Who Needs Reality? (Team Northwest Sweet Romance Book 1)

by Lia London

Milo unbuttoned his collar. “I don’t mind if you don’t!”

  ***

  As Milo pulled out his wallet to pay for the nachos, the middle-aged attendant checked out his attire. “You’re kind of dressed up for this.”

  He smiled and handed her the debit card. “Yeah, we came from a wedding.”

  “Not yours, I hope,” she droned. She zipped the card in her register slot and glanced up at Jill. “Hey, don’t I know you?”

  “Me?” Jill blinked. “Uh, maybe. We’ve been here before. Just not so dressed up.”

  “You’re the local kids that made it big!” She flapped her hands in the air, still holding Milo’s card. “Gerry! It’s the kids! The kids from the newspaper. Lookit!”

  Milo shrugged at Jill. “What’s she talking about?”

  A gray-haired man with glasses appeared in the doorway to a cluttered office behind her. “Is there a problem, Gloria?”

  “No problem, sir.” Milo waved his hands in an appeasing gesture. “Just buying some nachos.”

  Gloria grabbed Gerry by the elbow and showed him the debit card, then she pointed to Milo and Jill. “It’s them. From the newspaper.”

  By now, the short line of customers behind them had bunched up closer to see what was going on. Jill and Milo gave each other a quizzical look. There was a rustle of paper and a whump as Gloria slapped down the latest edition of the bi-weekly county paper.

  Jill swiveled it so they could read and let out a surprised yelp. There on the front page was a snapshot of Milo and Jill from last Christmas. The headline read LOCAL COLLEGE STUDENTS ON PILOT OF NEW REALITY SHOW. The caption below gave their names and announced their roles on Who Wants to Be a Soap Star?

  “Wait, what? This is all supposed to be under wraps until later this summer.” Milo looked around.

  Jill pointed to a paragraph further down. “They interviewed your mom and dad!”

  “But the non-disclosure agreement—”

  She covered her mouth. “They came late. They probably never even heard about it.”

  Milo groaned, snatched his debit card back, and left without the nachos. Jill followed behind, her hand holding onto the tails of his tux.

  A flurry of camera flashes surrounded them as people held up their phones. One pimply kid asked, “What’s going to happen on the new reality show?”

  Milo shook his head. “Parker’s going to kill us.”

  Scene 10: The Publicity Campaign

  Jill stared at the giant red barn-shaped building labeled Donut World. When Parker had texted Jill and Milo to meet her there, they had feared the worst.

  “I guess she’ll serve our contract termination papers with apple fritters on the side,” said Milo.

  “Well, we can’t stand out here forever. Let’s go face the theme music.”

  Milo hummed the Darth Vader march until they slid into the orange vinyl booth opposite Parker. “I’m so sorry!” he blurted. “I had no idea my parents were going to—”

  “For the love of peanut butter, don’t draw attention to yourself,” muttered Parker. When Jill gaped at her in surprise, she sighed. “Hey, this is my mistake, too. I knew they came late and spaced giving them the paperwork completely. What we need to do now is damage control.”

  One of the knots in Jill’s stomach loosened a little, and she knocked her knee against Milo’s leg in a gesture of solidarity. “So … we won’t be fired?”

  “Not if we handle this right. It’s very important that this look like a mistake, not a planned publicity stunt.”

  “But it was a mistake!” insisted Milo.

  “I know that, and you know that, but you two weren’t the only ones to show up in the media in connection with the show. A guy in Chicago ‘slipped’ the news to his blabbermouth agent, and two girls in Tallahassee managed to give themselves some exposure, too.” She rolled her eyes. “They were careful to reveal as much as possible without specifically naming the network, but their local stations figured it out.”

  Milo cleared his throat. “Exposed and revealed, huh? I imagine that means they—”

  “No imagination required, Milo. It was all out there for the world wide web to see how they’d look in the bedroom scenes.” Parker half devoured a maple bar in one bite.

  “Wow,” said Jill. “Suddenly our mistake looks pretty innocent.”

  Covering her mouth with two fingers, Parker spoke through the dough. “Yeah, it was perfect, actually. You’re already the girl-next-door contestant, and there you are coming across as high school sweethearts in a local paper. Doesn’t get much better than that.”

  “Grade school sweethearts.” Milo said, deadpan delivery. “Let’s take the story all the way back.”

  Jill winked. “Back when he’d throw gum in my hair and draw pirate faces on my coloring books.”

  “I never did that.”

  Parker chuckled. “Well, the YouTube vids of you guys leaving the mini-golf place in evening wear plays into that innocent narrative, too, so hey. We’ll have to run with it. The key will be keeping it controlled. The show needs to brand the contestants carefully, and those other guys …”

  “Wait. Brand us?” Jill narrowed her eyes. “So, I really am the girl-next-door candidate? And Milo’s … what? The resident nerd?”

  “Thanks for that,” said Milo.

  “You know I mean that in a good way.”

  “Uh, Milo’s actually a wild card right now. He’s got two very different roles going, so he could either be the player or the puppy.”

  Jill snorted. “Woof, Milo. Sit. Good boy.”

  “Anyway.” Parker clearly wanted to regain control of the conversation. “We’re going to have a team meeting with the others and talk about how to start the ‘leaks’ about the show, making sure we don’t give away anything too important. And.” She pointed at Milo. “You need to get your sweet ma and pa in line. I’ll send home the forms with you today.”

  Milo shifted. “You were going to leak all along?”

  “Yeah, it’s just early. It runs the risk of losing momentum if we start too soon. We don’t have the right footage available yet to start the premier campaign.”

  “What’ll that have in it?”

  “The laughably crappy auditions, banter from the judges, and the Olympic stories for the regional team contestants.”

  Milo leaned on his elbows. “Olympic stories? Tell me I don’t have to wear a Speed-o.”

  Jill snorted. Three elderly couples in a nearby booth surveyed them with obvious disapproval. It dawned on Jill that Parker chose this place for its clientele. No one here watched reality shows. More likely infomercials on walk-in baths or reverse mortgages.

  “Olympic stories are what I call those featurettes they do on the different star athletes to drum up empathy. All the soft lighting and sappy music and fascinating back stories.”

  “For soap stars?” Milo scoffed and then crooned, “She survived three tragically inadequate liposuction procedures to come back and lead the billionaire board of trustees to a shocking mutiny against Mr. Blitzbomb-Newlander’s corporate empire.”

  Parker cackled like a cartoon witch. Milo and Jill exchanged surprised glances. The geriatric squad in booth #9 frowned them all back into silence, but Jill’s gaze lingered on him. When did he get so funny?

  Smiling, Parker wagged a finger at Milo. “Yes, Milo Halsey. You’re the wild card.” She wiped up her crumbs with a napkin. “Okay, you two. We’ll clean up this mess. Team Northwest is going to shine. We’ll be classy. We’ll be fresh. As a measure of atonement, be extra nice to the others. Helpful, supportive, the whole bit. They need to know you didn’t do this on purpose.” She tossed her wadded napkin over Milo’s head into a waste receptacle. “Figure we’ll start those Olympic moments at the next shoot. We need them yesterday.”

  “Sans Speed-o.” Milo kept his face straight.

  “Yes, but for the love of spandex, wear something! We don’t want to copy Tallahassee.”

  ***

  “We�
�d better split up today, huh?” Jill wrinkled her nose. Parker’s team meeting at a park had only marginally thawed the arctic glares blasting towards Milo and Jill, and now they were all supposed to go plan their Olympic Moments for an hour.

  “Probably would look better, yeah.” Milo donned his sunglasses. “It’s going to be okay, Jill. We’ll get through this.”

  Jill nodded, her skin prickling as he went off toward Amaya. Without enthusiasm, Jill settled herself against a tree and searched her phone’s photos for ideas that cast the right light on the girl-next-door who maybe escaped total vanilla boredom once in a while.

  Near the end of the hour, Crawford sauntered up. “What, no lover boy?”

  Jill shielded her eyes to look up at him. Says the guy who’s always off with Chieko? “You mean Milo? We’re just friends.”

  He crouched and Jill got a whiff of his spicy-sweet cologne. The sunlight played nicely through his tousled hair and she allowed herself a few seconds to enjoy the overall view. She could tell he was doing the same and thanked her lucky stars that her faded capris and lacy sleeveless top flaunted her curves advantageously.

  “Really just friends?” His tone sent a tickle to her stomach. “So, the newspaper and the videos online …?”

  “The newspaper story was all from Milo’s parents’ perspective, and they’ve had us married in their minds since middle school.”

  “Ah.” His smile hitched up on one side. “So, you’re not honoring that engagement?”

  “I don’t think it’s a binding legal arrangement.” She felt a traitorous blush rise in her cheeks as Crawford dropped smoothly to sit next to her.

  “Well, that’s good to know.” He blinked slowly and grinned. “Because I’ve had my eye on you since that first day.”

  “Oh?”

  “And I was hoping to maybe … get more on you.”

  Jill bit her lip, unsure of what to say to such an awful pick-up line.

  “Five minutes!” Parker’s voice carried across the field.

  Grateful, Jill got to her feet and dusted off the grass. “Let’s talk about that after the session today. I should go freshen up.”

  His grin widened and she could feel his gaze on her back as she trotted back to the bathrooms by the covered picnic tables. Inside, Amaya leaned into the cloudy mirror, touching up her lipstick. Jill turned on the sink and splashed some cool water on her face.

  “Was Slime Ball hitting on you, too?” she asked.

  “Crawford?”

  “My mama warned me about guys like that, but man! He’s one fast operator.”

  “Why? What did he do?”

  “He and I were the first to arrive.” She slipped the make-up back in her purse and pulled out a pick to fluff her hair. “The guy comes up all charm, and within about two minutes, he’s making a move to kiss my neck.”

  A lump rose in Jill’s throat. “What did you do?”

  “I pulled away and caught him in the act. He was trying to get a selfie vid of us making out or something. Can you believe that?”

  Jill splashed her face with water again. “Think he’s collecting women or something?”

  “I don’t know if he wants sex, or if he’s trying his own publicity leak, or what.” Amaya shot Jill a look she couldn’t interpret.

  Feeling winded, Jill hurried through the make-up routine. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “He’s nothing like Milo.”

  Jill felt Amaya’s studious gaze. “True.”

  “A perfect gentleman.” Her eyes sparkled a little as she went back outside.

  “Uh-huh. She’s crushing on Milo.” Jill frowned and daubed on some more mascara just as a stall door opened. Chieko appeared in the reflection behind her, eyes red and puffy from crying.

  “Hey.” Jill tried not to stare at her. “You about ready? Parker called time.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Jill took the cue and slipped out to join the others while Chieko did whatever she needed to get her face in order.

  “Milo, you don’t really want to win, do you?” Jill managed to sit cross-legged like a campfire girl in the passenger seat.

  “Not really.” He stole a glance to gauge her reaction.

  “And Crawford’s a Slime Ball.”

  “Oh? That sounds juicy. What—”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I’m pretty sure I do.”

  She back-handed him gently. “Just … I think Antonio has the cards stacked against him. Not just in this show, but … in life.”

  “A win, even at the regional level, could help him, I guess. The ten thousand. What’s your point?”

  “What if we had a sleep-over?”

  Milo’s foot slipped off the gas for a second before he recuperated. “What?!” Why am I questioning this?!

  “At your parents’ house, if they’d let us. We could even sleep out on the tramp or something.”

  Milo’s vision blurred with a parade of imagined spectacular outcomes this could have. He gripped the wheel tighter. “I would love that. It’s a great idea!”

  “Awesome! You call your parents and ask, and I’ll call Antonio.”

  “What?!”

  Scene 11: Backstage Romances

  Jill and Milo sat in the porch swing of the Halsey home waiting for Antonio to arrive. “You have to trust me on this. It’s the right thing to do.” Milo still looked like he needed convincing. “His commute to shoots every day is so long.”

  “This is only cutting an hour off the time.”

  “One way. That’s two hours he could be with his brothers.” She clasped her hands in the her little-girl-begging pose. “Please? Be a sport. It’ll be fun.”

  Just then, a dusty green Subaru Forrester pulled into the drive.

  “That’s them!” Jill bounded to her feet, leaving Milo in the swing.

  Antonio got out, looking at Jill warily. “Why are you guys doing this?”

  “You have an 8am shoot.”

  “Yeah, but … why bring the boys to your house?”

  “It’s not my house. It’s Milo’s parents’ house.”

  “Wait, the leakers?”

  Milo strolled over, rolling his eyes. “Yes, the leakers. The nice ones who took us all to lunch that first day, remember?” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Look, the house is big enough to sleep us all easily.”

  “Did you get the whole day off work or not?” pressed Jill.

  Antonio ran his fingers through his thick black hair and nodded.

  “Then let’s meet these guys!” Jill ducked and waved at the two boys in the back seat of the car. “Let them out before they roast.”

  Antonio thumped on the roof of the car with his palm. “Carlos, Emilio. Vengan a conocer mis amigos del show.”

  Jill glanced sideways at Milo. “I caught ‘show’. How about you?”

  “I took Russian, remember?”

  “Nyet.”

  The two boys emerged, cautiously eyeing Milo and Jill.

  Her heart melted instantly for their huge, chocolate eyes. “Oh, my goodness, you boys are so handsome!” She barely contained a happy dance. “This is so going to work! You two are going to be the stars of the show!”

  Milo did a double take. “Wait, what?”

  Jill widened her eyes at him and mouthed, Olympic moment.

  Milo scrunched his face into a confused expression.

  She decided to ignore his odd mood and turned back to the boys. “Did you bring something to swim in? Milo’s got a pool.”

  As the boys retrieved their backpacks, Antonio glanced at his watch. “It’s so early, though. What are we going to do all day on a Thursday?”

  Jill could almost feel her credit card jumping in her purse. “Oh, I thought we’d give the boys a special day on the town. Come on, now. Get your stuff!”

  Milo watched Jill and Antonio verbally wrestle back and forth, irked by how many times she touched his arm while pleading. At last he interrupted, stepp
ing in between them. “Antonio, just let her. Her family is loaded and she doesn’t have any brothers or sisters to spoil or boss around. This is making her so happy.”

  Jill gave him a grateful grin and extended her hands to Carlos and Emilio. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Reluctant to get too friendly with Antonio, Milo still felt duty-bound to support Jill’s whim. “She needs this.”

  Antonio shook his head. “What do you mean? If she’s rich, why does she need this?”

  The answer struck Milo hard in the gut right as he said it. “She’s got money, but no family. I mean, not the kind that loves and spends time with her. You’ve got family, but no money. You’re the one who’s rich.”

  Antonio looked at the boys wistfully. “I don’t know what to say. But yeah. My brothers are everything to me. I’d do anything for them.”

  “Even be a soap star?” Milo gave him a wry grin.

  Antonio laughed. “I have to beat you, first.”

  Milo snorted. “I’m not the competition. Crawdad is.”

  “I could take him down in a fair fight.”

  “Man, I’d love to see that!” Milo gestured at the kids. “You should probably set some ground rules for Jill, or she’ll have them so hyped up they won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

  “Yeah, and we still need to get them up early, even if the drive isn’t so long now.” Antonio held out his hand. “Thanks again, man. This is really nice of you.”

  Milo shook Antonio’s hand, still very unsure about where this day would go.

  ***

  Milo could feel that Jill’s current excitement revolved around the boys and doing something kind for them, but could still not comprehend why she felt it was her duty to play the beautiful, bouncy fairy, granting wishes. He felt himself torn between admiration for how well she worked with the children and jealousy because this meant she had more interaction with Antonio. How could he compete with that? He didn’t have cute little brothers. Maybe he should get a puppy. Those were chick magnets, right?

  As the children climbed the bike racks outside the ice cream parlor with cones in hand, Milo sidled closer, wondering if the heat he felt came from the sun or her skin. “You’re amazing, Jill. For someone who never had siblings, you have this down.”