by Box Set
There was a few minutes of tense silence, and Sylvia almost pushed for the explanation three times before the forms were signed. Finally, Greg put down the pen and started talking.
"I'm in the fifth year of a six-year contract with Dot Entertainment, the company that owns Collectibles. When you sign up to be in a franchise like that, you're not only agreeing to do the movies. There are months of promotional appearances and a bunch of other stipulations—including having a say in what I do even outside of shooting and promo tours." He paused and rubbed his temple again. "I've come to New York to do a limited run on Broadway in a musical I really wanted to be a part of."
Sylvia's eyes widened at that. Greg Abrams on Broadway? How the hell had she not heard about this? She opened her mouth to ask, but then she took another look at Greg and closed it. Her questions could wait.
"The thing is, even a limited run takes a lot of time. It’s two and a half months of commitment between the rehearsals and performances in this case. And with the contract I have, Dot Entertainment was in their rights to tell me no." Greg's face hardened. "They finally agreed, but they threw in a clause that basically comes down to me keeping out of trouble."
"A morality clause," Nate said.
Sylvia frowned. She remembered a few headlines about Greg dating this actress or that producer, but she didn’t recall anything bad. No drugs, no DUIs… Why would they insist on something like this?
Greg nodded. “These days, they are pretty standard in contracts for anything involving a big franchise, especially one that has a massive young audience. The one I have in my main contract isn't bad, but when we negotiated this time, they insisted on adding things. They knew they had an advantage, and they used it.” He grimaced. “So now, if I were to…misbehave in New York, they could pull the plug on their agreement—up until a week before I start actually performing, which isn't for another three weeks."
“Why would they?” Sylvia asked, no longer able to keep quiet. “If they don’t need you for anything—”
“They don’t have to need me.” Greg rubbed his eyebrows again. “Let’s just say I don’t…see eye to eye with someone on that team. If he can make my life more difficult, he will.”
"And a story like this would be perfect for that," Shawn said.
"Exactly."
Sylvia hated how defeated Greg sounded. He was probably already envisioning going back with his tail between his legs, and Sylvia hated to even think that she would miss seeing him on a Broadway stage. Now that she’d imagined that, she couldn’t unsee it. And she wanted it. Badly.
"So not only do we need to bury this story, we also have to come up with a different one," Dean said, leaning forward in his seat. He put his laptop on the coffee table and rested his elbows on his knees, tangling his fingers together.
Sylvia looked at her brother. "Can't we simply tell the truth?" Greg was against it earlier, but she still thought it was worth a shot.
Nate shook his head. "Sadly, no. It's not going to be enough to interest anyone other than maybe Greg's mother—and ours, but that’s a stretch," he added, quirking up a dry smile for her. Their mother was hardly interested in either of them."We need something that will be a better story, a bigger one."
"Can't we focus on Greg's Broadway show?"
All four men shook their heads, but Greg was the one who spoke first.
"I can't talk about it yet, especially since it may not happen at all."
"And it doesn't hold enough weight to distract the world from a possible sex scandal," Shawn added before wincing at Sylvia. "Sorry."
She was trying hard not to think about being involved in a sex scandal. Very hard.
"So…”Dean’s eyes pinned Sylvia to her seat and she held her breath. “How do you feel about pretend dating?"
She tightened her hands into fists on her lap as her heart started beating faster. She couldn't even glance to the side at Greg as she searched for something to say. But the three fixers didn’t wait for an agreement. They started throwing ideas around and forming a plan right away.
It wasn't even that Sylvia was surprised, really. Pretending to date was a logical choice, a smoke screen that could turn a few photos from a back alley into just one element of a romantic story. Sylvia had been working for this company for about nine months now, and she had seen quite a few arranged matchups. She had even been pulled into selecting a perfect candidate half a dozen times, at least.
This time, both candidates are already here. She finally gathered enough courage to glance at Greg. He was sitting in silence, watching the fixing trio's back and forth as if it was a tennis match. She couldn't read him, couldn't see beyond the supposedly calm persona.
It had to be fake, right?
Sylvia had seen a few famous people in real life—some of them in the theater, some of them here in the office, seeking help. She understood that people living in a spotlight had to perfect their public faces, their ways of blocking off the world. And somehow, she knew this was what she was seeing on Greg now. He’d cut himself off, and she was left trying to make sense of it all. How the hell had her life become so surreal in little more than an hour? Meeting Greg in the alley, running away from the paparazzo, and now this?
Pretend dating Greg Abrams…sure, of course. No big deal.
The guy was just as handsome as he was in all the movies and photos she'd seen. Back in that alley, when he smiled, she could feel her interest pique and her body responding. But it was nothing, an instinctive reaction, because she couldn’t not respond to the universe suddenly putting an international movie star in her path.
Ironically, talking to him in a dark alley between dumpsters seemed less surreal than sitting next to him here, in the familiar surroundings of F.Y.U.'s private conference room.
Then Greg turned and looked at her, and everything was real again—maybe too real, if the way her chest tightened was any indication. Could she do it? Could she pretend to date him? As she stared into his blue eyes, she realized that while she might not be any good at acting most of the time, it wouldn’t take much pretending to do this.
Which could be good for the plan, but potentially dangerous for her heart.
"You okay?" Greg whispered, leaning closer to her.
Sylvia started to nod out of habit, but she stopped herself in mid-gesture. She shrugged instead. "Not really," she admitted in a whisper. Having those freaking photos taken and becoming a topic for gossip was bad enough. But if she’d also get lost between what was real and what was pretend, she was going to end up hurt when the act would inevitably be over. "You?"
He nodded. "Same." His mask slipped for a moment, and she could see once again how stressed he really was over this as she took in the frown on his face and the slump of his shoulders.
Sylvia worried her lower lip between her teeth and glanced down on her lap. "I'm sorry about all this. I—"
Greg shook his head. "It's not your fault."
"But if—"
"Hey, you're not to blame for this. I mean it." He tilted his head down a bit and sought her gaze once again. "I thought you'd blame me for dragging you into this."
"You helped me when I felt sick, and you're getting punished for it."
"The paparazzo was there after me, and now you'll—"
"Guys," Shawn's voice interrupted their whispered conversation, and both of them drew back. Sylvia realized that she’d leaned closer to Greg than she’d thought while they were talking. "Trying to out-guilt each other won't help anyone. It's not about whose fault it is or isn't. It happened, and now we have to fix it."
Sylvia nodded, pulling back from Greg, and she took a deep breath. “By pretending to date?”
"That seems like the best option. Dean's bringing Kevin back," Shawn said, pointing a thumb at Dean who was texting on his phone, "and then we can start putting things in motion. In the meantime, this is what we—"
"Who's Kevin?" Greg cut him off, frowning.
"Our resident computer wizard," Nate expl
ained. "We're going to need his help, and it needs to be done before tomorrow when the photos get out."
Sylvia sat up with a wave of new hope. "Can't he block the sites with the photos?"
Shawn shook his head. "He can manage it a bit, and he's probably going to try to contain their spread, but there's no way to block it completely, since he can't hack the press or TV outlets. Erasing the photos too extensively would draw attention and suggest we're trying to hide them on purpose."
"So we contain the spread to some degree, but we won't clear all the sites." Nate looked at Sylvia. "I'm sorry, sis, I wish we could get rid of them all, but that's just not going to work."
She tried to smile but probably grimaced instead. "Don't worry about it. You're already helping by taking this on."
Sylvia and Nate might fight from time to time like only siblings could, but she had never doubted he'd have her back on this. He had been her first phone call for years now, even before he moved to the business of doing that for other people.
He smiled at her, and she managed to answer in kind. It will be fine. It has to be. She turned to Greg, and they looked at each other for a long moment. Sylvia needed him to make the final call, because she was still feeling guilty and didn’t want to pull him into anything against his will.
I’m game if you are, she wanted to tell him, but the words wouldn’t come out. Finally, he had to have read it on her face, because he nodded and turned to Shawn.
"So, what's the plan, exactly?"
Chapter Four
By eight the next morning, Greg had managed to go back and forth about a dozen times on whether this plan would work or not. They stayed at the Foster, Young, and Urban office until almost two, then he went back to the hotel, called his agent and publicist back in L.A., and then caught a few hours of uneasy sleep. Now he was meeting Sylvia for the first of their pretend dates, and he was still on the fence about their chances. On one hand, it should be easy enough—spending a few weeks going out with an attractive woman and getting himself photographed while doing so wasn’t exactly a hardship. On the other hand, what if nobody would buy it and they only made things worse?
Too late for that now. Greg straightened in his chair. He wasn’t used to sitting right at the front of a café or restaurant. Usually, when he went out, he tried to hide in the back or in a private room where he could avoid being spotted. He might be used to the constant attention, but it didn’t mean he liked it. Except this time attention was the goal. They needed to be seen and photographed.
For now, everyone let him be. Apparently, it was true what the New Yorkers among his friends always told him—people in this city were too cool to stare or come up and interrupt him. The waitress only raised her eyebrows for a moment before asking if he wanted more coffee.
Greg had been a little early, so he was waiting in the café for about ten minutes before the door opened and Sylvia came in. She had a dark blue skirt on that drew attention to her legs, and Greg caught himself before his gaze lingered there for too long. He noticed she was attractive last night, but today there was something different about it. Don’t go down this road, he told himself firmly as he watched her scan the room quickly. She offered Greg a small smile when she noticed him, and he stood up as he watched Sylvia come up to him. He leaned in to kiss her cheek, inhaling the scent of coconut as he greeted her. "Hi."
"Hey.” She sat down when Greg offered her a chair. "How are you?"
"Not enough sleep and nervous twitching whenever my phone rings, but fine otherwise. You?"
"Half-convinced I'm living in some kind of weird alternative reality," Sylvia admitted, one corner of her mouth going up.
Not a bad start. Joking their way through the awkwardness was more than fine with Greg.
After the waitress took their order and left, he lowered his voice. "Have you heard from your brother or his friends?"
"No, but I'm heading up to work right after our…breakfast, so if you walk me back, you can talk to them if you want."
"You work there?" He raised his eyebrows. That was a surprise.
"Didn't I tell you this last night?" When he shook his head, she winced. "Sorry, it must have slipped my mind. I'm their office manager.”
"So you're not a fixer?"
She chuckled."No, the only thing I’m fixing is their paperwork. They’re all brilliant, but keeping documents in check is apparently beyond them."
"Do you like working there?” he asked, relaxing back in his seat. He was having breakfast with a beautiful, funny woman. He was going to have a good time and not worry about anything else.“Working for family can be tricky.”
Sylvia made a weird gesture that was half nod, half shrug. “It’s fine. It's not all that exciting, since, as I said, it's mostly paperwork, but I'm good at it." She paused as their waitress came back with their food—scrambled eggs for him and pancakes and orange juice for Sylvia. " I get what you said about working for family, but Nate and I get along really well, so it’s nice. And Shawn and Dean are like my brothers, too. They’re Nate’s best friends from college, so I’ve known them for years. With all of them there, it’s the best job I’ve ever had." She smiled, picking up her fork. "And what about you? Do you like your job?"
Greg nodded as he watched her drown her pancakes in syrup. "I do. I love the actual acting part, especially on those days when everything just seems to work—the right co-stars, the right script, the right director. The high I can get from that is like nothing else. Not every day is like that, of course, but it happens often enough." Especially now when he could pick and choose not only the scripts, but also the people he wanted to work with. The only exception was the Collectibles franchise. He had no say in those films, but he had still lucked out with them. As a whole, the cast and crew were great. The only problem was Marlow, but Greg had to suck it up for only one more year.
And then never sign a contract like that again.
"Which part don't you like then?" Sylvia asked before taking a sip of her juice.
He shrugged. "Promoting the movie. It gets exhausting. A few days or even weeks would be fine, but it stretches into months these days when the movie is huge, and that's way too much."
"Don't you get asked the same questions over and over again?"
"Yes." He pointed his fork at her. "You try answering the same question differently when you hear it twenty times a day."
"No, thank you. I would just repeat the same thing over and over again. The most boring person ever."
He snorted. "That’s not as easy as it sounds, either. During our last press tour, me and the rest of Collectibles’ cast had a bet going on who would manage that for the entire day and nobody was able to do it. It screws with your head. You need to say something different."
"Broadway’s nothing like that," Sylvia said between the bites. "It's usually low-key, unless the show really blows up."
Greg nodded. He had seen some of the stuff that counted as promotion on Broadway. "Yeah, I'm jealous of that. But speaking of… Tell me about your musical theatre addiction."
Sylvia laughed and Greg was struck for a moment, his gaze dropping to her mouth. He wanted to trace her smile with his fingers…and his tongue.
He took another sip of coffee instead and reminded himself that this breakfast date was a pretend one.
"Famous last words, I warn you," Sylvia told him when she stopped laughing. She was glowing with an energy she didn't have before. "I can talk about it for hours."
"Start with the history part then," he said, leaning on his elbows on the table. "How did it start?"
"I was nine when my parents took me and Nate to see Wicked." She looked down at her pancake, and her smile gentled as she probably got lost in a memory. "I fell in love by the first song, and that was it, I was gone. Every birthday, we'd go to see another show—just me and one of my parents, because Nate didn't care for it at all. I collected playbills, tickets, merchandise. With all the stuff I have in boxes in storage, I could probably open a small Broad
way museum."
"You still can."
"And maybe I will, someday. I still collect stuff." She paused to eat another bite of her pancake. "I have a Broadway vlog, too," she said, and her cheeks and neck turned pink.
"Wow, that's great." Greg loved meeting a person so openly into something, so passionate. He made a mental note to check out her vlog. "Are you doing reviews, or reaction videos, or interviews?"
Sylvia raised her eyebrows at him, pausing with her glass halfway to her mouth.
"Did I say something wrong?" he asked, rewinding the conversation in his head.
"No, no! I'm just surprised you’re asking. And that you even know what reaction videos are." She worried her lower lip with her teeth, and it was terribly distracting. Greg blinked and looked down at his plate.
"Collectibles has a huge fandom, so I picked some stuff up along the way. I asked because I’m curious, but if you’d rather not talk about it, that's fine."
She shook her head quickly. "No, as I said, I can talk about it for hours, but I know it’s boring to most people."
"I like how passionate you are.” At her raised eyebrows, he chuckled. “Okay, maybe if you were passionate about nuclear physics, I wouldn't ask so many questions, but that’s only because I wouldn't have any idea what you were talking about. I'm pretty sure I can hold a conversation about Broadway." And if he couldn't, he would call up one of his friends currently working there and ask about stuff before the next date.
The next date. He was already thinking about meeting her again and the word “pretend” slipped from his mind completely. Damn it. He had to be careful or this would end in a disaster. He needed to be on his perfect behavior and not get himself into more trouble.
"I barely passed physics in high school, so you're safe from that." Sylvia scrunched her nose. "Anyway, my vlog is just me in a big, pink wig that started as a cure for my self-consciousness in front of the camera and quickly became a running joke.” She ran a hand through her hair and blushed a bit. “I have an occasional guest, but they're my friends and fellow fans—no one actually involved in any production. I talk about the shows I saw. Sometimes, when I haven't been to a show for a few weeks, I do a news video—like when there is exciting casting news or something new in development." She glanced through the glass but then winced and looked the other way.