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“Will you let me know how your work goes tonight?”
“Oh.” Not what she’d thought he was going to ask her. But what could she expect? He’d only stopped her from getting sugar in her hair. She was reading signs that were not there. “Oh, sure, yeah. ’Course.”
“Okay. Thank you again.”
The car was spewing exhaust all around them, but Megan couldn’t smell it as long as he stood in front of her. Only when he opened the car door and used his hand on her arm to get her inside could she breathe again. He closed the door. Megan gave her address to the cabbie and looked out the window at Alessandro.
He licked his fingers. He licked the churro sugar fromherfingers off ofhis.
Megan’s heart did another lap around the block before joining her back in the cab.
♦
Chapter 5
Alessandro couldn’t sleep.
Did Megan know that the way she looked at him was driving him crazy? Was he misreading the way she alternately treated him like a work colleague and blinked up at him like a lover?
She’d taken on his problem at the Studio, and all he’d done was nearly kiss her.
Dimenticalo, idiota. Forget it. She was there to help the Studio—the focus she’d held when talking to Etta and Susie proved that—not to spend more time with her ex-barista. And she’d told him in simple words even he could understand that she could not live in his world.
But then he remembered that little shiver she’d given when he’d stopped her from touching her hair. And maybe Alessandro could tell himself that he tended to do that to women when he first met them, but the problem was, he’d felt a spark reach up his arm. He’d wanted to hold her hand properly, to warm those fingertips, to stroke her hair flat against her coat, to smooth out the raindrops until they chilled his heated skin. To lift her chin so he could see the light reflected in her eyes.
Gesù Cristo. Get a grip. You just haven’t been with a woman in too long.
No one had reminded him that having a relationship with Nikki that only extended to the cameras would mean he wouldn’t be able to date anyoneelse. He’d been too busy with filming and interviews to think about it, always believing he’d end their arrangement afterthisproject orthatone. Now that they were a continent away from each other and he’d met Megan again—the one woman he’d never been able to get out of his mind—the ridiculousness of him and Nikki had become abundantly clear.
At first, he’d enjoyed their differences, and they’d dated for real for three whole months. He’d met talented singers he wouldn’t have known any other way; he’d learned a lot about the music industry from watching Nikki’s recording sessions and his backstage pass to her concerts. In return, she’d been invited to movie premieres she wouldn’t have gotten to by herself, met his friends, and become a fixture on morning shows.
She’d taken him to more clubs than he could remember the names of, and his social media hits became more about his outfits than his acting. Nikki even kept him around when the top designers would send her racks of clothes to choose from before her shows. She told him not to question his own talents, and he praised her songwriting and made fun of the charts whenever her numbers dipped.
And that was the problem in the end. They had more fun being friends than they did as lovers. One night, they’d stopped in the middle of having sex and just laughed at each other.
Alessandro turned over in bed and punched the king-size pillows. They didn’t help him get more comfortable, but he liked the release of energy.
They’d broken up but kept up their genuine affection for each other in front of the cameras. Alessandro was content to trail Nikki to her clubs and concerts, and she was happy to join him on the red carpet. They backed off from discussing their relationship in interviews, answering any questions with knowing smiles and assurances that their other half was wonderful. They’d been doing this for most of the last year—longer than they’d actually dated. It had worked. But now it didn’t. And Alessandro found himself itching to make a change.
He was going to disobey Yasmin again. Tomorrow he would have to call Nikki and figure out a way to officially break off their “romance.”
Once he’d decided on that, he fell into a sleep that was broken at three a.m. by the ringtone he’d assigned to his manager.
“Mmph?”
“Okay, who is she?” Yasmin’s very wide-awake voice said.
“Um—who?”
“The woman in the viral photograph you let someone take last night!”
Alessandro woke up, fast. He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at his notifications, which he always muted at night.
Alessandro Rosselli Welcomed Home by Mystery Woman
“Merda!”
Someone had taken a picture of him with Megan in front of the churro truck. There was no mistaking the intimacy in their look, even before you flicked over to the one of him holding her hand. Jesus. He’d had no idea the light from the truck would make them so visible.
