‘Hey, now,’ Ivy started, ready to let them have it, but Harker interrupted.
‘Forget all that.’ He waved his hands. ‘This is Ivy Vega, the edgy opposite of her twin, the sugar-sweet Olivia Abbott.’
‘Ooooh.’ That seemed to impress the group.
I’ll have to tell Olivia that! Ivy thought.
‘And Ivy’s going to be just as good!’ Harker gave a thumbs up.
Ivy was starting to get a little panicky. She needed Olivia to come and deal with all the attention.
She looked over her shoulder through the open doorway and caught sight of Olivia in the main area, practically concealed behind the glass Eiffel Tower with Jackson.
Even if I did a cheerleading routine on the table, she wouldn’t notice, Ivy thought. I’m on my own.
‘There’s more,’ Harker went on.
Please no, Ivy thought. She wasn’t sure she could handle more.
He grinned and grabbed a leather messenger bag from under the table. ‘Just this morning, I closed the deal for the option on the hottest book series in town.’
Harker pulled a hardback out of the bag and held it up. The woman closest to Ivy, in a red off-one-shoulder blouse, gasped.
Ivy recognised the book from posters in bookstores and even on billboards. It was a dark, paranormal romance called Eternal Sunset about an immortal vampire girl and her sister who fall in love with two reincarnated boys once a century. Totally dumb and of course it had sold a gazillion copies.
‘And we need some really special actresses to play Carmina and Belinda, the two immortal vampires . . .’ Ivy started to see where Harker was going. ‘Carmina is a girly-girl, just like Olivia, and Belinda is edgy and dangerous, just like Ivy!’
‘I should tell you –’ Ivy started.
But Harker was so excited that his shaggy hair was bouncing up and down with every other word. ‘Two sisters in real life, plus a great vampire actress on the big screen. What’s not perfect?’
To Ivy’s horror there was lots of nodding around the table.
‘But a debut?’ said the woman in green, sceptically. ‘I’m not sure we should go with someone untested.’
Ivy wanted to kiss the woman. ‘Actually, I –’
‘But don’t you see, Jennifer?’ Harker insisted, as he leaned over the table to grab a dumpling from one of the plates. ‘The wider public don’t know that Olivia has a twin sister. And if we can keep it that way, we can build up a whole mystery about who we’re casting. It’s a publicity dream!’
Jennifer frowned. ‘But that all falls apart the minute a pap gets a shot of the two of them together.’
Harker nodded. ‘Yup, that’s why I’m telling Ivy all this.’ He turned to her. ‘You two will have to stay on the down low.’
Don’t tell everyone that I’ve somehow been roped in to star in a blockbuster? Ivy thought. You’ll get no argument from me there.
‘If the news gets out before then,’ Harker said, ‘it just won’t work for the two of you.’
The gathered suits murmured like a mantra, ‘Just won’t work.’
Ivy started to see it clearly now.
Jennifer crossed her arms. ‘That’s low risk, then.’ She raised an eyebrow at Ivy. ‘Got that?’ she said. ‘If there’s a news leak, your sister and you are out.’
Ivy felt like it was almost a challenge.
‘What do you think, man?’ Harker prompted Ivy. ‘Can you do this for me?’
‘Er . . .’ Ivy didn’t care about her film career, but she knew how much this would mean to Olivia. She’d just have to try her best at this acting game. After all, weren’t there loads of actors and actresses out there who weren’t exactly brimming with talent? She could be one of them! ‘It’s an amazing offer,’ she began.