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She eyed his recently filled coffee cup, searching for a way to break the ice. “You’re not afraid that’s going to keep you up all night?” she murmured.
He set the coffee cup down, those incredible blue eyes moving to hers. “Wearegoing to be up half the night. I might as well be productive with my time.”
A state of affairs he clearly interpreted as her fault, she absorbed, surveying the faint traces of irritation creasing the edges of his mouth. He was still furious with her, that was obvious. It had been there in the brusque way he’d treated her ever since they’d left the party, using the minimum number of words necessary to communicate. A wall she needed to get past if she was going to right-side the situation.
“I apologize about the press,” she said quietly. “I know this is not the type of coverage you are looking for, Cristiano. But I promise you, there is very little truth to any of it. It’s all been exaggerated way out of proportion. It will blow over before long, I’m sure of it.”
“You think so?” He picked up a stack of paper and tossed it on the table in front of her. “My evening press clips.Gainingsteam is more how I’d describe it.”
She scanned the headline of the story on top.
Palace Readying a Statement to Deny Playboy Alexandre’s Wild Love Life
Read on, through the first paragraph, which detailed an inside source at the palace who’d revealed the royal family would ask for the prince’s privacy as he and Juliana “worked through their relationship.” The same source who referred to her as a “diversion” for the prince, who couldn’t possibly be taken seriously.
That hurt. Her stomach plunged, lodging itself somewhere above her twisting insides. But more than that, it wasridiculous. This had gotten out of hand. Completely out of hand. She flipped through the articles beneath, each more ludicrous than the last, earmarking her as the catalyst for the destruction of the rumored royal match. Jensen Davis, modern-day Scarlet Woman.Man-wrecker extraordinaire.The woman who would bring the royals down.
She bit her lip, tasting the salty tang of blood. This had gone far enough. She was through being the fall guy for her mother and Alexandre. Not when it came at the expense of her career. Herreputation.
She set her cup down and sat up straight, squaring her shoulders, her eyes on Cristiano. “I am not having an affair with Alexandre Santeval. He is a good friend of mine. The episode in the fountain was a stunt for my mother’s show—one Alexandre went along with because he and Juliana had gotten into a fight and he wanted to make her jealous. I had no idea that he was going to take it this far. If I had, I never would have done it.”
A skeptical look crossed his face. “So this is all the prince’s fault?”
“No,” she conceded, her chin dipping. “It was mine as well. I agreed to do the stunt. I bear responsibility for it, too.”
His expression darkened. “And it didn’t strike you as beingunwise, given your current commitments? That this type of juvenile schoolyard stunt was a bad idea?”
She swallowed past the bitter taste of regret that stained her mouth. Yes, ithadoccurred to her that it was a bad idea. She’d signed off those stupid stunts when she’d left her mother’s show. But she couldn’t go that far with the truth. Not without revealing her mother’s business, something Veronica Davis would never forgive her for.
She sank her teeth deeper into her lip. Eyed him. “I was exhausted. I don’t always make the best decisions when I’m in that state of mind. Clearly,” she acknowledged, for good measure, “this was not a good one.”
Cristiano regarded her for a long moment, as if he was debating whether or not to believe her. She thought maybe he’d decided it was inconsequential when he finally spoke. “Good thing, then, that we have cleared your schedule and you will now be able to get some rest in Milan. Perhaps it will improve your decision-making skills.”
Frustration bubbled up inside her. He wasimpossible. Not budging at all. “Tatiana,” she elaborated, “thinks she can reschedule the shoots I have planned. But Shanghai is a live show—one I’m headlining. I was looking at this,” she said, picking up the PR plan he’d handed her in the car. “There’s no reason why I can’t do Shanghai and keep my FV commitments. It’s only one day.”
“It’s not one day,” he replied, a hard edge to his voice. “It’s two days of travel at a minimum, then the day of the show. Which will leave you jet-lagged and exhausted—the exact opposite of what all this is meant to accomplish. To allow you to focus on your FV work the way you should be. Not to mention the strategy of removing you from the media eye—perhaps my stronger reasoning at the moment.”
She eyed the impenetrable terrain of his face. “Cristiano,” she murmured, letting her dark lashes flutter down over her eyes in a gesture that always, without fail worked. “I understand that you are angry. I have apologized more than once for my actions. But I cannot miss this show. If I do, my reputation will suffer. Imagine if this were me, reneging on a million-dollar show with FV. How would you feel?”
“Furious,” he agreed evenly. “Exactly as I do right now, given you’ve thrown my entire advertising schedule into chaos.” He arched a dark brow at her. “Perhaps the better question is why you keep doing this to yourself. I’ve seen your schedule... Tatiana reviewed it with me. You would have to be superhuman to pull that off.Ihave a crazy schedule and it far supersedes mine. And for what?” he asked, flicking an elegant, Rolex-clad wrist at her. “So that you can host the entire French Riviera at one of your wild parties?”
Ooh. A bolt of heat moved through her. She was going to kill her mother. She truly was. She hiked her jaw higher. “That was a onetime thing. And the reason I work so hard is not to party, it’s to protect myself. A top model only has a few years at her peak, then it’s downhill from there. It’s only smart business sense to maximize my earning potential.”
“While you neglect your responsibilities and put those relationships in jeopardy?” He shook his head, an infuriated look on his face. “If you are so intent on protecting your career, I suggest you get a handle on your schedule. Rethink your current trajectory. Draw some lines between your personal and professional lives. Because I didn’t sign up to put a Davis on my payroll. I signed up for the model with the power to transform my brand.That’swhat I want from you over the next few weeks.”
A feeling of complete impotence swept over her. She’d attempted to do exactly that when she’d finally walked away from the show—tonotbe a Davis anymore. She’d spent her entire life at the mercy of the show and its scripted plotlines with utterly no power of her own. Yet now, when she’d finally cut those ties, her mother was still pulling her puppet strings from afar, to the detriment of everything Jensen held dear.
Her nails dug into her palms. Thiswas the last time she allowed her to do it. The queen of manipulation was no longer going to orchestrate her life, no matter what sob story she threw at her. But first, she acknowledged, she needed to clean up the mess her mother had created.Again.
“You know what I’ve done for the brand,” she said quietly, her eyes fixed on his. “That I’ve made it hip again.Buzz-worthy. That I’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty to do so. You might consider cutting me some slack.”
“Give me a reason to do so,” he returned in a voice hard as flint, “and I might consider it.”
Cristiano observed Jensen as she curled up in the chair opposite him, an embattled look on her beautiful face. She had batted those long, dark lashes at him, fully expecting him to capitulate—the usual reaction she undoubtedly elicited from men—and allow her to jet halfway across the world to China, as if he hadn’t already made it clear what her responsibilities were for the next five weeks. Howunhappyhe was with the current situation.
She had chutzpah, that was for certain. And maybe, he conceded, eyeing those luminous dark eyes and impossibly long lashes, she’d had reason to believe it could have worked. He’d have to have been deaf, dumb and blind not to admit she was beautiful. It had been there in that initial flash of attraction between them at the party tonight.
His gaze slid over her, curled up in the seat. She’d removed the dramatic stage makeup she’d been wearing. Without it, she looked about eighteen rather than twenty-six, her high cheekbones and full mouth set off by a flawless honey-hued complexion that made makeup unnecessary. And then there was the perfect voluptuous body beneath the silky material of the soft white T-shirt and black yoga pants she wore. The long legs that went on forever.
