His voice was this strange mixture of casual and friendly, tinged with what sounded like sadness. But that couldn’t be right. I did like that he cared about what I wanted.
“You haven’t met my mother yet, but I am superfluous to her planning. She could pull off something twice as elaborate in half the amount of time. And I’ll have to make some kind of arrangement so I can have access to my phone to check on Nico and Kat’s press tour, but I’d set aside this time to be your liaison. I suppose it doesn’t really matter whether I’m behind the camera or in front of it.”
“Well, if you’re on television, it might help you get some new clients. Everyone in America will know who you are.”
Now that idea had merit, and it hadn’t occurred to me. He was right. This might open doors for me to build my business. We just couldn’t tell anyone about our little scheme or else everyone on the show and across Internet message boards would be talking about how I wasn’t there for “the right reasons.”
Taylor entered the room, still looking panicked. I was pretty sure this job was going shave ten years off of her life expectancy. “Dante, Chris needs to interview you in the interview room.”
“Of course,” he said. He nodded at me before leaving, and I smiled back.
The anger had been sustaining me, and now that it was gone, I felt drained and exhausted. I was ready to find my room and go to sleep. “Where am I staying?”
“Not yet,” Taylor said, not quite meeting my gaze. “Matthew Burdette wants to talk to you.”
Chapter 6
I’d like your permission to slightly exaggerate our relationship.
“Why does he want to see me?” I asked, my heart in my throat. “What’s wrong? Where are we going?”
Taylor chose the last question to answer. “Everyone calls it the ‘Bat Cave.’ It’s the studio where the production team lives and obsesses over everything on the show.” She took me outside, and it was now light enough that I could see a small guest cottage positioned just south of the main house. I knew they had a room inside the mansion where the story producers would stay with monitor feeds, and that the garage served as their control room.
It seemed rather ominous to go somewhere called the Bat Cave. If this were a scary movie, the audience would be screaming at me not to be stupid enough to go in.
She opened the door and ushered me inside. I hesitated for a moment, and then went in. The house was dark, because someone had put blackout curtains on all the windows. It took my eyes a second to adjust, and I recognized Matthew Burdette before Taylor led me over to him.
He seemed very average—average height, average appearance, brown hair, brown eyes. Your eyes would skim over him in a crowd.
But the anger he radiated was not average, and was wholly intimidating. I instinctively realized that he was meaner than a wet panther, and I would be a fool to cross him.
“Tell me,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “What is the name of your company again?”
I felt the urge to lie to him in order to protect myself, but I was a terrible liar and it would be very easy for him to find out.
“Lemon Zest Communications, sir.”
I hadn’t meant to add the sir on the end. All my life I’d been raised to say “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir” to adults. I’d had a hard time dropping the habit in my college years as it had been so ingrained, and this man was bringing it back out in me. That abject fear that I’d endure something terrible if I didn’t show the proper respect.
“You’re filling in because of the girls we had to send home, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you didn’t want to fill in?”
“No, sir. I didn’t.” He was pee-your-pants scary.
“And you thought, what, you’d sabotage my entire show by dressing up like this and ignoring Dante?”
Ignoring him? I felt like I’d spent the whole evening doing nothing but talking to him. Well, I probably hadn’t talked to him that much, but I’d definitely spent the entire party thinking about him when I wasn’t talking to him.