Ways To Ruin A Royal Reputation (Mills & Boon Modern) (Signed, Sealed…Seduced, Book 1) by Dani Collins (best ebook reader ubuntu .txt) 📗

“I’m not talking about it here.” Her voice was hollow. All of her was. It was the only way she could cope, by stepping outside her body and letting the shell be transported wherever he was taking her. If she let herself see and think and feel, she would buckle into hysterical tears.

“That’s not a denial,” he growled.

How had this happened? Why?

“Who—” She had to clear the thickness from her throat so her voice was loud enough to catch the PA’s attention. “Who released this story?”

He told her the name of an infamous gossip site. “Their source is the wife of Avery Mason. She claims he confided in her early in their marriage.”

Amy set her hand across her aching stomach and looked out the window.

“The flight plan has been changed, sir,” Luca’s PA informed him after tapping his tablet. “The team will meet us when we refuel in Athens.”

No photo op at a factory in Jiangsu then. Big surprise. “The team” would be the same group of lawyers, spin doctors and palace advisers who had handled his first damning scandal and were continuing to massage it.

Obviously, she was off the job. Amy couldn’t be trusted. Luca would control the messaging, and his lawyers would likely press her to sign something. Maybe Luca would sue her for defamation. The contract she’d signed with him hadn’t stated explicitly that she was supposed to ruin him. They’d left that part as a handshake deal. Could that come back to bite her? She needed Bea!

The private airfield came into view. They drove up to his private jet, and even that short walk of shame was photographed from some hidden location that turned up on her phone when she checked it as the plane readied for takeoff.

“You’re shaking,” Luca said crisply. “Do you need something?”

A time machine? Her friends? She dug up one of the sleeping tablets she’d taken on the flight here, requested a glass of water and swallowed the pill.

Luca answered a call and began speaking Italian. His sister perhaps. He was cutting his words off like he was chopping wood. Or beheading chickens.

“Sì. No lo so. Presto. Addio.”

She handed back her glass and texted Bea and Clare, already knowing it was futile. They were tied up with other things, and she didn’t know how to ask for forgiveness when she was piling yet more scandal onto London Connection.

In a fit of desperation, she sent out a text to a few of her closest contacts, fearful she would be locked down in Vallia again. A commercial flight was out of the question. She’d be torn apart, but a handful of her clients flew privately throughout Europe. There was a small chance one of them might be going through the airfield Luca used in Athens.

As she was texting, her mother’s image appeared on her screen as an incoming call.

Don’t cry. Do not cry.

Amy hit ignore, then tapped out a text that she was about to take off and had to set her phone to airplane mode. It wasn’t true, but she couldn’t face the barrage that was liable to hit her. She turned off her phone and set it aside.

Luca tucked away his own phone and studied her.

The plane began to taxi. The flight attendant had seated herself near the galley. The rest of his staff were sequestered in their own area, leaving them alone in this lounge, facing one another like duelists across twelve paces of tainted honor.

“Yes. It’s true,” she said flatly, appreciating the cocooning effect of her sleeping tablet as it began to release into her system, reducing her agitation and making her limbs feel heavy. It numbed her to the profound humiliation of reliving the most agonizing, isolating experience of her life. “I had an affair with my teacher in my last year of school. That’s why I was expelled and why my parents disinherited me.”

“How old was he?”

“Twenty-nine. I was eighteen.”

He swore. “That’s not an affair, Amy. He should have been arrested.”

“Oh, he’s a disgusting pig. I won’t argue that, but I came on to him, even after he said we shouldn’t. I told you I was spoiled. I wasn’t used to taking no for an answer. I loved how enamored with me he seemed. How helpless he was to resist me.”

She saw how deeply that hit Luca, pushing him back into his seat. Making him reconsider his own infatuation with her.

Was she trying to hurt him with this chunk of heavy, sharp-edged history? Maybe. Kicking it at him felt like the only way she could handle touching it at all.

“I’d never had to face any consequences before that. If I was caught bringing alcohol into the dorm, my parents would make a donation to the school and smooth things over.” That had been her father’s solution, to avoid a fight with his ex over which one of them had to bring Amy back into their home. “I was friends with everyone. It was a point of pride that even if someone thought I was full of myself, I would win them over by flattering them and doing them favors.” That had been her mother’s legacy. If you didn’t have a clear pressure point like money or maternal guilt to bring to bear, fawning and subtle bribery were good substitutes. “I refused to let up when he tried to turn me down.”

“Grown men are not victims of teenage girls,” he said with disgust.

“Not until his mother, the headmistress, discovers them. Then he’s apparently a defenseless baby and the harlot who seduced him is served with an overdue notice of expulsion. That’s when her parents finally decide she should be taught a lesson about the real world.”

His flinty gaze tracked across her expression.

It was all she could do to hide how devastated she’d been. Still was. She looked away, out the window to where Tokyo was fading behind wisps of cloud.

A tremendous melancholy settled on her. The sleeping pill, but history, as