Acting Royal #Wattys2017

Chapter 1a

ZAYN

"She has to be conservative looking, but not ugly. She needs to have a pretty face, but she mustn't have blow-job lips..." Zayn drifted off there for a second thinking about the girl that had "slept" over last night. They'd done very little sleeping.

"She needs to be intelligent, well-spoken but not boring. She has to be vaguely fun or my parents wouldn't buy it. But not night-club fun, not grind- against- your- groin fun. And most importantly, she can't be sexy! She can't look like any woman I've ever dated. And she has to act like she's happily engaged to me for the next five days." Zayn rattled off the list while casually lying poolside with a Martini.

Rafiq could barely contain his shock. He'd been Zayn's trusty advisor and right-hand man for over 9 years now, and in all that time this was definitely his most bizarre request. And there'd been some pretty strange ones. Like the time he'd wanted black panthers at his 21st birthday party, or the time he'd wanted his swimming pool drained and converted into a walk in ice bar made of ice for a New Year's party.

"And you want this by when, your majesty?" He asked.

"We fly out tomorrow morning." He obliterated an olive between his pearly whites.

"I'm afraid Genies lamps are just a myth." Rafiq's tone was deeply sarcastic.

Zayn slammed his Martini down, swung around and pulled his Dolce and Gabbana glasses down just enough to inflict the full force of his death stare on Rafiq. "What are you trying to say?"

"That it's impossible."

"You disappoint me Rafiq, I didn't realize the word "impossible" was even in your vocabulary." The Prince paused for a moment, "Can't you just pay some girl a lot of money to do it."

"Some girl?" Rafiq cynically gestured with inverted commas. " Some girl is not going to convince your parents, they'll see right through her in five minutes." A sadness washed over his face, "You know, underneath all your women and cocktails and parties, you're a good man Zayn. A great man! But you're throwing it all away and I'm afraid this plan of yours is going to backfire, with serious consequences. Maybe more serious than you can ever imagine."

"Well, you'll just have to find a way to make it work then." Zayn was angling his deck chair to favor the sun now, he needed to work on his tan. "I have the utmost confidence in you old boy."

Rafiq clenched his fists, trying to hide his rapidly growing anger. "The only way this could ever work, is if I could find a woman so convincing, so committed to playing this role that she would stay in character- as your devoted fiancé- 24 hours a day, for the next five days, without making a single slip-up. And on top of that, she'd have to learn everything about you that a real fiancé would know in a matter of hours–"

Rafiq stopped dead in the middle of his sentence as a crazy, uncensored thought burst into his brain. As if reading his mind, Zayn jumped out of his deck chair and grabbed him by the shoulders.

"You're a genius old boy. I knew you could do it!" The Prince was grinning like the Cheshire cat who'd got the girl and was now licking cream off her.

"We need to hire an actress."

JENNY

"They're paying how much?!" Jenny shouted down the phone at her agent Simone.

"That's...that's..." She was stuttering now. "Money like that would mean I wouldn't have to work for a whole year. A year. What's the catch? There must be a catch. A big one."

"There are some terms and conditions." Simone sounded hesitant. "One of them is signing a non-disclosure agreement about the job. It also involves traveling for a few days, leaving tonight. It's very short notice. They also won't say who the client is. To be honest, this thing feels a little cloak and dagger, but the money is unbelievable and you haven't booked a job in almost two years. Not to mention that this brief was written for you."