Page 27 of Beneath the Fame

“Yes, gorgeous,” he said, leaning back into my space. “I know you’ve got your reservations, so…I’m following your lead.”

Following my lead but applyingjustenough of the exact right kind of pressure that had me ready to climb into his lap, setting be damned.

“Let me think about it,” I said, and he nodded.

“Cool,” he chuckled, planting a soft kiss against the side of my head before he slid out of the booth. “But…I think you already know the correct answer.”

ChapterSeven

ALEC

“Man…youknow I told Ellie I didn’t think you could pull Vanessa,” Shaw muttered to me from his seat beside me in the greenroom area.

I’d been zoned out, reading through a script for an upcoming episode while we waited for our cue to step out before the audience. We’d been booked together—since we were brothers on the show, after all—to promoteKinfolk, on a show that was more like a traditional talk show than what Van and I had done with Arnez and Arizona.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, and he shook his head as he showed me his screen—filled with a surprisingly high-definition photo of me with my tongue in Vanessa’s mouth. “Oh,shit,” I whispered, taking the phone from his hand to scroll through the whole photo set—a total of five pictures of Van and I at the sushi place lookinghellacozy.

“Secret safe with her my ass,” I groaned, handing Shaw his phone back.

“Huh?” he asked.

“Man…the damn server recognized us but made a big deal swearing up and down she wouldn’t tell a soul—which, neither of us believed that shit, butdamn. Pictures?!”

Shaw shook his head. “You’re both hot news right now, bro…you’ve gotta be a little bit more careful than this—especially if you’re trying to keep the relationship private.”

“That’s the thing,” I groaned, dropping my head into my hands. “Thereisn’ta relationship, not right now. I’ve been trying to…prime her to it, I guess,” I admitted. “She’s got all this shit going on with the media, everybody at her neck, so she’s not really trying to give any fuel to that fire. I thought we were tucked off enough to get a little privacy, but damn. I clearly thought wrong.”

“I don’t believe you were thinking at all,” Shaw chuckled. “Not about that kiss, that is. It’s nothing to have dinner with a coworker, butthislooks like your ass got caught up.”

“I…can’t deny that like I want to.”

“I know you can’t.” He laughed. “You and Vanessa is a good look though.”

I scoffed. “I doubt those comments would agree.”

“What comments?”

“The comments on the post.”

“There’s no comments on that post,” Shaw said, dead serious as he looked me in the face. “You haven’t learned that by now, man? There’s never comments on the posts. That’s not even a thing that exists.”

I chuckled at him, shaking my head. “Clearly,I need to be approaching this from your line of thinking.”

“You absolutely do. We’ve been in this business too long to not have those blinders up, for our sanity. I’m still working on pulling Ellie in—we probably need to get Van on the same train too.”

I nodded. “Yeah, probably so. As a matter of fact, I probably need to reach out to her—how wide do you think those pictures have gotten?”

Shaw cringed. “Ellie sent it to me. So if she’s seen it, I’m sure she’s already talking to Van about it.”

“Shit.I need to call her,” I said, already pulling my phone back out and navigating to her contact. Just before I hit the button to initiate the call, a production assistant came rushing up, asking if we were ready.

“Can I just have like…five more minutes?” I asked—a question that was answered with aboy are you crazylook.

“I realize I posed that as a question,” the PA said. “That’s my bad. But…no, you can’t have five minutes. You’re being introduced in ten seconds. Go,now.”

Damn.

Damn.

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