Page 32 of Lucky Star

Chapter Twelve

Sarah

Icarried a manila folder into Broderick’s office, surprised to see him already sitting at his desk. Usually, I was in the office at least an hour before him.

I waved hello and set the report down in the wire basket on the corner of his desk.

“Hey. You got a minute?”

“Sure.” I plunked down in the leather chair across from him.

Without preamble, he asked, “How come you weren’t truthful about the nature of your relationship with Cameron?”

During our conversation the week prior, I’d been evasive at best, and had outright lied at worst. It just depended on your perspective. “I did.”

“You said you knew him. You didn’t say you were with the guy.”

I’d known I was going to have to tell Broderick about Cameron and me, but I’d wanted to be able to do it on my terms. Not as some sort of inquisition. Never mind that I was pretty sure this whole conversation was one massive HR violation. “It’s complicated.”

“Complicated enough that he was hanging out in the parking lot on Friday night?”

“We were on a break?”

“How very Ross Geller of you.”

“It wasn’t like that,” I said, my voice coming out a tad touchy.

“What was it like then?” he asked, leaning back in his chair and linking his fingers over his middle. “There are a lot of rumors about you two.”

I looked down at the ring on my finger and twisted it around. I couldn’t say why, but suddenly I was nervous. Our engagement wasn’t some dirty little secret, but sitting across from my boss, I didn’t think he’d see it that way. I wasn’t naïve. And yet, I wouldn’t hide it either.

“We’re engaged.” I held up my hand to show him the ring, and instead of offering his congratulations, his lips thinned into an angry slash.

“Who knows?”

“Why does it matter?” Even though I’d expected something like this, I was going to force him to say the words out loud.

Broderick grabbed a pen and scribbled something in his notebook. “We’ve got the publicity team coming in this afternoon. Since Cameron’s a relative unknown, they’re going to recommend one of two options to boost his star power.” He dropped his pen and stared at me. “The first option will be to set him up with some rising starlet. Depending on who his agent recommends—likely one of her own clients—by tomorrow night, the gossip mill will be flooded with pictures of the happy couple having an intimate, candlelight dinner.”

Wait, what?

Did that mean Julie had already given the green light, and if so, had she told Cameron? Was that what had prompted him to rush our engagement?

And yet, that wasn’t the worse-case scenario. I’d been around long enough to have seen option number two play out more than once.

“Or,” I said, taking over the reins of the conversation, “they’ll fabricate a relationship between Cameron and Jillian. They’ll leak pics from the set of them hanging out together, laughing at inside jokes. And even though I’m your assistant and therefore will be around all the damn time, somehow, I’ll be mysteriously missing from each and every shot. They’ll make it look like he and Jillian are so caught up in each other they don’t even notice the paparazzi lurking in the bushes.” Miraculously, my voice never wavered. Inwardly, I gave myself a high five for holding my shit together when I felt like the world was falling apart around me.

“Look, Sarah, I know this is shit timing for you personally, but this is the nature of the business. We can’t have millions of women lusting after some dude with a new wife. Cameron is going to have to agree to one of these scenarios, so I need you to tell me which one hurts the least.”

The problem was, both would tear me apart. The bigger problem was that I wasn’t good for Cameron’s career. As much as I’d wanted to pretend otherwise, I wasn’t naïve. Stupid, maybe. But I knew the game and how it was played. This movie was his big break. If it meant never having to worry about his next job, I would have to swallow my pride.

But just like I knew how this game worked, I also knew he wasn’t the only player. If Jillian didn’t go along with the charade, things might be tolerable once we left for Vancouver for principle filming. Surely, whichever starlet Julie wanted to set Cameron up with wouldn’t make the trip too.

“What does Jillian say?”

“She has a long-term boyfriend in London no one seems to know about. According to her agent, it’s no great imposition to keep him a secret. He’s a famous chef or something, so he’s too busy to care what she does on a set. He won’t be a problem.”

“Is that what I am? A problem?”

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