Name Your Price

Chapter 4

Olivia walked out of the meeting in a daze. After an hour of negotiation and a few phone calls, they’d settled on a final agreement—including the stipulations of a fifty-thousand-dollar advance and a million dollars as the prize money. Each. She couldn’t believe it. Her heat-of-the-moment declaration on the street had the potential to change her life. All she had to do was live in a house with her ex for a month and not kill him. Which may be easier said than done, but she’d figure it out. She had a million dollars on the line.

“You’re sure?” Mansi had whispered to her one last time before she inked her name into the contract. Olivia wasn’t sure about Chuck, but she was sure she needed the money, so she’d nodded and scrawled her signature.

They all shook hands, and Parker told them they would be in touch soon about a schedule since they didn’t want to lose any momentum with the video having gone viral.

When they parted to carry on with their days, Olivia gave Chuck a frosty glare and climbed back into Mansi’s Mercedes. They were paying her to live with him, not be nice to him.

“Well, this is gonna be fun,” Mansi said. “A month of Chuck Walsh just when you thought you were done with him.”

“It will be painful but necessary,” Olivia said. “Thanks again for coming.”

“Of course. I just don’t want to have to say I told you so when you want to kill him after one day.”

“Oh, I already know I’ll want to kill him. The next four weeks will be a test of restraint and summoning the acting skills buried in my heritage.”

Mansi gave her a small smile. “Well, let’s hope you’ve got your mom’s chops.”

Olivia smiled back. As a kid, she used to put on her mother’s movies and pretend she was the one having a conversation with her instead of her scene partner. She’d memorized lines of dialogue from her romantic comedies and the few more mature dramas that her grandmother had let her watch. No such opportunity existed for her father, seeing that he was never in a movie, and that had left the fragile bond tying her to her parents at all a hair thicker for her mother. Now this bizarre opportunity had given her a chance to explore a side of herself rooted in the defining characteristic of the woman she’d never known, because if she was going to survive living with Chuck in front of cameras, there would be a fair amount of pretending going on. The thought of it put a warm, if not slightly intimidated, sensation in her chest.

Mansi drove Olivia back home, where she got in her own car to head to work. Most everyone at the magazine worked remotely these days, but Olivia enjoyed coming into the office when she needed an escape from the four walls of her tiny apartment. She thought breaking the news to her boss that she needed time off to be on a TV show was something better done in person anyway.

When she arrived at the building that housed Mix , she took the elevator up to the fourth floor. A few coworkers sat in their cubicles, but the grid of mostly empty desks looked like the final moments of a chess game with only a few pieces left on the board.

In a turn that she herself still to this day didn’t fully understand, she’d made a career out of writing about celebrity culture. It was a strange addiction of sorts. Media coverage was all she had to remember her parents by, and while she abhorred what she saw there, steeping herself in that world helped fill the ugly, misshapen hole in her heart over what the media had done to their family. It was a scab she couldn’t stop picking. Perhaps some subconscious drive to infuse more integrity into reporting on celebrities as artists, to spare the world the type of headlines she’d seen about her parents and the tragedy that befell them, kept her around too.

She walked to her desk, dropped her bag, and woke her computer. The screen fizzled to life, and her eyes went straight to the number in a round, red dot informing her how full her inbox was. She grimaced at it and scanned the first few messages at the top. One stuck out, a reminder from Willow Grove that her payment was past due, although that problem now at least had a short-term fix. She decided that rather than diving into the rest of the messages sure to overwhelm her, she would go tell her boss her news.

Stephanie had an office in the row of small suites around the floor’s perimeter. She never worked from home because she had two small children who made it near impossible. Olivia found her at her desk wearing her customary look of simultaneous focus and frazzle. Her blond bob was pulled half back in a clip, and her sleeveless blouse had a smudge near the collar that looked suspiciously like Magic Marker. Stephanie always reminded Olivia of the eye of a hurricane. Chaos swirled around her—her children, her job as a senior editor—but she herself was remarkably calm.

Olivia knocked on her doorframe.

Stephanie’s head popped up from where she had been staring at her computer. Her messy desk splayed out before her like someone had overturned all the drawers on top of it. Stacks of papers teetered, and Post-its fluttered like rainbow eyelashes. A coffee mug that had likely held coffee earlier that morning had become a pen holder. “Olivia,” she said with a serene smile. “How can I help you?”

“Good morning, Stephanie. I wanted a quick word if you’ve got a few minutes.”

She looked around at her desk like something there would inform her of her schedule and looked back up. “Sure. Come in.”

Olivia got right to the point because she knew Stephanie’s time was limited. “So, I’m going to be on a TV show?” She wasn’t sure why she said it like a question. Perhaps because she was still in shock.

“Oh? Which one?”

“Name Your Price.”

Stephanie arched a knowing brow. “Would this have anything to do with the video of you online?”

A hot flush curled into Olivia’s cheeks. She grimaced. “You’ve seen it?”

“I think everyone’s seen it,” Stephanie said with a gentle smile. “I’m sorry to hear that you and Chuck broke up.”

Of course Stephanie knew about Chuck. She had been the one to send Olivia on assignment to interview him, and she’d been the one Olivia had to tell that she couldn’t keep the assignment because their relationship had crossed from professional to personal faster than a lightning strike.

“Right. Thanks,” Olivia said awkwardly and unsure how else to respond. “Anyway, Name Your Price wants us to live locked in a house together for a month. If we make it without leaving the house, we win.” The if in her statement came out with a bit more emphasis than she meant.

Stephanie narrowed her eyes. “Interesting. Do you need time off?”

“Oh, um, well, I was thinking I could work remotely because I’ll need something to keep me sane in there, but—”

“I know you have plenty stored up, Olivia. You never take time off.” She said it almost as if scolding her. It was true. Olivia hoarded her time off in case she needed to use it to care for Grandma Ruby. “And the timing is rather perfect what with you submitting your Power Couples piece last week—which is excellent by the way. Your interview with Jack and Gemma Lincoln was the cherry on top.” Stephanie lifted her hand into the OK symbol.

“Thank you,” Olivia said with a proud smile. She’d spent months tracking down meetings with six Hollywood couples for a feature piece in Mix . Turned out, getting two busy, powerful people in the same place at the same time for an interview was a tall order. For the final couple, she’d spent last Monday chatting with the daughter of a famous music producer who had her own radio show and her Emmy-winning screenwriter husband in their home. Stephanie was right: with that project wrapped up, right now was fitting for taking time off.

“Take the time, Olivia. You deserve a break,” Stephanie said.

Olivia involuntarily huffed a laugh. “You make it sound like a vacation. I’m going to be locked in a house with my ex-boyfriend and a bunch of cameras.”

Stephanie laughed. “Well, when you put it that way, maybe not. But I’m serious. I know you’re under a lot of pressure caring for your grandmother, and maybe a little change in routine will do you some good.”

Olivia had confided in Stephanie on more than one occasion. She knew about her family history, of course she did. And even with the potential to bust her career wide open by leveraging it, Stephanie never pushed her to. Olivia had always respected her for that.

“Thanks,” Olivia said.

“Of course. And maybe when you get back, we can talk about writing one of the harder-hitting pieces you’ve had your eye on.”

She never pushed her on her parents, but she always pushed her in other ways.

Olivia had written profiles on actors, musicians, famous directors. Her dream was to one day be a best-selling biographer, but she was still cultivating relationships and earning enough clout for anyone to trust her with their life story. Stephanie was always passing her opportunities to earn that clout and encouraging her to take a risk on writing a splashy breakout piece.

“Sure,” Olivia said, grateful but not exactly committing. “That would be great. Thanks, Stephanie.”

“Good luck with your TV show,” Stephanie said.

Olivia left her office in another daze. Everything was falling into place. All she had left to do was tell Grandma Ruby she’d be gone for a month.

When she returned to her desk, she found a new email waiting at the top of her inbox. One from Parker Stone.

Subject: Move-in Schedule for NYP

Hey, gang. We’re excited to get going. See attached for details.

See you soon!

—P

Olivia opened the attachment and felt her heart lurch up into her throat. Apparently, she’d be seeing them very soon because they were moving in the day after tomorrow.

Not a minute after she finished Parker’s email, she got a text from Chuck.

Hey roomie. Did you get that email?

Olivia rolled her eyes.

Yes. And don’t call me roomie.

What should I call you?

How about cellmate.

Could you at least try for optimism? This isn’t going to be that bad.

Chuck, this is literally a nightmare scenario.

Yes, and that’s the point. At least we know what we’re getting into.

Olivia realized he made an excellent point. It wasn’t like they were walking into the situation ignorant. She sighed and remembered what they had talked about that morning outside the studio.

So, about these rules…

Yes. Agreed. Necessary. Let’s meet tonight at Mel’s. 8.

Chuck’s pushy little text messages irked her something special, and it dawned on her that one benefit of living with him for a month would be a significant reduction in text communication.

Unless they locked themselves on either end of the house and only communicated electronically, which might be a solid idea, now that she thought about it.

Either way, she agreed that they needed to lay some ground rules, off camera, before they got into this mess they’d signed up for. And seeing that she had one day to get her affairs in order before Name Your Price locked them in and threw away the key, a prompt meeting with Chuck was necessary.

See you there , she responded, and wondered if she should read into the fact that he’d picked the diner where he’d turned her world upside down with a kiss on their first date.

···

Mel’s was a greasy spoon off Sunset Boulevard. The perfect late-night hideaway after seeing a show or drinking too much and needing something battered and fried to sop it up. Or, as was happening at the moment, the perfect place to discuss boundaries for avoiding homicide while locked in a house with your ex for the sake of a reality TV show. Olivia ordered a milkshake with extra whipped cream to help the conversation go down easier. Chuck got decaf coffee. Night had fallen outside, and the summer sky glowed a shade of dusty purple above the city lights. Not a single star was visible.

At their booth, a cushy cove with worn, red leather seats and a laminate table, Olivia watched Chuck watch her pluck the cherry from her shake’s fluffy top and suck the cream from it. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he wet his lips. He lifted his coffee for a sip, and Olivia couldn’t tell if his reaction was jealousy that she was indulging in a treat or tempered arousal from watching her do things with her mouth.

“You can have some if you want,” she said, and pushed the shake to the table’s midpoint. She dipped her long spoon into the whipped cream and ate the white puff it returned with.

Chuck smirked at her. “You know I can’t.”

“Sure you can,” she said, and sucked on her spoon. It popped from her mouth with a slick sound that made Chuck lick his lips again.

“No, I can’t. Do you know what it takes to look like this?” he said, and gestured at himself, specifically the middle part of his body.

The face hadn’t been up to him. That was a blessing from whatever Grecian god statue his parents had prayed to. The height was genetic too, and sure, the abs, lats, delts, and whatever else made up a torso and arms fit for an action hero probably had roots in a fortunate gene pool, but Olivia was well aware how much work Chuck put into his body. The gym and the diet and all the routines had dictated their life. Like when she was hormonal and craving salty grease, but he was having a keto week. Or when she wanted to see a matinee at the theater, but he had to get in a workout during an afternoon window. Or when he left a pile of sweaty, squishy clothes on the bedroom floor because he came over after a run and she stepped on it with a bare foot.

“Yes, I do know. I used to date you, remember?”

He gave her another smirk, and she pushed the milkshake closer.

“That’s why I know one milkshake isn’t going to kill you. Half a milkshake, actually.”

His eyes widened at the sweating glass of frozen chocolate, but he pressed his lips together and ultimately resisted.

She pulled the glass back to her side of the table. “Suit yourself. Your restraint is remarkable when you want it to be.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She found the straw buried in the cream and took a long, brain-freezing pull. “It means we should talk about what we came here to talk about.”

Chuck sat up straighter and leaned his elbow on the table. “Right.”

The elephant between them was that neither of them showed restraint when it came to the other person. Not emotionally. Not physically. They were explosive magnets, and they both knew it. And an explosion would not lead to the million-dollar paycheck they both needed.

“Ground rules,” Chuck said.

Olivia nodded. “Ground rules.”

They stared at each other, neither of them sure where to start.

“No sex?” Olivia said, jumping straight into the deep end.

Chuck sputtered into the coffee he’d been about to take a sip of. She handed him a napkin. “Sorry,” he said, and dabbed his lips. “Going right for the big one there.”

Olivia shrugged. “I mean, it’s the most obvious and problematic one, right?”

He gave her a look that positively melted her to the booth. “Olivia, the sex was never a problem.”

Heat curled up from low in her belly and spread into her every extremity. She pressed her thighs and her lips together. The urge to throw her milkshake aside and climb across the table into his lap was the exact reason she knew this was the most important rule.

“No, it wasn’t a problem,” she agreed. “It was what came after.” She took another pull of her shake in an effort to lower her body temperature. “And before, honestly.”

Chuck sighed, as he too was well aware of the cyclical nature of their problems. Fight, make up, fight, make up. Rinse and repeat. On and on for all eternity. There was no beginning and no end, but part of what kept pulling them back to each other, part of what made them put up with the fighting, was their physical connection. If they cut off that life source, they just might be able to really call it quits and survive living together.

“No sex,” he agreed.

“And if there’s only one bed in the house, I get it.”

A laugh popped from his lips. “Liv, it’s a house in the Palisades. It probably has like five bedrooms.”

“Oh, I seriously doubt that, Chuck. It’s probably a condo, and the pool and gym they mentioned belong to the property complex. They know we can’t stand each other. I’m sure they are planning a hundred ways to sabotage us—remember the cryptic challenges they’ve got lined up? You really think they’d put us in a house large enough that we could avoid each other?”

“That…is an excellent point.” He stroked his jaw again. “What else do you think they might do?”

Olivia sighed. “I don’t know. Forcing us to eat, sleep, and exist in the same space is bad enough, isn’t it?”

Chuck gave her a look that she couldn’t fully interpret. “You’re right. So, I guess we just keep our distance?”

“As best we can, yes.”

A silence settled between them aside from Olivia’s straw hitting an air pocket in her milkshake and making a rude sucking sound. Chuck’s phone pinged with a message.

He reached for it, and Olivia noticed his lips twitch up at the corners when he looked at the screen. He started tapping out a response.

“Who’s that?” she asked, rotely and not even thinking she didn’t have the right to inquire about his personal business anymore.

“My sister,” he answered just as automatically as if the idea of new boundaries hadn’t registered to him either. “She’s pretty pissed at me right now.”

“Why?”

He stopped typing and looked up as his phone let out the whoosh sound of a sent message. “Because of this whole situation,” he said, and waved his hand over the table.

She knew he didn’t mean Chelsea was upset that they were having an evening chat at a diner.

“She’s mad that we broke up?”

He quietly laughed in the form of a little huff out his nose. “Liv, she adores you. As far as she’s concerned, I’ve ruined everything and taken away the big sister she never had—which, ouch. I think she likes you more than me.”

The warmth that filled Olivia’s chest felt like the sun on a crisp fall day. At the same time, a wave of guilt washed over her for feeling like she’d somehow let Chelsea down. She tried to drown it with another pull of her milkshake. “I think you will forever hold idol status for her, don’t worry.”

He shook his head with a soft smile and shoved his phone back in his pocket. “Unlikely. She’s threatening to fly out here and stab me with the blunt end of a paintbrush.”

Olivia grinned at the thought of Chelsea hopping a flight and showing up in paint-stained overalls to harangue her brother. “What’s she doing this summer?”

“Art camp. She’s a counselor for a bunch of tweens trying to find their inner Monet.”

“That suits her.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of perfect. She’ll be back for school in September. We should take her—” He cut himself off midsentence as if he’d tripped. His brow furrowed. “Sorry. Never mind.”

His interrupted suggestion that the three of them spend time together—because clearly that was what he had been about to say—left Olivia with a sense of sadness she wasn’t sure where to place. Those days were obviously over.

She returned to her milkshake for solace. “How are your parents? How’s your dad doing after his surgery?”

Chuck lit up with the usual sunbeam shine that mention of Barbara and Sam Walsh summoned from him. Olivia had been lucky enough to bask in the source of that light on the occasions she’d met his parents, and while it was golden and beautiful, it always left her wrung out and drained like a long day in the real sun. The presence of something so wholesome and unconditionally absolute served to remind her that she’d never had the same. No doting from the two parents who’d given her life, at least.

“They’re good. My dad’s doing really well, apparently. I was thinking of flying out to help around the house for a while, but my mom said he’s already up and about. His doctors are impressed he’s recovering so well.”

“Your dad’s a sturdy man.”

“He is. Took a new hip like a champ. He says thanks for the get-well card.”

Olivia had sent him one two weeks ago when he’d had his hip replacement. Little did she know her relationship with his son would be over by the time he’d recovered. The thought made her ache the same way discussing Chelsea had. His whole family had been over-the-moon happy when their relationship had turned serious. They’d welcomed Olivia with an enthusiasm she’d at first found intimidating but had grown a fond affection for. Losing them felt like more than just a casualty of their breakup.

“Tell them hi from me,” she said with a weak smile.

A sad look washed over Chuck’s face, twinged with something Olivia couldn’t identify. He nodded. “I will.”

Another silence filled the space between them. Chuck drummed his fingers on the tabletop.

“Nice job getting them to double the prize money, by the way. That was a bold move,” he said in a shift of topic.

A smile bent Olivia’s frozen mouth. “I figured we had nothing to lose.”

He smirked and raised his coffee mug as if toasting to her. “Well, now we have double the amount to lose.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It is if we can’t pull this off.”

Olivia took a final slurp of her shake. “Then let’s do our best to stack the odds in our favor.”

“Agreed. So, what do you think they’re going to make us do?”

“Hopefully nothing too terrible. I won’t even have work to distract me while we’re in there.”

A look of surprise crossed his face. “You took time off?”

“Stephanie gave it to me when I told her about the show. Why do you sound so surprised?”

He tilted his head and gave her a knowing look. “Because you never take a break, Liv. I was sure you’d find a way to multitask, even while trying to win a million dollars.” He was scolding her just like her boss had, and she didn’t like it.

She found one last bit of frozen chocolate to suck through her straw with another gurgling sound. “Not this time. What about you?” she probed, knowing Chuck did not currently have a job to take time off from and unable to resist provoking him.

Where she thought she might see an icy glare or a snarky smirk, Chuck actually sighed. He ran a hand through his disheveled hair, and she tried to ignore the flash of his biceps that peeked out from his tee shirt’s sleeve. He had a small tattoo on the inside of his right arm that was the perfect size for pressing her lips into, which she had done many, many times. “Nothing to take time off from right now, unfortunately.” The note of dismay in his voice stirred something inside her. She knew he’d been struggling to find work—they’d argued about it plenty—but broaching the topic when they weren’t screaming at each other let her see the sincere distress he was trying to hide. It made her want to probe deeper.

She set her glass aside and placed her hands on the table. “Chuck, does this still have to do with whatever happened with Richard Sykes?”

He quickly turned to her, and the look on his face told her the answer was yes.

It was no secret that Chuck Walsh was difficult—perhaps the worst label an actor could earn—but the reason why had never been fully disclosed. The clickbait headlines had planted seeds in the Hollywood rumor mill soil and left Chuck’s reputation decaying without going into any real detail.

Up-and-Comer Chuck Walsh Fired from Star-Studded Blockbuster

A-list Director Richard Sykes Drops Walsh Midshoot

Chuck Walsh Loses the Bet on Safe Gamble : Rising Star Loses Breakout Role in Next Summer’s Hit

When it had all happened a month ago, Olivia only witnessed what she saw in the tabloids plus Chuck in a mopey, drunken stupor for a few days claiming he didn’t want to talk about it.

She’d let it go.

“I’d rather not talk about that,” he said now. The sharp edge to his tone told her not to push, and she knew if she did push, they’d end up fighting and someone would storm out.

Olivia of yesterday might have demanded he tell her, but Olivia of today—the one with a million dollars on the line if she could figure out how to coexist for a month with the man sitting across from her—impressed herself by dropping it.

Instead, she sighed and turned to look at the counter. She and Chuck had sat there the night of their first date. They’d seen a show at Whisky a Go Go and wandered down the street once they left the sweaty little red box. They’d been plenty close to each other during the show, smashed together with the crowd near the stage for some punk band she’d never heard of that Chuck knew, but sitting knee-to-knee at the diner counter after had somehow felt more intimate. At least that was how Olivia remembered it. She also remembered the basket of fries they’d shared, though she ate ninety-five percent of it, and how Chuck had wiped a dribble of ketchup off her lip and then sucked it from his own thumb in a way that had nearly made her combust.

Then, of course, there was the way he’d slipped his hand into hers when they walked back outside, and she’d felt at once like her body was an enormous swarm of butterflies and a bomb that was about to detonate. And how when he’d leaned her up against the cool stone wall of the building and kissed her like no one else had ever kissed her before, she thought every star in the sky had aligned for them.

“Liv? Hellooo? ” Chuck said now, and waved his hand at her.

“What?”

“I said dibs on the TV whenever there’s a game on that I want to watch.”

The shimmering, nostalgic fantasy that had been replaying in her mind disappeared in a puff of smoke. Whatever sweet memories had been trying to convince her that Charles Michael Walsh was some kind of romantic hero had almost succeeded. Alas, the man sitting across from her claiming rights to the televised snooze fests that were professional sports was none other than her ex-boyfriend.

She pushed her way out of the booth. “Whatever, Chuck.”

He sipped the rest of his coffee and watched her stand. “Are you going to make me pay for this?” He gestured at their table.

Olivia looped her purse over her head. “Yes. Consider it compensation for landing us on a TV show that I don’t want to be a part of.”

Chuck turned around in the booth as she began to walk away. “A TV show that could make you a millionaire!” he called after her.

“Only if I manage not to kill you!” she called back, and shoved open the diner’s door.

No one raised a head at their dramatic exchange. Given the crowd that hung out around Sunset after dark, they were not even close to being strange.

Olivia passed back into the summer evening and wondered, sincerely, if she had it in her to win this game.