Procecutors hoping to win a domestic-violence conviction often worry about lovers reconciling. But it doesn’t look like there’s any danger of “
Real Housewives of New York City” star
Kelly Bensimon making up with her ex-boyfriend,
Nick Stefanov.
Bensimon is still furious at Stefanov for getting her arrested in March, when he told cops that she’d given him a black eye and a gash on his left cheek.
“He went into a police station and told a detective to
Google my name — just in case he didn’t know who I was,” Bensimon tells us.
“What guy does that? He went to the press and acted like he was
Rihanna,” adds the model.
Stefanov, at the request of
Manhattan prosecutors, is tight-lipped about the specifics of the fight they had at her SoHo apartment. But he denies he was looking for attention.
“I didn’t want Kelly arrested,” he tells us. “I went to the cops after her doorman saw me with blood on my face. I just wanted to go on the record. Then the media got a hold of it. Now it’s out of my hands.”
The 30-year-old venture capitalist was branded a “no show” when he didn’t appear at Bensimon’s March 31 hearing, where she pleaded not guilty.
“I wasn’t required to be there,” Stefanov argues. “I don’t intend to come to the hearing next month. If I showed up, they’d say he wants attention. If I wanted attention, I would have gone on her TV show. I’ve gone to great lengths to stay under the radar.”
A friend of Stefanov’s says, “What guy would want to broadcast that he was slapped around by a girl? She caught him on the cheek during a heated argument. Everybody argues. They had a passionate relationship. The cops visited both their houses before. Nick pleaded with the DA against seeking a restraining order. But it’s automatic.”
Word is that Stefanov, who has been chilling out in
Mexico for the past month, tried to make peace with Bensimon by sending her an e-mail, but she reported the overture to authorities.
Bensimon says, “I wish him well,” but she suspects Stefanov had a hand in a flurry of negative stories about her. “Everyone’s coming after me,” she says. “It’s the new recession vocation.”
Stefanov denies he’s out to smear her: “I have zero animosity toward Kelly. No one is out to get her. Up until two months ago, this was the woman of my dreams.”
Bensimon’s attorney,
Ed Hayes, who has called Stefanov “a jilted moron,” says: “It’s a breakup where he won’t break up. He refused to leave her house when she asked him to. Then he went and got her arrested. It’s not the best way to make someone love you. It’s over. He just won’t accept it.”
Not surprisingly, Bensimon didn’t invite Stefanov to her 41st birthday party on Friday at The Gates. Instead, she showed up with actor
Max Palacio. Though he’s ostensibly her “boyfriend” on the show, they barely spoke at the party, sponsored by Rose’s Mojitos. Palacio spent more time with his arm around a German model. That is, until photographers started snapping Kelly with her birthday cupcakes (iced with a picture of her in a bathing suit). Suddenly, Palacio was at her side —getting into a flirty frosting fight for the lensmen. When the snapping stopped, they separated again. Max left on his own.
But then, as Bensimon reminded us a few days earlier, “Housewives” isn’t a reality show, “It’s surreality.
The minute there’s a camera on you, it’s not real. The thing I like about it is they make you into a chameleon.”
No doubt the chameleon will sport a believable color when she comes before the judge on June 8
from the NYPost
