Diana assembled the briefing book in forty-eight hours, which Sebastian suspected should have taken a week, and delivered it to his office at eight in the morning with coffee that was precisely his preferred temperature and an expression that conveyed absolutely nothing.
"Everything you need to know about being Sebastian Ashford's girlfriend," she said, setting it on his desk. "I've also prepared a supplementary document on the ten most likely interview questions and optimal responses. Lyra tends to use Catherine Vance as a conversational wedge, so I've included talking points for that scenario as well."
Sebastian picked up the briefing book. It was forty-seven pages long.
"You made this in two days."
"I made this in twelve hours," Diana corrected. "The remaining time was spent on quality review."
He looked at her. Diana had been with him for three years—long enough to know when he was genuinely impressed and when he was simply too proud to admit it. She met his gaze with the particular blankness that meant she was choosing not to comment on whatever his face was doing.
"Additional note," she said. "Miss Shaw called me last night at nine-thirty to ask if she could review the file before your rehearsal session. I declined and told her you would provide it directly. She was—" Diana paused, selecting her word with visible care, "—professional about it."
"Professional."
"She wanted to know if you had a preferred restaurant for the charity benefit. I told her you did not, but that you would be amenable to suggestions. She said she would send a list." Diana glanced at her tablet. "She sent three. They were all appropriate."
"Which one did she recommend?"
"The River Café."
Sebastian raised an eyebrow. The River Café was among the most expensive restaurants in Manhattan, and it was also—if he was being honest about the kind of details that Diana catalogued without comment—the restaurant where he had taken Amelia Park to dinner the week before their breakup, two years ago.
"She chose it deliberately," he said.
"She chose it for the view," Diana replied. "Her email included a note about the fireworks on weekend evenings and a comment that it would photograph well for any society page coverage."
Of course she had. He opened the briefing book.
Vivian had prepared her own supplementary material, which she brought to their first rehearsal session three days later—not at his apartment, as he had suggested, but at a conference room on the seventh floor, which she had booked and which she arrived at armed with a second briefing book, a legal pad, and the particular expression of someone who had spent the last seventy-two hours treating a fake relationship like a graduate-level research project.
"You're overprepared," Sebastian said.
"I'm appropriately prepared." She set her materials on the table. "I have fourteen pages of questions about your background, including four about your college years that I'm hoping you'll answer before Lyra asks them. I have a timeline of your last three public relationships, which Diana's file covered adequately. I have notes on Catherine Vance's family connections, her alma mater, and her known interests, which Lyra will almost certainly use as conversational ammunition. And I have—" she flipped to a tabbed section, "—a full breakdown of the seating arrangements for the charity benefit, which I obtained from the event's public registration."
Sebastian stared at her.
"The seating arrangements."
"I know who will be sitting at your table, who will be watching from across the room, and which of your colleagues is most likely to make a comment that could embarrass the arrangement." She met his gaze. "I'm not going in unprepared. I'm not going to be the weak link."
He had been worried about that—the possibility that she would treat this with less seriousness than it required, that she would underestimate the scrutiny they would face. He had been worried, less consciously, about the opposite: that she would take it so seriously that she would begin to see the performance as the relationship itself, and that something would get confused in the translation.
He was beginning to suspect that this particular worry was not his primary concern.
"Sit down," he said. "We have work to do."
They rehearsed for three hours. They practiced the story of how they met—the version they had agreed on, which was technically true in its broad strokes: the lobby, the coffee, the interview, the unexpected recognition. Sebastian delivered his lines with a smoothness that Vivian found both impressive and faintly irritating, because it reminded her how much practice he had had being charming in professional contexts.
"You're too polished," she told him during a break.
"That's generally considered a compliment."
"It's not convincing. Real couples stumble. They interrupt each other. They finish each other's sentences wrong." She demonstrated: "I spilled coffee on you—"
"—and I was an ass about it—"
"—and then you sent me a very formal email—"
"—which you ignored—"
"—because I was too proud to admit you were right."
He looked at her. "That's better."
"That's how it actually happened."
"I know." He was quiet for a moment. "That's why it works."
She filed that away, next to the Barcelona story she still hadn't heard, and went back to rehearsal.
The restaurant rehearsal happened on a Thursday evening, at a table in the back corner of a steakhouse that Sebastian chose because it was dark enough that no one would recognize him and loud enough that they could practice without being overheard. They ordered food they didn't eat. They worked through the conversation scripts. They practiced the way he would look at her when someone asked a difficult question, and the way she would laugh at something he said—real enough to be believable, brief enough to suggest they had better things to talk about.
"This is the part where you touch me," Vivian said.
"Where I touch you."
"For credibility. If someone is watching, they need to see something that looks natural." She demonstrated: she put her hand on the table near his, close enough that their fingers were almost touching. "The key is proximity without possession. You don't grab. You don't hold. You position yourself in a way that suggests intimacy without demanding it."
Sebastian watched her hand on the table. Her fingers were long, the nails painted a deep burgundy that he had noticed the night of the gala and tried not to notice since. She held her hand with the particular stillness of someone who was concentrating very hard on not revealing how much concentration the gesture required.
"Let me try," he said.
He moved his hand so that his fingers covered hers—not gripping, not holding, just resting. The contact was light. It was also, he noticed immediately, making it significantly more difficult to concentrate on the line he was supposed to be delivering next.
"Like this," he said, and his voice came out lower than he intended.
Vivian looked at their hands. She looked at his face. She very carefully did not move her fingers.
"That works," she said. Her voice was steady. She was proud of that. "That's convincing."
He didn't move his hand. Neither did she.
"Sebastian."
"I know."
After a moment he withdrew, and the absence of contact was surprisingly noticeable, and neither of them mentioned it.
They went back to rehearsal. They finished the restaurant script. They walked to the car, where he drove her home in silence, and when they reached her building she thanked him for the evening and stepped out of the car and stood on the sidewalk until his taillights disappeared around the corner.
Then she went inside and called Maya and said, "I need to tell you something about rehearsal."
Maya, who had excellent instincts and the worst timing, said, "Oh no."
"Oh no what."
"Oh no as in I've seen your face when you talk about this guy and oh no as in you're in trouble."
"I'm not in trouble."
"Vivian. You're doing fake dating with a billionaire and you're calling me after rehearsal to report on the progress. You're already in trouble."
Vivian hung up the phone. She lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about his hand on hers, and the way he had said like this, and the fact that she had not wanted him to move.
Three weeks. She had three weeks to prepare for the charity benefit. Three weeks to memorize his background and practice her performance and figure out where the line was between the act and whatever was happening on this side of it.
Three weeks, she suspected, was not going to be enough.
The next day she spent her lunch hour reviewing the briefing book Diana had prepared, and she found herself lingering on the section about Sebastian's mother—a single paragraph, carefully worded, containing almost no actual information, and yet she read it three times and then sat at her desk feeling something she could not name. He had lost his mother at seventeen. He had gone to Barcelona afterward. He had bought a book of poetry from a woman who had seen him, and he still had the book, and he had told her where to find it as though that were a normal thing to do with someone you were fake dating.
She was reading too much into it. She was aware she was reading too much into it. She kept doing it anyway.
On Thursday, Diana appeared at her desk with a garment bag.
"For Saturday," Diana said, setting it on Vivian's chair. "Mr. Ashford asked me to handle the details. There are shoes in the bag as well. They're your size."
"How do you know my shoe size?"
Diana's expression did not change. "I know everything about everyone in this building, Miss Shaw. It's part of my job." She paused. "He was very specific about the color. He said burgundy, and he said it twice."
Diana walked away.
Vivian sat very still at her desk. She looked at the garment bag. She thought about Sebastian Ashford, who noticed the color of her dress at a gala and remembered it three weeks later and specified it to his assistant with enough emphasis that Diana reported the detail to her.
She was in trouble.
She had known it since the restaurant. She had known it since his hand covered hers and she did not pull away. She had known it since Maya said the words out loud on the phone, and she had not denied them, and she had not been able to stop thinking about them since.
She picked up her phone. She typed a message to Sebastian: Seating arrangements confirmed. I'll send the finalized timeline tonight.
She deleted the message before sending it.
She typed it again.
She sent it.
His reply came in ninety seconds: Thank you. Get some sleep.
She set the phone on her nightstand. She turned off the light.
She did not get some sleep.
But she lay in the dark and thought about his hand, and about the word convincing, and about how easy it was becoming to confuse the performance with the thing it was supposed to be performing.
She was not sure which of them was more convincing anymore.
She was not sure it mattered.
She was not sure that was a problem she was ready to solve.
She was not sure she wanted to solve it.
She was afraid that last one was the most honest of all.
She was also afraid of how much she wanted it to be true.
