“I have no idea. They wanted me to agree to a fake relationship with her a while ago, but I said no. I don’t know what game she’s playing.”
“Can you put your own Instagram post up saying you’re not together?”
“They’ll ruin me if I go against Serena.” He paused. “Theyownme, Marley. If I want to work in this industry, they fucking own me. I have to work three times as hard, put up with three times the bullshit, and still… they own me. Fuck. I need to talk to Esther. I’ll get those pics of you taken down. They can’t violate your privacy like that.”
“Okay. Let me know how it goes.”
“Yeah. I’ll call you.”
An hour later, Marley’s painkillers had kicked in, so she showered and changed. The piece was still up on the gossip site, and she hadn’t heard from Nikhil. She assumed he was in crisis mode with his team, and she didn’t want to bother him.
Marley’s phone rang. Unknown number. She cringed. Maybe someone she knew had seen the damn article.
“Hello?” Marley said when she accepted the call.
“Marley, this is Jacqueline Richards.”
Shit. “Oh, hi, Jacqueline. What can I do for you?”
“We’ve gotten word about this social media situation. We’ll need to see you in the store this afternoon to discuss it.”
“Oh, yes, of course, but if you are talking about the post with Nik Sharma, he is going to get it taken down. And there is nothing—”
“One o’clock work for you, Marley? My office. We can send a car if you’d like.”
Marley exhaled. “Yes, one works. I don’t need a ride.”
“Excellent. See you then.” Jacqueline disconnected the call. Marley stared at her phone for several seconds. Clearly someone from the store—maybe Tova—spoke to the so-called reporter about Marley.
Marley felt her stomach drop. She had no doubt in her mind—she’d lost the personal shopping job. She hadn’t done anything wrong—Nikhil wasn’t her client when anything happened between them, both that first time at the King Street hotel, and again now.
And Nikhil and Serena weren’t together. Nikhil hadn’t bought Marley fake boobs, either. Marley had had a mastectomy, not a boob job.
But she’d still lost the personal shopping role. She knew it without a doubt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Nikhil
The first thing Nikhil wanted to do after reading that blasted gossip article was quit this damn movie and move to New Zealand where he was pretty sure everyone still thought he was dead. The second thing he wanted to do was go home and kneel in front of Marley and beg for her forgiveness for bringing this chaos into her life.
Instead, he called his agent.
“Esther, they’re not allowed to take pictures in a doctor’s office, are they?” he said the moment she accepted the call. He was still on a bench in the men’s changing room at the gym. No one had come to get him, so he assumed everyone out there had checked their messages and was now doing their own damage control.
“Absolutely not. I’ve already put a call into the lawyer the agency has on retainer. I’ll get this pulled by the end of the day, babycakes.”
That wasn’t really much help at this point. “Everyone has already seen it,” he said.
“It’s the best I can do. One question, Nik,” Esther asked. “How much of this is true?”
“Esther, you know I’m not dating Serena. You were there when I said no to the fake dating contract.”
“But are you dating the stylist?”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t know if confirming it now could make things worse for Marley, and he didn’t want to take that risk.
“We’ll figure this out, babycakes,” Esther said. “What worries me is this little gossip piece has made a fool out of the darling of the franchise.”
