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For several long moments, the only sounds were the scrape of table legs as the waiter continued to set up the café and the soft coos of a couple of pigeons dancing around his feet in hope of scraps. He gazed around the street even as he kept Anna’s face in his peripheral vision. Her expression was surprisingly hard to read. He’d expected trembling lips, perhaps even a few tears or a full-on collapse into crying. But she surprised him, her face unexpectedly smooth except for a tiny little V between her brows as she read.
Although, he reminded himself, Anna had truly changed since he’d seen her last. The Anna of his childhood would have turned crimson and run off after falling off the catwalk. She had blushed last night, but she’d gotten back up, and done so without a single tear. He admired her for that.
Finally, she looked up. She didn’t say anything, just stared at him with wide eyes.
“Sí, Anna. We have a problem.”
Anna looked back at the phone then slowly read out loud.“‘The Virgin and the Billionaire?’”
The headline burst off the screen, splayed across the page in large block letters. But even worse was the picture beneath—a photo of Anna splayed across Antonio’s lap, the gold gauze of her skirt hiked up past her knees to showcase her bare legs. Her eyes were locked on Antonio’s face, lips parted, arms wrapped around his neck. His gaze was fixed on her, one arm curled possessively around her back as the audience around them stared in openmouthed glee at the drama unfolding just feet away.
Alejandro had thought it was hilarious. Adrian had yet to reach out. Neither had his parents or Diego.
A small sigh escaped Anna’s lips. “I don’t see how this is newsworthy.”
Her irritated tone made him suppress a grin. He was enjoying the feisty version of Anna far too much.
“Apparently, a slow news day.”
“And what kind of title is that?” She looked up, her eyes sparking with a fire that made him grit his teeth at the desire it reignited. “It sounds like a lurid romance novel.”
He nodded at the picture. “It does look like the covers of the books you see for sale at the airport.”
She looked back down. Her cheeks pinked. “Yes, well...”
His lips quirked. “You read them, don’t you?”
She paused a moment then raised her chin and shot him a smile. “I do.” She handed the phone back to him. “I’m sorry, Antonio. Truly.” She looked at her feet, the gesture more reminiscent of the Anna he’d known. “I can’t believe that one stupid shoe has caused all this trouble.”
He cleared his throat. “Yes, well, the damage is done. Now we just have to decide what to do about it.”
CHAPTER SIX
ANNABITBACKa groan. The image of her body inelegantly splayed across Antonio’s lap with that horrible title, written all in caps, would forever be burned into her brain. She looked ridiculous. Like one of those perpetually stunned heroines on the covers of a gothic romance running across a cliff in her frilly nightgown toward a dark castle. Antonio, on the other hand, oozed confidence and sexuality, as if a woman hadn’t just landed in his lap.
“Maybe it’ll go away in a day or two?” she finally managed to say.
“I’d hoped for the same when Alejandro texted me.” He pulled up something else and handed it back to her. Her stomach dropped. Tweet after tweet accosted her, along with her name and the photo underneath Twitter’s “What’s Happening” column.
She’d been turned into an international joke in less than twelve hours.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, her eyes sweeping over the cobblestones, the planter on the stoop just to her right, her own feet. Anything but him.
“It’s fine, Anna.”
He didn’t sound fine. He sounded tense, frustrated. That was understandable. From what Uncle Diego had said when he and Aunt Lonita had visited her in Paris last month—a visit where Diego had spent part of the time installing new locks on the doors and windows while Lonita had piled food into her cupboards and asked not so subtle questions about the crime rate in the surrounding neighborhood—Antonio had become notoriously secretive about his personal life. He was respected and admired in both his professional and social circles. Landing on the cover of a global tabloid was most likely at the bottom of the list of what he considered respectable media coverage.
He shifted in front of her, drawing her eyes from her own feet to his polished leather shoes. She frowned. There had been a time when he’d run wild across the slopes of the Sierra Nevada with her, his feet bare and covered in mud as they’d climbed trees and scaled boulders.
What had happened to that carefree, adventurous soul? She’d loved that about him; the tap of a pebble at her window or a note slipped under her door, inviting her on an afternoon of adventure. The times she’d felt free, felt like she was truly herself, had been those afternoons spent barreling through fields of wildflowers or splashing in a nearby creek. The girl who disappeared into grief and fear that she wasn’t capable, wasn’t strong enough, was truly too fragile to accomplish anything on her own, had morphed into someone strong, someone daring and exciting, with Antonio. It was one of the reasons she’d fallen for him.
But from what she could see, if there was any trace of that adventure left, Antonio had buried it very, very deep.
“Not exactly the coverage either of us needed,” she finally croaked.
Not to mention the humiliation of Antonio knowing she was still a virgin. She didn’t really care if anyone else knew. But Antonio knowing...she bit back a sigh.
“Walk me through the last few months of your life.”
