“Are you out of your mind?” Autumn stared at Nick, then past him at her friends. “Have you all completely gone off the deep end?”
Liz shook her head and gave her a sympathetic smile, though her own heart was in tangles over this new development. “Sweetie, we’ve gone over and over the issue. Nothing excites people more than a couple getting married in Hollywood. You and Nick were on your way to becoming a super-couple before this past week, and a wedding would clinch your title at the top. Or as close to it as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will let you get. Plus, it’s bound to divert people’s attention from your past to, well, your future.”
Autumn just stared for a moment before turning back to dusting and straightening up her home. The camera crews from ABC were due to arrive in a few hours, and she wanted them to see that her home was neat and clean. Lily was currently down for a nap, but dressing her up was the next item on her to-do list. If she could show the people who’d be watching that she and Lily were perfect the way they were, that she wasn’t a bad person, that she was a great mom, then she hoped that they’d leave her be. A wedding to Nick, though, was not her preferred choice. It wasn’t even a choice. So, she ignored them.
Nick, however, would not be ignored. “Come on, Autumn. You have to see the logic in this plan.” He touched her arm lightly, and she whipped around to face him, her eyes glittering with anger.
“Don’t try to placate me, Nick. Don’t try to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do. This is my life, my career we are dealing with. No one really cares about yours. Don’t you think the only reason anyone even cares about you is because they thought you were dating me? If you’re not, you’ll sink back into anonymity. You just want to further your career and your fame.” She stabbed a finger at his chest. “Well, I am not buying it. I’ll go down in shame if I have to, but I’m not letting you use me to better both of our images. Summer might have sunk to deceit in order to begin this drama, but I refuse to do follow her example. So just drop it.” She looked over at her friends. “All of you. Just leave it alone.”
When she grabbed her cleaning supplies and started out of the room, Sherrie called out to her. “Where are you going?”
“I have things I need to take care of before I let the country into my home,” Autumn called over her shoulder and disappeared.
“Well.” Liz looked at the other three and sighed. “Should we go after her?”
Nick shook his head. He knew the mood Autumn was in, and, if he were her, he wouldn’t listen to the four of them either. “Let me talk to her. If she still says no, then you’ll have to think up another plan. But let me try first.”
“Okay.” Sherrie glanced at her watch. “I need to take care of a few details before tonight’s taping, but I’ll be back later.”
“I’ll go with you,” Leah said and followed Sherrie towards the door.
Liz watched them go and realized that this was the first time in a few days that she and Nick were alone. She wondered what to say to him because they’d yet to discuss the status of their relationship. If there was a relationship. From the look on his face, he seemed to be wondering the same thing. “Nick, I-”
“Liz.” He took her hand and squeezed it. Everything else may have been muddled for him, but how he felt about her was crystal clear. “This whole wedding thing complicates things with us, but I’m willing to marry Autumn and be with you. As weird as that sounds,” he added with a smile.
Her brows shot up in surprise. “Really? You-you’re not breaking things off because of what’s been going on?”
“No.” He tugged her closer and touched his lips to hers in response. “Things with you feel right, and I’m willing to give it a shot if you are. So, what do you say?”
Liz smiled. Any lingering doubts seemed to disappear from her mind. “It’ll be odd if you and Autumn are married, but, well, you mean more to me than I thought you would. So I say okay. Let’s do this.”
“Awesome.” He kissed her again. “And, for the record, no hard feelings about keeping things from me. I understand the need for privacy, and I can’t do anything but respect Autumn’s privacy. And, speaking of Autumn,” he gestured towards the stairs, “I should go talk to her.”
“Yeah.” She kissed him again. “I hope she agrees to this.”
“I’ll try my best,” Nick promised before making his way upstairs to find Autumn.
He felt too tall in the medium-ceilinged second floor hallway. His head practically brushed the ceiling, and, in the narrow hallway, he felt clumsy. Despite the awkwardness he felt, he could still appreciate the pretty décor, the rugs, and the paintings Autumn had decorated the hallway with.
He found her in what he assumed was Lily’s nursery. Her hands were set on the windowsill and her forehead rested on the window overlooking the street outside her home. Though there weren’t as many reporters outside anymore because ABC had laid claims to any images of her home, the street was still busy.
“They’ll see you if you stand there,” he said quietly and stood in the doorway as she turned to face him.
“Nick.” It was more a plea than statement, and he felt bad pressuring her but had no choice.
He stepped into the room and glanced over at the crib where Lily slept. “Autumn, you’re a great mother, and I know you want whatever’s best for Lily. Right now, it isn’t safe for her to even go outside, and that can’t be the kind of world you want her to grow up in. Marrying me isn’t an appealing choice for you, and it’s not exactly first thing on my list either. I’d rather be with Liz than marry you. No offense,” he added.
She managed a small smile. “I understand. And I know you have good reasons for suggesting the idea of a wedding. I just…It’s not exactly the circumstances under which I’d imagined marrying someone.”
“You’re telling me,” he replied. “Look, if we were married, we’d only have to be together in public. We’d already been doing that, so it can’t be much more difficult, can it?”
Autumn sighed. “And where would we live? We’d obviously have to live together, too.”
“I know.” Nick paced the small room. “We’d have to move in together, and it’ll be better for you to move into one of those gated communities. Especially now. It’ll be safer for Lily and you. Reporters won’t be able to walk up to your door or harass you. If we get a big enough house, you won’t have to even see me if you didn’t want to.”
She knew. She knew everything he was saying and had gone over it in her head before any of the current drama had taken place. She certainly had enough money in royalties and from her contract to be able to afford her own place in the secluded Hollywood Hills. She just loved her little slice of the city too much to leave it. But she’d known she couldn’t stay for too much longer.
“How long? Nick, even if we got married, we wouldn’t be married forever. So how long before we have to lie yet again and get a divorce?”
He shrugged. “Six months to a year. Juliette said that we could get a positive spin on it if we separated after nine months and filed for divorce after a while.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and met her eyes. “We’re doing this to help you, Autumn. That’s all this is.”
“Really?” she asked after a moment. “Because, in that explanation you gave downstairs, it sounded like you wouldn’t have thought of putting yourself in the spotlight if it weren’t for the fact that your group’s album is coming out this year. Tell me, Nick,” she began, stepping away from Lily’s crib and towards him, “would you have thought of marrying me if it weren’t for the fact that exposure would help album sales?”
Nick tried to tamp down on the impatience but failed. “Look,” he said through clenched teeth, “if I were in your position, especially in the middle of awards show season, I wouldn’t turn away the best help I could get.”
“The best help, huh? Damn it, Nick! I could do better than this sham marriage.” Autumn pushed her hands through her hair and shook her head. “I don’t see a point in marrying you after I make my statement. It’ll clear things up, and none of this fuss will be necessary.”
“Are you really that clueless?” he wondered. “Saying a few words isn’t gonna do jack shit, Autumn! Words mean nothing in this town, or have you learned nothing yet? You have to show them that you’re sincere.”
“And lying is being really sincere, isn’t it?” she shot back. “You said yourself that we can’t keep lying because it’s the lies that got us here. Why the hell are you pushing this?”
He stifled the urge to just pick her up and shake sense into her. “Because it’ll be beneficial to both of us in the long-run. Do you want this scandal to taint the rest of your career? People will always talk about it, whether it’s behind their hands or whatever.”
“And marrying you is going to prevent that?” She rolled her eyes. “Please. You’re a has-been, Nick Carter. I’m not that naïve that I don’t know that your group is floundering. You just want to make yourself look good by marrying an actress who…” Her voice trailed off. Who what? she wondered frantically. Her life was hinging on this ridiculous mess that she’d found herself in, and she couldn’t be sure, not yet, that it wouldn’t affect her career. “Who’s on her way up the ladder,” she finished after a moment.
“Not for long,” he replied. “If things keep going the way they’ve been this week, you’ll never get another acting gig. Directors and producers don’t want actresses with scandal attached to their work. You’ll drop faster than you can say your own name. You’ll be a nothing, a nobody.”
“Like you?” she asked.
Nick winced. In the few months he’d known her, she rarely took potshots at other people, but, when she did, they hit the target. “Like me,” he agreed. Because he was practically a nobody. “If you’d marry me, we could fix both of our problems. Where the hell are the cons in this? We’ll live together in a house big enough that we won’t have to see each other if we don’t want to. We’ll go to big events together, act in love, and, afterwards, we don’t have to see each other again until the next time. Where are the flaws in that plan?”
“There’s probably fifty thousand flaws in that plan.”
He was close, he knew, really close to losing his temper. He’d never been known for his patience, and she was tempting it. “I can’t believe how incredibly childish you’re being with this whole thing. Grow up and face your responsibilities, Autumn. You haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of making it through this if you don’t. So you can sit here and hope that a way out of this mess will suddenly appear, or you can make it happen.”
“Go to hell, Nick,” she snapped and turned to rummage through Lily’s clothes for an outfit. “Take your self-righteous attitude, your idiot ideas, and get the hell out of my life. Instead of being the friend I thought you were, you’re nearly as bad as Summer.”
After several moments of silence, he sighed. “I thought you were a reasonable person, but you’re no better than other women I’ve been around. Maybe Summer had the right idea in messing with you. At least she was smart about when she decided to dish the dirt on you. Coming out with her stories before the Golden Globes and Oscars was definitely gonna kill you. Good thing I don’t have to be around to watch it.” He moved to the door before looking back to where she stood, her hands stilled on a tiny pair of clothes. “I hope, for Lily’s sake, that you get your sanity back.”
Autumn stood where she was for a long time after he’d left. She was doing the right thing, she told herself repeatedly. Marrying Nick would be a mistake because, well, it wasn’t going to work. At least, she didn’t think it would work because it would be just another lie in the long line of many lies and omissions that had turned into weapons aimed at her.
God, was she doing the right thing? She shuddered at the memory of all the cameras and microphones thrust at her when she’d left her home to go see Summer the day before. It had been a nightmare, and she knew it would be like that again and again. Until this mess had been resolved. If it were ever resolved.
There had to be another way, she thought, than marriage. If she were perfectly honest with herself, and she felt she should be, then she’d have to admit that it was the idea of marriage to a man she had no real feelings for that was the most disturbing part of the plan. Ever since she’d been a little girl, she’d dreamt of marrying the man she loved, and she’d been so sure it would be Jack. Of course, he was gone, and a marriage of convenience was top of the list on her short list of choices.
But marriage to Nick?
“Autumn.”
She shook herself out of her thoughts and, fixing a bright smile on her face, looked over at Liz before crossing the room to lift her now-awake daughter out of the crib. One look at her friend’s face, though, dissolved her fake cheer. “Oh, Liz.” Her voice wavered, and she let Liz pull her into a hug. “I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s a tough choice,” Liz agreed quietly. “I know you don’t want to do this, but, Autumn, this isn’t a light decision. There’s so many positive things that can come out of marriage to Nick.”
Autumn stepped away and picked Lily up when the baby babbled up at her. “There’s absolutely no other bachelor in town that I could marry? Really, Liz. How can you, of all people, approve of this?”
“Not easily, but we knew, going into this business, that there would be sacrifices we’d have to make.”
“But not like this. Sacrifices, career-wise, I can understand, but to marry someone I don’t love and keep up a fake relationship for the cameras?” She shook her head. “I don’t think I can.”
Liz sighed. “Right now, your private life is the issue. Besides, if anyone can get through the impossible, it’s you. You’re right. This is your life, but, if you want anymore out of it than infamy, you need to work with the system before you can beat it.”
Autumn didn’t reply for several moments as she changed Lily’s clothes and murmured to her child. The baby babbled back and giggled when Autumn blew kisses on her belly. When she was dressed in a pretty blue top and white pants with a white ribbon laced through dark curls, Lily wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck and let herself be lifted into secure, comfortable arms. There, she nestled and, leaning against Autumn’s shoulder, played with her mother’s necklace.
“Marriage to Nick, huh?” Autumn said finally, stroking her fingers over Lily’s hair. “Well, at least it’ll get me into a gated community, away from the media. Lily will definitely be safe. And she likes Nick.” She shrugged. “I guess I could probably think of a thousand worse things.”
Author's Chapter Notes:
Craziness, just pure craziness. I've updated this story like crazy this week LOL. I promised two chapters this week, so here's the second one! I hope you enjoy!
