“Wait,” I said. “No. Not your plan—”
“Like I said,” the man said, smiling as he swung the jacket around my shoulders, “I don’t want you to catch a cold.”
His gaze burned my face red hot as he buttoned up the front. Embarrassed, I clutched the jacket together to cover my cleavage. Not like he hadn’t seen it all anyway, I told myself.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Anytime,” he said, grinning. “I mean that. And if you—”
A knock on the door cut his sentence short. He bit back his words and opened the door. A woman wearing a wire earpiece seemed relieved to see him. She held a clipboard out to him expectantly.
“We’re ready to start the auditions now, Mr. Letocci.”
“You’re— you’re Piers Letocci?” My jaw dropped as I turned to the man with light blue-green eyes. The pieces clicked together in my head like a puzzle I should have figured out long ago. The accent. How gorgeous he looked. Why he’d looked at me like that when he raised his mask—he must have expected me to recognize him.
“I take it you’re the interviewer who never showed up?” the woman asked. She dropped her eyes to my chest and I pulled the jacket even tighter. “Well, I hope you made the most of your interview time.”
“I didn’t—We weren’t—”
I turned to Piers for backup, but he started to laugh.
“You’re supposed to interview me?” he said, when he finally stopped chuckling. “Oh, my. What a bloody mess.”
“And you’re British!” I said incredulously. “He’s British!”
“Of course he’s British.” The woman looked at me like I was nuts.
“Of course,” I said weakly. “Of course he is.”
“We need you on set in five, Mr. Letocci.”
“I’m on my way.”
She turned on her heel and murmured into the wire mouthpiece. Piers began to follow her down the hall.
“Wait!” I cried.
They both turned to look at me.
“What about my interview?”
Piers grinned.
“I should think you have enough of a story in all this to write up for your magazine. What was it again?”
“Moi.”
“Right. Moi. Trust me. It’ll go over great.”
“I can’t write about this! Are you crazy?”
Piers raised his eyebrow. The woman gave an exaggerated glance at her watch.
“Why don’t you come in for the auditions?” he asked. “And if I have some free time afterward, we can do the interview.”
“Mr. Letocci—”
“It’s fine,” he said. He waved to me. “Mrs…ah…”
“Forrester,” I finished for him. “Miss Forrester.”
“Miss Forrester here adheres to a strict journalistic code. You agree not to leak any news about our contestants, yes?”
“Yes. Absolutely no leaking of any sort.”
“Except coffee.” His eyes sparkled.
“Right,” I said, clenching my jaw. “I just want to get this interview done with.”
“Then follow me, Miss Forrester.”
The set was more sparse than I could have imagined. In the middle of a low black platform, two red backdrops were propped behind a white leather couch. A potted fern stood at one end of the couch.
Around the set, though, there was a lot going on. Three stationary cameras were set up in different angles to the stage. Each one had multiple people working behind it, all dressed in black. Another camera was being wheeled across the stage in back. Two large microphones hung from black stands over the couch. Wires ran everywhere on the floor, with colored duct tape keeping them in place.
At a small table in the back of the room, there were two men and a woman sitting with clipboards in front of them. I edged their way. Were those the producers? Or were they—
“Stay here,” the woman ordered me. I stood in the spot she pointed to, which was unfortunately distant from the table of producers.
On the other side of the set from me, there were twenty young women sitting in folding chairs. They looked like they were dressed for a fashion shoot. One of them, a really young blonde woman, twisted her fingers between her knees nervously. I realized that they were the potential candidates for the show.
And every single one of them was staring, transfixed, at Piers Letocci.
Piers skipped onto the stage and clapped his hands together once.
“Alright, people, are we ready to go?”
A bevy of black-suited crew members were around him in an instant. One of them touched up his makeup. Another one combed back his hair and fixed what looked like a tiny wire under his shirt buttons. I realized it was a microphone when his voice came booming through a speaker near me.
“Check levels,” he said, and immediately the speaker lowered in volume. “Check, check. Rubber baby buggy bumpers.”
“Sounds good, Mr. Letocci!” a voice called out.
Someone appeared with another suit jacket for him, identical to the one I was currently wearing, and he slipped it on easily, adjusting his cuff links.
“Ready, Dave?”
A man holding one of those clicky chalkboard things stepped in front of the foremost camera.
“Billionaire Dating Game, Episode One,” he said in a bored tone. “Auditions. Take one. Action.”
The cameras started rolling.
“Welcome back!” Piers said, standing with both hands out to what I realized must be the main camera. “It’s time to find out who has what it takes to be a contestant on… The Billionaire Dating Game!”
He turned sideways, and I saw that a crew member was leading one of the girls up to the stage. She shook hands with Piers meekly and they both sat down on the couch. The camera on wheels adjusted a foot to the left.
“What’s your name?” Piers asked.
“Melinda,” the girl said.
“Let’s do that again,” Piers said, not unkindly. “First and last name, please.”
“Oh—oh, okay,” the girl stammered.
“What’s your name?” Piers asked, with exactly the same rhythm and intonation as before.
“Melinda Reed.”
“And why do you want to date a billionaire, Melinda?”
“I just want to find a man who’s responsible,” she said, swinging back into what sounded like a memorized answer. “I don’t care if he’s a billionaire, but if he’s good at business, I think he would be more mature than most guys. And I’m an independent woman, so I need a mature man!”
“Not sure if you have the logic quite right there,” I muttered. The woman with the earpiece turned to look at me and I pretended like I hadn’t said anything.
I edged back as the interviews went on. The producers were taking copious notes of all of the contestants. I glanced over and saw that one of them had a clipboard with the contestant’s picture on it. Underneath was written Southern Bitch. So that was how they were judging the contestants? I bet they chose the girls with the maximum potential for drama. The woman with the earpiece noticed me looking over at the producers and ushered me away, explaining that I needed to stay well away from the judges’ table. One of the producers, the woman in the middle, eyed me with a suspicious glance.