Brigitte says Jesse James was her friend

London (ANI): Brigitte Daguerre, the Los Angeles-based photographer who claimed she was the third woman to have a sexual relationship with Jesse James while he was married to Sandra Bullock, has now said that she and the TV host were just friends.

In a statement released online, she says, "I was not his mistress. We were friends. This thing has been blown (way) out of proportion and I wanna be left alone." The photog had earlier claimed that that three years into his marriage with Bullock, James hired her in 2008 to do styling work for a West Coast Choppers photo shoot, reports The Daily Express. Daguerre says the two emailed and texted each other for a year. Daguerre also told TMZ that the two had sex four times before she cut the affair off.

The claims came after a second woman, Melissa Smith, dished that she, too, had an affair with the reality TV star. The entire media firestorm first started when reports surfaced of James having an alleged 11-month affair with tattoo model Michelle "Bombshell" McGee.