Camera Flashes (1) - Taylor Swift

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Grace waited until Thursday morning to tell Taylor that she had accidentally gotten her invited to brunch with her parents.

She sat her down in the parlour with a large paper pad on a stand, the kind you would see in an elementary classroom while they practiced their spelling words and gathered her most trusted staff to join them, Charles was on speakerphone.

She should have told her in private but she was concerned that Taylor would take it poorly and she needed all the support she could get. Mathers, Parker, Ophelia and Bridget were sat opposite Grace's display.

"Thank you for joining me," Grace picked a marker up off the stand and uncapped it, "Unfortunately, I have some bad news to share. Taylor has been requested to join my family for brunch tomorrow and we need to prepare her..."

"Excuse me?" Taylor raised her eyebrows, "Nope. I'm busy, I'm flying back to New York. Sorry, Mom's got chemo. Gotta walk the cat, re-shingle the roof, pay the electric bill."

"It's non negotiable," Grace gave her a soft, pleading look, "They want to assess your value to the public relations, which means we need to you not be you for two hours."

Grace turned to the notepad and wrote in big swirly letters How to survive the Kent's. Survive being the most important takeaway from that.

"Not that there's anything wrong with you," Grace corrected herself when she realized Taylor hadn't said anything, "But if we want to be allowed to be seen together in the slightest, you need to impress them. I've gathered the best of the best, they have all either worked closely with me while in the presence of my family or survived personal encounters. And there's also Charlie."

"Thanks," Charlie hummed, she could practically hear the eye roll through his voice.

"We will discuss this later," Taylor narrowed her blue eyes when the panic passed over her momentarily. Being ambushed in a group was not even remotely her idea of good communication but she had to focus if she actually did want to go through with it.

"She's right, you need to not be yourself," Parker cleared his throat, "Let me tell you something I was told on my first day, you do not want to make an enemy of Robert Kent."

"I'll tailor something so it's a good fit," Ophelia offered when the conversation had a break, "How do you feel about black?"

"Black is good," Taylor swallowed, "Okay, okay, I'll listen."

Grace pulled her shoulders back and scribbled something else on the paper, "Good posture, you slouch. Shoulders back, head forward. You'll never be caught with a double chin or bad angle if you never look down. Cross your ankles, never your legs."

"You draw attention when you say more than you need to, very few words are needed if you use the right ones," Charlie chimed in.

"You must never use a contraction in your speech," Grace added it to the list, "And don't joke."

"They do not joke," Bridget had learned that the hard way, "Pretty much ever."

"I figured," Taylor started to get more nervous as time went on.

"If they ask about the tabloids, you deny. You deny until you're blue in the face, you had nothing to do with Kanye which is true but they won't believe that," Grace said as the sheet had to be turned, "Not Adam, not Kanye, not Tom. Lie... lie because you love me and we need this to go well. You can't have gossip around you, play it down, make it outrageous that anyone would even think it."

The group got quiet at those words, surprised by the emotion the heiress was so forthcoming of, words she so freely expressed.

"And if you're not sure what to do, follow her lead," Parker suggested, it worked for him so it could work for Taylor.