Chapter 6
Miley
There he was.
Christopher Vale. Shirtless. Swimming in the pool.
Trisha glanced at the scene and said, “I’ll leave you two to it.”
And then, she was gone.
I walked a few steps then stopped. My feet made the decision before my brain caught up.
He was mid-stroke, cutting through the water with smooth, steady strength.
He surfaced at the near edge and pulled himself out of the pool in one motion.
Water ran down his chest, his stomach, pooling briefly at the waistband of his black swim shorts before dripping onto the stone.
His hair was slicked back, darker when wet, and water droplets rolled down his neck and along the line of his collarbone.
He was built the way men were built when they had personal trainers and the discipline to actually listen to them.
Lean and defined, every line of him visible, every muscle doing exactly what it was designed to do.
His shoulders were broad and his waist was narrow.
There was a trail of dark hair below his navel that my eyes followed for approximately one and a half seconds before I forced them back to his face.
His face was looking directly at me, catching me mid-stare like a tourist at a museum who’d wandered into the wrong exhibit and couldn’t find the exit.
“Miley.” He said my name like he’d been expecting me, which he had, but did he have to say it while standing there dripping wet and half-naked? Was that necessary? Was this a meeting or an unsolicited cardio moment?
“Hi.” My voice came out higher than I would’ve wanted. I cleared my throat and spoke again.“Hi.”
Smooth. Really smooth, Torres.
He grabbed a towel from a lounger and dragged it across his face, then his hair, then slung it over his shoulder without any apparent urgency to cover himself. Because why would he? He looked like that. If I looked like that, I’d never wear clothes either.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable.”
He walked past me toward the villa. I sat down on one of the terrace chairs and pressed my palms flat against my thighs. Then took a very long, very deliberate breath.
Get it together. This is a meeting. A professional meeting. About your career. Your future. Your restaurant. He is a person. A regular human who happens to be extremely tall, extremely wet, and has a stomach you could grate cheese on. Focus.
He returned ten minutes later wearing linen trousers and a white shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled to his forearms. His hair was still damp, pushed back from his face, and he looked like he’d just stepped off a yacht in the south of France rather than out of a pool in Miami.
The casual clothes should have made him less intimidating.
They did not. They made him look relaxed and so handsome it hit on a delay, where you think you’re fine and then thirty seconds later your brain catches up and you realize you’ve been staring.
“Thank you for coming. Please, sit,” he said, even though I was already sitting, which he noticed with a small smile. “Or, stay sitting. You’re ahead of me.”
I bit the inside of my cheek.
“I owe you an apology,” he said, settling into the chair across from mine. “What happened at your restaurant should never have happened. It was a failure on my end. Not yours.”
I opened my mouth to say it was fine.
“It’s not fine,” he said, before I got the words out. “Don’t do that. Don’t minimize it.”
I closed my mouth.
“You were assaulted in your own restaurant,” he continued.
“By someone associated with me. Your business was destroyed by a public reaction to an incident that wasn’t your fault.
” He braced his forearms on the table. “I want to compensate you. The restaurant, the lost income, the cost of rebuilding if you choose to. Whatever the damage is, I want to make it right.”
I sat there with my hands clasped in my lap and my heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my fingertips. This was Christopher Vale. He was looking me in the eye, treating me like I mattered.
My eyes stung. I blinked fast and looked at the pool.
He leaned forward. “What do you want, Miley? I mean it. Whatever it takes. Name your terms.”
I looked at him and couldn’t help but think of the fact that he knew my name. Those blue eyes were steady on mine, and up close they were more complex than they looked on camera, darker at the edges, lighter in the center.
He was breathtakingly handsome.
“Anything?” I asked.
“Anything.” He held my gaze, and the corner of his mouth lifted, just barely. “And in return, can I ask you for something?”
“What?”
“An interview. You don’t have to,” he added. “This isn’t a condition. The compensation, the public statement, all of that happens regardless of whether you do this. I’m asking, not requiring.”
I studied his face for a lie and couldn’t find one. Which either meant he was being honest or he was a better actor than I’d given him credit for, and I’d given him a lot of credit.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
He smiled, reached across the table and took my hand. Then slowly brought it to his lips and kissed my knuckles, and I swear on everything I own that my brain left my body, took a vacation, and sent a postcard saying it wasn’t coming back.
“Then I’m in your favor,” he said, smiling, and his eyes held mine over my own hand. I was twenty-five years old and had survived a childhood with Aunt Eliza and a restaurant disaster. But nothing, nothing in my life had prepared me for Christopher Vale kissing my hand and looking at me like that.
“You’re kinder than I expected,” I heard myself say, which was not what I’d planned to say. I’d planned to say something professional. Something composed. Instead my mouth decided to freelance.
He raised an eyebrow. “What were you expecting?”
He leaned closer. I caught the full wave of whatever cologne he was wearing, warm and woody, and my thoughts scattered like a flock of startled birds.
“I…” My lips were trying to form words but the words kept changing direction halfway out.
“I mean, I’m a big… fan, and you once signed an autograph for my friend.
She asked on my behalf. And you wrote…” I was babbling.
I knew I was babbling. I could not stop babbling. “You wrote that I had great taste.”
He stared at me. Those blue eyes, focused entirely on me, with an expression I couldn’t decode and probably shouldn’t try to because my brain was currently operating at about fifteen percent capacity.
“Is that so?” he said. His voice dropped half a register. “Well, I have great taste too. And if a woman as beautiful as you is a fan of mine, I’d say my taste is excellent.”
Heat rose from my collarbone to my cheeks in approximately half a second.
Full-body blush. I couldn’t hide it and couldn’t explain away the room being warm, because the room was not warm, the room was perfectly climate-controlled, and the only thing generating heat was me, sitting across from Christopher Vale, turning the color of a tomato because he called me beautiful.
Get it together, Torres. Get it together right now.
I managed a shaky smile. I said thank you in a voice that sounded almost normal if you ignored the slight tremor, and Christopher leaned back in his chair with that small smile still on his face.
He suggested dinner. A staff member appeared with menus and guided us to a table inside the villa’s private dining room, intimate and warm, with low lighting and tableware that looked handmade.
I opened the menu. My eyes hit the prices and I nearly choked. The appetizers alone were in a range that would make my savings account weep.
Christopher must have seen something on my face because he set his own menu down and looked at me.
“I’m treating you,” he said. “Order whatever you want. Don’t look at the numbers.”
“The numbers are very large.”
“They’re just numbers.”
“They’re numbers with a lot of zeros.”
“Miley.” His voice was gentle, amused, and the way he said my name made my pulse do something unhelpful. “Order. Whatever. You. Want.”
I ordered. The seared scallops because they were prepared with a citrus beurre blanc that I wanted to study. The wagyu because I’d never had it at this grade and I was a chef who believed in research.
The food arrived and it was excellent. The scallops were beautifully seared, the caramelization even, the beurre blanc balanced. The wagyu melted on my tongue.
“This is really good,” I said.
He took a sip of his drink. “The lamb rib I had at your place was better.”
I looked up. “You’re just saying that.”
“I’m not. I’ve eaten at restaurants all over the world. Michelin-starred, chef’s table, private dining, all of it.” He set his glass down. “Your lamb was better. A lot better.”
The compliment warmed me from the inside out. I took a sip of wine because my mouth had gone dry and I needed a second to process the fact that Christopher Vale had just told me my cooking was better than Michelin-starred food.
The wine helped. Barely.
“So,” he said, his tone shifting to something purposeful. “About the interview.”
I set down my glass, meeting his gaze.
“There’s a reporter running a story,” he continued. “The coverage has been damaging.”
He explained. A certain reporter had been pushing a narrative that painted Christopher as a reckless celebrity who'd ruined an innocent woman's life.
The story had turned me into a victim and him into a villain, which was bad for his public image at a time when it mattered more than usual.
He didn't explain why. He just said it did.
He asked if I’d be willing to sit down with a reporter and tell the truth. Just my honest experience of what happened and how he’d handled it.
His eyes held mine across the table. “As I said, you don’t have to,” he said. “This isn’t a condition.”
“I already agreed, didn't I? I don’t go back on my words,” I said. Then, before I could talk myself out of it, “You said you’d also do anything?”
“I did.”
“Okay, this is going to sound weird. You’re probably gonna think I’m crazy.”
“I’m intrigued.”