‘By calling tabloid journalists at midnight?’
Calling? He smiled at her naïveté. ‘She just needed to walk outside the club, a bunch of them were outside. They shouted questions at me, but I ignored them. They would’ve asked her about me, and angry because I rejected her, she probably vented to them.’
Millie looked out of the window as they travelled down the highway to the purpose-built temporary circuit around the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens.
‘I’ve never worked for anyone standing in such a bright spotlight,’ she murmured. She looked at him, and he caught the confusion in her eyes. ‘Being your press liaison officer was easy, but this is a high-profile campaign.’
Great, now he was a campaign. ‘Maybe you should hire someone with more experience,’ she said, biting her sexy bottom lip.
This again? How many more times would he have to explain? ‘Millie, I could hire anyone I wanted, the best PR company in the world. I do not want them, I wantyou.’
He couldn’t move past the thought that no one would do a better job than her. It was a gut reaction, and his intuition had yet to steer him wrong.
Their eyes clashed and held, and awareness slid into all her purple-blue gaze. Intuition and work aside, did she know how much he craved her?In his bed, under him, in the most primal way possible. Her curly hair spread over his pillow, hearing her pants as he pleasured her, lathing her pale skin with his tongue, tracing the contours of her curves with his teeth. Her eyes widened, and she touched her top lip with the tip of her tongue, a wholly subconscious reaction. He was experienced enough to know she was as attracted to him as he was to her, but she needed to make sense of what she was feeling.
Lust was lust, a basic diving force. It didn’t have to mean anything. A clash of pheromones and chemistry, it frequently didn’t. There was no need to make it more than it was. But Millie, he suspected, was someone who dissected it from every angle, to make sense of what she was feeling. Her brain would make her body-related decisions. And that meant he wouldn’t see her naked anytime soon.
Dammit.
He shoved away his lusty thoughts and told himself to concentrate on business. He’d promoted her because she sawhim, not the owner or the driver but the man he was, more clearly than anyone had before. That was wortheverything.
‘You were my press liaison officer and now you’re my PR person,’ he told her, getting back to the subject. ‘I expect you to do your job.’
She released a long sigh. Millie chose her battles, which suited him fine. He didn’t like people arguing with him; he preferred they did it his way the first time he asked. ‘It would be helpful if your ex would stop stirring the pot,’ she muttered. ‘Would you consider—’
No. There was no chance he’d ask Phoebe to shut up. He wasn’t going to open a shut door. ‘People will think what they think, and I don’t care. I only care what they think about my team and my racing, my abilities as a driver. Everything else is superfluous.’
Focusing on his racing was how he managed to stumble through those years after Alex’s death and then his father’s. Sorting through the legalities and establishing his right to the De Rossi assets had taken some time and a chunk of money. His dad’s will stated that Alex was to inheriteverything, and because he hadn’t made a new will yet in anticipation of his marriage, Alex had left everything to him. If had Alex had died after their father’s death, it would’ve been a simple process, but it happened the other way around. It took the hiring of expensive lawyers to establish he was the rightful heir to the De Rossi assets. Knowing Matteo hadn’t wanted him to have even the smallest slice of the De Rossi empire had been, and still was, acid in an open wound.
When he won a fourth championship, the world would see him as successful in his own right. It was, after all, something neither his father nor his brother had managed to achieve. He’d be seen as himself, and not a reflection of his brother and father. It would behisachievement, untainted by the old resentments and harsh memories.
He’d vowed to himself that this season would be drama-free. He’d all but stopped bar-hopping and partying, and it was bad luck that on two of the few occasions he’d been out at clubs, he’d met up with Meredith and Phoebe. Did the gods of good PR have it in for him?
‘Tell me about the charities you’ve short-listed for me to support,’ he asked, placing his ankle on his knee. Millie ran through the charities and gave a brief explanation of what they did. Within ten minutes, they’d decided on him lending his support to five organisations: attending a polo cross tournament this weekend, a golf tournament, a ball, a garden party and a cocktail party. Five charities over six weeks.
Millie tapped her pen against her lips, lips he desperately wanted to kiss. ‘It’s a pity you don’t have a decent, nice girlfriend, someone who can accompany you to these events.’
‘I’ve been doing solo events for years now,’ he pointed out.
‘But a pretty girl in a pretty dress, someone who isn’t known for getting into arguments and being confrontational, would be helpful.’ She nodded at his phone. ‘Do you know any women like that?’
It was true that he preferred women who were a little edgy.
Millie was anything but edgy. But something about her called to him, and if the chemistry crackling between them translated to the sheets, sex would be explosive.
She works for you, De Rossi. That would be a stupid move.
‘Well?’ Right, she’d asked him a question. What was it again? Did he know any nice women? Of course he did: the wives or girlfriends of fellow drivers, and his senior staff. It was true, men liked to party with bad girls, but they invariably married good girls. Not that marriage was something he’d consider. The De Rossi brand was his wife and mistress and took up all his time. And best of all, it didn’t talk back or act out. And he didn’t have to consider its feelings or opinions.
‘I knowyou.’
Their eyes collided, but Millie waved his words away. ‘Anyone else but me? Anyone you can ask to be your plus-one?’
As the person responsible for rehabilitating his image, she was going to be accompanying him everywhere he went for the next six weeks anyway. Why deal with the hassle of having to make nice with someone else when she could do the job? ‘Youcan be my date.’
She stared at him, then laughed. ‘Yeah, right,’ she scoffed.
Annoyance spiked. Was she denigrating him or herself? Both rankled. ‘And why not?’
