"Fine," I grumble.
"And giving you the money upfront is a dangerous move. I mean, you could just leave town, couldn't you?"
Maybe that's the plan, I think to myself.
"Emmett will be taking you out for dinner, mini-trips, buying you whatever your heart desires, so don't forget that part too. In exchange, you'll need to pretend to be his girlfriend in your personal life and public one. This means, you can't tell your friends and family that this is a set-up. Not even your closest ones. Not even the ones whose wedding you were at. You can't trust any of them."
I nod, even though I already told Jackie everything this morning. Luckily I know she and Will can keep a secret. I exchange a glance with Emmett and wonder if he's told Will anything at all. Men can be so damn secretive, it wouldn't surprise me.
"Now," Autumn says, "that everything has been laid out, is this something you'd be willing to do Alyssa?"
I take a moment to think about it, even though I've already made up my mind. I suppose if I were downright evil instead of slightly evil, I could tell them no and then threaten to tell the gossip sites everything they just told me, unless they gave me the money to shut me up.
But the truth is, even though I still think the whole idea is ridiculous and the next three months are going to turn my life upside down in ways I can't imagine, I wouldn't do that to Emmett. For all his many faults, I can tell he's got a good heart somewhere underneath his manwhore façade. His honesty and sincerity can be endearing and maybe it's pure ego that's putting himself up to this risk, thinking nothing could possibly go wrong, but he's got just as much to lose as I do. Actually, he has a hell of a lot more. Both of our dreams are at stake but at least his are realized and apparently hang in the balance.
I give them a quick smile. "If all terms are held to … yes. This is something I can do."
Autumn grins at me. "Fantastic! I'll get the lawyers to draw up the contacts tomorrow and have them sent to your work."
"You know where I work?"
"I know everything about you Alyssa," she says. If she wasn't so pretty I'd think that was the creepiest thing I'd ever heard.
"Well, just make sure the rest of the world doesn't know it too," I remind her.
After the meal is over (though delicious, I barely ate since my nerves were doing a conga line), the three of us step outside of the restaurant to the flash of a camera blub. There's just one photographer but he's already here and already capturing us together.
"What's your name sweetheart?" he yells at me and for a moment I don't know what to do, I just stare blindly at the camera and hope my makeup still looks presentable.
"Emmett needs his privacy," Autumn says to the photographer. "This is a very new relationship."
And then she whisks the two of us away to his car, getting me in the passenger seat. Before I know what's going on, Emmett is driving the two of us away, leaving Autumn and the photographer behind.
"Holy crow," I say, turning in my seat to watch as we drive off. "That started fast. How the hell did they know you were even there?"
"All the best restaurants have spies," he says with a sigh. "They place a call and then the paparazzi show up. I think they must get paid out for it."
"Well then it was pretty dangerous to have the meeting there, wasn't it? I mean, I still haven't signed the contract."
"Yeah, well," he says. In the passing orange street lights I can see his hands kneading the steering wheel. "Autumn thinks more highly of me than you do. She assumed you were someone who actually liked me."
///
"Oh," I say quietly. In the car, in the fading evening light, everything seems more intimate. Being at dinner with Autumn put a nice distance between us, a distance that helped me analyze everything from a business point of view. But being alone with him is already changing that and the three months have barely started.
As silence slides in, I feel forced to explain. "It's not that I don't like you."
"Alyssa, it's fine."
"No seriously. I'll admit I don't know you at all. I just don't like your type."
"My type?" He glances at me and something hot flashes behind his eyes.
"Yeah. You know. A womanizer. You sleep around."
"So? You do too."
"I do not."
"And I don't care if you do. If you go and get laid most nights of the week, have one-night stands. You do you. I'm not here to judge. But it's not exactly fair that you judge me."