The True Love Experiment

“I’m not an actor,” he says.

“Neither am I.” I motion to him, from the top of his sexy head and all the way down the length of his solid bod. “And you’re fooling yourself if you think all of this wasn’t made to be in front of a camera.” I turn to Brenna. “What do you think? Imagine the female audience’s reaction.”

Not realizing she was called over to referee, Brenna looks like she’d rather go back to listening to Rory’s mosh pit escapades.

“I mean,” she says with a wince, “Fizzy isn’t wrong. You’re just as hot as any of the Heroes—in a totally objective, still-my-superior-at-work kind of way, of course. And you two have chemistry.”

I motion to her. “Give this woman a raise.”

“I—” Connor says, but I jump in again, going for the kill.

“You said yourself that you didn’t want the show to be overly produced. Wouldn’t that include editing interviews to look like I’m talking to someone when I’m not? Let’s talk it out for real! Viewers should see me hearing the questions and reacting in real time.”

Connor runs an exasperated hand down his face and then turns his green eyes on me. “All right then. I have my own request.”

“A quid pro quo. I respect it.”

“I was thinking how great it would be if you could talk River into appearing in the first episode. Have him walk the viewers through the science.”

I belt out a laugh. This poor, naive man. “You don’t know River Pe?a. He’d sooner die.”

“I assumed as much,” he says. “But I also know how persuasive you can be.”

There’s an awkward beat of silence.

“I’m just going to…” Brenna points behind her before heading in the other direction.

I look at Connor again. “River is pretending that none of this is happening. Nobody is that persuasive.”

“Based on personal experience, I disagree.”

Connor gives me a knowing smile, and while I’d like nothing more than to stand around and flirt with him all day, he has a point. “I’m not sure I can convince River to do anything, but a good idea is a good idea. No promises, but I’ll try.”

“Likewise about the confessionals. I can’t promise anything,” he says, and extends a hand for me to shake, “but I’ll try.”

Connor wraps his hand around mine and we shake once… twice… and reluctantly let go. He glances briefly over his shoulder, then back at me. “You good?”

I nod and watch him walk over to Rory to discuss something. Liz comes to find me to ask if there’s anything I need before we wrap for the day. I tell her nothing, but that’s not exactly true. What I need is for Connor Prince III to do something that makes me not want to be near him every second, and I need him to do it soon.





twenty-four CONNOR




I wake up before sunrise on Tuesday and get a brief shot of professional bliss before dread hits me like a shadow chaser. Yesterday’s shoot was good—brilliant, really—but if I thought watching Fizzy flirt with a bunch of gorgeous, interesting men right in front of me would be difficult, I was only partially right. It was unbearable. And we’ve only just begun.

The truth is, if we thought we were onto something with the guys during the casting call, that awareness was amplified tenfold seeing them on camera with Fizzy. There were a handful of awkward moments, and not everyone clicked, but her chemistry with a couple of them was off the charts, palpable enough to feel all the way in video village, where some of the bigwigs were watching on the monitors. They congratulated me at the end of the day with dollar signs in their eyes, already feeling the tendrils of something great. I should be ecstatic, buoyed by their enthusiasm and plotting how to capitalize on it. And I am.

But I’m also a touch lovesick.

No better way to get my mind off things than exercise. And it’s early enough that I have time to kill even after my run. I call Stevie and test her a bit and wish her good luck on her state capitals test. I’ve just hung up and am walking out the door when my phone rings. Thinking it’s Stevie again, I answer without thinking.

It’s not Stevie.

“Hey, Dad.” I jog down the stairs. “I’m on my way to work. Can I call you back?”

“I just need a minute.”

At the driveway I pause, taking a calming breath. It’s always the same shit: my time isn’t important; his call is urgent. And I know what’s coming. I climb in, the phone connects to Bluetooth, and my father’s voice fills the car. “I talked to Stefania last week, and she mentioned you’re doing reality TV now? That right?” I swear I don’t have to tell anyone anything anymore, because my daughter will always do it for me. I’m also not sure if I’m more annoyed that he’s been stewing about this for a week and is just now asking, or that the last time I talked to him was more than four months ago. I’m glad he has a better relationship with Stevie than he had with me—marginally—but everything with him comes with a cost. “When we spoke you said you were working on another conservation project.”

This isn’t a conversation I want to have with my dad on any morning, certainly not today. “The company is trying out a few new things this year. I’m a part of that.”

“LA has plenty of better shops, Connor.”

I stare out the windshield. “Dad, come off it. I don’t want to live in LA. I’d see Stevie once a month, if that.”

“Kids are adaptable,” he says, and when I don’t say anything in response, he continues. “Listen, you know how I feel. You could have easily come to work for me, C-suite from the get-go, seven-figure salary, but fine. You were doing important work.” I hear his air quotes and swallow down an expletive. Getting into it with him is never worth it. “Now I have to stomach that my son spent a couple hundred grand on school so he could film a bunch of housewives?”

I bite back the rant on the tip of my tongue, knowing it won’t make a bit of difference anyway. “It’s not housewives, Dad. Anyway, this is a one-off. The company needed opportunities for product placement, and they asked me to take it on. It’s a huge budget and they’ve already given me the green light to do my next doc when this show wraps.”

I wince at the boast I can hear in my own voice, the pathetic attempt to earn his approval.

“And then what? You continue to be their cuck the next time they—”

“Dad. Enough.”

He immediately falls silent. I rarely raise my voice to him.

Not long after he’d had his holiday fling with my mum, he’d married a woman he’d dated off and on in college, and they had a couple of kids. When I moved to the States, I lived with them for two years. My father is a multimillionaire who owns one of the largest real estate development firms in the States, and to me, a teenager raised by a poor single mum, money was power. He was intimidating and strict; Dad and I never butted heads because, like my two half siblings, I never dared talk back to him. He’d lecture us all while we sat there silently poking at our overcooked pasta. I moved out the second I could, got a partial scholarship to UCLA, and worked as a waiter to pay the rest of my tuition and to pay my way through film school at USC.

I thought that when Stevie was born, he might see this perfect little girl and magically turn into a decent human, but of course he didn’t. He loves his granddaughter as much as he’s capable of loving anything, but the only time he’s ever told me I did a good job was when Nat and I split up, and apparently, I undid all of that by following her to San Diego. In his words: What kind of a man does that?

“All right,” he says. “What’s the show? The Bachelor version ten-point-oh?”

Does Fizzy get this when people find out she’s a romance writer? The instant comparison to the one big property everyone is familiar with? “Yeah, Dad. Something like that. Listen, I’ve got to ring off. I’m about to head into the dead spot in Mission Hi—”

I end the call, letting him believe it’s been dropped.



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