Pretending to Be Us

by Taylor Holloway

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” she said. Then she bit her lip. “I do want to talk about it actually. I just can’t.” Her expression was defeated.

  “Why not?” I blinked. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  She stared down at her mostly uneaten fish. “I just... it would change the way you think of me if I told you and I don’t want that.”

  She thought I would judge her? Hardly.

  “Everybody has family problems,” I promised her. “I have an uncle who’s a total recluse, remember? Connor Prince? He used to be a huge deal in Hollywood and ever since his big scandal he's like the freakin’ Phantom of the Opera. The only time I ever see him is at Christmas and he gets weirder and weirder every year. Recently he’s grown this giant beard and I barely even recognize him.”

  She smiled thinly. “I’m just worried about some stuff right now,” she said after a moment. “I wish I could tell you everything. I would if I could. I’m sure you’ll find out eventually, but I just hope you don’t hate me when you do.” Her delicate hands made themselves into worried fists and then she folded them neatly in her lap. “I’m not this perfect princess you think I am,” she said finally. “I’m just a regular person with all kinds of bad problems.”

  I grinned at her. “You think I want you to be a perfect princess? I just want you to be you.”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t think you do. But it’s nice to hear anyway.”

  “Why don’t you try me?” I asked. “I might surprise you.”

  “You’ve already surprised me,” she said. “I’ve had the most wonderful day. Let’s not ruin it with too much reality.”

  I stifled a sigh. Did she think I wanted a fling? This is why being impulsive is bad. I’d probably have to ease into things with her. If I told her I was head over heels for her, she’d bolt. “Okay,” I told her, aiming for casual. “Do you want to go look at the castle? It’s pretty at night.”

  She perked up, but her walls were up again. “That sounds wonderful. Then we probably need to go meet everybody else. I’m exhausted.”

  It was painfully obvious that Lucy didn’t trust me. That was okay. Anything worth having would require a little bit of doing. Now that I’d had a taste of her, I was definitely up for the challenge.

  24

  Lucy

  “Last week it was the water and electricity, this week it’s the mortgage, but now we just received a hospital bill and I don’t think I can keep this up, Daniel.” I was face down on the pillow in my gigantic, palatial, unbelievably gorgeous suite in Wallace Prince’s ‘modest’ second home in Avignon. “We need to be shooting. I need to be working. This is going to all come crashing down if I can’t even keep my family off the street!”

  “Huh?” Daniel asked. I looked up to see him distractedly texting. Bill was at his feet, fast asleep.

  “Did you hear me?” I asked.

  “Sorry.” He shook his head and put the phone down. He took in my expression and came over to sit next to me. “I’m really sorry. You’re upset. What’s up?”

  I resisted the urge to scream at him. Nice of him to finally notice I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “If I’m not working, I’m not getting paid. We just received a bill for thousands of dollars for my grandmother’s ER visit the other day.”

  “I thought you guys never went to the ER.” He frowned. “You said that your grandmother made you go to IHOP instead.”

  I shook my head. “Not that time. The other one from a couple of months ago. Mormor fell and broke her wrist. They billed us seven thousand dollars!”

  “Seven thousand dollars for a wrist?”

  “I know!” My voice sounded whiny, but I didn’t even care. “She’d needed a teeny tiny surgery to put a pin in her wrist. It had only taken a few minutes. They didn’t even put her all the way asleep.”

  “That’s a lot of money,” Daniel said.

  “Yeah, and I don’t have it.” I couldn’t believe they honestly expected us to have seven thousand dollars just sitting around. Nobody I knew had that kind of money. I reassessed my surroundings. That wasn’t true anymore.

  “Doesn’t your grandmother have Medicare?” Daniel asked. “She should be eligible, right?”

  I winced at the reminder. “Mormor is in the US illegally. She doesn’t have any benefits like that. She was only supposed to come for a visit a few years back, but then she never left. See, her husband died, and she was lonely. She said she couldn’t be alone in Sweden. She just moved in with us. I know there was paperwork that we were supposed to do, but it was all so complicated...”

  I’d been trying to take classes at the community college while working at the hospital when Mormor arrived and announced that her visit would be permanent. My mom promised she’d take care of everything, but she never did. I think she was overwhelmed by it. The only good thing was that the government wasn’t particularly concerned about little old Swedish ladies overstaying their visas.

  Daniel frowned. I could see the gears turning in his lawyer brain. “That’s... not great. There are, um, some things that you can do from a legal perspective, but--”

  “They all cost money?” I asked sarcastically.

  He nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I told him. “I just know they’re going to come after us for all that money and I’m not getting paid for coming to Avignon and sleeping with my costar.”

  Daniel’s jaw dropped open. “What?!”

  I blinked. “Yeah. This afternoon.”

  “Wow. Congratulations,” he stuttered. His phone buzzed again, and he glanced down at it. He frowned. “I’m jealous.”

  “Who are you texting with?” I asked. Daniel was clearly distracted.

  “Santiago.” Daniel was mumbling, so at first I thought I misheard him.

  “Who?”

  “Santiago Diaz.”

  Now it was my time to gape. “Why are you texting with him?” I’d officially blocked Darcy. I just got tired of reading her bullshit.

  Daniel’s expression turned bashful. “We were supposed to meet up for a drink tonight, but he says he has to work.”

  “He works for Darcy!” I reminded him. “Aka our enemy. Remember?”

  I didn’t know much about Santiago other than the fact that he was a model who moonlighted as Darcy’s right hand. I just assumed he was in on all her evil schemes and shared her total lack of morals.

  “Sure. But Santiago’s not our enemy,” Daniel said, frowning. “He seems like a nice guy, actually.”

  I swallowed. “No. Daniel. He’s not nice. Please stay away from him. I know he’s really, really good looking, but he’s out to get us.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know he works for Darcy. I know she trusts him. I know that means we can’t.”

  Daniel shook his head. “I don’t think so, Lucy. He doesn’t really like her very much. She’s really mean to him. He showed me some of the texts she sent him. She’s really a horrible bitch. I can’t believe you worked for her for more than five minutes.”

  “Daniel! This is a setup! He’s working with her.” There was no way that Daniel hanging out with Santiago could possibly be a good situation for either of us. I didn’t trust Santiago any more than I trusted Darcy. Less maybe, because at least I knew what Darcy was capable of. Santiago was a total unknown.

  Panic blossomed in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t think I could get more stressed out, but apparently there’s no ceiling for insecurity and paranoia. My blood pressure was probably 200 over 150. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes and I fought to keep my temper in check.

  Daniel frowned at my obviously worked-up state. “You slept with Peter Prince,” he told me. “I don’t think you’ve got the high ground here on making smart choices. So maybe don’t order me around.”

  I squeaked in surprise. “That’s not fair,” I argued. “Peter isn’t trying to get me—both of us—fired and disgraced.”

  “Neither is Santiago.”r />
  “Don’t be naïve.”

  “I’m not in love with Santiago,” Daniel said. He was irritated. “I just wanted to have a drink with him. Honestly, it’s kind of nice to be honest with someone for a change. He may not be perfect, but I’ve spent all day for the last few weeks lying to everyone I meet. Santiago knows what’s really going on here. It’s hard pretending to be your slavish assistant all day.”

  I sucked in my breath. “You aren’t my slave. We both wanted to do this.” I frowned. “Have I been treating you badly?”

  Daniel’s expression softened a tiny bit. “No. You’re great, Lucy.” He sighed. “It’s not you. It’s... the whole situation is just hard, you know?”

  I nodded. “I know. It’s horrible. I hate all this lying.”

  “If you really think he’s bad news, I won’t go out with Santiago,” Daniel told me. “But in return, you have to promise not to see Peter Prince. If we’re going to do this, we have to make smarter choices. Both of us.”

  I swallowed. “I like Peter.”

  I liked him a lot. And it wasn’t just physical either. He was kind and funny and smart. I’d thought he was just a materialistic A-lister at first, but he wasn’t. He made fun action movies because that’s what he genuinely enjoyed. Did that make me love Jaws 3D? No. But I wasn’t going to run down what he liked just because it wasn’t what I liked. He wasn’t just chasing the almighty dollar. He just wanted to have fun at work. And who could judge someone for that?

  But liking him created a lot more problems than it solved.

  “And I like Santiago,” Daniel said. He frowned. His phone beeped again. “He wants to meet me downstairs and I want to go. So, what do we do?”

  “I don’t know.” I flopped back down onto the bed despondently. I’d felt so good just a few hours ago, but now it was all gone. “I really just don’t know.”

  25

  Peter

  Lucy avoided me the next day. And the next. I occasionally saw her darting across courtyards and around corners, but I could never pin her down for a conversation or a kiss. When I ran into Daniel, he explained that Vanessa was keeping her busy. It was all perfectly believable, but it was also frustrating. All I wanted was some time alone with her, but she was nowhere to be found. Darcy, however, managed to find me without any issues.

  My dad’s villa in Avignon was not technically a castle, but it was big enough and elaborate enough that you would have thought Darcy wouldn’t have been able to find me if I didn’t want to be found. It wasn’t though. Because she found me. Each time I managed to come up with some lame excuse for why I couldn’t talk to her, but eventually I ran out.

  “Want to go down to the village with me for some coffee?” she asked when she located me sulking in the library on the third day of our visit. “I was looking for Santiago to get him to go fetch me some, but he’s nowhere to be found.”

  I looked up from the battered Tom Clancy novel I’d found shoved between couch cushions amidst an otherwise much more rarefied book selection. Someone must have smuggled it in. Probably one of my brothers. I’d never been much of a reader, but I didn’t mind a good thriller or adventure. As long as there wasn’t too much scenery chewing. I couldn’t stand authors who couldn’t get to the point.

  “Oh, no thanks, Darcy,” I told her. “I think I saw Santiago and Daniel taking Bill for a walk in the gardens. He might be down there.”

  Darcy sat down next to me on the couch. A bit too close. She was wearing a low cut dress a size or two too small and very high heels. An odd choice for a quiet morning in France, but whatever. I just hoped she wasn’t wearing it for me.

  “Have you seen Lucy today?” she asked me. She said her name like it was a dirty word.

  I shook my head. “No. Have you? I’ve been looking for her.”

  Darcy smirked. “She must be off doing important Swedish princess things.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “Like what?” I shifted a little bit away from Darcy and she used it as an excuse to get closer. The woman had no sense of personal space. Either that or she wanted into mine.

  Darcy’s expression worried me, but I wasn’t sure why. “Oh, I don’t know,” she purred eventually. “She’s a very mysterious person, isn’t she? I feel like she must have a lot of secrets. A lot of secrets.”

  “You think Lucy has secrets?” I asked. My ears strained for someone, anyone, to come rescue me from Darcy, but it was quiet. I would have to find my own way out of this conversation.

  “Everyone in Hollywood has dirty secrets, don’t they?” Darcy asked. “It’s the nature of the business. We’ve all got angles.”

  “Lucy’s not from Hollywood,” I reminded Darcy. “She’s not like that at all.”

  “No. She’s from, um, Sweden, isn’t she?” Darcy laughed. “I keep forgetting. Her accent is so good.”

  I’d initially thought Darcy’s reactions to Lucy were strange, and they’d only gotten stranger on this trip. Darcy had been the one to arrange Lucy’s audition. She was the reason we met her in the first place. The fact that she immediately turned on her when she got the part still made no sense to me.

  “Why don’t you like Lucy?” I asked. “I feel like you’ve been suspicious of her from the start.”

  I didn’t really think I would get a straight answer out of her, but I felt obligated to try. Darcy had been attached to this production from the very beginning. It made no sense to me that she would try to undermine it.

  Darcy’s dark eyes were fathomless, and the huge, fake eyelashes she wore made them look like spiders. She stared at me intensely for a few seconds and then looked away. The spider legs brushed her cheeks and then she stared up at me again. She was, I think, faking an earnest and innocent expression. “I just want to make the best movie possible.”

  “And you think that means recasting the Eva role?” I asked. It was the only explanation that made any sense, even though it seemed like an enormous waste. We’d already shot the whole movie at this point. Recasting would be expensive. And it would take forever.

  Darcy nodded. “I’m actually very glad we ended up coming here to Avignon. The production delays are a burden to our budget, but at least it gives us all a chance to take a hard look at the choices we’ve made about the production. Maybe we’ll find options we didn’t think we had.” Her leg was right up against mine. She slid a bit closer and then she laid her palm atop my knee. Her posture and familiarity were unapologetically suggestive. Her nearness made me uncomfortable. “Sometimes a little perspective opens up all kinds of new opportunities. Even for us.”

  Darcy was too close. I could smell her perfume and the tips of her hair tickled my arm. She wanted something from me that I wasn’t able to give her.

  “I’m sorry?” I asked, hoping she wasn’t referring to me and her.

  “I think you know what I’m saying,” she replied. Her voice had become a breathy whisper.

  I did. I wanted no part of it. The only person I wanted to be close to was Lucy. I sat up straight and cleared my throat. “Excuse me,” I said, determined to get myself out of this situation before it escalated. “I think I need to go.”

  Darcy pressed her fingertips against my chest. She knew she was being rejected, but her confidence was unshakeable. “Be careful,” she told me, leaning in against my ear before I could twist around her and escape. “She’s not who she pretends to be.”

  “Who?”

  She looked at me like I was foolish. “Lucy Bergen, obviously. Our precious little princess.”

  I froze. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve heard some rumors,” Darcy said. “I’m having Santiago look into them. I’m also taking an in depth look at all our contracts. I just want to tell you, professional to professional, that I have a feeling that Lucy might not be on this production much longer. So, I guess what I’m saying is: don’t get invested. Not in her performance. And definitely not in her.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean. Everybody loves Lucy.”<
br />
  “For now.”

  “What does that mean?” If I didn’t like novelists that couldn’t get to the point, personal interactions like this were torture.

  Darcy shrugged her shoulders and arched her back, so I’d have no choice but to stare at her cleavage. I looked out the window. “I’ll let you know if my research comes to anything. Lucy’s up on the veranda,” Darcy told me, leaning back. “See you at dinner.”

  I shot out of the room like it was about to explode.

  By the time I got up to the veranda, five stories above the library and accessible only by a narrow spiral staircase, Lucy wasn’t there. I did, however, see her leaving the villa in a taxicab from my excellent vantage point as far away from the exit to the villa as humanly possible. There was no way to catch up to her, although of course I was still going to try. I turned around and headed for the stairs.

  26

  Lucy

  “If Bill could talk, he’d tell you he doesn’t want to wear that ridiculous vest,” Santiago teased Daniel, lacing their fingers together and pulling him closer. “Animals shouldn’t wear clothes.”

  Daniel rolled his eyes but didn’t resist Santiago’s kiss. “Oh please,” he argued when they drew apart. “He likes looking snazzy. I feel like you of all people should appreciate that.” Daniel looked Santiago up and down. Daniel had a point. Santiago always looked like he fell off a fashion runway.

  “Well, if you put him in doggy Prada it would be a different story, wouldn’t it?”

  Daniel and Santiago were spending every waking moment together and I had to admit that they made a nice couple. They were both tall, dark, and handsome, and Santiago seemed to have the kind of dry, sarcastic sense of humor and penchant for practical jokes that could help balance some of Daniel’s wide-eyed optimism. They might be cute, and cracking little jokes all the time, but I didn’t trust Santiago one bit. I probably never would.