Dante leaned back in his comfortable chair on the wide veranda, looking at the ocean, taking a long swig of his beer. Two very different women sat across the table from him, both of them way too intense, both of them on a mission that he couldn’t quite wrap his head around.
“So let me get this straight,” he said. “You think the way to get the world off of Lacey’s ass for her scrapbooks—which I had sent to my room by IMO, by the way—” He directed this last point to Lacey, but she just groaned and looked away.
“Burn them,” she muttered.
“Right. Anyway, you think the best way to handle the unwanted attention on Lacey is to put even more attention on her. As some sort of tricked-out superfan. How is that going to restore her credibility?”
“Not attention on Lacey—on the superfan,” Anna said, her blonde hair pulled back into a messy bun that was already tangled in the wind. She was dressed in a style Dante could only describe as “corporate retreat”—soft black trousers, a polo shirt, and beach sandals—while Lacey was back in her habitual tunic and leggings. Neither woman looked comfortable—Anna was too focused, and Lacey too grim. But Anna had assembled a freaking spreadsheet to justify this course of action, so he was willing to hear her out. “I mean, Lacey will play the part, but the role will be sort of like a fantasy-come-to-life scenario. The ‘real’ number one fan of Dante Falcone gets a chance to break onto stage and stand in the spotlight with her dream come true.”
He crooked a brow at her. “So then why don’t we get a real fan to play that part?”
“Can’t control that,” Lacey said. She was worrying the edge of Anna’s printouts. “Too risky to let an unvetted person strut around on stage with a billion-dollar rock star. That’s why we have security guards.” She shook her head. “If we’re going to do this, it’s got to be someone we can control, someone we can trust, but who can still play the part convincingly.”
“And that someone’s you.” He eyed her over his beer, watching the color creep up her cheeks. “You’re going to be the one to act like you’re in love with me.”
“I can learn how to fake it,” she said stiffly.
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s already under way,” Anna broke in. “I have a ton of friends who are perfect at helping with stuff like this. They’ve all liked and shared the Falcone and Paradiso pages, co-opted the Twitter feed, you name it. We’ve started to turn the tide from ‘Lacey Dawes is a freak show’ posts to ‘Maybe the scrapbooks were a plant’ to ‘What does it take to get a real fan to show up for Dante Falcone?’ to ‘Here she is.’ ” She sat back and gave them both a determined smile. “Give me another few hours, and I’ll have RockerGrrl firmly planted in everyone’s mind as the next amazing revelation on the Dream It tour.”
RockerGrrl? Dante grimaced. He could feel a headache coming on. “I guess I just don’t understand what the big deal is,” he said. “I mean, they’re scrapbooks, Lacey. So you were a fan. Who cares?”
“Dante, it’s my career,” Lacey said. “How do you think it looks for me to have gotten myself into a position to be your agency rep—all the while hiding the fact that I was obsessed with you throughout my teenage years? At best I look single-minded and intense. At worst I look like the scariest kind of freaky stalker. It calls everything into question. Would I be so successful with other clients? Am I even safe to be left alone with you? My reputation is everything. If I want to be seen as credible in this industry, clients have to trust me. And how can you trust someone who writes ‘Dante plus Lacey Forever’ on the inside cover of fifteen separate books, along with detailed descriptions of what our wedding and honeymoon would look like—in seven different places! Why did I not burn those scrapbooks when I graduated from high school? God, I’m so stupid!”
Anna turned to her, ready to jump to her defense. “Lacey, you couldn’t have known—”
“Oh, come on, Anna,” Lacey grumbled, and to Dante’s deepening concern, she really did sound depressed. “Seeing those books on screen was a pretty harsh wake-up call. I could have been excused for making them—I mean, you are amazing.” She directed this last to Dante, but he didn’t speak. He didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought. “But I can’t be excused for leaving them locked up at work where anyone could find them.”
“Brenda raided your office and unlocked your drawers!” Anna protested, but Lacey shook her head.
“Still my mistake. If I wanted to be totally safe, then I should have gone the extra step to protect myself. I was so eager to take advantage of the information I’d stored away, I didn’t think how it might look if anyone found those scrapbooks. And now I have my answer: I look like a fool. Nobody wants a fool on their team.”
Dante slanted a look at Anna. “You consult with businesses in crisis all the time, right?” he asked her. “What do you think?”
“My professional assessment?” Anna gave a little shrug. “Lacey Dawes is a business in crisis. She has placed herself in a position of great risk and opportunity. The risk is that she has garnered public notice at a pretty significant level; but that’s also the opportunity. If she can focus that attention on another element, and then later, ideally, present that distraction as her own invention to elevate and focus audience interest on a corporate-positive end target, which leads to a defined call to action that supports and extends brand awareness, she’ll be a hero.”
Dante stared hard at Anna for a moment, and then looked back at Lacey. “You understood all of that?”
Lacey shook her head, her face bleak. “Not in the slightest.”
“Oh, give me a break,” Anna said, rolling her eyes. “It means this: With distraction number one, the scrapbooks, Lacey looks like a love-struck fool. If she creates distraction number two, the superfan, and it’s successful—and if she then makes it seem like both distractions were created by her quite deliberately—then she has a shot at looking like a PR savant, willing to do whatever it takes in order to make IMO, and of course, Dante, look extraordinary.”
Dante nodded, considering. “That makes a weird sort of sense,” he said. “So, how does this work, then? Another wig?”
“Another one?” Anna frowned, and Lacey shot Dante a warning look. He grinned, taking that in, and Lacey jumped into the fray to stave off Anna’s clear curiosity.
“Definitely a wig, makeup, some kind of outfit, whatever—just something that makes me look legitimate as a fan. If you can feed the flames that I’m the right grown-up fangirl for the real Dante, not the Dante of the past but the Dante of the here and now, and insinuate that maybe Dante really does like me back, that would probably play well. After the show, of course. He can’t really know what to expect before the show.” She eyed him with a look so endearingly serious, a little part of him became unglued. “So remember, act surprised.”
“I can act surprised,” Dante said. “But—”
Anna’s phone beeped, and she frowned down at it. “Oh, I’ve got to get this. It could be a date for the damn wedding.”
Dante lifted his brows. “What wedding?”
Anna fitted the phone to her ear and shot him a grimace. “Trust me, you don’t want to know. Hello, this is Anna!” she bubbled into the phone as she turned away and walked the short distance to the edge of the patio.
Lacey immediately turned on him. “So, really? You’ll do this for me?”
Dante rolled the bottle of beer in his hands, then set it down on the table. “I’ll do this for you, sure. But I think there should be something in it for me.”
Lacey stilled, clearly still too keyed up to read his mood, and not wanting to play this the wrong way. Her vulnerability struck him to the core of his being, and he shifted, forcing himself not to just take her into his arms. He hadn’t been alone with her since that scene in the storeroom in Baltimore, and it was driving him absolutely insane. “Of course,” she said uneasily. “What—I mean, what did you have in mind?” She really needed him to help her, and he could tell that it was taking a lot out of her to ask for his assistance. He liked being able to be there for her, more than he wanted to admit. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to turn this to his advantage.
He smiled and leaned forward, picking Lacey’s hand up and drawing her toward him until he was able to graze her knuckles with his lips. Her sharp intake of breath was all that he needed to stir the desire in his gut, and his smile was completely unfeigned. “I’ll think about it and let you know tonight after the show,” he said, squeezing her hand. “But stop worrying so much, sweetheart. I guarantee you’re going to like it.”