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She absorbed the additional perspective. It was the reason she’d signed on with FV, a brand many would have called a fading star. Because she’d believed in the company’s current direction. In Cristiano’s plans. In his track record as a brilliant thinker and marketer. But she’d always sensed that Francesco, whom she’d worked closely with until his death three months prior, had not been a fan of hers—an opinion she hadn’t seemed able to shake.
“And then there was Francesco and me,” Pascal continued, a mischievous sparkle in his dark eyes. “We were just as bad. We rattled the rafters some days.”
She frowned. “What did you two disagree about? Francesco chose you as his heir apparent, after all.”
He threw up an expressive hand. “Francesco was a rose and I am a garden bursting with outrageous color. He had his vision, I had mine. I knew it would be fine when I eventually took over. Meanwhile,” he conceded, his wry smile deepening, “Cristiano had to play referee, which couldn’t have been easy for him.”
Which, in hindsight, made Cristiano’s actions more understandable. His autocratic behavior with her had been infuriating, but she could see, given the pressure he was under, why he might have done it. She had backed him into a corner. Given him no choice. Not that it made what he’d done okay. She was still intent on convincing him to allow her to do Cannes, once she’d demonstrated to him he had nothing to worry about. That she would do her job. She intended to knock his socks off.
As for that strange, inexplicable attraction she’d sensed between them the night they’d arrived? Her mind went back to the moment he’d lifted her down from the helicopter. The heat that had pulsed between them. She would almost have believed she’d imagined it she’d been so exhausted, practically hallucinating by the time her face hit the gazillion-thread-count pillow. Except it had been too palpable, toorealfor her to have conjured it up.
The sensation of his tall, hard body plastered against hers was still imprinted in her head. The spicy, intoxicating male scent of him. It didn’t take much for her to imagine him without the clothes in an intimate encounter of another kind. How impressive he would look. Which was insane thinking, because just as he’d clearly turned it off that night, it was ridiculous to even think about it.
He thought herbeneathhim. That was clear. A royal pain in his behind. She would do well to put it out of her head and concentrate on what was important here. Impressing him with her work, so she could get back to her other assignments and undo the dents she’d done to her career.
She looked down as a message buzzed on her phone, sitting on the table.Her mother. If a silver lining existed in all of this, it was that here, on Cristiano’s fortress of an estate, her mother couldn’t get to her. Not that she hadn’t tried. She’d called, shortly after Jensen had arrived in Milan, over the moon with the royal buzz. Had proposed a follow-up stunt to the Alexandre story to keep the buzz going for next season. Jensen had told her no, absolutely not. And this time, she’d meant it. She was staying on Cristiano’s estate and immersing herself in her work, she’d told her mother, which she desperately needed at the moment.
When Veronica Davis had responded to the whole idea of her staying on Cristiano’s exclusive estate with the glee of a genie rubbing her hands together, calling him “beyond delicious” with that Machiavellian brain of hers, Jensen had stopped her in her tracks. Made it clear that Cristiano and her FV work were off-limits, not to be touched under any circumstance. Which didn’t mean her mother had listened to her, a worry that percolated in the back of her head. But given that was another of those things she had no control over, all she could do was try to make her mother see how serious she was about it, the part of this shecouldcontrol.
She reached down and swiped the message from the screen without reading it. She was done with her mother. The only thing she planned on doing this evening, given she and Pascal were finishing early for once, was to keep her date with the hot tub outside the pool house, its views of the lake legendary. Which might go some way toward easing some of the wickedly sore muscles in her body so she could actually work tomorrow.
She had just stepped out onto the terrace on a hot, sultry night in Moltrasio, intent on a light dinner and an early night after her epic soak in the Jacuzzi, when a shadow fell over the gray stone tile. She looked up, a smile on her face, expecting it to be Filomena who normally stopped by with news of dinner at around this time. Instead, she found herself face-to-face with Cristiano, dressed in dark jeans and a blue T-shirt, his jet-black hair scraped back from his face as if freshly wet from the shower. The designer jeans hugging the powerful muscles of his thighs, the T-shirt defining the impressive line of his abs, dark stubble shading his jaw, he was blatantly male in a way that stole her breath.
Caught off guard, she pressed the book she’d been about to read to her chest, drawing his attention to the flirty neckline of the rose-colored sundress she wore. Which exposed nothing really, except for an expanse of tanned skin and bare shoulders, yet she somehow felt branded by his dark appraisal, which moved slowly over her, missing nothing.
“Checking up on me?” she murmured, to divert her attention from the warm burst of awareness that moved through her. “Making sure I’m not off lighting up the town? Causing a ruckus? Because I can assure you the only plans I have for this evening are a glass of wine and this book. Very exciting, I know.”
His hard mouth quirked. “Actually,” he drawled, his rich, lightly accented voice sending a shiver of response through her, “I hear you’ve been working hard. I thought that since I’m home early tonight, we could have dinner together. Talk about the upcoming week. We have some engagements we are doing together it would be good to discuss. Filomena has prepared a fantastic linguine carbonara. I can promise an equally good bottle of wine to go with it.”
Have dinner with him?She eyed him silently. He wasn’t wearing that combustive look anymore. He looked relaxed and almost approachable. Amiable, even. Was this a peace offering? And if so, would it be wise for her to reject it?
She chewed on her lip. Could one dinner hurt? Surely she could suffer his infuriating arrogance for an hour or so? Ignore how he looked in jeans and a T-shirt, which took his level of attractiveness from superior to somewhere approaching drool-worthy.
“All right,” she agreed, “that would be lovely. Where will we eat?”
“On the main terrace.” He tipped his head in the direction of the house. “Shall we?”
She deposited her book on the table beside the lounger and fell into step beside him on the stone path. Even at five foot nine, she was dwarfed by him, the warm palm he held to her back large and masculine, sinking into her skin and warming her all the way through.
She got the distinct impression that, despite his autocratic behavior, he was at his core a gentleman. An opinion that was confirmed when he pulled out her chair for her on the torchlit patio and ensured she was seated before he sat down opposite her. Resplendent with a glorious mix of primary colors that spilled from the flowerpots and shrubs along its periphery, the terrace offered a magnificent view of the glittering, cerulean-blue lake, bathed in a golden pink shimmer as the sun sank below the mountains.
It was a ridiculously romantic setting. Although clearly this was a business dinner, and Cristiano was merely keeping tabs on her, just as he’d promised he would do. Still, it was hard not to enjoy the spectacular setting and the even better Chianti Filomena poured for them both, its fruity, full-bodied flavor exactly what she needed after a ridiculously long day that had begun at the crack of dawn.
They traded small talk about how the shoot was going, presided over by one of the world’s top fashion photographers, and the social media posts she’d been doing to tease the campaign. Cristiano was an excellent conversationalist, sharing some of his own plans for the company, smart, strategic ideas that revealed more of that razor-sharp brain of his.
Sprawled in the chair opposite her, the hard, angular bones of his face powerful and perfectly put together in the candlelight, his effortless charisma was so imposingly male it was impossible not to be aware of him on a physical level. To wonder what it would be like to be on a real date with him, with all of that intensity focused on her with an end goal of an entirely different nature. Which made her glad for the small talk they exchanged, so she could attempt to avoid that distracted thinking.
“Speaking of partnerships,” he murmured, sitting back in his chair and cradling his wineglass in his hand as Filomena cleared away the main course, “I met with Nicholas Zhang this afternoon.”
Nicholas Zhang?Jensen knew Nicholas. Few would not. The consumer goods scion was one of the most powerful businessmen in Asia, his empire ranging from household goods to health products to fashion and beauty. It was why Cristiano would be talking to him, when he could be considered a competitor to FV, that intrigued her.
She arched a brow at him. “You are considering a partnership with him?”
He lifted his glass of wine to his mouth and took a sip. Savored it before he set the glass down. “He is buying a one-billion-dollar stake in Francesco Vitale.”
Her eyes widened. FV had been a family-controlled company for fifty years—ever since Francesco had founded it as a young window dresser in Milan. It was a revered Italian fashion powerhouse.Iconic. The thought of Cristiano ceding any amount of control over it to a foreign entity seemed inconceivable. “Why?” she breathed.
“Because we don’t have the financial ability to square off against the mega giants taking over the industry,” he said, matter-of-factly. “This will allow us to do so. It will also offer us unparalleled access to the Asian market, which is critical to our success.”
