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Egan sat forward. “They are going to focus on her life here on the island. That is part of it. Though it’s a food competition they will show The Retreat. They are also going to ask personal questions. If she’s single, married, et cetera. It will come up during the taping. We’ll be flying people around, so they are going to know our family businesses have a far reach.”
“So I might be on TV?” he asked, grimacing. Not what he wanted, but he’d do it for Grace and his best friend. For his job too.
“Oh, you’re going to be seen,” Egan said, laughing. “You’re going to California with her.”
“What?” he asked, his mouth opening and then closing.
“It was discussed that these shows like to draw up drama. Grace can have a bit of a temper. If you’re there, maybe you can calm her,” Mitchell said.
“No one is using you,” Egan said quickly. “It’s not that. Think of it as us giving you a week to spend time and support your girlfriend. I don’t think I’d like Blake traveling alone without me. You know what happened to Laine not that long ago.”
Egan was putting the guilt there and he knew it by the grin on his buddy’s face.
Laine was engaged to Carson Mills, and in the fall she’d been in Chicago at a gallery showing and got into some trouble and ended up in jail. Carson woke Egan up to get him flown there and get it all sorted.
So yeah, that was popping into his head too.
“No, I wouldn’t want her there alone. But...if I’m on TV, then people will start looking into me, right? Or not. I’m not anyone.”
Mitchell and Egan started to laugh. “Sorry, dude,” Egan said. “They already know about you. Decorated fighter pilot. Not that I lean this way, but you’re also pretty good on the eyes. The viewers are going to eat you up. The producers will too. And that is why I’m telling you, we aren’t using you, so don’t think it.”
“We kind of are,” Mitchell said, shrugging, “but not in a bad way. It makes for good TV, but we aren’t making anything up. Everything we are saying is a fact.”
He knew that. But his past... “Egan. Someone could look into me and find out about my past.”
He was looking at Mitchell while he said it. “You’ve got nothing in your past that is going to come back to you,” Mitchell said, grinning. “You do realize that Griffin would have discovered anything that was there to find before we even hired you.”
Lincoln sighed. “I know that. It’s something else.”
“My father knows about Lara,” Egan said. “Griffin found that too. You were a seventeen-year-old kid as a passenger in a car accident. No drugs or alcohol were involved. You’ve got nothing to hide.”
He hadn’t realized that Egan and his family knew about that before he’d confessed it in one night of drinking to Egan when they’d been living together.
He supposed he should have since it was all over the local news back then. A deep enough internet search would find it in thirty minutes or less.
“Nothing illegal,” he argued.
“Nothing at all,” Egan said firmly.
“It doesn’t mean someone might not start trouble once everything is aired.”
“They don’t have Hailey Bond as their lawyer,” Mitchell said, smirking. “If we aren’t worried, you’ve got no reason to be worried either. Trust me.”
If there was anyone he trusted more than his parents, it was the two men in this room.
But speaking of his parents. “Am I allowed to let my family know? I hate to have them find out when they start watching this on TV.”
“You can,” Mitchell said. “They will have to sign the nondisclosure forms too. Right now, the main players that are going to show up on TV have to get them there first. We’ll look at the schedule and get you home in the next day or so to get your parents’ signature.”
“Maybe bring Grace with you,” Egan said. “Let them meet the girl that could make you a star.”
“Asshole,” he said when Egan was wiggling his eyebrows. “I’m far from a star. Don’t be jealous that I might become the face of Bond Charter.”
Egan grinned. “I get to pilot the crew around, not you. But I’m positive they are going to film you up in the air at some point. Maybe even with Grace. That would make for good TV.”
He let out a sigh. He wanted to say none of this was what he signed up for but not much he could do about it.
“Are we done now?” he asked. “I’d like to get back to the island and talk to Grace. Does she know about me going with her?” He wasn’t so sure she’d be happy that it was being forced on her.
