9. Cameron
CAMERON
“Nooo,” I groaned, rolling over in bed to check why my phone was blowing up. “It’s early!”
Once again, my Veritique alerts were going off, but I couldn’t think of a single thing that could be causing problems. We’d had a blissfully stable few weeks, and while I couldn’t completely credit Felicity for the positive change, it sure felt like she had something to do with it.
I squinted at my phone. “What the hell is #RingingintheRomance?”
It wasn’t a hashtag I was familiar with. Not that I had a hand in every single thing the media department was doing, but still. They at least included me in emails when something was going to launch. I scrolled until I found a link and clicked through it.
“Oh, fuck,” I said when it took me to Lucy’s Snug account and I saw a still of me and Felicity from the night we had our meeting in the Veritique showroom. “What kind of bullshit drama did she cook up?”
Signing Lucy was a no-brainer, but I still wasn’t completely comfortable with how much freedom we’d given her, within certain parameters, to post what she thought would be the most effective without having to get sign off on it from me first. When we’d put together the contract, she’d argued she knew best what her followers would respond to.
I couldn’t exactly argue with that—but that didn’t mean I was always thrilled with how she got her results.
“I know I’m going to hate this.”
Boris decided I could use some support and jumped up beside me in bed. He refused to sleep next to me, opting instead to sleep close by in his own luxury dog bed.
I pushed play and discovered that Lucy had zoomed in on us bickering about why the Aeternum ring wasn’t right for Felicity, and ended the clip with me describing how the perfect ring would complement her.
What I hadn’t realized in the moment was the way Felicity looked at me as I described the symbiotic relationship between ring and wearer.
Her eyes were locked on me, and her expression shifted from anger to awe as I spoke.
Lucy had added little floaty hearts around us toward the end of the clip.
Okay. Not terrible. I couldn’t actually see the ring in the clip, so she hadn’t blown our reveal, and I stood by everything I had said, so the message in the video was solid.
But why was everyone reposting the clip and tagging Veritique along with #RingingintheRomance and #CamLicity?
It was good content but didn’t seem viral to me.
Then I read her caption.
“How swoony are these two? The Veritique CEO and his Marketing Associate have been hiding a romance from us…so when’s he gonna put a ring on it? C’mon, Cameron, pop the question and make Felicity yours for good! Team #CamLicity!”
I jolted upright. No, this wasn’t happening!
But the more I scrolled through social media, the more I realized it had already happened. CamLicity was everywhere—there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. And worse, as much as I hated the idea of a fake romance with Felicity Rhodes, the rest of the world loved it.
Veritique was going viral in a big way, and not for something negative for the first time in ages.
It didn’t matter. Lucy had gone against my plans. I’d said that a fake romance was out of the question. I’d forbid it. I was about to type out an angry email when I paused to consider what I’d said that night, so I could repeat it in writing in the message.
Fuck me. I’d never actually forbidden it. I’d ended the brainstorming session but never outright told Lucy not to proceed with the fake relationship. Clearly, she was an “ask forgiveness not permission” kind of person.
A text popped up from Felicity. “Can we talk?”
She’d seen the hype as well.
“Meet me at Juniper’s in 30,” I typed back quickly, mentioning the little coffee shop around the corner.
“I’ll be there in 45.”
I smirked. As always, Felicity was going to do things her way—and on her own schedule.
I got ready for the day in a haze, trying to figure out how we were going to make the mess go away. Because I absolutely couldn’t play along with the fake relationship. Not a chance.
But if I was honest with myself, I was intrigued by the possibility of Felicity playing the role of my adoring girlfriend. I’d experienced a hint of it the night I carried her groceries, and I’d caught myself thinking about that smile of hers more than a few times since.
I wound up waiting for her at the coffee shop, uncharacteristically torn between the two options I was being forced to face. Put a stop to the good press Veritique was currently getting or pretend to be in a relationship with a woman who wasn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe with me.
Neither choice sounded doable.
I scrolled through the various posts using the hashtags while I waited for Felicity to finally arrive. I sighed and glanced toward the door, only to spy two young women trying to pretend they weren’t watching me. They giggled when I looked at them.
I frowned at the thought of being observed and refocused on my phone. The more I scrolled, the more my perspective shifted to a place I didn’t want to be. Numbers didn’t lie, and I couldn’t deny the impact of what I was seeing.
The bell over the door sounded, and I felt like I had to catch my breath when I saw Felicity breeze in.
Why did she have to be so insanely attractive?
And it was effortless. She’d just twisted her hair up and slipped on a simple dress, but she still wound up looking better than the runway models I’d dated.
She gave me a tight smile when she spotted me.
“Hey,” Felicity dropped into the chair across from me. “So, what’s new with you?”
I laughed despite all the bullshit we were facing. “Not much. You?”
“Oh, you know, just embroiled in a hot love affair with my boss that’s captivated the nation in the past twenty-four hours. No big deal.” She gave me a half-grin.
“Oh, right, that.”
We stared at each other, sharing a moment of commiseration.
“Coffee?” I asked, breaking the spell. “I’m guessing we’re going to need it.”
“Yes please. Ask for a Dutch chocolate mocha. It’s not on the menu, but they make it just for me.”
Of course she’d charmed the local baristas into creating a special drink for her. I wondered when I was ever going to be on the receiving end of that charm.
Coffee in hand, I headed back for our table trying to ignore the fact that I felt like people were watching me the entire time.
It wasn’t like my life was exactly low-profile—I’d made the society pages my fair share of times, especially whenever I was dating anyone particularly famous.
But the stares had never felt this concentrated before. Was this going to be my new reality?
Felicity took a sip and closed her eyes. “My favorite part of the day.”
I took the few seconds to admire her. Damn it, why did she have to be so fucking gorgeous?
“Anyway,” she continued. “It’s not happening, right? We’re going to clear things up ASAP. Because I’ve got Lucy on speed dial and I can make this all—”
“Hold on now,” I interrupted her. “Not so fast. Have you had a chance to go deep on the coverage?”
She frowned at me. “I took a peek, but I haven’t checked the metrics or anything. I didn’t feel like it was necessary since we both agree the idea is ridiculous. There are good reasons why we blew it off the first time she brought it up to us.”
“Yeah, it’s lowest common denominator marketing. I would never have signed off on this sort of bullshit if the idea had been run past me before it went online, but the fact is, Lucy followed her gut.” I paused. “And it’s working.”
Felicity gave me a blank stare. “So?”
“So…” I began cautiously. “I think we should go with it.”
Her mouth dropped open.
“You’re speechless for a change?” I joked.
She bristled. “No, Cameron, I’m not. I have plenty to say, so strap in.” She glanced around the room and leaned closer to me. “My response, in a word, is abso-fucking-lutely not. Pardon my French.”
I threw back my head and laughed at her. “Am I that bad? There’s no way you can envision faking being attracted to me?”
“Well, I…” she stammered for a few seconds, realizing she was insulting her boss. “No. You’re not that bad. But it could never work!”
I leaned closer to her. “And why not? And when you answer me, please keep in mind that the peanut gallery is watching us.”
She screwed up her face in confusion, and I flicked my eyes toward the table with the junior paparazzi, who were doing a terrible job hiding the fact that they were recording us. Felicity pretended to look in her purse and glanced in their direction.
“Are you kidding me?” she complained, hiding her displeasure with a neutral expression.
“That’s my point. The story is out of our hands now.
It’s a living, breathing thing I think we should harness and control.
The other option is to suffer the consequences of coming clean.
” I fiddled with my phone. “Can you imagine how bad it’s going to look if we publish some sort of retraction?
And on the heels of the domestic violence stuff? ”
She shook her head, and a few tendrils spilled down onto her cheeks. “There has to be a way to contain this. We can still spin a retraction that’ll work for us.”
“Okay, Miss Marketing Expert, how? Lay it out for me, and if it’s doable, I’ll agree to it.”
Felicity sat up straighter and cleared her throat, like she was ready to brainstorm. “I think we could start by…uh…” she drummed her nails on the table. “If we take the approach that we were, um…”
“Exactly,” I said after letting her stew in silence for a few minutes. “We’re painted into a corner.”
Her shoulders slumped, and I tried not to feel insulted that she was so resistant to pretending to like me.
“I can make it worth your while.”
Felicity met my eyes. “Oh yeah? How?”
“Well, first, I intend to make it clear to Lucy that we’ll both have to sign off on anything that goes wide. No more gotcha stuff. You’d get final approval on the photos and text used. And I’ll provide professional hair and makeup any time you want.”