Page 55 of The Love Lie
Palm trees pass in a blur.
“Emily!”
Water shimmers up ahead.
“Samantha!”
She stumbles in pure shock but somehow manages to keep her feet. The boat bobs ten feet away. One of the employees waves her forward, already reaching for her suitcase.
“Stop right there, Sam, and give me five minutes or I’m telling the whole world the truth about you. The truth about your sister.”
Everything within her comes to a screeching halt. Sam closes her eyes for a moment, to breathe, to think. Then she plasters a smile on her face, spins around, and plays dumb.
“Nina, oh my gosh. I didn’t realize that was you. A family emergency came up and I have to—”
“Cut the crap, Sam.”
Deny. Deny. Deny.“I don’t know what you mean? I’m not—”
“Iknow, Sam.” Nina pointedly arches her brow and snorts. Shedding her friendly skin, the cutthroat Hollywood producer slithers out of hiding. “I’ve known since the second you two switched places. Did you really think you could fool me? I mean, obviously, yes. But it’s my job to read people. To find their weaknesses. To play on their strengths. To expose the secrets they naively think they can keep hidden. And I’m good at my job, Sam. I’m very, very good. Even if I wasn’t, Emily and Jake were about as subtle as a foghorn.”
All the times Ninarandomlyhappened upon her and Cooper in the resort run through Sam’s mind. All the times the producercajoled them into hanging out. All the times she kept their ruse going just a little bit longer.
Why?
Suddenly, Sam remembers this is the woman who stood between her and Emily while the show was filming. The woman who wouldn’t let Sam get through to her sister even when she called the studio explaining there was a medical issue. The woman who tried to corner Emily into revealing her cancer diagnosis on-screen for the whole world to see.
Fuck her.
And fuck this.
Sam cocks her hip and crosses her arms over her chest. “So why pretend you bought it?”
“I wanted to wait and see how it all played out.” Nina shrugs, no hint of apology in her tone. “I wrote Jake a note after he left. I’m assuming he got it, which means he knew I knew, and so did Emily. I thought she would’ve told you when you got your phone back after filming wrapped, but when it became clear you and Cooper were still playing engaged, that for some reason you weren’t talking to your sister, I got curious.”
“Curious?”
“About what exactly was going on between you and Cooper.”
Sam’s throat tightens. “And?”
“And it’s a masterpiece.” A hungry gleam shines in the producer’s eyes. “We’ve had a lot of crazy things on this show, but we’ve never had a twin swap or a not-so-fake engagement or one of the contestants running off with a producer. I really thought I’d seen it all, and so do our fans, but this is something entirely new. A rarity in my line of work. A holy grail.”
Sam’s heart thuds painfully against her ribs, but she forces a sharkish grin. “Then it’s too bad you don’t have a single minute of the truth on film.”
“Who’s to say I don’t?”
Her blood pounds. “We would’ve seen the cameras.”
“Would you have? Phil is pretty experienced at remaining unseen. He’s been doing this for five years, after all.”
“We never dropped character outside of the room.”
“You mean the room Emily was staying in during filming? That room? Where we had hidden mics?”
It’s a bluff.
It’s got to be.
