Page 26 of Lights, Camera, Love

Without needing any encouragement, my mind floats back to that night on the farm last week, when Evie and I shared a spontaneous drink on her cabin verandah. Unless I imagined it, there was a fiery little zing flying back and forth between us, which threw me so out of balance that I had to get up and leave.

‘Fuuuuck.’ Austin’s elongated growl steals back my focus.

‘Language,’ Jeremy chastises while Austin runs his fingers through his hair, his other hand tightly gripping the phone he’s gawking at.

‘What’s wrong?’ I reach across the table to snatch the phone off him.

My stomach drops at the social media post filling the screen. Nadia just uploaded a series of screencaps of an old text exchange between herself and Austin, in which he comes across as ruthlessly cruel, hostile and sexist.

Jesus fucking Christ.

I mutter an excuse to Austin’s parents, telling them that he and I need a minute to discuss a work issue. Austin jumps up and follows me into the apartment.

‘Why the hell did she post that?’ he spits out, chasing me down the hallway and into his bedroom. ‘That chat isyearsold.’

I shut the door so his parents can’t hear us. ‘I know.’

Austin already showed me these tasteless messages a while back—Nadia sent him the screencaps on the same day she sent the video of him jacking off to his own image, which she found on his computer.

He breathes out hard and sags onto the bed. If this post goes viral, the social media warriors are going to tear him apart. Austin’s fans won’t know—or care—that he sent those texts years ago, when his marriage was falling to pieces, and he wasn’t in a good place.

He blinks up at me, his eyes round. ‘What are we going to do? I look like a complete asshole in those messages. This could screw up everything I’m trying to achieve with this film, and I might not get another shot. Dad would never let me hear the end of it!’

I massage the back of my neck, thinking. ‘We need to do two things. One: we have to get those posts taken down right away. And to do that, you’re going to have to call Nadia.’

‘Noooo,’ he groans, clutching his cheeks.

‘Just play nice. Ring her and apologise; say that you’ve been too busy to be in touch. Don’t even think about implying that you miss her romantically, but youcanacknowledge her existence and your history together. Say it would be good to catch up as friends some time, but that if she wants to do that, she’ll have to take those posts down. Tell her it’s not right to expose a private moment between the two of you. Tell her you don’t want the public to know anything about your private life. Make her feel special, like she’s still a part of it.’

Austin’s skin has turned a pale shade of grey.

‘This is just temporary bullshit to get her to take down that post right away,’ I reassure him. ‘The second thing we need to do is make a serious effort to drive up excitement aroundMoving. If someone googles “Austin Reynolds” right now, we want articles about the movie to spring up everywhere, drowning out anything Nadia might post. The producers are doing fuck all to market it in advance. So, we need to do something to get people talking about it.’

His feet are tapping like mad against the jute rug. ‘Okay. So, how do we do that? I’m already posting behind-the-scenes stuff on my socials.’

‘We need something juicier than that.’

‘Juicier?’

Like the solution to a brain-teaser suddenly clicking into place, two photogenic faces come together in my mind—a match made in movie heaven. ‘You and Evie should pretend to be a couple,’ I say. ‘In real life, I mean.’

Austin’s brows slide up. ‘You mean fake dating? Like a PR stunt?’

I nod, doing a quick mental tally of the many Hollywood couples this has worked for in the past. ‘All we’d need to do is to get you guys seen around town. Cuddling, holding hands—stuff like that. We can tip off the paparazzi that Austin Reynolds has been spotted out and about with his new girlfriend, who also happens to be his co-star.’

His eyes grow large. ‘Fuck, man, I don’t know. Do we really want the media digging into my personal life?’ He blinks fast, staring into space.

‘As long as you’re not back on drugs, and we can keep Nadia’s stuff buried, what’s there to discover?’

He gulps hard. ‘Do you think Evie would even go for it?’

‘We can only ask, but I think she can be convinced.Movingis as much a romance movie as it is a dance film. If audiences believe that you and Evie are genuinely falling in love, they’ll pay good money to see that transpire on the big screen. And that’s good for her, too. But she has to be one hundred per cent in, or it’s not happening.’

He lets out a sharp breath. ‘I don’t know if she will, man. She’d be forever tied to me on those “who’s dated who” sites.’

I roll my eyes. ‘What a fucking nightmare. Being forever associated with one of the country’s biggest sex symbols.’

A blush flowers over Austin’s cheeks, and he looks away before smiling up at me. ‘You always tell me what I want to hear.’

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