Chapter Seven

"Keep filming," the director yells, and everyone goes back to their places.

Luca makes sure I'm steady on my feet before he steps back. "I'm King Reginald Lucannon St. Marten, at your service, my lady."

That freaking accent. It's super British. I thought the man was English, not Ralavian. Ralavious. Ralavan. I don't know. Of course I don't know anything. If this had been a regular job, I would have studied everything I could about it and the people involved, but I'm not truly here to help the production. I'm here to spy, so all my research has been on Joseph Helms.

There's the sound of a throat clearing. You know what I mean. It's that sound that tells you you're taking too long.

I'm sorry my panic attack is going on too long. I thought I was on one show, but it turns out I'm Meredith Grey meeting my boss after I slept with him the night before. Except for the sleeping with him bit. Even that feels important. Like maybe our body parts had been separate, but I swear there was some soul touching in there.

I'm going to have to force myself to get through this. I'm here to film my thirty-second spot and then get rejected.

By the sweetest, loveliest man I've ever met.

This suddenly sucks. Hard.

"Your Majesty, I'm Anika. I'm an executive assistant from New York." I sound like a pageant contestant. All I need is to throw in an I love America and I'll be Miss USA. I'm also merely parroting what I've been told to say. They don't want it to sound like I work in the entertainment field. Not relatable or something. Apparently I'm more relatable if the person I'm grabbing coffee for is a billionaire CEO and not a Hollywood director.

He gives me a grin that I feel in my freaking womb. I don't intend to use that particular body part for a long time, so it's not welcome. "It's lovely to meet you, Anika."

Awesome. We've done the hard part, and I can go blend into a wall at the cocktail party. If I can find one that's made of gold glitter. If I can't, I might stand out. Though if I stand next to Tiara Kate, no one will notice me because of her flashing diamonds.

I start to pull away, but his hand holds mine fast.

"Are you from the city?" he asks. "Or did you mean the state?"

He knows exactly where I'm from, but he seems to know how this game is played. I don't want to play with him. He's the only man in years I've met who seemed real to me. It hurts to find out the truth. "Born and raised in Hell's Kitchen."

He looks me up and down, though somehow manages to make it not feel like he's leering. Rather he looks at me like I'm a work of art and he appreciates me. "A Manhattan Princess. Intriguing."

"I'm no princess, Lu…Your Majesty." I don't care that the cameras are rolling. I need him to understand. "I'm just a person."

"You think a king can't be a person?"

"I think a king has obligations I can't imagine." I can't help but think about what he'd said to me that night. He couldn't kiss me, couldn't stay with me because he had something he had to do. I'd honestly thought he hadn't found me attractive and had a charming way to get out of doing something he didn't want to do.

What if he'd been honest with me? He'd known he had to be right here for the next few weeks, and then he would have to show his fiancée off to the world so his plans could work. It could be a year or so before he and whoever won his "heart" could be free.

His hand shifts on mine, and he's bringing it to his lips. "But suddenly obligations don't seem so terrible." His eyes hold mine, and then he releases my hand. "After all, I'm surrounded by beautiful women."

"Thirteen of them." My mouth is running of its own accord now because the carefully laid plan is blown. I'm already supposed to be in that mansion, wolfing down whatever's passed for appetizers and counting down the time to when I can get out of these shoes. "You know it takes thirteen to make a coven. Now that would be fun. If you were dating thirteen witches and they could hex each other and send you love spells."

His eyes have widened, and I know I'm having one of those Anika moments. Right on the Internet.

"I think I'll stick to women like you." He's smiling at me like he finds me perfectly charming and not weirdly quirky in a "she might lose her shit and kill me" way.

I do have that look about me sometimes. Or so I've been told. "Well, I should go and join the others."

He reaches over and smooths back a lock of hair that's escaped the rest. He tucks it behind my ear in a sweetly affectionate way. "I'll see you in there, Anika."

And I'm released. I practically run away, fleeing up the steps as I hear the host of the show step in.

"Well, she was interesting," the host says in a jokey way that lets me know he would cut me right now.

"She was indeed intriguing, Tom," I hear Luca say.

"So is your queen here?"

"Oh, I definitely think my queen is here this evening," Luca assures him as one of the assistants opens the door for me.

He says more, but the door closes quietly behind me.

And I get ready to face the music.

"What the hell, Ani?" Ivy's voice comes over the line. "I'm sitting here making fun of women who think it's a good idea to date a dude on camera and suddenly one of my best friends is there. Trying to date a dude on live TV."

I've spent the last hour moving from whatever room Luca was in to one he wasn't in, watching most of the women snag him for some one-on-one time.

It's maddening.

When I'd felt my cell buzz in my bra, I'd snuck away.

"And is that the same guy from the bar?"

Ivy hadn't talked much to Luca beyond threatening his life if he murdered me. When we'd gotten to the café, she and Heath had been in a deep discussion of how to fix their AI's sarcastic bent. I thought maybe not be around her so much. It was obvious to me the AI was learning from its source material.

I'm huddled in the corner of the luxurious mansion that is being used to house the potential queens. I can hear the ladies partying in the other room. I'm holed up in what passes for the kitchen. I say passes because there's no food here. Just bottles of wine and booze and diet soda. I know there's some canapés being walked around, but when my cell phone had buzzed, I'd realized I hadn't locked the sucker up the way I should have. At least I'd turned off the ringer.

I'm going to get in trouble, but what's the worst that can happen? They fire me and then I don't have to watch the man I've been crushing on date a whole bunch of gorgeous women? Go into fantasy suites with them? I'm an assistant here, so I could be the one he calls to get him a box of condoms.

"Yes, and I didn't know," I say into the phone, keeping my voice down because they're filming. This part isn't live, so it feels more normal to me.

Not that anything feels normal.

"But didn't you spend the night with him?" Ivy's voice has gone low, too. "Wait. Hold on. Harper's calling in. I knew she was going to watch it. She acts so pretentious. Like she only watches PBS or something. Hah. She slums with the rest of us."

There's a pause and then Harper's voice comes over the line. "Holy shit. Ivy, are you watching this? Why is Anika falling out of a Central Park carriage dressed like a slutty Academy Award?"

I wince, but the description is accurate. "I'm not used to these heels."

"Ani? I thought you would be…well, I don't know," Harper admits. "What the hell is going on? Was that Luca? That looked like Luca. He did not mention he rules over a small European country. That feels like something he should have talked about."

If I'm panicking, at least I have my girlies freaking out with me. "I know, right?"

"Or he could have wanted one normal night before he had to start this show." Ivy plays a part she doesn't normally play. The voice of reason. She's usually better at being the voice of rage. "I know I'm not like a king or anything, but as the only one of us who has been on the cover of a magazine, it can be nice to meet someone who doesn't know who you are. Who doesn't have any expectations of you."

Who doesn't know how brutal your fall from grace had been. Ivy is well on the way to climbing back up the hill, but she took the hard way down once.

I can see what she's saying. "I told him I'm a production assistant. He should have told me he was about to be involved in a production."

"Sure. He was supposed to think that in a city of eight point five million with hundreds of production studios, that you would be working on his."

Ivy is starting to annoy me. "He could have asked. But no. He was too busy playing that stupid game Heath gave us." I'd thought it made us go deep, but we should have spent some time in the shallows, too. This whole thing could have been avoided if we'd made normal small talk.

Me: Yeah, I work as a production assistant.

Luca: Oh, hey. I'm about to start a production. It's a reality show.

Me: Same. Wait. Is it the same?

And then we would have known, and I could have told the director to find another assistant to take corpse girl's place, and I would likely still have to grab his condoms from Duane Reade.

"Hey, he was only trying to help. Honestly, it was kind of my idea," Ivy says. "Also, uhm, burn those cards. They're annoying. He keeps asking me questions. He says he has to know everything about me before he formally proposes. He's a nosy bastard."

Oh, I'm going to buy him part two of that game and hope it has some blank cards so I can fill out a couple of questions of my own.

"I still have not heard why you were on my computer screen." Harper tries to bring us back to the problem at hand. "And why were you talking about covens? That was weird, you know. The Internet now thinks you're some kind of Wiccan."

"They do?"

"Oh, yeah," Ivy replies. "There are already fun threads on your vid. Some of them think you're going to try to enchant the king. Most of them think you're a cute weirdo. And there's talk that you faked that pratfall."

That's horrifying. "I did not. Why would I do that?"

"Hey, a wardrobe malfunction can jumpstart a girl's career," Ivy continues. "But they don't know you. We know you can trip over air."

"Thank god he caught you. That dress… Tell me you're wearing underwear." Harper sounds like my mom.

I don't want to lie to her. There's a reason I haven't sat down even once. I'm not sure that would end well. "Well, my granny panties made lines, and I didn't bring a thong."

Harper groans.

"Look, one of the other girls dropped out, and the director needed thirteen for timing or something." Though now that I think about it, maybe it is a dark ritual. It feels like one. "It doesn't matter. Luca is going to reject me at the live elimination. Tell me no one's watching."

I know I should be pulling for this thing to be successful, but I'm being selfish.

"Yeah, absolutely no one's watching." Ivy is usually an excellent liar. I feel like she's not even trying here.

"It's late. No one cares. It was a stupid idea." Harper makes a better attempt.

I still don't buy it. "How many?"

Ivy laughs. "Oh, man, it's got a million plus views already. Ani, people love you. I mean they're totally making fun of you, but they love you. And there is zero way that man is going to reject you."

"He looked at you like he could eat you up," Harper agrees. "They're talking about that on the Internet too. You two are hot together."

I knew something they didn't know. "Doesn't matter because he's going to cut me loose."

The door slams open and my nemesis is standing there, his face a glowering red. "Are you fucking kidding me? You are not supposed to have a cell phone."

I wince. "I forgot about it. I'm also not supposed to be a contestant on a reality show, but here we are."

"They're looking for you. We need you for the welcome champagne shot. Get your ass out here," Patrick barks.

"I have to go," I say into the phone. "It's going to be okay. By tomorrow everyone will forget tonight. I'm just one more girl in a short dress who should watch where she's walking. Talk to you tomorrow."

I hang up before they can argue with me.

Patrick holds out his hand.

I stare at him.

"Phone." He looks even more irritated than usual as he shifts his attention from me back to the living room and then back to me as though I'm keeping him from his real job but I'm also dangerous, so it's not like he can take his eyes off me.

All contestants give up their phones. They're allowed to talk to loved ones but under some kind of supervision. Contestants can't spend all their time mooning over a man and fighting each other for him if they're on their phones.

I stride to him, wincing because my feet hurt, and drop my precious phone into his hands. "I'll expect that back in a couple of hours."

He slides it into his pocket. "You have an odd sense of time, Fox. The elimination ceremony goes live in fifteen minutes. The director is upset that you didn't do one of the live shots from the cocktail party. You know all the other women snagged the king to get some one-on-one time. You're supposed to be pretending to be a contestant, not an ornately dressed hermit."

So my plan has worked. I'll deal with Joseph being irritated with me. It might be helpful because I'll see how he handles being annoyed by his subordinates. I walk through the French doors because this is almost over. I'll be locked into my postage-stamp apartment, curled in a fetal position on my Murphy bed in mere hours. I will nurse a bottle of wine and try not to Google myself.

I might stay off the Internet forever.

Patrick moves ahead of me, disappearing onto the set.

As I turn the corner to join the other women, I wonder how I would look with red hair. And a new face.

And I bump straight into a big hunk of man.

Luca reaches out to steady me, and a grin lights his gorgeous face. "Ah, Anika. I've been looking for you."

The kitchen hadn't been enough. I should have hidden in the pantry.