First Time Lucky (Billionaires of Europe Book 5) Read online

  She had dark brown hair, long, straight, and shiny. It cascaded over her shoulders as if moving, even in a still photograph. Her eyes were warm brown, with just the slightest hint of green speckled through them. She was looking at the camera as though she could see through the lens, and she was deciding whether or not to approve of what she saw there.

  Matteo had never been so drawn into a photograph before. He craved the approval of the woman in the photograph, even as absurd as he knew that feeling was.

  It was all smoke and mirrors. He knew that. The modeling industry, like the TV industry, like his own industry, was all about pushing an image to create a feeling to drive consumer action. This wasn’t art that he was looking at, as much as the woman in the photo made him feel like it was. No, this was a skill. Albeit a lucrative one.

  And the woman was clearly a professional. He picked up the photo, and the informational sheet came with it. He managed to tear his eyes away from the photo just long enough to read the professional information there.

  A model. That explained it. Of course she had managed to show up in a photo with such grace, and such an evocative expression; it was her job to appear more interesting than she was.

  That probably wasn’t fair. He had no real way of knowing what she was actually like. And he never would, would he? Not if he walked out of this meeting the way he had been meaning to, just moments before.

  His mind had changed already. If he were honest with himself, he knew that. But he had been so set on his decision that it took him a minute to change course. It probably wouldn’t do for his decision to so obviously have hinged on this woman’s picture. So he set it down and made a show of carefully examining a photo of another woman. And then another. He could feel the eyes of the other people in the room on him, but he made them wait.

  He felt certain that none of them were going to hurry him in his decision. He examined every photograph, enjoying Lewis’s discernibly growing discomfort, as much as the man attempted to hide it. Finally, he sat down the last of the photos and looked up.

  “I’m going to want final approval on any edits. I understand this is an art form, and it’s all about creating the right narrative, but if I’m going to do this, it’s going to be about creating the narrative I want. You understand, of course?”

  A participant in a reality show requesting approval of the final edit was unusual. Matteo knew enough to know that. Unheard of, probably, if Matteo had to guess. And, judging by Lewis’s pained expression, that would be a correct guess.

  “I’m sure we can work something out,” Lewis said. “Usually we don’t give participants that kind of control over the final product—not because we don’t want to accommodate you in any way possible, of course. It’s just that what we do here is a skill set, and it can sometimes be hard—”

  “Yes, I understand. You don’t want to work that way. But I’ll be honest with you, this isn’t worth my time. The only way it is worth anything to me is if I come off exactly the way I want to. In order to do that, I have to make sure that my brand comes through the way I want it to, and that is my skill set. I can grant you some of my time, and some of my reputation, but only if you are willing to make sure that I get out of this what I want to get out this.”

  He wasn’t trying to be harsh with the man. He understood that he was just doing his job, and the position he was in was necessarily going to be one of weakness. But, at the same time, Lewis needed to know who was in control here.

  He held Lewis’s stare, refusing to look away. Business sometimes felt more like playground bullying than a civilized way to make a living, but it was what it was.

  Lewis blinked first. He offered an accommodating smile.

  “I’ll have to get some approvals and run it up the chain. But I’m sure I can find a way to get everyone on board with your vision, Mr. Bonnuci. Welcome to Beyond Words.”

  Chapter 5

  Josie

  Life as a model was never going to be predictable. Josie had known that when she signed up. She knew she was never going to know what she was working on from week to week, or even from day to day. It had made her nervous to begin with, but by now she had mostly gotten used to it. She even found that the variety was surprisingly helpful for keeping her distracted when she didn’t want to think of something.

  It had kept her, for instance, from stewing over the audition for the reality show. Three weeks went by, and she had heard nothing. The whole strange incident had faded from her mind, and life had gone back to normal. Lewis was gone, and with him the whole weird afternoon. She wouldn’t have to find a way to say no—or to convince herself to say yes. She wouldn’t have to decide if putting up with that kind of experience would be worth it, for the potential positive impact on her career. That was nice, at least; her life was complicated enough already without adding in an ex-boyfriend and a TV audience.

  So Josie couldn’t say that she was excited when her phone rang and she saw that it was Lewis calling. She had to take a few deep breaths to steady herself before she even picked up the phone. And, when he told her that she had gotten the part, and that she was needed for a screen test the next day, she had a hard time coming anywhere close to his level of enthusiasm, even filtered as it was through his artfully affected indifference.

  “You know these sorts of things are supposed to go through my agent,” she said.

  “Oh, I know that. Of course, I know that. I just thought you might want to know sooner rather than later.”

  “Is that really the only reason?”

  Josie couldn’t help but let a little playful flirting slip out. She’d spent too much time with Lewis as an object for her affection, and too little time with him as anything else, not to feel like that was habit. She made a note to herself that, in the future, she should try her best to avoid flirting.

  Unfortunately, Lewis seemed all too eager to welcome and return her accidentally flirtatious tone. “Oh, well, if you really want to know, I’ve never been able to resist being the one to give you good news.”

  Josie retreated into professionalism. Told him to give her agent the details and that she would be there tomorrow as needed. When she hung up the phone, she felt herself plunged back into the state of confusion and uncertainty that she had been in when she had left the audition.

  Did she want this? And, if she didn’t want it, did she need it?

  All the advice came back to her in moments like this, when she was trying to figure out what she needed to do. All the people that had told her she would need to make sacrifices to get to where she wanted to be. She had chosen to enter a competitive career. And, with competition came difficult decisions. Lines she had to decide whether she did or didn’t want to cross.

  The decision of whether to do the show felt larger than she thought it should. It felt stranger, and potentially more problematic, than any of the work she had been doing up until now. And aside from all of that, she couldn’t tell how much of this indecision was because of the work itself, and how much of it was because she wasn’t sure of what Lewis wanted. And how he intended to get it.

  Was this really just an opportunity that he thought would be good for her, and had extended it to her as a gesture of friendship? Or was it what it seemed like—an attempt to rekindle the fire that had never really ignited?

  That same slightly sick feeling that she had had in the pit of her stomach when she had been dating him returned. That feeling that, at his heart, all of Lewis’s emotions toward her were really more about himself. She couldn’t shake the idea that him being with her had become more and more about the challenge of him convincing her to sleep with him. And less and less about any real connection they shared.

  Maybe it’s a problem that will solve itself, she thought when she woke up the next morning. The term “beauty sleep” existed for a reason, and Josie thought, as she looked in the mirror, that this definitely was not going to be her best face she was putting forward today.

  Still, she went through with it.
She was a professional, and it was time to do her job, even if that job looked a little different than she had been expecting it to. She got in her car, drove to the studio, proceeded to the receptionist desk, and checked in. She sat with the other women this time and was relieved that, now, she was not being shown any preferential treatment. The women she was sitting with didn’t make her nervous—that aspect of the competition didn’t matter to her. She’d long gotten used to being judged against the beauty of other women and had learned not to take it personally.

  She had expected that she would be called back into that same room, and things would go mostly the same way they had before. But instead, she followed along as she and the other women were herded into a van and driven across town.

  Traffic aside, it was a nice trip. They were headed to the beach, which was something Josie never minded. Sure, she’d been to the beach just the day before. But at least this time she was more fully clothed.

  As she went through hair and makeup, and tried on various potential outfits for wardrobe, Josie began to relax. This was all toward a different end, sure, but at least so much of it was essentially the same. All these little rituals and familiar little things to do with the production had a steadying effect on her. And she felt less and less like she was faking the confidence that she had been careful to keep on her face the entire morning.

  There was a section of beach well away from the rest of the production where each woman was being taken one at a time. They weren’t supposed to hear anything, and they didn’t. But it became clear from what the other women reported when they came back that they were filming potential footage for the show. Introductory interviews, Josie figured. It set her nerves off again, but she did her best to tamp them down. She made small talk as best she could with the other women. They were similar to many of the models that she had known over the years, although there were little differences. They all seemed to have aspirations for fame, and Josie found it amusing to note how open some of them were about their goals versus others. She felt a little uncharitable thinking about it and judging them, especially considering she had her own aspirations. But it helped keep her mind off of what was coming.

  When her turn came around, she was ready. She was in a stable place to play her character the way she had been told was wanted. And, this time, Lewis was nowhere to be seen. It was just a director, the cameramen, and a few other crew members adjusting sound and lighting. She was seated on a stool in front of the ocean, and she’d seen enough photos of herself to know that the lighting and the setting would be plenty flattering.

  “All right,” the director said. “So you’re one of the gold diggers, yes?”

  Josie was relieved that it was also upfront.

  “Yep,” she replied, trying to be friendly and agreeable and upbeat in the way that usually got her the “most easy to work with” comments from photographers. “That’s me!”

  “Great. So, for this I want you to just take it easy. Just speak for a bit, and we’ll pick what we need. Do your best to really get into it, and don’t worry about how this sentence or that sentence makes you look. The larger-than-life you can be, the more screen time you’ll get. I see you’re a model?”

  Josie nodded.

  The director smiled as he put her paperwork aside. “You certainly look like it. So this is all pretty new for you, right?”

  She knew it was a skill set for the director of a reality series to be able to put the participants at ease. She understood that he was just doing his job. But still, he was good at it, and Josie felt the nerves that had been building up over this experience began to melt away.

  “It’ll be easier than you think,” he said. “What you do as a model is harder than this. With modeling you have to carry everything in one shot. We’ve got hundreds and thousands of frames to get it all across. So it’s hundreds and thousands of times easier!”

  I’m being coddled, she thought. But still, it worked. The director directed, and she responded. She felt less and less like herself with every word that came out of her mouth, but he encouraged her enough that it all somehow felt natural. Not naturally herself, sure, but when she was in character, she felt the sentences start to flow. She could sense the director guiding her further and further toward a caricature of a shallow, conniving woman, but he encouraged her so much along the way that she didn’t really mind.

  It was such a gradual shift that it wasn’t until it was all over that she realized how into it she had gotten. She felt a rush similar to the one that she sometimes got during shoots, and that familiar rush made her feel relieved as well.

  “Great! You can wait back with the others if you want. Or you can wander off if you need some time alone. We’ll give you a ride back to the studio when everyone has finished, but we don’t actually need you again today. Someone will contact your agent with further info when we’re ready to move forward.”

  That was it? Had she done it? Whether she was going to succeed at this or not was out of her hands now. She could already see the production assistant beginning to wrangle the next girl for her interview.

  She should head back toward the others, she thought. There were some snacks and conversation, and she should get to know the other women if they were going to be going through this whole strange experience together. But even as she started walking toward them, she knew she didn’t want to. She had had enough of their particular brand of vapid for one day. Instead, she headed toward the line of shops and restaurants along the beach.

  Walking off the production site and into the real world was surreal. Josie felt like she had been suffocating and was now shedding something heavy. How had she not realized how much it bothered her until just now? She could breathe again. And, if she were lucky, maybe she would get a nice long break before the next production shoot.

  She found herself walking toward the closest place to get a drink. She had mostly avoided the cliché of the model who drinks too much to deal with the stress of their job. But every now and then, a little something to take the edge off was necessary. Today was one of those days.

  Being early afternoon, the bar was mostly empty. It didn’t look like they were much for serving food, even though it probably would have been a smart business decision for them to be a little more lunch focused, considering how busy the establishments on either side seemed to be. But Josie was glad of this. A little bit of near-solitude was exactly what the doctor ordered.

  She sidled up to the bar and ordered a vodka cranberry, defaulting to her usual aloof, sophisticated face that she wore when she was tired and didn’t want to be approached. Subtly, mostly by habit, she scanned the room.

  There were a couple retirees who probably really shouldn’t have been there, considering the prices she had seen on the menu. This place was more upscale than she had realized before she walked in, and she thought to herself that it was a good thing she had a paying gig today.

  Her admittedly judgmental scan at the bar was interrupted when her eyes grazed across the man sitting clear on the other side of the bar. He didn’t look like he belonged there. Josie wasn’t sure he looks like he belonged anywhere, really. He was impossibly attractive, with deep olive skin and slightly long, wavy hair. He was tall, she could tell even though he was sitting down. And his actions as he stirred his drink were strangely graceful. His eyes looked intelligent, and she saw that his focus was on a television that was out of her line of sight, although she could hear it must be tuned to a business channel from the snatches of audio she caught over the low mumbling background noise of the bar.

  He was focused on the TV and lost in thought at the same time. She wasn’t sure how that was possible, but he certainly made it look attractive. She couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking about. It had to be more interesting than her own little dilemma, and she found herself wishing that she could be swept up into whatever fascinating world he inhabited.

  He was rich. She knew that even before she realized how she knew it, but one by one t
he details started filtering in.

  In Josie’s line of work, it was surprisingly useful to be able to tell how well off someone was. There were so many hangers-on mixed in with the people that she needed to network with that there had to be a reliable way to separate the wheat from the chaff. Watches were a great way of doing that, and by now she was familiar with a variety of upscale brands—she’d even modeled for one or two. Most of the men she had known went with more ostentatious brands and styles, but the one this man wore was understated. And yet Josie knew that it was worth more than she would likely make in a year.

  The man’s clothing was also impeccable. Much like the watch—understated, classy, and clearly still very much high-end. And boy, did he wear it well. His clothes must have been made for him, the way they wrapped around his well-toned arms.

  He smiled, and Josie felt a flicker of a thrill in her chest. She wondered again what he was thinking about; his face lit up like he had just remembered something that delighted him, and what Josie wouldn’t have given to be delighted by the same thing.

  “Vodka cranberry?”

  Josie came back to herself. Her drink sat in front of her, and she realized that she hadn’t noticed it being set down there. She also realized that her expression had fallen. She must’ve looked ridiculous, staring slack-jawed at the man across the bar. She was embarrassed, but she didn’t let it show. She only smiled, and then thanked and tipped the bartender.

  She took a second and shook her head slightly. It was probably just how weird the day had been that had made her get so swept up in staring at a stranger. Once she finished her drink, called a cab back to the studio, and drove back home to where the world made a little bit more sense, she would be back to normal. She felt sure of it.

  She didn’t let herself look across at the stranger again, at least not until she was halfway through her drink. She needed to give herself a chance to unwind and decompress enough that she wouldn’t get all caught up in that again. She was in her twenties, not in her teens. Something about looking at this man made her feel like a giddy high school student, and she was sure that was not an appropriate look.