by Leslie North
"What?" The words sorry about that were still lodged in Cassandra's throat. She glanced at Arthur, who seemed enthralled by the checkered pattern on the curtains.
"What do you mean, what?" Amy snapped, then let loose a string of threats into her headset. "It's the middle of the show, right here. Right about now, the viewing public is going to be really sick and tired of your whole Miss Perfect routine. It's the right time to change it up."
"I don't have a routine!" Cassandra protested. She could feel Arthur's eyes on her, but refused to look at him. Her cheeks were burning with indignation. "I've been myself this whole time."
"Ha! Yeah right." Amy clapped her hand on Cassandra's shoulder again. "Nothing is that perfect. And no person is either. Keep letting us see those cracks in your facade, baby. The viewers are gonna lap it up."
Cracks in my perfect facade? Stunned, Cassandra could only open her mouth silently, then close it again. She made the mistake of looking at Arthur, who was grinning from ear to ear. "Stop it," she snapped at him.
"I didn't say a word."
"Yeah, but you were thinking it." From outside of her anger, she realized that the cameras had started up again, but she didn't care. "I know exactly what you were thinking."
The smile faded from his lips. He crossed his arms over his chest. "Oh, you do? Please. Enlighten me."
She threw up her hands. "Maybe I'm having a hard time being myself too, but you know what? What I told you still applies, even if it applies to both of us." She let her hands fall and narrowed her eyes. "I'll be myself if you will."
He took a step towards her. "Is that a challenge?"
She lifted her chin. "Yep. You think you can handle the real me?"
His eyes darkened. "I don't know. Have I met her?"
"Yes." She straightened her shoulders. "She's right here." She held his gaze, refusing to break eye contact even as her heart raced and her breath came faster and faster. He was the first to break eye contact, which gave her a little thrill of victory until she realized he was raking his eyes across her body in open lust. An involuntary shudder rippled through her as her skin heated under his gaze, and Arthur smirked. "Stop it," she demanded.
"Stop what?"
"Looking like you just won something."
"I didn't?" He took another step toward her, and she shuddered again, hating how her body responded to him even when she wanted to strangle him. His eyes dropped to her lips. "Fine then. Let's call it a tie."
She wrapped her arms around his neck and sighed when his mouth claimed hers. Half of her still wanted to throttle him, but how could she when he was kissing her like his life depended on it? The cameras whirred around them, capturing the moment, but they couldn’t capture the intensity that burned through Cassandra. How could she be feeling so many things at once? Hurt, anger, happiness, desire. Wasn't love supposed to be easy? Would a perfect prince in a fairy tale have her head spinning like this? No.
But a perfect prince in a fairy tale wouldn't have her aching for him this way either. She arched against Arthur, shamelessly wrapping her leg around his waist. He responded with a growl, and she gasped when she felt how hard he was already. She moaned.
"Cut!" Amy barked.
Cassandra pulled back, horrified.
"Yeah, that was hot shit, babies, but we need to keep it safe for primetime." Amy's wink made Cassandra wish lightning would strike her down. She glared at Arthur, who just smiled smugly, completely unembarrassed by the massive erection visible under his pants.
"Sorry," Cassandra snapped. And with another glare at Arthur, she did something she'd never done before.
She flounced from the room.
14
"So, what I'm saying is…" Arthur crossed his arms over his chest. "Is that…Wait. Cut!"
Cassandra gave him that look again. She'd been giving him that look all morning, a mixture of surprise and disapproval, as if he were a naked stranger showing up at her door, but he didn't care. She'd been in a weird snit ever since they'd last slept together, and while part of him was aware it probably had something to do with the baby and hormones and the way she kept tossing and turning last night, he wished like hell she'd cut it out. He was trying to get the perfect take here, and it was hard to do when she kept ruining them with her glares.
He held up his hand. "I don't think I should be behind the counter for this scene," he told Amy. "I'd like it better if I was right by Rory there."
Rory looked alarmed. The bride and groom gave each other a wary glance. "Um, I like it this way. The two couples together?" Kendra piped up.
Cassandra huffed something that could have been a laugh. "Is that what we are?"
"Time's a wastin', babies!" Amy shouted. "Arthur, stay where you are and pick up where you left off."
"I want to try it over with them," Arthur protested. None of this felt right any more. Every movement felt stilted; every word felt rehearsed. If he could just do the scene with the island between him and Cassandra's weird anger, maybe he could make it feel right again.
"Okay, now I'm saying cut too," Cassandra snapped. "Arthur can I speak with you? Alone?"
The fury in her eyes had him feeling like the earth was crumbling under his feet. She shouldn't be looking at him like that. She was the one who knew him, who he'd bared his soul to. She knew how hard this was, and she knew he was putting it all on the line for their baby.
Something inside of him snapped.
He smirked. It felt good to smirk, like putting on an old pair of jeans. It also felt good to sweep all the plates from the counter and send them clattering to the floor in an explosion of ceramic. And yelling, "Fucking HELL!" loud enough to make everyone jump and act a little frightened by him felt best of all.
"I'm done!" he roared as he slammed his fist down. It hurt, but the pain felt good. It cleared his head and made him see he needed to get the hell out of here. He needed to get on the next plane home.
Arthur McClellan, bad boy chef, had stormed off sets plenty of times before. He made it a practice never to look behind him, not even if someone shouted his name. Or slammed the door and ran after him.
But Cassandra wasn't just anyone.
"Arthur, what the hell?!" she shouted across the lawn.
The aggression in her voice made him stop, but the raw, ragged way she said his name made him turn around.
And all the breath left his lungs.
His perfect princess Cassandra was undone. Her fists clenched, her cheeks flamed red, and her hair tumbled wildly around her face.
She was breathtaking in the most literal of senses, and all of a sudden, Arthur couldn't remember why he ever wanted to leave.
Until she opened her mouth and reminded him.
Cassandra was tired. Tired on a soul-deep level. The kind of tired that frayed at your nerves and made you feel like your skin was rubbed raw. She'd never been so tired in her life. She wasn't puking anymore, but that nausea had been replaced by the desperate urge to sleep at every opportunity. And she would have had an opportunity as soon as shooting wrapped up. Except Arthur, or whatever version of himself he was playing today, kept insisting on re-shooting the same scene. He' gotten on her last nerve hours ago. When he'd stormed out, it finally snapped.
"What the hell are you doing, Arthur?" she yelled. He flinched, which only made her madder. "Or should I even call you Arthur? I'm not sure. I guess I don't know what version of you I'm looking at today."
"Cut the shit, Cassandra." He had the nerve to sound pissed at her?
"What shit? I have no shit to cut. Whereas you seem to be full of it!"
This time, when he flinched again, her heart softened. She was hurting him, and as much as she wanted him to hear her, she didn't want to lose him forever.
"Arthur," she said, taking a deep breath. "I'm just…scared." She straightened her spine and stepped to him, placing her hand over his heart the way she'd done when things felt right between them. "I'm worried about you losing yourself—"
He jerked b
ack from her touch. "I lost myself a long time ago."
Cassandra froze. Echoes of her father's ranting, his nightly soliloquies on all the ways the world had wronged him as he poured another drink, sounded in her brain.
She stepped back. Arthur might not be a drunk the way her father was, but right now, he was sounding just as unstable. "I don't think that's true," she said, hoping she sounded convincing. "I think you—we just need to clear things up." She forced him to meet her gaze before she continued. "Clear up what we are."
"You don't know?" He sounded even more hurt than before.
Cassandra forced herself not to soothe him. "Right now? No, I don't. Not really. Are we a real couple? Or are we both playing to the cameras?" She swallowed hard. "Am I just a way for you to further your career? And keep your promise to your mom?"
His hand moved protectively to her stomach. "You're asking me if this is real?"
She squirmed away. "I'm not talking about the baby. I'm talking about us."
He jerked back like she'd scalded him. "What we are? Shit, Cassandra," he scoffed. "Come on. For better or worse, we just signed on to be a lovey-dovey couple in front of the cameras for the next few weeks."
"And after that?"
He opened his mouth. Then dropped his gaze to his shoes.
Cassandra felt like a bubble of pain was inflating in her chest. It pressed against her lungs making it hard to take a full breath. It squeezed her heart until she was sure she'd pass out.
And then it burst, and the pain was gone. And everything was clear.
"I see," she said evenly.
"See what?" Arthur looked bewildered by her sudden resolve.
She shook her head. "What the line is. Between us. Between real and fake. I see it, and if you don't, well…" She shrugged. For once in her life, it didn't matter to her if she was being nice or not. What mattered was that she told the truth. "Then I guess I know what I have to do."
15
Ever since the cooking lesson, Vinny had always waited—with a grumpy sneer pasted on his face to hide his excitement—for Arthur to approve the crew's breakfast before the morning production meeting.
This morning, Arthur rolled over on the couch—he was back to sleeping on the couch again, much to his bewilderment—turned off his alarm, and then rolled right back again.
Did it fit his bad boy image to leave Vinny in the lurch like this? Arthur didn't even know any more. All this image stuff was screwing with his head, and what he needed more than anything was to sit down with Cassandra and figure it out. Preferably naked.
But she wasn't talking to him. She'd been eerily silent ever since their dustup yesterday, when she'd suddenly gone all cold and stoic on him. It was unnerving to see her so closed off. It gave him an unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach.
It was that unsettled feeling that finally propelled him out of bed and down the hall to the kitchen, where he stopped short.
The usual production staffed ringed the kitchen island—Amy with her headset on, Sam looking frightened of being around actual people instead of figures on a screen. Vinny glared at him from the stove and went back to sullenly folding egg yolks for make your own omelets. Cassandra sat with her hands folded in her lap, looking so beautiful it made Arthur's head spin. These were all the normal people to see gathered right before shooting commenced. But strangers milled around in the kitchen too. Vaguely familiar strangers who made that unnerved feeling in Arthur's stomach about a hundred times worse.
"What's going on," he asked, a little too loudly.
"He's here!" someone whispered.
"You had to already know that," Arthur shot back.
"Sit down, baby," Amy instructed, her usual smile gone. "Adele's on speakerphone, so she can hear this too."
"Hear what?" He clenched and unclenched his hands. The fact that Adele had flown home already irritated him to no end. "This is annoying and I'm hungry. What's the problem?"
"The problem is that Cassandra wants to pivot," Adele's crisp voice came through crystal clear on the phone.
Arthur looked at Cassandra. "What does that mean?" he asked her.
But it was Adele who answered. "She came clean about you two." Miles of ocean separating them couldn't drown out the irritation in Adele's voice. "Told us that your relationship, well, isn't."
It was like she'd reached through the phone and punched him right in the gut. "What the fuck?" he gasped.
"I let them know that my personal life couldn't be the focus of my show," Cassandra spoke up.
"Your show? You mean the show," Arthur corrected.
"No, Arthur." Adele sounded bored now. "Her show."
"So, it's a go then?" Cassandra asked, leaning in to the phone. "And you agree to my terms? My child will not be part of the narrative. That is not an option."
"We have your terms," Adele said. "And our legal team is going through them now but…" The executive paused for effect. "Yes. I think we can make this work, Cassandra. You've more than proven yourself."
"Yes, I have," Cassandra agreed, and there was no trace of her former self-effacing, make-nice ways. Arthur found himself beaming with pride as he watched her. Hell yeah, doll. You kick ass and take names. This is hot as fuck. All at once, he found himself in the middle of an achingly hot fantasy involving Cassandra in one of those white business suits she favored, with the skirt hemmed extra high, and riding even higher on her thighs as she straddled him…
"What?" Arthur mumbled, snapping back to reality to realize that everyone was waiting for him to speak.
"Excuse me," Cassandra broke in. "But do you need me for this? I have a fitting."
"Of course, this is just about Arthur now," Adele agreed.
"It is?" Arthur blurted. "Then would you go ahead and tell me before my stomach lining digests itself?"
"Thing is, baby." Amy looked genuinely sad. "If Cassandra's personal life is off the table, then we have no idea what to do with you." She put her hand to her heart. "Now, I will personally murder anyone who says you don't make good TV—"
"But you really only work," Adele broke in smoothly, "in conflict with Cassandra. She really helped sell that whole 'reformed' thing. Now we're back to square one with you."
"You're firing me?" He gripped the kitchen island.
"Not firing, just…" Amy searched for the word.
"Retooling," suggested Adele. "What is your brand, Arthur?"
"My brand." It was such a hollow word, but he unfortunately knew the answer. "I'm a fucking bad boy," he mumbled.
"Precisely. Now, if you want to keep pushing the reformed angle, there's a sub-network show we can offer you. Web-exclusive content."
"I already did that bullshit." The back of his neck was heating up.
"Right, well, if you're still aiming for the big time, then we have to drop the reformed act."
"It's not an act," he said. But no one heard him in the flurry of excitement from Amy.
"That's right, baby, if you just want to yell at people all day, I've got the perfect fit." She winked. "You know I would be a connoisseur of the topic. Which is why I'm developing a new program where a 5-star chef visits failing restaurants and finds all the things wrong with them."
"So, they can do better?"
Her grin was gleeful. "Nope! Just pure voyeurism. I want rats in the kitchen, leaky pipes, frozen food, and pissed off patrons. I want the viewers to get really upset about what they see, and you'll be the proxy for them."
"I'll get upset and yell about how awful they are?" Arthur asked dully.
Amy nodded. "Hell yeah, you will. Every single negative thing you can find, I want you to not only point out, but get pissed about it." She smirked. "If there’s one thing working together these past few weeks has showed me, it's that no one points out the negative quite like you, baby."
Horror pooled in his stomach. He was surrounded by people, but he felt completely alone. Abandoned. What they were proposing was a choice between playing the part everyone expected from hi
m in order to get into the big leagues, or scaling back his dreams for the sake of his “reformation.”
And what good had the reformation done him? He hadn't kept his promise.
He was still unhappy, and if he chose either option, he would stay unhappy.
But what else was there?
He drew back with a start. "I'll get back to you."
"You'll get back to us? Wait? Where are you going?"
Arthur ignored Adele's confusion, and Amy's profane threats as he hurried down the wing that contained the fitting rooms. He needed to keep his promise. He needed to find his happiness.
He needed to find Cassandra.
He burst into the room as Cassandra tugged her blouse down over her growing belly. She grunted and swore, and then swore again when she saw him. "What are you doing here?"
"What was that?" he demanded, ignoring the cries of protest from the seamstress. "You just throw me under the bus?"
Cassandra yanked futilely at the blouse again, and then gave up in frustration and yanked it over her head. Her smoothly rounded belly was so perfectly full and ripe . Arthur couldn't stop staring at it.
"Yeah, this doesn't fit any more," Cassandra sighed as she handed the blouse to the seamstress. She turned back to Arthur. "Nothing fits, that's the point. I can't hide it any more, and I don't want to, either. I want to get back to my life." She blinked hard. "I don't want to live my whole life on a screen."
"Neither do I. You know that. I've told you that. But why are you bailing on us?" His voice broke.
She spread her hands. "What's ‘us’? I don't know what's real any more, Arthur. At first, I thought you were this bad boy, and it scared me. Then I learned it was all an act. But I never thought there'd be nothing behind that act." She pressed her hand to his heart, that simple, comforting gesture feeling so different now. He wondered if she was trying to feel if his heart had broken yet. "You weren't hiding behind a persona, because you have nothing to hide. There's nothing real here." She thumped her hand on his heart and drew back. "You look to the people around you to find out who you should be, and I lo—" She looked away. "I care about you too much to try to make that decision for you. You need to."
