From Fake to Forever Read Online Free Page A

“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think? You and your sister already signed the agreement.”
    Her eyes darted to her sister. “I signed an agreement?”
    Missy smiled guiltily. “Oh, yeah, that. I might have…uh…kind of…uh…slipped that document under your nose without telling you what you were signing.”
    “What?”
    Ben stuck his fingers in his ears. “I’m not hearing this.”
    “They’ll pay us for as long as he’s here. Plus, I thought it was a great opportunity to get some free publicity,” Missy rushed to explain. “I thought you’d love it—once you allowed the idea to soak in a while.”
    “What free publicity?” Sandra cried. “Mr. Movie Star”—she jerked her thumb at him—“doesn’t want anyone to know he’s here!”
    Ben cleared his throat. “Ah, but once I’m gone, you’re free to use my name. You know, Ben Capshaw was here, would send his own kid here if he had one, et cetera, et cetera.”
    “Yeah,” Missy chimed in. “Just think what it’ll do for next year’s enrollment.”
    “What exactly makes you think people are going to want to send their child to a preschool just because Ben Capshaw graced it with his presence?”
    Her sister bit her lip. “Wouldn’t they?”
    “ No. I know I wouldn’t. Besides, it totally undermines the quality of our school.”
    He took a step closer, his eyes narrowing. “Hey, now wait just another damn minute. I don’t think my being here is going to undermine anything. I’m a professional.”
    “You’re an actor,” she said flatly.
    Ben blinked. It suddenly occurred to him that Miss Sandra had many, many problems with him—starting with his appearance and traveling all the way down to his profession. Huh. This was interesting in itself, because most women fell over their toes when a celebrity was in front of them. Especially if he paid even the slightest bit of attention to them, such as he was doing. Case in point was her starstruck sister, Missy. So his first instinct had been correct. Sandra was different from other women. She wasn’t impressed with his actor status at all.
    What was wrong with her? She was practically un-American. He’d worked with Steven Spielberg and Julia Roberts! How could she not be impressed? But no, this woman couldn’t care less. He had a sneaking suspicion she treated the garbage collector with more respect.
    The way she stood there like some snooty, anticelebrity goddess, combined with his damaged ego, pushed him over the brink of reason. Did it really matter if he was able to do his research at her preschool? He had more than enough confidence in his own acting ability to give a good performance. But at this point he wasn’t about to let her stand in the way of perfecting his craft and was equally determined to make it as difficult as possible for her to get her own way. As much as he hated to do it, he had no choice but to play dirty. He sighed.
    “That’s fine,” he said with forced agreeability. “I’ll have my attorney talk to your attorney, and we’ll all get it settled sooner or later.” He shrugged and turned to leave.
    Sandra placed a firm hand on his arm. “Wait. Did you say lawyers? Why do there have to be lawyers involved?”
    He felt tremendous satisfaction at knocking the ice princess off her frosty high horse, but he kept his expression blank. “Well, you know,” he said, waving his wrist back and forth, “our lawyers are going to have to settle the whole contract agreement you signed. Not to mention the plans I had to be here with you. This is costing me a lot of time. Time I could have been using to work on other projects.”
    Actually, he had no other projects at the moment, and he also had no idea whether he would even have a legitimate lawsuit, but the way the women paled, they had no idea, either.
    Damn, he was a good actor.
    The sisters exchanged worried looks, then Missy spoke first. “Since we, um, already signed the agreement and all, couldn’t we