AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER FOUR
CAIROAPPEAREDINso many tabloids with so many women that even when the woman in question was notorious in her own right, like Brittany, it could only cause so much comment. There was the initial carrying on and then it was on to the next set of celebrity shenanigans. Football players were forever embroiling themselves in bitter custody disputes with B-list actresses, politicians were ever hypocritical and blustery in turn and the papers never lacked for seedy stories to tell in their breathless, insinuating headlines.
“We appear to be less interesting than the custody tussles of a striker for Real Madrid,” Brittany said brightly when they met after the initial frenzy started to fade that first week, to plot out their next few moves. That sweet smile she could produce on cue did absolutely nothing to soften the edge in her voice—which was a good thing, Cairo thought, since he was a perverse creature who liked the edge better. “The entire world has been overexposed to Cairo Santa Domini scandals. A few pictures in a strip club are too run-of-the-mill to captivate the public interest after a steady diet of far worse. I’m afraid your shenanigans are good for a shudder, nothing more.”
“It’s usually more than a shudder,” Cairo assured her, because he couldn’t seem to help himself. “It’s really more of a drawn-out scream, with many a religious conversion along the way. Oh, God. Oh, Cairo.Oh,God.”
Brittany sighed as if he was a deep and enduring trial to her. A sound Cairo was certain no woman—noperson—had made in his presence in all his life, except himself.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, as if placating a child having a tantrum.
“You do that,” he murmured, and then they discussed how best to prepare for the second phase of their plan.
Cairo very rarely appeared with any woman more than once. It was difficult to maintain a reputation as an inveterate playboy if he seemed interested in quality rather than quantity, so he’d never tied himself down to anyone for more than a long weekend. Sometimes he’d throw in a repeated date or weekend years later, just to keep people guessing, but that didn’t happen very often.
“I become rather boring after three consecutive days,” he’d once told a smarmy journalist in Rome when questioned about this pattern of his, flashing a knowing smile as if he could already read the fan letters his secretary would be forced to wade through, each declaring him anything butboring. Some complete with enclosed panties, as punctuation. “It is less a pattern and more of a public service, you understand.”
The second time the paparazzi “caught” him and Brittany in the sort of restaurant famous people would only patronize if they were trying to avoid being seen, five days after that night in the strip club, it caused a buzz. It suggested that an actual relationship of some kind had survived both what was calledCairo’s Scandalous Lap Danceand the resultant tabloid screeching over the photos of the two of them kissing.
“Had I known this would cause such a commotion,” Brittany told the pack of cameramen who surrounded her when she emerged from an expertly timed trip to Cartier, flashing her megawatt gold digger’s smile and a sizeable cocktail ring on her right hand featuring a deep blue sapphire the approximate size of the Mediterranean Sea, “I would have asked for something a whole lot bigger.”
Then, days after that dinner, they were seen exiting Cairo’s private residence in the unfashionable morning light, suggesting they’d spent the night there. Or perhaps several daysandnights, now that Brittany had finished her run at the strip club.
“Are youdating?” a clearly appalled television tabloid reporter asked Cairo as he made his way through the heaving mass of paparazzi outside a charity event in London a few days later. “You and the Queen of Tacky?”
“You will be the first to know.” He smiled, all teeth and noblesse oblige. “You and all of your viewers are foremost in my thoughts as I navigate my romantic life, I assure you.”
“Why isn’t she with you tonight?” another reporter demanded. A bit too hotly, Cairo thought, as if these people had personal stakes in Cairo’s continuing bachelorhood. He supposed they did. And in that darkness in him he paraded around in so many fine clothes, calling it a man and letting them call him the worthless one he’d always known he was. “Did you already break up?”
“I cannot keep track of this relationship according to all your conflicting headlines,” he told them. “On, off. Playboy, gold digger. Maybe she and I are simply two people who enjoy each other’s company. But of course, that makes no snide headlines for you, so that will never be printed as a possibility.”
Cairo Calls Bad-news Britt a Gold Digger,screamed the papers the following day, right on cue.
After that, Cairo squired Brittany to the lavish wedding of an old boarding school friend of his, currently one of the richest men in Spain. The speculation about what they meant to each other surged into what could only be called a dull roar.
Had Cairo ever attended a wedding with a date before, therefore keeping him from finding several dates there? Answer: no. Did a man who was only after a bit of fun take that fun to a very old friend’s wedding in the first place? Answer: of course not, as there was nothing fun about a date with high expectations that a man was only going to dash cruelly. The papers were agog. Could Cairo Santa Domini possibly be getting serious about the most unsuitable woman in the world—even after she’d finished her stint in that horrible Parisian club?
Answers on that last varied, especially after “a wedding guest” released a photo of Cairo and Brittany in their wedding finery, clinging to each other on the dance floor in what was called “the would-be king at his most tender and affectionate—friends claim they’ve never seen playboy Cairo lose his head like this before!”
“I had no idea you could dance so well with your clothes on,” he’d murmured to her as they’d swayed to the wedding band.
“How many of the bridesmaids here have experienced whatyoudo so well without your clothes?” she’d replied, not missing a step as she smiled up at him, and he was certain only he could see how razor-sharp that smile was.
After that, they took it to a new level and introduced a series of romantic holidays.
First a weekend in Dubai. Then a week in sun-drenched Rio, and an endless series of photographs of the happy couple on the famous beaches in very, very little. “The better,” one online gossip magazine asserted dryly beneath a photo of Brittany in a tiny bikini, “to remind you why Brittany Hollis is dating your husband Cairo Santa Domini and you aren’t.” Then, after a low-key week or so in Paris, they embarked on an elaborate fortnight in Sub-Saharan Africa, from the sweeping deserts of Namibia to the glory of Victoria Falls to an elegant, fully catered safari in Botswana.
All photographed extensively and then carefully curated to look like a sweepingly luxurious trip so epic it redefined romance. A love letter to all the world, from two of the least likely people to fall in love around. A masterpiece.
If Cairo said so himself.
“Oh, please,” Brittany replied when he actually did say it, sitting on one of the camp chairs in the spacious tent they shared, piled high with rugs and linens and tables laden with succulent foods, that had been set up for them a stone’s throw from the nearby river bristling with hippos and crocodiles. She was reading yet another book on her e-reader while he tracked their headlines on his mobile, and they were the only ones in the entire world who knew that they slept on opposite sides of that tent the same way they’d slept in different parts of all the hotel suites he’d booked. Night after torturous night, not that it was driving him mad. “Romanceis not the word being used when people discuss us. I think you know that.”
He did know it. What he didn’t know, out there in the deep Botswanan night so thick with stars, was why he wanted to change the conversation. Or why some part of him hated it every time another tabloid skewered her. When that, of course, had been the whole point from the start.
Has Brittany Stripped Her Way into Cairo’s Heart?howled one New York gossip rag.
Will Cairo Be Lucky Number Four for Much-wed Brittany?asked a British paper, pretending to be slightly less salacious.
