by Holly Rayner
But she was convinced that Matteo wasn’t that way. More convinced than she should be, really. And, in the end, she found that the best way to deal with the frustrating problem that sat in front of her was to dive into it.
She let herself get lost imagining Matteo and her in a normal, romantic relationship.
That got her through the night and the next morning. Luckily, she had a follow-up shoot from a previous job that got her through until late afternoon when the sun began to go down. And that, quite luckily, took her through until a call from her agent lit up her phone.
All at once, her heart started pounding in her chest. The whole conundrum of the situation returned. She found herself more nervous talking to Elaine than she had been since she’d been a brand-new model with every good thing to gain and nothing to lose.
“Hello?” She answered as nonchalantly as she could, though she was somewhat less rehearsed at making her voice hide what she felt than she was making her face do so.
“Sweetie, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news…”
It was a strange mix of emotions that greeted the news that the show had been canceled. And an even stranger mix when her agent told her that the reason why was because they had lost their billionaire. The whole thing might be started up again in a couple weeks if they could find someone else to come in and replace him.
It wasn’t about her. It couldn’t be. She had known him for such a short time, and it had been, in retrospect, an inconsequential conversation. They’d said a few things—she’d embarrassed herself at that—and then he’d wandered off in the direction of the set.
But there was a part of her that held onto the hope that she somehow factored into his decision. And there was a very different part of her that worried that, if she was a factor in his decision, that was not a positive development.
She hadn’t dealt with insecurity like this in years. She was bulletproof—she had to be. As a model, there was no other option but to believe in yourself when the entire world seemed to make it their mission to convince you otherwise. So why did she question herself like this?
“But I do have some good news…” Elaine continued.
Josie had been meaning to ask her agent not to call her that, but it kept slipping her mind.
“Oh? And what’s that?” she asked.
“I have an exciting new meeting for you. Now, I’m not completely sure what the project is, but the backer has deep pockets and wants to meet with you personally. So do I set it up?”
“Is it walking or posing?”
Her agent hesitated. “Again, sweetie, the deets are a little thin on the ground right now. But I can assure you the funds are there for this project. And if you were willing to do a reality TV show to kick-start your career, then that gives me hope that you’re willing to think outside the box. Just go, meet with him, and figure out how far outside of the box he wants you to go.”
There were some insinuations there. And no, Josie wasn’t comfortable with them.
At the same time, though, it was possible that she was misreading things. And Josie did need to work. A modeling career was like a shark—if it stopped swimming, it died. At least, that was what she had been told in so many words from different people whenever she thought of stepping back for a bit and taking a break. And besides, now is definitely not the time she wanted to take a break. There was too much on her mind that she didn’t want to think about.
“Set it up for a public place,” she told Elaine.
“Of course! Of course. I’ll text you the details when I parse them out with his assistant.”
“Okay, great.”
“Nice boy,” Elaine said, mostly to herself. “If his boss is anything like him, I’m sure you don’t have anything to worry about.”
But worry Josie did. More than usual, and she blamed that on the whole reality show experience. It had knocked her off her game in more ways than she had realized, and she didn’t like the fact that it was affecting her other work already.
Luckily, Josie didn’t have to worry long. A text came through from her agent about an hour after their phone call. The meeting was set for mid-morning the next day at a popular brunch spot downtown. That, at least, was something to be excited about; if they were going to meet there for a meeting, it would mean not having to stand in the interminable brunch line that the restaurant in question always seemed to have, any day of the week.
Along with her worry, Josie found herself excited, and she couldn’t help but feel a little thrill of self-importance, unjustified as it was, as she walked past the line and up to the host to tell him her name. When she did, the host seemed to stand up straighter.
“Right this way, if you’ll follow me,” he said.
She followed him into the restaurant and past any number of fashionable diners sipping mimosas and talking far too loud for the time of day. She began looking around the room for anyone who might be her potential client, but no one stuck out. And then the host who had been leading her exited out of the dining room.
Confused, she followed. “Did you want me to follow you, or…”
His tone was still respectful as he answered, even if there was a slight hint of amusement there. “Yes, Ms. Green, right this way.”
She followed him through the kitchen and out another exterior door. If it had been surprising so far, it was only more so when she found that the door led to a little courtyard, surrounded on all sides by buildings. It was not a large space—only big enough for one table and a variety of flowering plants, but it was large enough to take her breath away.
Matteo!
He smiled, and, for the third time in her extremely brief period of knowing him, Josie felt herself almost blush. She had been so surprised to see him standing there, that her usual air of practiced indifference had cracked.
With the practiced ease of the professional, the host was mysteriously gone. Josie was there in the courtyard, alone with Matteo.
He moved toward one of the chairs at the table and held it for her. “Please, sit.”
She did, while she put back into place her usual face projecting indifference.
“My agent said you had a project for me?” she said, as it was the only thing that sprang to mind, and she feared an awkward silence more than anything.
He nodded, with mock solemnity. “I did tell her that, yes. I’m very sorry to tell you, though, that I lied.”
Josie let a smirk across her lips—a compromise between the cool, calm, collected image she wanted to portray and the wide, unabashed smile that she was fighting back.
“I can’t say I mind,” she said.
His smirk was a little closer to a smile than hers. “I didn’t think you would.”
Josie manipulated her face for a living, but she still found it a challenge not to smile like a schoolgirl. The best she could do was an ongoing grin as she picked up the menu and looked at it.
“You know, I never introduced myself,” she said as she let her eyes run across the menu, although her brain wasn’t really absorbing any of it. “But I guess you figured out who I was anyway.”
He winked at her. She had forgotten how that wink made her melt the first time she’d seen it. She remembered now.
“That’s another thing I have to apologize for,” Matteo said.
“Oh yeah? Seems like you’re making a lot of apologies awfully early on…” She gave him a playfully admonishing look, and he held his hands up in exaggerated defense.
“At least I’m apologizing,” he said. “But no, you don’t have to introduce yourself. In fact, I knew exactly who you were the moment I saw you at the bar.”
She stopped pretending to look at her menu. “Oh? How so?”
He kept her waiting—just for a few seconds, but Josie felt the frustration of the anticipation all the same. She wasn’t sure she liked it—but she wasn’t sure she didn’t. He was a confusing man.
“To be honest, seeing your picture was what convinced me to do the show. And meeting you
was what convinced me not to. Eventually.”
The honesty was surprising. Josie couldn’t help but think back to Lewis, and the way he had kept her hanging on for so long with the promise that there was something genuine lurking underneath all of his playful, sarcastic words. To be confronted with honesty like this, so early on, was refreshing. It felt bold, somehow, and brave. Plus, it saved Josie hours and hours of wondering if she had factored into his decisions. And, she supposed, it stopped him from having to dance around the topic and come up with plausible deniability.
“I’m glad you did,” she said. And again, as she had during their first conversation, she felt exposed. She stepped back onto more familiar and comfortable ground. “I’ve been wanting to try this place for ages. I’ve heard getting a reservation’s impossible.”
Matteo’s expression changed as he sat straighter in his chair. “So I hear. I plan to fix that, actually.”
“Oh?”
He leaned forward, and she got the sense that he was excited about what he was saying, rather than just excited about who he was saying it to.
“Yes. My new app comes out in a couple of weeks, and this is one of the places we are planning on including when it does. We have a variety of establishments—mostly high-end—that we’re partnering with. Our app gets you into the best ones without the wait. Makes VIPs out of normal P’s.”
There was a side effect to his excitement—she got a sales pitch. She knew it was a sales pitch—she’d heard plenty of them. She just wasn’t used to finding it so disappointing to hear.
“Mostly high-end?” she asked trying to cover her reaction.
He smiled, and she let herself get drawn in again by his dimples.
“Okay, all high-end.”
“And I assume that getting transformed into a VIP happens with a little bit of money?”
It sounded harsher than she meant it to. She was still smiling, and still putting on her best engaging but aloof persona. But she apparently couldn’t stop herself from showing a little bit of the sting that having been relegated to a sales pitch had made her feel.
For his part, Matteo seemed to acknowledge her offense, but not to dignify it. He did, though, seem to tone down the sales pitch.
“Well, it’s a subscription-based service. Most of the best ones are nowadays.”
“Didn’t your last app take off mainly because you didn’t immediately monetize it?”
She was treading the edge now, carefully between teasing and aloof, and slightly vindictive. She made a note to step back toward teasing.
“You’ve done your research,” he said, and it was Josie’s turn to be on the back foot.
“If I was going to be competing for your affection,” she told him, “I figured I may as well know who you were.”
“And were you planning on competing for my affection?”
The slight trace of ice that had been forming between them melted. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table and resting his head on his folded hands. With just a hint of that smile…
“Turns out I didn’t need to compete, though, did I? Apparently, I won anyway.”
Matteo laughed. It was the first time Josie had heard his laugh, and she adored it immediately, in a way that made it hard not to show it.
“But anyway,” he said, directing his attention at his own menu, and leading her to direct her attention back at hers. “We were talking about the restaurant. It very much deserves the line of people outside. If I may suggest, they do a little twist on the Eggs Benedict that I think you’d love.”
“Oh? And what makes you think that? I haven’t told you what kind of thing I like to eat.”
“Well, you have taste buds. That’s pretty much the only qualification needed to enjoy their eggs bene here.”
Josie smiled, mostly just glad that she wasn’t going to have to pretend to read the menu anymore. She could fold it up and lean back and look at the man in front of her instead.
She felt excited in a way she couldn’t remember ever being. When she had booked her first modeling gigs, she had thought that was pretty much the pinnacle. But no, there was more. It was possible to be much, much more excited than she had been back then.
“So why Miami?” Matteo asked as he, himself, folded his menu and arranged it with hers on the table. She felt silly at the way she liked that he had joined their menus together. She felt silly in so many little ways right now.
“Well, I decided I wanted to be a model after college. I needed to move to a big city with a decent industry to pursue it.”
Nothing unusual about that, it was a speech she’d given to countless people over the years.
“Yes, but why Miami? Why not New York? Isn’t it usually New York?”
She raised her eyebrows. It was a bit of an assumption on his part, but a correct one. “A lot of girls go to New York, yes.”
“So why not you?”
The answer she usually gave here, to anyone who wandered into this territory, had to do with the weather. New York had cold winters, and sweltering summers without meaningful access to a beach that didn’t require either a long bus ride or a long subway ride through Brooklyn, of all places. That had always been her excuse. It was understandable and acceptable, and kept the conversation from getting too close to anything real.
He noticed her hesitation. “I imagine the weather is a bit better,” he said.
Were her canned responses really so predictable? “It wasn’t really that,” she said.
“Oh?”
“No, though the weather is pretty nice down here. Well, most of the time anyway.”
“So what was it then? What drew you here?”
She hesitated again but kept her hesitation shorter this time.
“In college I wanted to be a marine biologist. Eventually I realized it wasn’t really where my strengths lie—too many things about the job just aren’t what I’m good at. I’d be struggling my whole life, only to be competing for jobs with people who are better suited to them. I love the ocean, and I love the creatures in it, and I figured if I was going to pursue something else, I would at least want to do that close to the thing that I loved first.”
The smile he gave her was warm and accepting. It was like he knew that it was difficult for her to talk about this—at least in the context of an unexpected first date—but he didn’t belabor the point.
“You picked a great place for it,” he said. “Some of the best beaches in the world.”
“So I’ve heard.”
He grinned. “So I’ve investigated.”
Chapter 8
Matteo
Most of the gambles that Matteo had made in his life had not paid off. That was the thing about taking risks to get ahead and try something new—they usually didn’t. He had started a hundred projects that never got off the ground. Turned out they were all just test cases. When he did hit his first success, it was a success that carried him to huge wealth and prosperity.
And it had made him stop needing to take gambles. The only real one that he had made since he sold his platform and walked away with pockets overflowing with cash had been the app he was building now.
That was, up until he met Josie.
And if he were honest with himself, it was a huge relief to find that taking another gamble had paid off. He couldn’t decide if she was the woman that he had seen in the photograph, or the woman that he had met in the bar, or neither of those. Or, he reasoned, some combination of those two and yet somehow so much more.
Conversation with her was both the most difficult thing he’d ever done—and the easiest most natural thing. He wanted to impress her, but not seem like he was trying to impress her. He wanted her to want to seek his approval, but to feel secure in the knowledge that she already had it. He wanted her to laugh, but not see him as replaceable entertainment she could easily dispose of. He wanted to be all things to her, but not seem like he was trying to be. He wanted her to understand that he was invested, but not feel like h
e had given up any of his power.
It was exhausting. But at the same time, every word she said propelled him forward and made the impossible task that he had set for himself seem inevitable.
“You don’t text? What, never?” Josie asked while cutting a bite of her Eggs Benedict.
How many times had he given this explanation? “No, never. I know it’s a bit strange…”
“It’s a bit strange for someone who basically invented the text-based social network to never text?”
“Yes. That.”
She tilted her head. “So, it’s good enough for the millions who made you your billions, but it’s not good enough for you?”
He grinned, pausing his forkful mid-air so he could respond. “Millions? I’ll have you know we passed the billion mark before I even sold the company. Who knows what it’s at now.”
“Right, right. So it’s good enough for the rest of us, but it’s not good enough for you?”
Matteo noticed Josie’s eyebrows scrunch together. Then she stabbed at her food with her fork using more force than before.
“I don’t really see it that way. The way I see it, it’s more that…”
Whenever he gave this explanation, he was aware that it was a bit off-putting. That was fine in most conversations—people who were motivated to interact with him would put up with feeling a little bit insulted while they did. But it wasn’t good enough for this conversation. It wasn’t good enough for her.
“I just want to feel that when I’m communicating, I have the other person’s full attention. If I’m texting, who knows what they’re going to be doing when they read my message? Who knows what else they’re doing when they respond?”
“That seems a little unfair,” Josie said. She took a sip of her water without taking her eyes from his.
He was right. The answer hadn’t appeased her. He tried to explain further. “It may seem that way, but I give as good as I get. When I’m talking to you, you have my full attention.”
