Now the sonofabitch was resorting to flattery. And that was working too. Even though I could see through his antics, I wasn’t immune to them.

I let out a deep sigh. “I’d need you here basically every day.”

Alex Chase’s whole face lit up and traitorous butterflies exploded in my stomach.

Rami shook his head vigorously. “He can’t come back here. The press would have a field day with it.”

I said, “Okay, I’ll come to you, but it’s going to cost you and we’ll have to work it around my schedule.”

Rami still shook his head. “You’d be photographed and then the dating rumors would start.”

I cringed at the very idea of being tabloid fodder like that. “So you head it off by telling them I’m just training him.”

Rami said, “You’ve signed an NDA and you’re not part of the business, so I’m going to be perfectly frank with you. The studio doesn’t want it getting out that he’s struggling. They’re already worried about how fans will react to the casting announcement since it’s so off brand for him. They’ve got their own consultant and were against us hiring someone else, but their person isn’t helping and we can see a train wreck coming. If we push any harder, we’re going to make them doubt he can do it. It's late for recasting, but anything is possible.”

If no one could know I was teaching him and there was the constant risk of paparazzi following me or using their stalker lenses, I couldn’t see a solution. Maybe it would’ve worked before when no one knew what I did for a living, but I’d been dodging my fair share of photographers since that video had leaked. But Victoria sent me in here, so I felt some responsibility to at least take the suggestion seriously.

Rami scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “How else could we do it? Alex has too many commitments here to get away somewhere. We could try a neutral location, but if you kept going back, someone would notice, so we’d have to change it every time. There’s too many risk points with how focused people are on Lady Elena. If you got caught before the casting announcement, they’d assume Alex was a client and then he’d get rolled into your VP scandal in a negative way that might jeopardize the role. You can’t get away with more than a few meetings.”

Alex Chase turned his whole body to face me, making it feel like the conversation was now just between the two of us. “We could date.”

I sat there and blinked at him. I would’ve thought he was joking, but the intensity of his expression told me otherwise.

When I still didn’t say anything, he added, “Rami is right. They’ll assume we’re dating, so why not use that as our cover? We won’t really date, obviously. But we could stage a relationship, keep them focused on that so they don’t think to question why we’re spending so much time together. It’s the perfect solution.”