He rubbed a rueful hand over his square, stubbled jaw as he spoke, and Daisy had a hard time believing there was anybody out there who didn’t think he was absolutely stunning. Sure, Christién was gorgeous, but Mason had a rugged masculine appeal that the other man, with his too-perfect features, was lacking. While she could stare at Christién all day, Mason was the one who made her feel weak-kneed and hot under the collar. Not that she would ever reveal that fact.

“Chris and I ran in the same circles, and at one point were rivals for the same woman.”

“Ah, the beautiful and talented Gigi,” Christién supplied as he placed a couple of steaming mugs of something delicious-smelling in front of them. Daisy wrapped her cold hands around the hot mug and inhaled deeply. She could smell both cinnamon and chocolate infused with something else.

“Drink up, ma petite fleur. It is my own recipe. You won’t be disappointed. So, Mason was telling you about the time we were both infatuated with Gigi?” He clutched a hand to his chest and sighed, the sound steeped with longing and tinged with more than a little melodrama. “Gigi. So beautiful and so treacherous. She loved having us compete for her affections, and in the end, after we were like snarling dogs after the same bitch, she threw us over for a woman.”

Mason chuckled, took a sip of his drink, and then shut his eyes as he savored the taste.

“Chris and I found ourselves in the same little osteria in Milan, nursing our wounded egos at the bar,” he said. “We started talking and discovered how much we actually had in common. We’ve been friends ever since.”

Daisy made a noncommittal sound, dying to ask for details. He’d revealed so much and yet so little. What exactly did the two men have in common? Other than similar tastes in women and a background in modeling? She was desperate to ask but not sure she had any right to the information. She took a sip of the hot drink and moaned involuntarily. Gosh, it was good.

“This is delicious.” Chris gave her a smug grin, and after thumping Mason on the back, he excused himself to prepare their meal.

“Why did you decide to stop modeling?” Daisy asked, deciding to leave the topic of women and vice behind.

“I think the more pertinent question is why did I start,” he corrected. When he didn’t elaborate, she felt compelled to prompt him for more.

“Well? Why did you start modeling, then?”

“It was just after I’d left the army. I was bumming around, feeling a little disconnected from civil society. Everybody else seemed so . . . normal. And I wasn’t. I was staying with a friend, sleeping on a mattress in his living room, doing the odd job here and there. The plan was to join the army, see the world, get a degree on their dime. The reality was, I saw the worst of the world, and I didn’t have time to get that degree because it turned out that I had other more valuable skills and the army wanted me to hone those particular talents before anything else. So I gained a skill set that was useless in normal life and that put me in pretty much the same boat I was in before I left Riversend. Waiting tables. Doing delivery work. Odd jobs. I was working at a trendy restaurant in Soho when an older guy slid his card across the table and told me to contact him if I ever got sick of waiting tables.”

He shook his head and laughed in a self-deprecating way before raising his eyes to meet hers. Daisy was completely riveted by his story and trapped beneath that piercing gaze.

“I thought he was hitting on me. I’d had a few guys offer me money to suck their co—” He coughed, catching himself before saying the word. “Sorry. Anyway, a few older guys offered me money to do stuff with them. Older women too. And I would have dismissed Bernie as just another one of those guys, if one of the waitresses hadn’t spotted him giving me the card. She told me that he was a big deal in the modeling industry and that I should follow up and see what he had to say. I called him the next day, and he asked me to come to his office and lined up a few jobs almost immediately.” He shifted his broad shoulders awkwardly. “Modeling never sat well with me. It’s not my kind of thing. But within three months the money made it worth my while. Like I said, I was never in Chris’s league. But I did all right.”

He had done more than “all right.” Daisy had seen him in so many magazines and advertisements during that year. Prominent brand names in some of the bigger fashion publications. He was being modest, and she knew it was because that chapter of his life embarrassed him. Which was ridiculous when he had been such a success at something he’d essentially been half-assing. In truth, Daisy didn’t think the man had ever experienced real failure. Everything he decided to do, he excelled at. Which was rather extraordinary for a guy who came from such humble beginnings.

Tags: Natasha Anders Alpha Men Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net