by Hope Tarr
“Look, you two don’t like each other. That’s pretty obvious. But whatever bad blood or feud you’ve got going, it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
She sent him a sly look. “Not a feud—a bet.”
Fending off a feeling of foreboding, he asked, “What kind of bet?”
Her expression darkened. “One Fran and I made the first day on the set after the press conference. I bet her you’d lose. She swore that so long as she was the one who got to style and photograph you, you’d win. She staked her front row seats to New York Fashion Week. I put up something of…similar value.”
Greg felt as though the floor was falling beneath his feet—at the same time the roof was caving. “I don’t believe you,” he said, but in his gut he knew that at least some of what she said was the truth.
He cast his thoughts back to that day at craft services when Francesca had first approached him about coaching him on the side. He’d known then there was more to her offer than simply wanting to help him out, and yet he hadn’t pressed for answers, not wanting to blow his shot at winning—and spending time alone getting to know her. At the time, it had seemed a win-win situation. Not so much now.
Deidre ran a sculpted fingernail along her lower lip. “Why do you think she’s been helping you out on the side?”
“Who says she has?” If she thought she could trick him into confessing, she was about to be disappointed—sorely.
She continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “Sleeping with you was the surest way to ensure your cooperation. We had ourselves a good ole laugh over how easy it was to bring you to heel once she pulled down her panties.”
The taunt hit home. Francesca was a popular girl, a grown-up version of the “cool kids” he’d spent his school years dodging, a more glamorous version of the one hundred women who’d given him the shaft. The bet itself was bad enough, but alone, it wasn’t a deal-buster. But if the rest of what Deidre said was true, if Francesca had used sex to manipulate him into winning it for her… He thought of all the working out he’d done for her—all the pull-ups and sit-ups, the leg lifts and squats and bench presses, and felt shame heat his face—and anger boil his blood.
She shrugged. “Don’t take my word for it, ask her when you see her tonight. You are seeing her, aren’t you?”
“You’re telling me this to get back at her, because you’re pissed that I’m probably going to win—and you’re right, I am going to win.”
Deidre clucked her tongue. “I do believe you are. And come to think of it, you are right about one thing.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“Our little wager was all about proving which of us is the better photographer. It really didn’t have much of anything to do with you. You, sugar plum, were just a prop.”
That did it. He strode across the living room to the landing and tore open the door. Swinging back around to Deidre, frozen in place, he roared, “Get out of here—now!”
…
Driving back to Greg’s bungalow, Francesca was over the moon, and not because she was well on her way to besting her old enemy by winning their wager. She no longer gave a fig for the dinner for four. What—or rather whom—she cared about was Greg. He was on track to win. Barring a major upset, she couldn’t imagine him not winning. She felt so sublime that not even Dee’s glaring earlier could spoil her high spirits.
Based on the fan e-mails pouring in, Greg was the anticipated male winner. Once he won, product endorsements, modeling contracts, People and Us magazine covers, even a series spin-off were in his immediate future. The show had yet to air, and he was already inundated with fan offers ranging from sweet to seriously raunchy. At least once a week, some poor misguided woman sent in a marriage proposal—or her panties. So much for her former Media-Shy Mogul!
Thrilled as she was for his success, all the female attention he was receiving sometimes felt like considerable competition to field. She wasn’t entirely comfortable sharing Greg with the world, at least not in that way. She wanted this one part of him all to herself, and not only because she was jealous—which she was—but because…she was in love with him.
Madly, deeply, head-over-heels in love! Her gorgeous geek had cracked the code to her heart, and now that organ and the rest of her belonged to him entirely.
Marveling over the past weeks, she wondered why she’d fought so hard against her own happiness. Now that she’d surrendered to her feelings, she felt lighter, freer, than she had in years. She’d even begun thinking of how they might manage matters beyond the show. A long-distance relationship wasn’t ideal, but it could be done, especially if it was only temporary. Fortunately, photography was a portable profession. Once Sam went to college, just two years away, she could move anywhere she fancied. She meant to broach the topic with him that night.
Brimming with plans, she swung into the free space and hurried up to the house, carrying a marketing bag filled with his premade gourmet favorites—and her heart on her sleeve.
“Hullo, darling!” She held the bag aloft.
Rather than reach for it, he stood out on the stoop, staring. “What’s all this?” The grudging air with which he greeted her didn’t go unnoticed. He was brassed off about something—and that something, she strongly suspected, had to do with her.
Once the door closed, he took the bag from her and slammed it down. “Is it true you only slept with me to win a bet?”
Francesca froze. Looking into his blue eyes, so angry and so wounded, she stumbled over what to say. “I-It sounds as though you’ve had a visitor, one who’s given you some rather bad partial information.”
Hands fisted on his hips, he stared her down. “Yeah, Deidre stopped by earlier on her way out of town. Partial intel, huh? So fill me in.”
“Greg, I know how this must look, and I’m not proud of it, but you must believe me. Making love with you was never about winning any wager.”
“That night at your hotel, why were you so eager to rush me into bed, huh? At the time, I thought it was because you were upset over the call from your kid, but now I wonder if maybe that wasn’t staged for my benefit, too.”
The implication that she’d tried luring him to bed to win a wager was a slap in the face, but bringing Sam into the fray was tantamount to a punch—with brass-sheathed knuckles. “Leave my daughter out of this!”
“Fair enough, besides I can put together the rest. I’m a smart guy, remember, but apparently not as smart as you. You knew once my clothes came off with you behind the scenes, taking them off again—for your fucking photo shoot—would be a whole lot easier. Only you didn’t count on me turning you down that night, did you? And even though I didn’t fuck you, you still had me so hot that the next day I took off that robe like I’d been stripping all my life. I bet you and Deidre had a good laugh over my Magic Mike moment, too.”
“Laugh, Greg, I don’t know what she told you but—”
He cut her off with a fierce shake of his head. “It doesn’t matter what she said. Bottom line: I trusted you, and you lied to me. More than lied, you used me.”
She dragged a hand through her hair, sending pins flying. “Yes, I should have told you about the wager, yes I should never have accepted it in the first place, but believe me, I never lied to you, especially not about my feelings. They were—and are—nothing but genuine. Please, darling, you must believe me.”
“Must I?”
“Greg, please don’t let Dee, and my mistake, spoil everything we have.” She hesitated, silently beseeching him to take her in his arms, to hold her as he had that night at her hotel and every other since.
Only, his arms remained at his sides and his gaze boring into hers could have cut glass. He took a step toward her—and began moving her toward the door. “Look, it’s been fun, and I’m sure slumming it beneath your gene pool was a novelty, but the game’s over now. You’ve had your fling and you’ll probably win your bet, too.”
Obliged to back up, she begged, “Greg, please—”
/> “Good-bye, Francesca.”
“Greg, no!”
His reaction was beyond anger, beyond fury even. He looked at her as though he loathed her. “You know, I was right about you from the first.”
She pressed the back of her hand to her trembling mouth. Though she knew she would regret it, she couldn’t hold back from asking, “W-what do you mean? Right about what?”
“You really are a Medusa.”
The week of the press junket was one of the bleakest of Francesca’s life. She hadn’t felt so fraught with self-loathing since her marriage ended. Apart from the necessary interactions during interviews, Greg refused to so much as look her way. The worst of it was, she didn’t bloody blame him.
Brooding back at her hotel, a knock startled her from her moping. Hoping it might be Greg coming to talk things through, she called out, “Come in.”
Franc poked his blond head inside. “May I have a moment?”
“Of course, I’m always pleased to see you.” She glanced to the hospitality bar. “Fancy something?”
“Honesty for a start.”
”How about something easier—a drink perhaps?”
Clearly impatient, he nodded. “Perrier, please.”
She waved him to the sofa, and got up to take out the sparkling water. She twisted the cap off the chilled bottle and poured two glasses. Handing him one, she sat back down.
“Thanks,” he said, taking a seat across from her. “What’s going on with you and Greg—or should I say not going on? I’d like to help if I can.”
The offer was clearly sincerely meant and utterly sweet, but Francesca heartily doubted that Franc or anyone else could help win Greg back to her. From that very first day in his Silicon Valley office, he’d shown himself as stubborn. If he’d truly made up his mind against her, and it seemed he had, no manner of intervention could change it. Beyond that, she’d earned his distrust—and his loathing.
“Suffice it to say that Greg and I are chalk and cheese.” His brows lifted in apparent puzzlement and she added, “We’re as different as night and day.”
He sipped his drink. “Differences aren’t always a bad thing, you know. My husband, Nathan, is my polar opposite in nearly every way. He’s a couch potato. I’m a sports club rat. He’s never met a processed food he could resist, and don’t even get me going on his button-down dressing. He’s an accountant, for chrissake! And yet we’ve been happily together for six years and counting.”
“I’ve been helping Greg on the side, coaching him, Franc. Though really, I didn’t do anything magical. It was mostly moral support.”
He nodded. “I suspected as much. Go on.”
“I offered him my help because I’d made a wager with Deidre, or so it began. But once we started spending time together off-set it quickly became…more. I still want Greg to win, of course, but for himself, not because of fearing I’ll have to forfeit Fashion Week tickets or wanting revenge on Dee and my sous chef ex.”
Franc passed her the box of tissues. “Since we’re making confessions…I’m not actually British.”
“Sorry?”
“I’m from Brooklyn.”
“You are not!” He was more plum in the mouth than she was, and she’d grown up in London. Then again, this might explain his taste for sugary coffee concoctions.
He nodded. “It’s true. I’ve wanted to be a stylist ever since I can remember. My sister’s Barbie, my aunt’s French poodle, nothing with hair was safe around my scissors and me. Only I wasn’t interested in being a barber like my uncle Stan. My dream was to be a stylist to the stars.”
“And presenting yourself as a British expat played a great deal better than being from Brooklyn ever would have?”
“Exactly! It’s worked great for me professionally. On the personal front, it’s presented…complications.”
“Such as?”
“I dated Nathan for six months, and all that time I led him to believe I was born and bred in West London. I knew I needed to come clean and confess the truth, but I kept putting it off by one more day.” Arching a brow, he asked, “Care to guess how well that worked?”
“I’ll wager…” She stopped herself. Going forward, she meant to eradicate that word from her vocabulary. “I suspect he found out the truth on his own.”
“Bingo! He came across a box of papers with my high school yearbook when we were packing up my place to move in together. He didn’t give a crap whether I was from West London, Brooklyn, or the moon—it was that I’d lied to him. If I could deceive him about something as basic as my birth, what else might I be hiding?”
“But you’re still together?”
“We are, and it’s good, really good, but we didn’t get there overnight. It took a lot of patience and a lot of love on both our parts to repair the damage.”
“I’m honored that you’ve taken me into your confidence but—”
“Don’t give up on Greg or on your dreams of sharing a happily ever after with him just yet. Sure, you’ve messed up—royally—but to quote one of my personal heroines, silent screen legend Mary Pickford: ‘Failure isn’t the falling down but the staying down.’ You’ve fallen. So now…get up.”
She shook her head, weary beyond the spotty sleep she’d gotten. “He thinks I only…slept with him to influence his winning.”
His gaze honed in on hers. “Did you?”
“No, of course not! I told him so, only he wasn’t keen on listening. He said…” Her voice broke off. “He said he’d been right about me all along.”
“Ouch.” Franc sent her a look of sympathy. “When you’re ready to try again, this time start by telling him you love him. You do, don’t you?”
She nodded, wishing she needn’t feel so miserable about it. “With all my heart.” How ironic that just when she’d meant to tell him so, he’d shown her the door for a second time.
Franc grinned. “Trust me, whatever you say to a man after ‘I love you’ goes down like buttah. In the end, ‘I love you’ beats ‘I’m sorry’ hands down.”
“Good God, you really are from Brooklyn, aren’t you?” Until now, she’d thought he might be having her on.
“Brooklyn Heights, baby, born and bred. The last name’s not Whiting. It’s Witkowski.”
“Polish?”
He nodded, a beatific grin breaking over his face. “If you think chicks dig the Brit speak, you should get an eyeful of all the swooning dudes.”
…
Hearing the doorbell, Greg called out from the bungalow’s kitchen, “Come in,” and returned his attention to the egg whites he was whisking. Beating up defenseless eggs was the next best thing to going at the punching bag at the gym—not that he wasn’t doing plenty of that, too.
Franc stepped inside the kitchen. “Making brunch, I see.”
Whisking, Greg shrugged. “Brunch, meal-of-the-day, whatever, want some?”
He wasn’t really hungry, but making breakfast gave him something to do other than mope. He’d planned to give the omelet to Brittany.
Franc reached out and touched his sweatshirt sleeve. “Those eggs are on their way to being meringue. You can stop now.”
Greg paused and looked down. He had indeed beaten his breakfast into submission. “I guess I went overboard.” He set the whisk and bowl aside. Reaching for the dish towel, he turned to Franc. “What’s up?”
“I stopped by to see Francesca last night.”
At the mention of her name, Greg felt like a fist had slammed him dead center of his newly excavated abs. He’d thought she was different from the other women who’d betrayed him, but she wasn’t. She was worse. Worse than Vicki, who’d set him up for humiliation on prom night, or Jacquie, who’d cashed in the plane ticket he’d sent her so they could meet for a second date, or even number one hundred, who’d ditched him on his birthday to hook up with the DJ hired to host his party. They were, he saw now, only infatuations. Sure, the hits to his pride were heavy, but as for his heart, none of them could come close to breaking
it, because he didn’t really know them.
But Francesca hadn’t run off. Instead she’d stuck around day after day and week after week, just long enough for him to fall in love with her.
“Yeah, so?” He concentrated on sponging up the spillage.
“She’s terribly remorseful for everything as well as miserable with missing you.”
“Is she?” Greg drew back his shoulders. “Did she send you here to say that?”
“She did not.”
Greg let his shoulders drop. “So I guess you heard she only played up to me, slept with me, to win a bet.”
Franc shook his head. “That’s not true. That’s not who she is.”
Greg beat the eggs some more, sending yolk flying. “I beg to differ. I’ve been thinking, and I’d bet my start-up stock that she was the one who leaked that video of me. All these weeks I’ve been nothing more to her than the means to an end.” No matter how many times he’d tried, he’d yet to find a way to make peace with the hurt.
Franc blew out a breath. “You’d lose your controlling interest.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know for a fact that Francesca didn’t have anything to do with leaking that footage.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I did.”
Wondering if Franc was “having him on,” as Francesca would say, he asked, “Why would you do that?”
“It’s simple. I wanted you to win.”
Greg scraped a hand through his hair. “There’s a lot of that going around. Team Greg is feeling a little crowded. Well, you can all relax and back the hell off because it’s looking like I have a pretty solid shot.” Ironic, now that he was almost a shoo-in, he couldn’t seem to give a damn.
“That’s great, Greg, but I’m not speaking of the show.”
“Sorry, man, you’re losing me.” For a self-made billionaire, these last few days had him wondering if he wasn’t a little dim.
“I didn’t leak the video so you could win Project Cinderella, delightful as that would be. I leaked it because I wanted you to win something a lot more valuable, even priceless.”