Chad flailed his hands animatedly. “I want you to roughen up his image a little. Up to this point, we’ve protected the wholesome brand, but this would be a good moment to rebrand and explore some edgier angles to Alex Chase. I want people to wonder if he might have a thing or two in common with Lucas Steel.”

Asha nodded. “We let the frenzy build, fanning the flames as needed, and then play on the sympathy when Alex gets his heart broken. We absolutely cannot let the public suspect any of this is staged. I’ll adapt our media plan when we see how people are responding to each phase, so this schedule is tentative.”

“The compensation is what was discussed at our last meeting,” Rami said. “The various statements and strategy for the public dissolution of the relationship are on page 57.”

A woman motioned to Rami through the glass wall, and he glanced at his watch before nodding to her.

“If you don’t have any amendments, we can go ahead and move to the signature pages.”

He started to turn to the flagged pages with eyebrows raised slightly in question. Ophelia pulled her copy of the contract from her purse, setting it gently on the table in front of her. She should have warned me because I nearly laughed aloud at all the markups. There were multicolored little flags sticking out from most of the pages.

Rami didn’t manage to hide the alarm on his face. Poor guy was way out of his depth and had yet to realize the full extent of it. She got off on this.

Ophelia said, “Let’s start with page one…”

She nudged my knee under the table, my cue to be far too Busy and Important for this conversation.

I glanced at my phone and showed it to Ophelia gravely. “I need to take this. Is there another room I could step into?”

“No problem.” Chad immediately jumped up. “I can take you to my office.”

It bothered me that he put his hand on my lower back when I stood up, but before I could say anything, Ophelia plucked his hand away. “Touch my client without permission again and I take this finger home as a souvenir.”

I winked at her and moved towards the door only to jerk in surprise when suddenly, from behind me, Alex Chase started making fake, exaggerated ringing noises. “Ring-ring! Ring-ring! Oh my gosh! I have a Very Important Phone Call too! I guess I better show you to Chad’s office and take my ‘call’ out there.”

His grin made it clear he didn’t buy my excuse to leave and he was poking fun at me, but trying to defend the lie would only make me look dumb. I rolled my eyes, but followed him out of the conference room, several doors down to what I assumed was the aforementioned office, wondering how best to get rid of my soon-to-be boyfriend so I didn’t have to make small talk with him while we waited.