Public Relations

Chapter Four

"Yes."

"Oh, um," Maisie's manager, Andrea, hesitates. There's a shuffling sound on the other end of the phone as if she's adjusting it from one ear to the other. "I'm sorry, I just want to confirm I heard correctly. Did you say yes?"

Maybe I shouldn't have blurted it out so quickly. But when she said what she did, how could I not say yes? I'm ninety-nine percent sure I've just made a complete fool of myself now.

"I, um—Yes." I squeeze my eye close, pinching the bridge of my nose. "I said yes."

"Oh, um, okay," Andrea responds, followed by another extended pause and some more shuffling. I push the keyboard on my desk away from me as I rise from my seat to pace my office. Finally, she continues, "I'm sorry, but I'm going to repeat it because I'm not sure you fully understood what I said."

"Gus, can I borrow this one?" my sister Lucy whispers, blowing a piece of her brown hair out of her face, a smudge of flour from the bakery she works at down the street decorating her forehead. She's seated across from me in my new office, the one I got with my promotion, flipping through one of the ARCs—Advance Reader Copies, essentially close-to-final versions of the book in paperback form—stacked on my desk. "Enemies-to-lovers is my favorite."

I shake my head, trying to focus on what Andrea is saying, and then pivot to pace around my cramped, disheveled office. It's an absolute disaster in here—manuscripts strewn across my desk, bookshelves barely half-filled, boxes of freshly arrived publications awaiting their release dates. The chaos is only interrupted by a small area by my monitor where a snail-shaped planter sits and a card that has two little tea cups clinking together and reads Happy 27th Birthday to my Best-Tea, that Maisie got for me a few months ago.

"Maisie needs a fake boyfriend," Andrea continues. "A staged romance, if you will, for publicity leading up to her tour for the next six weeks."

"Yeah, that's fine," I say to Andrea. "I can do that."

"Oh, wait, no, I want this one." Lucy's voice interjects again. I turn to her once more, finding her flipping through a different book, one she's not supposed to be touching. She begins reading the blurb on the back. "When a grumpy vampire pretending to be human meets a divorce lawyer — Hey!"

I quickly snatch the book from her hands, tossing it back onto my desk, and shoot her a sideways disapproving glare.

"You can?" Andrea questions through the phone, clearly surprised by my response. A wave of unease punches me right in the chest. Maybe she didn't expect me to agree to this. Maybe I should have said no. "Okay, um, did you perhaps want to hear the conditions before you... agree?"

"Oh." Yeah, I definitely responded too quickly. "Right, yeah, sure, please continue."

I turn to pace in the other direction, watching as my sister grabs a copy of a book from my desk titled The Hot Doctor (which is not mine; it was left by the previous editor) and flips through it. Her cheeks tinge pink, and she hurriedly puts the book back down and grabs another from the pile. "Do you really have to read all of these?"