Charade

Chapter 1: First Premiere

AN:  Hi Folks!  Thanks so much for your nice comments and private messages.  I appreciate your support!  I like to relieve brain pressure by writing out my Damie fantasies - PURELY FICTIONAL.  I write oneshots, although this one will take me two chapters to wrap up.  Thanks to Brooke for her inspiration and enthusiasm - you know what you did, gurl.  

Jamie's POV

It's been a long 8 weeks away from Dakota. She is in Italy filming Suspiria and I've been in LA shooting, then London to see the girls, then Belfast to visit my Pop. I've had to do a few appearances with Amelia, first to promote her involvement in Mum's List and then my attendance at an awards show. Nothing major, but I'm always sensitive to the fact Dakota will have to deal with the pictures and stories that surround such activities.

Here I sit in a studio in Belfast right now for a Skype interview, of all things. There is an interviewer with me here and Dakota is in her apartment in Italy. It's like we're together, but we're not and it's awkward – especially with the 3 second delay of recording.

Still, it's so good to see her sweet face, even though she looks tired. When she sat down and looked at the screen and saw me, she blew me a kiss, and that was enough to make me smile and tingle in all the right places.

The interviewer started off with all the normal questions about working so intimately and yadda yadda yadda. We can answer this stuff in our sleep and have been cautioned within an inch of our lives to ensure that we don't ever let it slip that the onscreen relationship moved off screen. We share some inside jokes along the way that most will not pick up on, but it makes us both smile.

Then the usual wife/family questions come up and I trot out my usual answers. These have been scripted and prepared by both Universal PR as well as my own. It's so rote at this point that I am on autopilot and I think I even slipped in some of last year's language.

"You know, the fundamentals of my life are the same. My family, my friends, they don't change. My wife is actually quite a brilliant person, which is why I was smitten with her from the start. She's incredibly supportive."

I'm watching the interviewer and when I glance at the screen, I notice Dakota looking down at her hands in her lap, not at the screen like usual.

The interviewer turns to her to ask about her private life. "So what about you, Dakota? Should we expect to see you handcuffed to anyone other than Christian Grey in the near future?"

She looks up and I recognize the sparks in my girl's eyes and I sit up a bit straighter and hold my breath. She snaps out, "Well, I'm not brilliant enough for anyone to be smitten with me, so I'm still single." Oh shit, where did that come from? Not good. Not good. Not. Good. Houston, we have a problem.

The damn clueless interviewer delves deeper. "Maybe Jamie can fix you up with one of his handsome friends." Oh hells to the no on that one, you fucknut.

She throws her head back and laughs sincerely and then drills the screen with those baby blues. "You'd think! We are such great friends and that IS what a friend would do, right?" With her incredible sense of timing, she just sits still and grins at the screen as if to say, 'your move asshole.'

The interviewer swings to me with a wide smile, raised eyebrows, and a questioning look. I don't even pretend as I frown at him while I shake my head and say, "Hell no. Never happening." That dipshit just can NOT take a clue and has the nerve to ask me, "Why not?"

"None of them are good enough for her. Period. Moving on?" I glare at him, double dog daring him to pursue the line of questioning.

And damn me if he doesn't pursue it. "So Dakota, would you say that you are hard to please? Is that why none of his friends are good enough?"