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Of course, there wouldn’t have been any consequences if he hadn’t given in to the wish to touch her.
“I have to call Nikki’s publicist,” Donna said.
“Don’t call her until I talk to Nikki,” he begged.
“They’re nine hours ahead of us,” Donna pointed out. “It’s daytime over there, and she’ll already have seen them. She wasn’t sleeping through her damn career like you were.”
“Porca puttana,” he growled, ignoring her dig. “Vi richiamero.”
He hung up before he realized he’d switched into Italian and they might not understand that he was going to call them back.
He hit Nikki’s number and put it on speaker, checking his texts while the line rang with an unfamiliar tone. Yep, she’d been texting him.
“Nikki,” he said, then was interrupted by a string of Polish and could only let her run herself out before he would be allowed to speak. He didn’t blame her, but it was still three a.m. and he was getting a headache.
After what sounded like one long sentence, she remembered to switch to English. “I won’t be made a fool of, ’Sandro.”
“That was not my intention,” he said. “There is no story here. She is a woman I am working with for the Studio fundraiser. That is all.”
“Is she an actress too? Because if she isn’t into you, she’s doing a damn good job of pretending she is.”
Alessandro winced again. Nikki was very good at gazing at him the same way Megan had last night. But Megan had had no reason to do it. Apart from what his stupid heart hoped was the truth: she liked him.
“No. She is not in the industry at all. I was just getting some—you know what?” He couldn’t spin the churro sugar thing. He might as well quit protesting. And Nikki was a friend. “Truth time,bella,” he said. “I like her. I met her years ago and again by accident a couple days ago.”
“Of course you like her. She’s gorgeous. You make a cute couple.”
“We are not a couple. You and I are supposed to be a couple.”
“Well, we’d better do something about that, and quick. You’re not telling me she wouldn’t be interested in you. She’s not looking for a career as a celebrity girlfriend, is she?”
“That sounds so mercenary.”
“It’s a job. And so is being a celebrity boyfriend,” she pointed out.
“I am glad you remember that. I was worried you regretted our agreement.”
“Not at all. My sales skyrocketed on New Year’s Day, and they went up again last night. Sympathy for the poor, jilted Nikki means mucho moolah, baby.” Nikki’s slang vocabulary was much better than his.
She did sound quite bouncy about the whole pseudo-cheating thing, now that Alessandro thought about it. “I just wish we’d talked about this before I left,” she added.
“Our people were determined to keep us apart.”
She called them a name he couldn’t translate. “Like we’re goddamn children.”
“I have messed up, though, without Yasmin to tell me what to do,” he admitted. “And brought you into it.”
“I knew you’d be back on social media. Your fundraiser.”
“Right.” Alessandro sagged against the huge window frame. “Nikki, I think—”
“You want to chase your mystery woman? You go ahead,kochanie.”
“No, I won’t chase her.” A small part of his heart thumped with grief at that decision, but he wasn’t going to give Megan any reason to avoid himorthe fundraiser. “I know I made you look foolish, and I am sorry, Nikki.”
“It’s no bother,” she said. He imagined her waving an expressive hand at the air. She talked with her hands like Italians. “I hated being stuck at home. Now I will go out and get drunk and find a friend and have a hot night of wild passion, and our publicists won’t be able to say anything about it.”
One of her songs was called “Wild Passion.” “We will need our publicists to make a joint statement.”
