Red Hot Rebel - Olivia Hayle Page 0,22

vintages. “Tell me something.”

“Tell you something? So I’m not just not uninteresting, but now I’m interesting too?”

“Don’t gloat,” he says.

“I’ll try to. Make it interesting.”

“Tough crowd,” he says. “Very well. Tell me why you chose modeling when you could’ve been anything else.”

It’s not a question I’ve ever been asked—not by anyone that isn’t my father. Everyone else, from high school, from my town, who I meet in the industry, sees this career as a lottery ticket.

The answer is a foregone conclusion. It’s self-evident.

I lean back in the chair and grip my own glass of white wine by the stem, trying to adopt at least a portion of his controlled composure. “I could have chosen anything else?”

Rhys snorts. “That’s fairly obvious, yeah.”

“And here I thought I was just a vain model.”

He glances past me toward the piazza beyond, and is it just me or is there a hint of contrition on his usually unforgiving features?

“I just told you you weren’t uninteresting. And anyone who spends five minutes talking to you can see that you could’ve been anything.”

I sigh, looking down at his glass. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“It’s the honest answer. I was scouted a few years back and toyed around with the idea of calling the scout back. And once I did, things started to snowball. It’s not an easy industry, not by any means, and I’ve worked hard at it, but I’ve never had my entire heart in it.”

“Which is why you’re also a student.”

Now it’s my turn to look up. “You know that?”

“I saw the textbooks on the plane.”

“I thought you were asleep,” I murmur.

“Not the entire time.”

I shift in the seat and stretch my legs out beside me, crossing them. It’s odd, being around men that are considerably taller than me. Both Rhys and Paolo had been today. “I’m studying part time,” I say. “Like I said, I know I won’t be a model forever. We have a rather finite shelf-life.”

His lip curls slightly, and it’s not in a smile.

“What?”

“I don’t like that description.”

“It’s common in the industry. It’s the truth.”

“Which I’m normally a fan of, but this expression…” He shakes his head and motions to the waiter for another glass of wine. I shake my head for a no. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I can’t spend a whole day posing in tight outfits with a hangover. Learned that one the hard way.

“Right,” I say. “The more brutal the honesty, the better.”

He smirks, looking past me to the people milling about again. I wish I had a camera at hand to photograph him doing just that—there’s something intriguing in his expression… “You remember.”

“Of course. A pretty violent metaphor, by the way.”

“I guess we’re both fans of violence,” he says.

“Or exaggeration.”

“Let’s go with that one.”

I find myself just looking at him, my mouth curving into a smile. He looks back at me calmly, but there’s something swirling in the depths of those eyes, too. “You know what,” I say. “I don’t find you uninteresting either.”

His eyes spark. “Well, perhaps this trip will be tolerable after all.”

8

Ivy

We touch down in the City of Love midday. I feel like a kid in a candy store. This had once been a distant dream, and here I am, about to walk streets I’ve only fantasized about.

“You never told me why you speak French,” I say to Rhys as we follow the bell boy upstairs to our rooms. The Rieler hotel in Paris is magical. The ride to the hotel had been magical. I think that might be the lead word for this stop—magical.

“No, I didn’t,” he says, like that’s a reply. I roll my eyes at his broad back. Predictably unpredictable, that’s Rhys.

The bellboy opens the door to a room that is splendor personified. Gilded bedframe. Painted ceilings. It looks like a pared-down version of Versailles. He informs me in near-flawless English that the hotel has a gym on the fourth floor, that breakfast is served from seven, that the staff are at my beck and call. I can barely focus on the words, my eyes locked on the balcony doors.

I open them the second I’m alone, and the view… the Eiffel Tower stretches up into the blue, Parisian sky in the distance, a giant amidst the mid-rise silhouettes. I can clearly make out the sliver thread of the glittering Seine.

It’s a balcony to loudly proclaim Let them eat cake! from, minus, you know, the subsequent beheading. I grip the railing tight and just breathe it all in.

You’re