Reena awkwardly pushed a big multicolored ball out from under her shirt, letting it drop to the floor, which made McQueen jump out of Nikhil’s hoodie and chase it. “Um… nice to meet you,” Reena said. “I’m Reena. This is my husband, Nadim.”
Nadim was still staring at Serena. Nikhil knew he needed to do something now before someone here fainted. Or embarrassed themselves further. There was another knock at the door then.
“That’ll be Ruby,” Shayne said.
It was time to get Serena and Caroline out of here. “Okay, you wanted to talk? We can go upstairs. Oh, and don’t worry about these guys. They’ve all signed the studio NDAs.”
Caroline nodded. “Yeah, upstairs works.”
Nikhil looked over at Marley. He wished he could bring her along. He was not looking forward to this conversation.
Marley gave him a reassuring nod. “I’ll be here. We’ll set up the party. You go ahead.”
He smiled at her.
Upstairs, they crowded into the sewing room, Nikhil and Caroline perched on the bed and Serena on the rolling chair at the sewing table.
“Sorry it’s tight,” Nikhil said. “It’s a small house.”
Caroline shook her head. “No worries. Clearly our timing wasn’t great.”
He shrugged.
“I wanted to call you,” Serena said. “But Reggie and Caroline thought we should speak face-to-face. And without publicists or agents.”
He didn’t want to deal with publicists, either.
Caroline glanced at Serena before turning to Nikhil. “We… wanted to explain.”
Serena nodded. “And I owe you an apology. Reggie told me that you thoughtI wrotethat Instagram post about us.”
Nikhil frowned. “It was your account.”
Serena shook her head. “I haven’t logged into my own socials in years. The studio’s been managing them while I’m filming this movie. I know they wanted to make it seem like you and I were dating, and I told them sure, whatever, if you’re game for it. But when you said no, I thought that was that. But then…” She glanced at Caroline and sighed. “I’m going to trust you here, because I think we would work better as allies than enemies. Don’t make me regret it, though.”
Nikhil raised one brow. “You know I’m bound by an NDA, too.”
“Yeah, but we’d rather you kept our confidence because youwantto, not because you have to,” Caroline said.
“Of course,” Nikhil agreed. “You have my word.” He still trusted Caroline.
Serena took a big breath. “You’re not the only one who’s been recently followed by photographers. Last weekend I was followed by a photographer who got pictures that the studio was not happy about. They were able to buy the pictures and kill the story, but there may be more out there. I’m… I’m in a relationship that doesn’t match their script for who the lead of the Ironis franchise should be with.”
Serena was thestarof this film. She was a huge celebrity, and they weren’t even lettingherbe herself?
Nikhil suddenly looked at Caroline. It all made sense now. Serena was datingCaroline. Her stunt double. And a publicisthad put up that post to deflect the fact that she was in a same-sex relationship. He couldn’t believe the studio would do that.
But this was the same studio that was overly concerned about the fans not being happy that the Bronze Shadow was an Indian man.
“How long have you two been together?” Nikhil asked. The more he thought about it, the stranger this was. He liked Caroline, but Serena had never been a pleasant person to him.
“A while. A year,” Caroline said.
He smiled at Caroline. It would be kind of weird to date your literaldouble, wouldn’t it? Was this a Hollywood narcissist thing? Clearly, there was a lot more to these two than what he saw in their daily training.
“So why didn’t you come clean when you realized the publicists lied on your Instagram?”
Serena shook her head. “I didn’t know they lied. I mean, I knew you and I weren’t really together. When they called me in to yell at me about the pictures of me and Caro, they said that you’d finally agreed to a publicity relationship and they were going to post it on my socials. That’s why I was so angry with you that day… I thought you went and kissed your girlfriend in publicafteragreeing to date me. I thought you set out to humiliate me on purpose.”
