Page 580 of Manhattan Bossholes

“You’re speechless for a change?” I joked.

She bristled. “No, Cameron, I’m not. I have plenty to say, so strap in.” She glanced around the room and leaned closer to me. “My response, in a word, is abso-fucking-lutely not. Pardon my French.”

I threw back my head and laughed at her. “Am I that bad? There’s no way you can envision faking being attracted to me?”

“Well, I…” she stammered for a few seconds, realizing she was insulting her boss. “No. You’re not that bad. But it could never work!”

I leaned closer to her. “And why not? And when you answer me, please keep in mind that the peanut gallery is watching us.”

She screwed up her face in confusion, and I flicked my eyes toward the table with the junior paparazzi, who were doing a terrible job hiding the fact that they were recording us. Felicity pretended to look in her purse and glanced in their direction.

“Are you kidding me?” she complained, hiding her displeasure with a neutral expression.

“That’s my point. The story is out of our hands now. It’s a living, breathing thing I think we should harness and control. The other option is to suffer the consequences of coming clean.” I fiddled with my phone. “Can you imagine how bad it’s going to look if we publish some sort of retraction? And on the heels of the domestic violence stuff?”

She shook her head, and a few tendrils spilled down onto her cheeks. “There has to be a way to contain this. We can still spin a retraction that’ll work for us.”

“Okay, Miss Marketing Expert, how? Lay it out for me, and if it’s doable, I’ll agree to it.”

Felicity sat up straighter and cleared her throat, like she was ready to brainstorm. “I think we could start by…uh…” she drummed her nails on the table. “If we take the approach that we were, um…”

“Exactly,” I said after letting her stew in silence for a few minutes. “We’re painted into a corner.”

Her shoulders slumped, and I tried not to feel insulted that she was so resistant to pretending to like me.

“I can make it worth your while.”

Felicity met my eyes. “Oh yeah? How?”

“Well, first, I intend to make it clear to Lucy that we’ll both have to sign off on anything that goes wide. No more gotcha stuff. You’d get final approval on the photos and text used. And I’ll provide professional hair and makeup any time you want.”

She bristled. “Are you suggesting I need help with that?”

I let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Felicity, no, not at all. You’re basically flawless.” I stopped talking abruptly, angry at myself for letting my subconscious take control of my mouth. “What I meant was, since it’s the company’s fault for sticking you in the spotlight, the pressure would be off you to have to worry about all the little details that go with that. I’d take care of everything, so you wouldn’t have to worry about what you wore last time, or if your manicure looks right.”

“That’s nice, but that’s the sort of thing that would come standard in this scenario.” She shrugged. “I’m still not seeing how this makes it worth my while.”

I threw down my winning hand. “I’ll pay you triple the going influencer rate per appearance.”

She froze.

“I don’t think you understand what that means,” she said slowly. “Do you know what they get paid?”

“I have a rough idea, sure.” Veritique hadn’t dealt much with influencers before, but I had plenty of friends running other companies, and I knew how much they’d had to pay for that sort of thing.

Felicity glanced around the room and leaned across the table. “Would we have to kiss?” She sounded horrified.

I moved closer to her, placing my elbows on the table. “If we’re getting fake engaged, then yes. We would. Probably often.”

My pulse hitched at the thought of it.

“Hold hands?”

I felt the corner of my mouth turn up. “Do you want to outline all of the physical stuff before you agree to it?”

“Well, yeah, I do,” she replied, sounding adorably stressed about potential kiss quotas. “We need to keep this romantic relationship professional, you know? Maybe we should get an intimacy coordinator, like they do on movie sets? Or even draw up a contract?”

“Felicity, I know better than anyone that contracts are important. But you have my word that I’ll abide by anything we agree to here. It’s not like I’m thrilled about all of this.”