were even blurry, but every shot looked intimate.
And blurry or not, we were beaming at each other.
“What the hell is this? Who took these?” I asked, only then noticing that Alvin was looking at the photos over my shoulder.
“They were either taken by someone who works in the building or just someone who was visiting. No one knew you were going to be there, and the shots are not high enough quality to be from a pap,” said Megan. “There is an article attached to it. Read it.”
Agreeing with her assessment about the images having been captured a bystander, I scrolled farther down and got to the article.
My anger reached a whole other level. I rose up from my seat and tossed the tablet on the couch between Tom and Megan.
Everyone was silent.
“I have to call Dylan and their parents. If someone tells them about this, they’ll misunderstand.”
“Dylan?” Alvin asked from where he stood, his arms crossed against his chest.
“Olive’s brother. My friend,” I clarified, glancing at Tom. That bastard knew I was friends with Olive’s brother.
“We can use her,” Megan interrupted before I could even think of where I’d left my phone the night before.
“What did you just say?” I asked softly. Surely I hadn’t heard her right.
Tom silenced Megan with a sharp look. “Come on, let’s just sit down for a minute, Jason. Like you said, it’s pretty early. I’m sure neither her nor her family has seen anything yet. You’ll call them as soon as we are gone.”
Even though I didn’t want to admit it, he was right. I wouldn’t want to alarm Olive’s mom and dad by calling at an ungodly hour, especially when there was a definite chance that they knew nothing about the photos.
I sat my ass back down and reached for my coffee. After I swallowed almost all of it down, I got up and tossed the cup into the garbage can in the kitchen.
“Ok, who has this?” I asked when I was back and my temper was slightly more under control.
“It dropped online after midnight. I tried calling you, but you weren’t answering, which is why I thought I should come here in the morning instead of waiting for our meeting. We need to get ahead of this and make a decision.”
“You were right, thank you for not waiting until our meeting. I don’t want them to learn about it from someone else. I doubt Olive has seen it either. At least not yet, not after her night out.”
Alvin coughed behind me and walked toward the kitchen. “Since you are having this meeting early, I’ll go and rearrange your schedule.”
“What night?” Megan asked, looking at Alvin’s retreating back.
I waved my hand. “Just in case I missed someone taking pictures of me, I was in a college bar with Olive. She was celebrating her movie deal with her friends and I was in and out of there with her in ten minutes tops. Other than her friends, nobody recognized me, so there is nothing to worry about.”
“Jason, was that a smart thing to do?” Tom asked. “Especially when you are trying to lay low? They could’ve written you up with a college girl if they had gotten a whiff of your scent in there.”
“If they had pictures, trust me, they would’ve released them with the rest of this. I was okay.”
Megan’s sharp eyes were still on me. “So, what is your decision?”
“Decision? About what?”
“We have an opportunity here, Jason. It’s up to you if we use it or not, at this point. If you accept, all I’m going to do is release who she is to the media and give a short back story of how she is your childhood friend—”
“She is my childhood friend’s sister,” I growled.
Megan just kept going. “And how she is the author of the adaptation… Well, everything will fall into place even easier than we expected. No one will assume your marriage is fake. All they’ll see is two friends falling in love after seeing each other again after so many years. The public will love the story. It’s the perfect cover, Jason, and you know it.”
“No, Megan. No matter how perfect this all sounds to you, I won’t use Olive. No.”
“Who said you’ll be using her? Your PR team will be using your story. Not you. She is your friend isn’t she? Wouldn’t she want to help you? You’re already friends, so what if you live in the same house for a few years?”
“She is right, Jason,” Tom jumped in. “I don’t think Olive would mind helping you, and I’m sure you remember what I told you about the book… I think she might be more than okay with this.”
I dropped my head into my hands. Olive, my wife? Dylan would skin me alive. Him aside, I didn’t even want to think of what her parents would think of me.
“Here.” Tom handed me the tablet again. “Look at these photos and tell me I’m not right.”
“The chemistry between you two speaks for itself, Jason. You already look half in love with her in these. It wouldn’t take much to make people believe that you married for the right reasons,” said Megan.
I grabbed the tablet from Tom—maybe a little too forcefully—and glanced at the website where our photos were plastered.
Funnily enough, we did look in love.
Yeah, I was definitely in trouble.
