Getting Tricky

by Scarlett Finn

  Yeah, Lyla couldn’t argue that, she wouldn’t have given it up for him. But it would’ve been nice to be asked before she became the butt of a night-long joke. There was a montage of the night. Various pictures from a variety of the clubs they’d been in were flashed on the screen, and in every one Trick was kissing a different woman.

  There was her husband on the screen with his tongue down the throat of one blonde, then another. Yeah, blondes were his thing. Inhaling, Lyla reminded herself how long ago this was. Well, ok, it was only two weeks ago, but she’d told him after that night that it was none of her business who he slept with and that hadn’t changed.

  They were friends. There was no love. It was just a friendship.

  Rolling her eyes up to him, she wasn’t surprised to see him pale and braced, but she grinned and pushed up to kiss the underside of his jaw, something she’d never done before.

  Out there in the world, in front of the camera, she had to be outraged by his behavior because it was the persona that had been developed for her, and she’d kind of walked into it being the opposite of a promiscuous man.

  So as the rest of the episode played out, Lyla wasn’t surprised to see that her every rejection of Trick was stressed, just as his patience was emphasized when she knocked him back time and again.

  But, there were no other incidents of him kissing anyone else. So at least her speculation about the honeymoon was wrong. He hadn’t been out partying or getting laid. Lyla watched to the end and when the show was over the viewing screen was turned off and the lights were turned up.

  Stretching her arms and legs straight, Lyla blinked to adjust to the illumination. Paul came into view with Sadie and the others from the initial panel who’d propositioned her. Looking over the back of the couch, Lyla saw the door closing, everyone else was gone, leaving her, Trick, and the panel alone. The panel was taking seats on the couch under the large TV screen they’d just watched on or they were pulling swivel chairs from the side of the room.

  Lyla didn’t know that they’d been due to have a meeting. “Are we leaving for the team-building thing on Monday morning or in the afternoon?” she asked Paul. “I have work to finish before—”

  “We’ll pick it up,” Ritchie said.

  Bunyan sat in the center of the couch opposite theirs. “We like the show, but we’re a bit worried about how the series will progress, there’s just not enough…”

  “Conflict,” Paul said.

  “Tension,” Bunyan corrected him.

  “Damn,” Trick said. “There’s a line I can’t cross, Bunny.”

  A smile quirked her lips, she’d never heard anyone call the executive that, but the star of the channel obviously got away with more than others. “Yes, we know that,” Bunyan said. “And we can’t force Lyla to relax her boundaries… we may have taken our need to find your opposite too far.”

  Great. So she was messing this up too. “You film me in the shower every morning,” she said. “I’m guessing that’s going to be on next week’s show.”

  “Not unless Trick is in there with you.”

  Inhaling, she knew it would be easier for everyone if she’d just start sleeping with him. But the panel didn’t understand how the couple had moved into a comfortable friendship zone. If she and Trick tried to force physical intimacy, it would just be weird.

  But at least he was saying they weren’t going to show her body, that was a positive, though she had taken to showering with her bikini on, so that might be why they weren’t showing it.

  “But we have an alternative,” Bunyan said. “We’ve hired a new character.”

  A new character, well at least they weren’t all pretending to be who they actually were anymore. Of course, it could just be a figure of speech. “A new character?” Trick asked, leaning forward, past her, his elbows coming to rest on his knees. “Who?”

  “Kira.”

  Her mouth fell open. “Kira Levine?” Lyla heard herself asking. “You want him to sleep with his ex… on camera?”

  Bunyan nodded and shrugged. “He has to sleep with someone.”

  Trick inhaled and his head lowered into his hands. Resting a hand on his back, Lyla stroked him in reassurance. This was just horrible. “You can’t ask them to do this,” she said. “It’s unfair. Trick and I is one thing, this whole thing was orchestrated, it’s fake. But there was actual real emotion involved in his relationship with Kira. You’re exploiting something real, something raw.”

  Trick sat back and picked up her hand to squeeze it in his as he kissed her fingers and focused on Bunyan. “And what?” Trick asked. “I’m supposed to screw around with Kira behind Lyla’s back? She’s supposed to play ignorant?”

  “You didn’t mind on your wedding night,” Bunyan said and Trick looked away from them all.

  Trick couldn’t feel guilty about that, shouldn’t feel guilty. They were still strangers then and she’d given him permission to be intimate with anyone he wanted to be intimate with.

  “It will only play like that until the show airs, after that, everyone will assume that Lyla has seen you together.”

  “So, she has to find out and flip,” Trick said. “You want her to perform for you?”

  “Isn’t that what you’ve both been doing?” Bunyan said. “It’s going to be great television, real drama, and it gives the audience something to sink their teeth into. We need it to keep the show afloat. We can only play it with you as the horny husband and Lyla as the frigid wife for so long. You’re just not gelling; I’ve seen some of the footage. People want sex or love by this point, and they’re getting neither, so we have to introduce drama.”

  Bobbing her head in a nod, Lyla could see how that made sense. “Lyla,” Sadie said, drawing her attention. “Would you mind giving us a minute?”

  “Oh, sure,” she said, leaping to her feet, but Trick caught her hand.

  “Wait a sec, babe. Sadie, whatever you have to say, say it. You don’t have to hide anything from Lyla, she’s cool.”

  But Sadie just smiled at her, ignoring Trick. “Do you mind?”

  Lyla shook her head. “Of course not.”

  It was sweet of Trick to think he should include her, but she wasn’t the star, and she’d come to learn how high up, or rather low down, she was in the order of things over the last couple of weeks.

  Trick kissed her hand. “I’ll come get you in a minute… we’ll pick up that wine you like on the way home,” he murmured and she nodded, letting her fingers run into his hair as she passed him to head for the door.

  When Lyla glanced over her shoulder to see Trick was looking over the back of the couch at her, she smiled and got a wink, but a real one, that was joined by a genuine smile.

  Stepping outside, she saw a group of colleagues nearby and Curtis was with them. She hadn’t seen much of her old friend over the last couple of weeks, though they were still texting and talking on the phone. But as he came nearer, he didn’t look particularly happy to see her.

  “We need to talk,” he said, taking hold of her shoulder.

  “Ok,” she said, worried that something might be wrong as he led her down the corridor and in to an empty office. “Is everything ok?”

  “Is everything ok?” Trick asked Sadie.

  He didn’t usually fall out with folks. He tried to get along with as many people as he could, especially his friends. But that Sadie had tossed Lyla out was a step over the line as far as he was concerned.

  “Do you feel anything for her?” Sadie asked, crossing her legs and leaning toward him, blocking out the others. “You’ve been married for two weeks, is there any chemistry… at all?”

  “Chemistry?” Trick asked, suspicious as he looked at everyone in the room. “Are you gonna tell me to ramp up the seduction? Come at her a different way? Sadie of all the people—”

  “I think you should divorce her,” Sadie said and he wasn’t the only one in the room stunned by that suggestion, but his friend didn’t back down. “Better yet, we’ll look in to a
n annulment; you haven’t slept together, right?”

  “What the hell is the meaning of this?” Bunyan demanded. “We can’t drop this yet, we’ve invested huge amounts of—”

  “This is going to bite us on the ass,” Sadie said, rising to her feet to point at the TV screen. “Either the public sees Trick as Mr. Stud Numero Uno, and Lyla becomes a laughing stock, or he’s dubbed a sexual predator and we walk right in to a harassment suit… Did any of you watch the same show I did? You’re making this woman out to be some sort of sexual simpleton!”

  “That’s the appeal! She doesn’t have the experience of—”

  “It’s not about experience, Bunyan,” Sadie argued. “You’ve shown that woman sitting at the bar alone on her wedding night while this bastard goes out screwing around town.”

  Trick flew to his feet. “Hey, I never had sex with—”

  “How many women did you kiss that night? Because it sure looked like more than five, maybe more than ten, yet the bride goes home in a cab with the damn cameraman.” Sadie lifted a finger at him. “Who, by the way, made a move on her… yeah, no one showed that slice of footage. You’re not the only man coming at her, which makes this so much worse!”

  Balling his fists, Trick clenched his jaw. “That bastard, Cliff, I knew it! I knew he was a—”

  “Would it have mattered what she’d done?” Sadie asked. “You were screwing around before the ink was dry on the marriage certificate. Yet, she sits in here watching it, smiling and kissing you, what the hell, Trick? You’re using her. You’re all using her.”

  “You knew what this was when you signed on,” Bunyan said. “All of us did.”

  “Do you think she knew she’d be made a fool of like this? She looks like an idiot and now you’re asking her to accept him screwing around with his ex after just two weeks! This isn’t a marriage, this is just us exploiting her naivety. Haven’t you heard the way she talks about herself?” Sadie snapped. Trick had never seen his friend this riled about any of their previous projects. “I’ve seen the interviews, you know, the ones that none of you have seen. She has like zero self-esteem, she’s not down on herself, just accepts that she doesn’t measure up, like somehow that’s normal and ok. Those people she works with, they already ridicule and bully her, how the hell is this going to play? They’re probably out there right now pointing and laughing.” Sadie shook her head and fixated on him. “Either you feel something for her and you man up and make this real, or you divorce her, right now, Trick. Don’t play these games with her. It’s not fair. You’re not only risking your rep, you’re risking her sanity, which was exactly what we were trying to avoid.” Sadie whirled around to pin her sights on Bunyan. “If you break this girl right in the middle of the damned lawsuit you’re fighting, what happens then? Huh?” Sadie turned back to him. “How will you live with yourself, Trick? If she’s ruined by this and turned into a joke?”

  Pushing back in his seat, Trick slid his hands down his thighs and sealed his lips. Sadie was right. Lyla had low self-esteem; he’d seen the way she counted herself out all the time. It was often subtle, but it was definitely there.

  Since they’d been living together, he’d grown to respect her in a way he’d never considered that he would. She was his friend. More than that, he worried about her, all the time. All the damn time. Especially when he was being an idiot.

  But this… he let his eyes rise to the blank screen. The world needed someone to love and they loved a good joke. He couldn’t let that joke become Lyla, even if she told him she understood the need for her role.

  At the end of the day, he was her husband and there were responsibilities that came with that. He might not have understood it on their wedding night. Might have spent most of their honeymoon in a bad mood because he had a boner that wouldn’t go away. But every minute he spent with her he admired her more, cared for her, and…

  Twisting to look at the door she’d left by, he wondered about her, where was she, was she ok? Were there people out there giving her a hard time? It made him so mad to think that anyone could say anything negative about his Lyla. His Lyla.

  That’s exactly what she was…

  His.

  NINE

  “I don’t think you understand how it looks,” Curtis said.

  They were in the empty office, seated in swivel chairs, facing each other. Lyla was watching the way their hands laced together between Curtis’ parted knees. His fingers weren’t as long or strong as Trick’s were.

  “I know you’re worried,” she said and smiled at him when he slid one of his hands out of hers and on to the side of her neck. “You’re my friend, Curt, you know how I feel about you. I would be worried about you too.”

  “He’s using you. They’re all using you.”

  She understood why it was difficult for him to understand the experience of living in a reality TV show, she hadn’t understood it either. “It’s ok,” Lyla said, smiling to reassure him. “It’s just the way it is.”

  “I can’t stand by and let you be hurt,” Curtis said, his voice softening as his hand slid up to her cheek and his thumb grazed over her lips. “You’re so vulnerable and you don’t see it… You don’t see what’s happening. You trust too easily.”

  He leaned closer and she knew he was going to rest his forehead on her hairline, like he’d done before, but he never got that far because an angry male voice interrupted.

  “What the hell is going on in here?”

  Lyla couldn’t have been more surprised to turn and see Trick just inside the office door. “Trick,” she said. “This is Curtis and—”

  “Yeah, I figured that out, babe,” Trick said, his face set in a weird kind of angry frown that was glued on Curtis as her husband marched toward them. “Just trying to figure out what game he’s playing.”

  When Trick got to them, he grabbed Curtis’ shoulder, hauled him up out of his seat and rushed him to the nearby wall. “Trick!” she screamed. “What are you doing?”

  But he didn’t listen to her, just thrust Curtis harder against the wall and pushed an arm to his chest as he got right into his face. “You wanna touch my wife, you ask for my permission… in writing, and don’t hold your breath waiting for a response.”

  Pushing away, Trick winded Curtis with the power of his shove and backed off a step to throw an arm around her neck, but she shoved at him. “How dare you,” she said, shrugging away from Trick’s arm to go to Curtis. “I’m sorry.”

  “He’s an idiot,” Curtis said, his hand flat on his chest as he tried to catch his breath. “You deserve better than that, Ly.”

  “What the hell would you know?” Trick shouted and she felt his body heat rush against her back. Here she was sandwiched between the two of them. As she tried to soothe Curtis, she pushed herself back into Trick to keep him away from her friend.

  “I know you’re going to hurt her!” Curtis said. “You don’t have a clue what you’ve done to her! Not a clue!”

  Now Curtis was losing his temper and she was beginning to panic because if they both lost their cool she’d have no way to calm them down. “Curt,” she said. “Don’t!”

  “What don’t I know, nerd, huh?” Trick asked and it was getting harder for her to keep any kind of pressure up on her husband because he was just too strong.

  “You don’t give her what she needs!” Curt argued.

  Lyla didn’t like how he spat the words over her; she didn’t want these men fighting. Why would the only two men in the world she cared about fight like this? They were her friends, why weren’t they acting like it?

  Trick’s laugh wasn’t happy. “Oh, and I suppose you do? Is that it? You wanna screw my wife? Do you?”

  “Trick!” she said. Shoving back hard, Lyla managed to give herself half a breath of space to spin on the spot to plant her hands on his chest. “Don’t speak to him that way! What the hell has got into you, Nairn?”

  His lips squeezed together and she felt the heat of his anger even though his eyes wer
e pinned on the man at her back. The pure hatred in them gave her a chill, but she shoved him once more.

  Trick bared his teeth and hissed. “You turn around and walk out that door with me right now, or I put this prick through a wall. Your choice, Malloy.”

  “Lyla,” Curtis said behind her, but she wasn’t going to let her friend get hurt.

  “Then let’s go,” she said, staring up at Trick, wishing that he’d look at her so she could tell if he really was angry or just playing the appropriate theatrical role. “Baby?”

  Whispering the pet name she’d never used before made Trick drop his attention to her, and while the intensity lingered, his anger began to cool. This time when he put his arm around her neck and tugged her against him, Lyla didn’t put up any kind of fight. She wanted to look back to see if Curtis was ok, but Trick was holding her too tight.

  The camera crew was just by the door. Great, well they had their footage, and now she understood why Trick had been such a bastard. It was an act. But she was annoyed. For the first time, she actually was irritated by this stupid game. Curtis hadn’t signed any contract, he didn’t have a role to play, he was her friend, and he’d just been hurt because of her fake marriage.

  They didn’t speak in the car, not until Trick pulled off the road to park in front of the liquor store. “Just the wine, or do we need—”

  “I don’t want wine,” she said and folded her arms.

  “You don’t… well I’m here now, why the hell didn’t you say that when you saw me turn down the block?”

  It was just fine with her that he was angry because she was too. “Am I supposed to be in your brain?” she asked. “How am I supposed to know what you’re going to do?”

  He squeezed his fingers around the wheel and gritted his teeth. “You saw me driving this way, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I saw you driving this way, but I figured, you know, being the insensitive jerk that you are, you’d probably be coming here for something you want. You haven’t been drunk at all this week, so by my reckoning, it’s overdue, right?”