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“Which will only benefit from you pulling back and taking stock.” He waved a hand at her. “What’s going to happen if you take a step back? Maybe take on a client or two less? Look at Shanghai. The world hasn’t come to an end because you didn’t walk in the show.”
Her chin lifted. “Ariana Lordes took my place in Shanghai. She is a bona fide superstar. Everyone’s talking about it.”
He studied the vulnerability written across her face, a fascinating crack in the perfect armor. Remembered what she’d said on the plane about the short duration of a model’s career. Her reluctance to give even a little on her insane schedule. “And so you worry that what?” he challenged. “She will take your place? That you will lose your relevance? You can’t control what happens in the industry, Jensen.No onecan control that. All you can do is make the best decisions for your career. For you. For whatyouneed.”
She was silent for a long moment, her ebony eyes contemplative. “Life is more complicated than that.”
He wasn’t content with that answer. “How so?”
“It just is.” She caught her lip between her teeth. “My career is important to me, Cristiano. It’s more than just a job. It’s—”
“What?” he pressed, thinking he might finally be getting somewhere.
“It’s my grounding force. It’s the only solid thing I’ve ever had in my life. I will not put it in jeopardy.”
That kicked him right in the chest. Thudded hard in his inner recesses. His gaze moved over the vibrant, beautiful lines of her face, the fragility he sensed about her in this moment so completely at odds with everything she’d thrown at him thus far.
What must it have been like to grow up like she had? In a world where nothing was real? Where the news value of what she was living ruled the day? Where the solid, grounding existence he’d experienced as a Vitale would never have been even remotely possible for her? How had she handled it? What impact had it had on her? His curiosity resurfaced, stronger than ever.
“What was it like?” he asked quietly. “To be a Davis? To grow up like that?”
She eyed him, an emotion he couldn’t read flickering across her face. “That’s a fairly broad question,” she murmured. “We could be here all night.”
“Humor me.” He waved a hand at her. “You were on television from when you were very young to just recently, no?”
“From when I was ten to when I was twenty-three.” She was silent for a long moment, swirling her wine in her glass, the ruby-red liquid glittering in the candlelight. “It was,” she said finally, “the furthest thing from normal you could imagine. When other kids were climbing trees, my sisters and I were memorizing plot lines. We shot ten to twelve hours a day, so we couldn’t go to school. We had tutors instead. And a nanny when I was younger. Everyone on the show had to sign an NDA, which meant I rarely got to spend time with my friends whose parents wanted nothing to do with the show. Which was most of them,” she acknowledged, her mouth twisting. “I don’t blame them at all.”
So in essence, he concluded, his heart pulsing for the young girl she’d been, she hadn’thada childhood. He could identify, on some level, given he’d lost his own parents at fourteen, when the boat they’d been piloting had crashed head-on into another vessel, killing his father instantly, and his mother days after. He’d been shattered. Annihilated at the loss. But he’d had no choice but to grow up fast, to mourn his parents from a place deep inside, rather than reveal his grief to the world, to give in to it, because his younger sister had needed him.
They’d been lucky enough to be put into his grandparents’ care, but in the years following his father’s death, Francesco had been heartbroken. Consumed by his grief, his grandmother preoccupied in her efforts to comfort him. They had, however, had the traditional family structure his grandparents had provided for them. The solid base to his life Jensen had never had. And for that, he would be eternally grateful.
“That couldn’t have been easy,” he observed. “Not having any kind of a normal life. How did you feel about it?” Because she’d always been positioned as the ringleader. The girl who would try anything.
She shrugged a slim shoulder. “In some ways, it was fun—a new adventure every day. We received a lot of attention...what teenage girl wouldn’t like that? But then,” she continued, a frown creasing her brow, “it all became a bit much in our teenage years. It never stopped. The show...the media coverage. We had no privacy. It was impossible to carry on a real relationship. So my sisters and I decided to get out. Ava and Scarlett started a fashion and design business in Manhattan, and I began modeling.”
“Which made sense given your background as a fashion influencer.” He tipped his coffee cup at her. “Was it an easy transition?”
Her mouth curved in a rueful smile. “Technically, yes. I had a natural fashion sense. I knew how to act, which is a crucial part of modelling. But few people in the business took me seriously in the beginning. I was an influencer, not a model. My celebrity, my built-in endorsement value, might have gained me access into the upper echelons of modeling, but it was also a strike against me. Brands were wary of hiring me. Other models were resentful when they did. I had to work twice as hard as everyone else to land jobs, and sometimes even that wasn’t enough.”
He recalled his own skepticism when she’d been presented to him as a candidate for the face of his brand. He’d pretty much dismissed the idea out of hand, based on her reputation alone, even after she’d established herself as a top model. Which was a perfect example of how hard it must have been for her to overcome that prejudice lobbied against her.
“But you persevered,” he pointed out. “That took guts.”
She shrugged. “It was the only thing I knew. I wasn’t afraid of hard work. Of having to prove myself, and people eventually began to see that I was serious. That I was good at my job.”
Only for her to put it all in jeopardy with this spiral she’d been on of late. It made no sense. Not when he could see how seriously she took her career. Which made him more mystified than ever.
He hiked a dark brow. “And so, you thought that by frolicking naked in the Trevi Fountain with a playboy prince and setting off an international scandal, it was going to preserve your stellar reputation?”
Her long, sooty lashes swept down to veil her gaze. “No,” she said quietly, “I did not. Sometimes my...impulsesget the better of me. Old habits die hard, I guess.”
He eyed the wealth of emotion simmering behind those midnight-dark eyes. He wasn’t getting the full truth here. He was getting partial truths. He was sure of it. He had the distinct feeling she’d just thrown him a line—told him what he’d wanted to hear—just to get him off the subject. And why that bothered him, why he wanted to get to the bottom of her, he didn’t know.
He could tell himself it was because she was a crucial asset to him and he couldn’t have her going sideways during this launch. But he thought it might be more. That there was something about that vulnerable light in her eyes that got to him. That there was so much more toherthan met the eye. That beneath the brilliant, beautiful packaging lay the real Jensen Davis. And as insane as it was, he wanted to see it. He wasintrigued.
Which wasirrational, given she was the exact opposite of the type of woman he normally gravitated to—the self-possessed, stable, dependable females he had always chosen—because that’s what his life had required. A woman like Alessandra Grasso, a predictable,safechoice, with the breeding and power to unite two family dynasties and create an even stronger whole. Something that would only underscore his revival of FV.
The fact that he’d been unable to pull the trigger on that particular match, that he’d told himself it was better done after he’d right-sided FV, when he had the time to invest in a relationship, that he’d harbored niggling doubts about the match, that she wasn’tthe onefor him,that had held him back, was beside the point. Jensen Davis was a wild card better left alone.
