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She bit her lip.Thatfelt like a slap in the face, given how hard she’d worked for FV over the past year, killing herself to ensure its success. All the times she’d gone above and beyond her mandate to ensure a campaign received the visibility it needed to catch fire. But right now, she needed to choose her words carefully. “I was so exhausted the night of the AMA party I could barely stand up. I had to be in Tokyo for a show the next day. I skipped the party, yes, but I did the awards as per my contract, a photo of which made it to the front page of theNew York Times. As for Pascal’s fittings,” she concluded, “we only pushed them a few days.”
“Days we do not have with a print and television campaign waiting in the wings. The most expensive in the company’s history...in theindustry’shistory. There is no room for error here, Ms. Davis, something you don’t seem to understand.”
She absorbed his impenetrable expression. How immovable he was. “I have other commitments I need to meet, Cristiano. We all need to be flexible here.”
His expression darkened into combustible blue fire. “We are five weeks away from the launch of Pascal’s collection—a collection the world will be watching. The campaign for which has not yet been finished.Youare the face of the FV brand—a job I am paying you twenty million dollars a year for. The largest contract of its kind in the business right now. Thereareno other priorities.”
She absorbed the fury coming off of him. She got it—she did. She hadn’t been prioritizing her FV work of late as much as she should have been. But what could she do? She’d been fighting the impossibility of her schedule for months, a schedule Tatiana had jam-packed, because her agent had made it clear she needed to make hay while the sun shone. Who knew how long she’d be on top? And quite frankly, she needed the money if her mother was to keep her house in Beverly Hills. But, she conceded, the impossibility of it all weighting her limbs, she also needed to keep Francesco Vitale—her marquee client—happy.
“I will talk to Tatiana,” she offered in her most conciliatory voice. “We’ll come up with a plan.”
“Actually, I already have a plan,” he dismissed, “one that will extricate us from this mess you’ve landed us in.” He tipped his glass at her, the dark amber liquid glinting in the light. “My PR department has developed a strategy to rehabilitate your image. To dodamage control. A couple of FV-sponsored charitable events over the next couple of weeks with a global reach that will cast you in a better light. Something for the press to feast on rather than their current diet.”
“That’s not going to knock them off course,” Jensen protested. “It would be naive to think so. It would be better to let this die out like it undoubtedly will.”Eventually. “And, besides,” she tacked on, “I really don’t think I can pack anything more into the next couple of weeks. I have multiple assignments to do before I fly to Milan, then a shoot in Cannes, the—”
He waved a hand at her, cutting her off. “Your agent is going to cancel those so you can focus on FV.”
Her jaw dropped.What? Tatiana was doing what?
She couldn’t possibly cancel those assignments. One of them was a show she was headlining in Shanghai for one of her favorite lingerie clients. Not to mention key assignments in Berlin and Cannes—one of them for an up-and-coming swimsuit brand she’d just signed on with. Business she needed to keep.
“That isn’t possible,” she said in as calm a voice as she could manufacture. “My clients are depending on me. They can’t possibly replace me this late in the game.”
“Clearly they will have to. You are the one blowing off the assignments, not me.” He forged on, as if he hadn’t just thrown a grenade at her. “The rest of the plan,” he expanded, “is that you will travel back to Milan with me tonight. You will stay on my Lake Como estate where we are shooting the collection, out of the media eye, a level of discretion my security team will ensure. There will not be one more photograph, one more stunt, one moreindiscretionbefore this launch, or I will personally cancel your contract so fast it will make your head spin.”
Her stomach plunged to the floor.She couldn’t believe he was doing this. Her rational brain told her he couldn’t do it—that he would never do it given everything he’d invested in her. Shewasthe brand right now. But another part of her was afraid he would. That challenging Cristiano Vitale in this moment would be a bad idea given the ruthless business-focused decisions he’d been making of late. Another of those career-limiting moves she didn’t want to consider.
She set her gaze on his, eyes beseeching. “This isn’t necessary. The headlines will stop, Cristiano, I promise. I can make it all work.”
“It’s already done.” His gaze glinted, hard like polished sapphire. “This is the deal, Ms. Davis. Take it or leave it. I would advise,” he suggested, a warning note in his voice, “you think very carefully before you reply. Because if you imagine I am bluffing, I can assure you that I am not. You are at the heart of my campaign. At the heart of the brand. I will do whatever I need to do to make sure you are in some kind of reasonable shape to deliver on everything you’ve promised. Trust me on this.”
She stared at him, dismay sinking through her. He had just thrown the one thing at her she couldn’t afford to lose—the contract she’d worked her entire career for. Not to mention the knock to her reputation she would suffer if she did lose it, a stain on her track record she could never erase. And then there was the fact that her powerful New York agent had apparently already weighed in—a decision she wished desperately she’d consulted her on. Which left her with no options.
“I clearly have no choice,” she said evenly, meeting Cristiano Vitale’s vibrant blue gaze.
“No,” he said matter-of-factly, “you don’t. We leave in an hour. Do what you need to do.”
CHAPTER TWO
JENSENWATCHEDTHEtwinkling lights of London disappear as the sleek, luxurious jet climbed high into the night sky, rendering the world below a miniaturized replica of itself. Her head was still spinning from the events of the night, her equilibrium not so easily restored as the tiny jet had achieved in its quick climb above the clouds.Freaking outmore accurately described her current state of mind.
They had stayed at the party long enough to make the perfunctory rounds and engage in the requisite small talk she’d needed to do on behalf of her clients, before they’d left via the back exit of the venue, thereby avoiding the throngs of press at the front. From there, they’d made a quick stop at her hotel to retrieve her things before continuing on to Luton airport, where they were to fly out of.
It had all happened with the rapid-fire efficiency the FV CEO was clearly used to. Cristiano had spent the entire ride to the airport on a call with Brazil, Portuguese rolling off his tongue as if it were his mother language, followed by a conversation with someone in LA, in which he’d plowed through a list of issues the subsidiary was facing with a razor-sharp intelligence and problem-solving ability that left her dizzy. When he’d closed off a conversation with China with a few sentences of fluent Mandarin, she’d observed the exchange with disbelief. Was there any language the man didn’t speak?
She would have been impressed if she weren’t consumed by the repercussions of his autocratic behavior on her career, and her worry about the impact it would have. She’d called Tatiana from the airport, searching for solutions. But her agent had simply restated the facts at hand. Cristiano Vitale was not happy with her recent headlines. He was her largest client and she had to keep him happy. End of story.
“Do whatever he wants for the next five weeks,” her agent had advised, “until the launch. I’ll deal with the rest.”
Except this was her career.Herreputation. Her agent could likely reschedule the shoots she had planned, but Shanghai was another story. She either walked in the show or she forfeited the job to someone else. Not an option when she’d worked so hard to land the assignment. Whenreputation, as her agent was so fond of saying, was everything in this business.
Her chest clenched, her fingers tightening around the mug of tea she held. Her career had always been her anchor—the one thing that had protected her when things fell apart, as they inevitably did in her life. She could not,would not, put that in jeopardy. Which meant she had to convince Cristiano she could manage all of this without him resorting to such drastic measures.
Her gaze bounced across the table, to where he sat opposite her in the luxuriously appointed seating area. Eyes on his laptop, his concentration complete, he looked formidably unapproachable, having stripped off his dark suit jacket to reveal the dove-white shirt, shirtsleeves pushed up to expose corded, muscular forearms. An impressive display that didn’t end with those amazing arms, the fine material of his dark suit trousers emphasizing the equally powerful muscles of his thighs.
As intimidating as Millie had pegged him to be, he was also undeniably gorgeous, what was more than a five o’clock shadow darkening his lean cheeks, his generous, sensual mouth softening the impossibly hard lines of his face. And then there were those eyes, the darkest, most vivid blue she’d ever seen. A woman could drown in those if she let herself and not ever want to call for help.
Good God, she thought, summoning her rationality as a wave of primal heat coursed through her. So he wasmanlyin the way Millie had described, far more attractive than the whipcord-lean male models she worked with, who never did it for her.Thiswas not the way to a clear head. To the strategic thinking she clearly needed to possess if she was going to talk her way out of this mess.
