Page 20 of The Fake Family Deal

Priscilla holds the door open then closes it once we’re inside. “This is going terribly.”

“Don’t pull any punches, will you?” I say, though I can hardly argue with her.

She continues like she didn’t even hear me. “We need to do something to get you to actually look like you could reasonably pass as a couple.”

“And what do you suggest for that?” My voice is ice-cold, and Marina cringes beside me, embarrassed.

But Priscilla is more than used to my moods by now, so she just fixes me with a level look and doesn’t engage with my pettiness. “We think that it would be good for you to spend more time with Lila — some activities, you get the idea. At least that way you have an outside interest bringing you both together.”

“And what precisely would those ‘activities’ entail?” I ask, not entirely sure I like where this is going. I know I technically agreed to this “spend time with kid” thing, and yeah, she’s kind of cute, but I didn’t realize I’d be signing up to do “activities.”

“Is there anything you want to do?” Priscilla asks us, appealing to Marina to help too.

Unhelpfully, Marina stays silent.

There is a long, long moment where we all stare at each other, like every word ever invented has been sucked out of the room. Finally, Marina pipes up.

“There are a few things Lila and I like to do together,” she says timidly.

Priscilla smiles in a way that looks encouraging, but I know her well enough to know that it’s masking relief. “Go on?”

“She likes to paint. Well, she likes to play with paint. She’s not exactly an artist yet.”

“Great,” I mutter.

Priscilla gives me a sharp side-eye, silently telling me to stay in line. She can be so demanding. I guess it’s why I made her the boss.

“Good start,” says Priscilla. “We were also thinking of things like bath time, meals, walks, story time, stuff like that.”

“She does like stories. I can bring some of my books from home.”

“Fantastic,” I mutter. The inanity of this conversation is about to bore me to tears.

Marina takes a sharp breath, clenching her fist like she’s trying not to start a fight with me. Why the hell did she agree to all this when she clearly hates me? Why didIagree to it when I hate everything about it?

By the time we leave the room, we have some bad ideas, but we also have some good ones. Priscilla seems happy enough with our progress and lets us go so she can inform the crew of our plans.

Simon doesn’t seem to be any happier, though. So far, I don’t think we’ve given him any usable footage whatsoever. But that’shisproblem to figure out later.

We reconvene after lunch to start the afternoon shoot. The runners have laid out plastic sheeting over my hardwood and moved my rugs out the way. At least they’re not going to wreck my furniture.

Marina settles with Lila, whose eyes light up at the sight of paint, and my own face falls as I take a seat next to them. My knees dislike sitting on the floor like this. I haven’t done it in years and I never expected to have to again.

Lila claps her hands, and Marina breaks into a smile, then shoots me a glare as if to saycheer up!I ignore her. This is all pretend, and I’m not in the mood to act like I care about this kid, even if she is supposed to be mine.

“All right, we’re just gonna set up around you, and you just have to act as naturally as possible. Okay?” says Simon, frowning at us. I frown right back. “We’re not going to stop, so just keep on pretending you’re having fun. Don’t worry about being cohesive as we’ll edit together the best parts later on. Just act like you would act at any other time with nobody else here. Just be totally normal, okay?”

He gets more and more animated as he speaks, almost begging us to give him something good. I can’t blame him.I’dbe annoyed if my staff were performing this poorly, too.

“Okay, we can do it,” says Marina, a steely determination in her eyes. The director says nothing, just looks at us as if to sayyou’d better or else I’m going to have an aneurysm.

He goes to round up the camera crew and stands with his back to us as they discuss something about filming. I don’t really listen because I don’t really care, and Marina is distracting me by trying to wrangle Lila into sitting still.

The kid isreallyinto paint.

At last, the cameras turn on us and Marina lets out a sigh of relief as she lets Lila loose. “Go on, baby. What color do you like?”

Marina points at the various bottles of paint laid out before us, all in bright primary colors. Lila crawls right over the canvas to stare at them, sitting down hard and sticking her hand in her mouth as if she’s contemplating what she wants to do.

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