Page 15 of Just for December

‘You want me to sell myself,’ Evie supplies, and now she actually does look at Duke and for the life of him, he can’t figure out how she’s going to be persuaded. ‘You want me topretendI’mdatinghim? Like an escort?’ Duke tries not to take the total disgust in her voice too personally. He isn’t exactly thrilled either. When he asked everyone to find a way to counter the press intrusion, what he’d meant was to stop it entirely, not encourage it but with a different angle.

‘We understand that you don’t like press,’ Marnie says, and Evie shakes her head, shooting more evil looks at Duke. Duke looks to the window, suddenly the most interesting framing of the sky there has ever been.

‘But this could be good for you, too,’ Marnie insists. ‘Your agent said after Duke was photographed with your book that sales spiked, and that other studios have expressed interest in adaptations of some of your other works. That’s amazing! Like, really cool. We can make sure they don’t mention Donald Gilbert again, if that’s the issue – this will just be Evie Bird and Duke Carlisle, and by the new year it will all have been forgotten about.’

‘It’s not that I don’t like the press,’ Evie says, her voice low. ‘Ihatethe press. I hate … all of this. Putting on a dog and pony show. It’s embarrassing.’

‘It’s lucrative.’ Marnie shrugs. ‘And we’ve all got a job to do.’ Duke feels Evie’s eyes on him, then, and he dares to meet her eye.

‘And you’re okay with this?’ she asks him accusingly.

‘I don’t know what I think,’ Duke says slowly. ‘I told everyone it’s down to you. I thought you might have some strong feelings about it all.’

‘You wantmeto be the bad guy?’ she asks him, and without waiting for an answer she says to the group, ‘Fine, I’ll be the bad guy. No.’

Nobody speaks.

Evie flops down on Duke’s bed and stares at the ceiling.

Duke’s heart thumps so hard the others must be able to hear it. He feels terrible, but the contract is iron-clad: Evie cannot go home early. So like everyone else, she needs to accept that, and find a way to make it work.

‘What I think is this,’ Duke begins, not getting up from his seat. Evie props herself up on her elbows and stares unblinkingly. It makes him nervous, but he is able to sound more confident than he feels. ‘They’ve all said they can’t make the articles go away, that the press will now be interested no matter what. And now they want to mould the press intrusion into something that helps everyone. The film, Daphne’s reputation too, because it’ll be a new piece of gossip and a nice neat ending to the drama of her affair with Brad. It helps me, because … well, it makes me look more down-to-earth, et cetera, dating a civilian or whatever you want to call it. And you will get a bigger profile, press for your books. That’s good, right? Your book is being made into a movie! Like it or not, you’re going to have your face known for a little while, so you may as well make the most of it whilst it lasts. Because, please don’t take this the wrong way, but … you’ll just as easily be forgotten. And you don’t need to do any red carpets or do your own social media – literally just some public dates whilst we’re both in the same place. Nothing confirmed or denied.’

Evie sighs, eyes narrowed.

‘Fine,’ she says, finally, and Duke can’t hide his surprise. But before he can say anything, she looks at him and says: ‘But first, we need some ground rules.’

Duke can tell the others are palpably relieved.

‘Thank you,’ Marnie says. ‘We’ll make it as painless as we can for you both. And who knows? You might even end up having fun.’

The look on Evie’s face lets Duke know that no such turn of events will be possible.

When everyone else has gone, Evie stands looking out over the square at the double window, her hands on her hips, breathing loudly. In, and out. In, and out. Duke waits for her to turn around, but she doesn’t. She just stands there. Breathing. In. And. Out.

‘I’m trying to relax,’ she says, eventually. She’s obviously been aware of his impatience. Hehasbeen lightly tapping his foot – she was the one who called this littletête-à-tête. She wants further ground-rules clarification, but in order to do that, Duke is going to need her to actually speak.

‘Sure, in your own time,’ Duke says.

She turns around. ‘Right,’ she starts. ‘Let’s just get on the same page here, okay?’

‘I’m all ears,’ Duke tells her. ‘Hit me.’

‘Rule one: no kissing.’ Duke bursts out laughing. She gives him that look. That scowl.

‘Oh, you’re serious,’ he says. ‘Right, yeah. No. No kissing.’

He had never even put kissing on his mental table, so it was no stretch to take it off. Kissing Evie Bird? It would be like snogging a cold stone statue.

‘Or ass-grabbing,’ she says.

Duke sets his mouth in a firm line and furrows his brow.

‘Absolutely not,’ he agrees, trying not to give his internal monologue away. Arse-grabbing? He’d no sooner make a move on her like that than he would put his hand into a viper’s nest. Still. Saying all this out loud is obviously calming her down about it all, and so listening is the least he can do.

‘Hand-holding should last no more than a minute, but two at most.’

Duke bites his cheek to keep from smiling, now. ‘It would be borderline foreplay to pass sixty seconds. I agree.’

---