Page 9 of Once Upon a Beast

I was grateful that her father was there. He would know what to do, what to tell her. I had too many things that I wanted to say. I was worried that if I had to talk to her, I would say too much. James understood it was going to be awkward for us and I was almost happy that Layla wanted him to get right to the point of her visit. I had been prepared for her surprise, her shock; I hadn’t counted on her anger. It took a lot to get her angry, I had rarely seen it when we were growing up. I had forgotten how fired up she could get, and how beautiful she was when she did.

“Engaged? Are you out of your mind? No. That is the stupidest thing you’ve ever said, Dad,” Layla said.

She had shot up off the couch as soon as her father had spoken. She turned to look at him and continued to keep her eyes from glancing my way. She had done it from the moment she had walked in. Besides her hello that wasn’t a hello at all, she had ignored me. She knew I was there; she just wasn’t ready to acknowledge me. I wasn’t going to push it. If things went the way her father wanted, we would be spending a lot of time together.

“No, it’s not. It’s the only solution. Hear me out before you start telling me I’m wrong,” James said and put his hand up to stop Layla from interrupting him. “We need to get in front of this story. We need to have another one in place. If we do, then there’s nowhere for the story to go. It would be impossible for Nic to have been having a secret affair with one woman if he was already having one with another.”

“Secret affair? Is that how you’re going to play us suddenly getting engaged?”

“Yes. We’ll put out a press release that you two have been dating for years and just recently decided to get engaged. It was because of my personal relationship with Nic that we all agreed to keep it quiet. I told the reporter who wants to leak the story that I would have a better one for him. This is it.”

“How’s that going to stop the woman from coming forward with the story?” Layla asked.

“If Nic is in one secret relationship, it doesn’t make sense that he’s in another. If the woman came forward with it, she would only look like she was trying to piggyback on our story. It will immediately lose credibility.”

“Or it will cause ours to blow up in smoke. Nic and I haven’t been seen together any more than he has with this other woman.”

“But you’ve been seen coming into my apartment complex. It’s easy to make people think you were there at the same time. That you arrived separately in order to keep things quiet.”

“Nic and I haven’t talked in years. There hasn’t been so much as a whisper of us being together. Understandably so, as we haven’t been. No one is going to believe it,” Layla said to her father before turning and looking at me. “Don’t tell me you agreed to this or think for a second it’s going to work.”

Her eyes were dark with anger and my body responded with instant need for her. I had to convince her to stay. If I had any chance of having her in my life, I couldn’t lose her the moment she walked back into it. Knowing her, or at least hoping I knew her, I told her what I thought would convince her.

“People like a love story. They knew we were friends when we were kids. It isn’t too much of a stretch to think that things progressed because of your father’s professional involvement with me. The press and the public will eat up the idea that we have found each other. We would be combining two dynasties together. It’s a fairy tale they will want to hold onto and root for.”

“It’ll make you look less like a beast and more like a prince?” Layla asked.

She looked over at me and our eyes held. I hadn’t forgotten how brown they were, how understanding she was. I could and wanted to get lost in those eyes. But there was a fire that was right below the surface, too. The anger was still there but she was starting to see our side.

We continued to stare at each other and I could read everything that Layla was thinking and feeling in that gaze. She was still coming to terms with the fact that we were in the same room together. She was annoyed at me for disappearing and she wanted to know why. She could see that I needed her help and there was a huge part of her who wanted to help but she was also just as annoyed with me for putting her in this situation.

“Something like that,” James said, breaking us from our gaze.

“If you discredit her claim that she was in a secret affair with you, then the rest of the story will lose any credibility. The whole story will fall apart,” Layla said.

“Exactly,” James said.

“That’s all well and good but, again, I don’t think anyone will believe it,” Layla said.

“You’re going to have to make people believe it,” James said.

“How?” Layla turned and glared at her father.

“You would need to be seen out, going to social events, dinners, plays, drinks, out with friends. Doing things that people would do if they were dating, engaged, and in life,” James said.

I looked over at Layla and even before she said anything, I knew she wasn’t happy with the idea. She wasn’t one who liked to go out very much; having to be social for the sake of being social and having her picture taken would not go over well. It was just one of the many reasons I didn’t think she would agree to do this.

“It would only be until the paperwork on the project has been signed and it’s underway. Once that’s done, there will be no turning back. Even if the story came out, it wouldn’t hurt the project,” I added quickly.

Layla would need an end game; she would need to know how long she would have to be stuck with me so she could prepare herself.

“And what happens then?” Layla asked. “Do we just go our separate ways? Do we do another press release saying, ‘Sorry, just kidding,’ and pretend like it never happened?”

“Pretty much. Couples break up all the time. You would be like any of those. We would, of course, say how we’re going to continue to work together and remain friends. While the personal relationship didn’t work out, that will have no bearing on our professional one,” James said.

I looked over at Layla and gave her a reassuring nod. I hoped the look told her that this was going to be okay. We would find a way to get through this together. I needed her to agree to this for so many reasons, most of them I couldn’t tell her.

“Layla, I promise, it won’t be that bad. A couple of weeks or a month at the most. We need to get in front of this story before it comes out. This is how we do it. I will do my best to keep the social outings to a minimum. I will do whatever I can to make sure you’re not inconvenienced unless necessary.”