Page 61 of Pink

At the very least.

• • •

Lev hadn’t meant to run into Gigi as he rounded the corner at the end of the hallway when she came out of the bathroom, but he still did. Her quiet ompf muffled against his chest, and the cell phone she’d been staring down at fell from her hands to skid across the floor.

With a chuckle, Lev bent down to pick up the phone that landed screen up, saying, “Shit, sorry about that. Hope I didn’t scare you.”

“Give me that.”

“What?”

The high squeak in her voice said she was embarrassed, and it had Lev instinctively glancing down at the screen of the phone in his hands. Instantly, he understood why she didn’t want him to have her phone.

A stream of text messages stared back at him.

HE IS HERE, the first one read.

From Gigi, it looked like.

Someone else asked, Who?

Him. The fucking guy!

What guy?

THE GUY, MOM. From before Paris! That was Gigi’s last message. To her mother, apparently. About him, if he were to guess considering the phone beeped with the next message that popped up at the bottom of the blue and white thread of texts that simply read, Oh, you mean that guy—Lev, right? Say hi!

“Hi to your mom, I guess,” Lev said, not even bothering to hide his growing smile as he handed the phone over to a fuming Gigi. “You told her about me? Was I … that special or something?”

“It was a … time,” she managed to spit out. “Just a strange time between then and now and … yeah.” Then, the red in her cheeks heated up to whole other level while she did her very best to avoid his attempt at eye-contact. “Stop asking questions!”

Lev’s hands popped high, palms up. “Okay. No more questions, then.”

Her easy blush was kind of cute, though. Good to see that hadn’t changed about her.

“I was going to ask what you’re doing in New York. Every article I ever see says you live in—”

“Milan, yeah.” Gigi’s gaze darted to his, and a small smile formed on her pretty lips. “Bought a property there a little while back. I’m in New York for work. Fashion Week in September. Some campaigns before that. Never ends.”

“I knew I was right about you.”

Her light laughter had the fire in his chest easing as he admired the way she wasn’t ashamed to grin wide in her happiness. He wondered if the beauty that was presented about her and her life in the magazines was the truth sometimes. It had to be a lonely life to constantly be watched and seen but not really known.

“Did you follow me back here?” she asked.

Unconcerned about letting her know the truth, he nodded. “Yeah—they’re bad news, you know? Those men you’re here with today, I mean. I’m not sure what you were told about today, but—”

“Nothing until I was here. This was all set up around me; I was given a time to show up. That’s how things work in my business sometimes. My time is money, as I’m often told.”

“Really.”

It wasn’t even a question.

Just a heavy understanding.

One he didn’t like at all.

Gigi raised one brow. “What did you mean by that—bad news?”