A snort. “She’s the lead in at least two leaked sex tapes. I’ve seen one. I’d rate it a B.” Daniel sounds thoughtful, but he often uses a smooth, soothing tone to deliver sarcasm. “Isn’t she in rehab?”
“She was. She left. She’s back now.”
“Why am I only now hearing about this?” Daniel demands.
“I handled it.”
“Clearly.” More sarcasm. I can hear papers flipping as he looks through printouts of the paparazzi pictures I forwarded to him.
“She was drunk, or on something,” I say. “Probably both. It was an accident. She saw me enter my hotel room, and stumbled in after me. The camera person must have been watching through the window.” I grimace. “Trying to catch me at something.”
“And it paid off. For once.”
“Quite.” My tone is cold enough to freeze a finger off. “Daniel, I can’t afford for them to go digging.”
Daniel knows my secret. As head of PR, his main job is to keep it buried. “We need to control the narrative,” he says.
“We could tell the truth.”
“That’s the last thing we want to do. The Crown Prince of New Arcadia, shacking up with the country’s top tabloid darling? While she was drunk and/or strung out?”
“We weren’t shacking up.”
“Says you. What will Winnie Bennett say?”
I groan.
“Exactly,” Daniel says. “We can’t ask. She’ll spin it the way she wants it. And she wants to be the reigning star of Page Six. Dating you would get her everything she wants.”
I groan again.
“You’re lucky her face isn’t in these pictures. Does anyone else know it was her?”
“I don’t think so.” I try to remember the details of that nightmarish night. “I bundled her back to her room as quickly as I could. I used her phone to call her father, who sent a car. The next day, he called my private line to thank me for my discretion and tell me Winnie had been checked back into rehab.”
“Where she will hopefully stay for the next two weeks. Excellent. With your permission, I’ll call Daddy Bennett and make sure the family stays quiet. And then it’ll be up to us to spin the story.” I can hear Daniel rubbing his hands together. Sometimes I wonder if he would prefer me to lead a more interesting social life. If that’s the case, he’d be better off managing PR for Franz, my younger brother.
“And how, pray tell, do we spin this?” I ask.
“I should think it would be obvious.”
“Is it?” I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Of course.” Daniel’s breezy tone tells me I’m not going to like his solution. “You find a woman who looks exactly like Winnie Bennett, and marry her.”
My head is still ringing with Daniel’s advice when I reach home. Find a woman who looks exactly like Winnie Bennett, and marry her. Before Midsummer.
I can only imagine the casting call. Leggy brunette wanted. Body type to match nude photos already dispersed by the press. Must be willing to sign an extensive pre-nup.
“It’ll work perfectly,” Daniel insisted. “At least we don’t have to match a certain shoe size.” He laughed at his own quip.
I ended the call to keep from shouting at him.
My driver deposits me on my front stoop. My home is modest-sized—barely ten thousand square feet. Classic architecture with the interiors decorated in a modern style, just the way I like it. I head to my kitchen, make my usual breakfast smoothie on autopilot, and pour it into a mug so I can carry it outside.
Find a woman who looks exactly like Winnie Bennett, and marry her.
Daniel is brilliant at PR—most of the time—but there is no way this sort of elaborate farce will work. I’m better off declaring a one night stand with Winnie Bennett, complete with garish sex toys and a drug buffet.
It’s a glorious summer day. Perfect weather for me to stare into my garden and contemplate my fate. Birdsong greets me as I slide open the door and step onto my deck.
I’m about to take a sip of my smoothie when a grey blur whizzes by my head. Before I can react, a sultry-eyed woman rises from my deck stairs like a dark-haired version of ‘The Birth of Venus’ by Botticelli.
Like Botticelli’s Venus, she is naked. Utterly and completely naked.
Unlike Botticelli’s Venus, she is not serenely rising from the ocean. She flies across my deck, shrieking, “Don’t let him out!” and runs straight past me… into my home.
Chapter 2
Benedict
For a moment I stand, blinking at my backyard. Then I pivot and follow the banshee. The brunette is completely naked, and waving a white flag over her head. Not a flag, actually, some sort of garment—a bathrobe. My impromptu guest dashes to and fro, using the robe to try to catch the parrot.
I should help her, but I can only stare. The woman is pale and curvy, of middling height. If she would stand still a moment, her head would barely come up to my chin.
Her damp hair flies around her face, strands catching on her flushed cheeks, but doing nothing to obscure her body. Her breasts bounce as she races around the room. Beautiful, bountiful breasts, perfect enough to give Botticelli heart palpitations and make him reach for his paints.
She looks vaguely familiar.
Mid-chase, my brunette Venus screeches to a halt and whirls on me.
“Shut the door!” she screams, waving wildly at the exit to my porch.
Mutely, I obey.
I need to get hold of myself. I have a wild woman chasing a parrot around my home. I should help catch the bird, and then find out what exactly is going on.
I have several questions. Is she my neighbor? An exotic bird breeder? An ornithologist? My dick would like to know if she’s a full or part time nudist.
First, I have to catch the parrot.
“Finally,” the siren says when I stalk to her side. “Took you long enough. A little help here?”
“What’s the plan?” I need to stay focused on the grey bird because if I look down at her, I’m going to get distracted. The parrot has flapped to a grand piano and alighted on my bust of Chopin. As I watch, it cocks its tail and defecates.
“I was going to try to trap him in my robe.” She gnaws her lip, totally focused on her quarry. If she realizes she’s naked, it makes not a whit of difference to her.
“Allow me.” I grab a cream-colored throw off my couch and advance, moving as stealthily as I can in a suit.
“Don’t kill it,” she hisses.
“I won’t,” I mutter. I’m almost to the piano. “Polly want a cracker?” I say under my breath.
The parrot cocks its head to the side; fixes one beady black eye on me. “Give it to me, big boy,” it croaks, and launches himself off the bust, directly at me.
Frankie
The man whose home I’ve invaded stalks forward, blanket stretched between his elegant hands. He’s a tall drink of water, lean and fit in a way that tells me he’s got muscles under his suit. His elegant, three-piece suit is perfectly fitted in every way, right down to his polished shoes, and crisp pocket hanky made of lavender silk. He’s a poster boy for a GQ article: Top 10 Reasons to Wear a Three Piece Suit Always, even when relaxing on your back porch at ten in the morning.