AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“There you two are.”
She looked up, horrified, as James walked across the terrace toward them, his eyes glittering with the satisfaction of a hunter who’d cornered his prey. “You’re a hard man to find, Constantinou.”
Alex drew his brows together. “Do I know you?”
James stopped in front of him, sticking out his hand. “Izzie’s boss, James Curry, from NYC-TV.”
Alex froze. Kept his hands by his sides. “The James Curry who’s been calling my office every day for a week?”
“The very same,” her boss acknowledged,unperturbed. “Has Izzie gotten around to explaining what we want to do with the exclusive?”
Alex’s voice was icy cold as he turned to her. “You’re a reporter.”
Izzie blanched, every ounce of blood in her body seeming to flee to her feet. “I was just about to explain.”
Her boss’s gaze swung to Izzie, then back to Alex. “Do you two know each other?”
Alex’s mouth tightened. “Nice try, Curry. Wasn’t half a dozen unreturned phone calls enough to convince you I’m not interested?”
Her boss shrugged. “Messer’s going to kill you in the court of public opinion.”
“Messer doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”
James lifted his shoulders. “Do you really want to take a chance on that?”
Alex’s gaze flicked to Izzie, moving scathingly over her. “So you sent Isabel to persuade me? Don’t you think that’s going a bit far?”
“I thought some female persuasion might help, yes.”
Izzie felt herself sink into the depths of hell. “James,” she interjected, “why don’t you let Alex and I finish our conversation? We can—”
“Actually,” Alex interrupted, “I’d like to know...do you often ask your reporters to go to the lengths Izzie did for this story? Or was I a special case?”
Her boss frowned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Alex’s fists clenched by his sides. “You really are scum of the earth, aren’t you?” He took a step closer to James, his six-feet-plus, wide-shouldered frame dwarfing her boss’s slighter one. James stood toe to toe with him, unfazed, his chin jutting out belligerently.
“What are you talk—”
“James.” Izzie stepped between the two men, heart pounding. “Please go inside. I’ll handle this.”
Her boss shook his head. “I don’t think I should—”
“That’s an excellent suggestion, Curry,” Alex broke in, a dangerous glimmer lighting his eyes. “Why don’t you follow it before I do what my fists are itching to do.”
Her boss looked from Alex to Izzie and back. “I think you should ex—”
“James,” Izzie broke in desperately. “Alex and I have something we need to discuss. Please go. I’ll find you afterward.”
Her boss gave her an uncertain look. Izzie pleaded with him with her eyes. “All right,” he said finally. “Think about it, Constantinou. It’s the smart thing to do.”
Izzie watched him go, sucking in a deep breath. Alex looked her over, his voice so cold, it sent a shiver down her spine. “You should have been an actress like your mother,” he drawled. “Your performance was utterly brilliant, Iz. I bought the naive young thing hook, line and sinker.”
She shook her head. “It isn’t anything like that. I was coming to track you down that day, yes, but I had no idea who you were when we got stuck in that elevator. Your receptionist said you’d left hours earlier and I was looking for Leandros, not Alex.”
His lip curled. “You expect me to believe that? You forget I have a hell of a lot of experience dealing with the media. I know exactly what lengths reporters will go to for a story, although I have to admit prostituting yourself is above and beyond.”
“Prostituting myself?” She stared at him, horrified. “I would never do that, Alex, I—”
“How did you manage it?” A disdainful glitter shone in his eyes. “My schedule was all over the place that day.”
She shook her head, knowing this was getting way out of control. “I didn’t manage anything. I went into reception, asked for Leandros, they told me you had gone back to the U.S. and I left. You were very closemouthed about yourself that night.”
“You wonder why,” he came back savagely. “So you just happened to get stuck in that elevator with me. Are you even afraid of them by the way?”
“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “Alex, be reasonable here.”
“Given what’s going on in my head, I think I’m being exceedingly reasonable.”
He looked like he wanted to put his hands around her neck and strangle her. She took a step backward. “I swear to you I had no idea who you were until I came back to work and James showed me a picture of you. Everything that happened between us was real.”
“You expect me to believe that?” His blue eyes gleamed with leashed fury. “How much of a fool do you think I am?”
“You heard James,” she said desperately. “He had no idea what you were talking about. This wasn’t a setup, it was—”
“Enough.” He ground the word out with such force she stopped in her tracks. She backed up until she met the hard concrete of the wall. He followed her, pinning her against it. “No more lies.”
She willed herself not to flinch as he took her jaw in his hand. “What if I’d been an overweight, unattractive has-been, Iz? Would you still have had the guts to seduce me?”
She raised her chin in defiance. “I went to bed with you for exactly the reasons I told you in London.”
Disbelief flared in his eyes. “What was that—oh yes, I remember now,” he jeered, his gaze raking over her. “You didn’t want to have any regrets. For once in your life you wanted to go after what you wanted. Well, you sure did, Iz. Too bad it was a wasted effort.”
Tears stung the back of her eyes. How dare he dismantle their wildly romantic night and make it into something dirty and disgraceful. “It wasn’t—”
“Tell me something, Iz.” He slid his thumb across her trembling lower lip. “Did you enjoy yourself while you did your duty? Or were those little moans all an act?”
She lifted her hand to slap him, but he caught it easily in his own before she got it halfway to his face. “Save it,” he bit out grimly. “I’ve had enough.”
He took a step back, his face hard as stone. “Tell your boss he has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting this story.” Then he turned and strode back inside, his long, furious steps eating up the length of the terrace. She stared blindly at the entrance, at the lights and laughter of a party still in full swing. Sank back against the wall, palms sweaty, heart racing. How had it all gone so horribly wrong? How could she have predicted Alex would drag her out here and kiss her after walking out on her in London? That he would want a repeat performance of that night as much as she did?
She pressed her fingers to her lips, still stinging from the intensity of his kiss. A kiss that had thrown her off her game completely...made her believe they might have something together. Stupid, she berated herself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could she have made such a mess of this? How could Alex think she had set him up like that? Slept with him to get an interview? It was inconceivable.
A wave of perspiration broke out on her brow. How was she going to convince Alex it had all been a huge, crazy coincidence?
What was she going to tell her boss?
She found him inside, talking to a producer from a rival station. He blew off the conversation and cornered her in a quiet spot behind the exhibits. “What is going on, Izzie?”
She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I will fix this, James.”
“You sure as hell will. What in God’s name was Constantinou talking about? What setup?”
Her stomach lurched. “It’s complicated. He’s just...misinterpreted something.”
His gaze narrowed. “Misinterpreted what?”
She pressed her lips together. “This has nothing to do with work, James, we—I— It’s personal.”
“I can see that. When were you going to tell me you knew him?”
“He’s just an acquaintance. He’s misunderstood something. Give me a chance to make this right and I will.”
Her boss sighed. Seemed to run out of anger. “Look, Izzie, I know you wouldn’t do anything unethical. It’s just not you. So whatever’s going on...fix it and get that interview.”
She nodded. That’s exactly what she was going to do. She just had no idea how she was going to do it. What exactly did the odds of a “snowball’s chance in hell” equate to?
CHAPTER SEVEN
ALEX COULD COUNT on one hand the times in his life he’d made a decision that went against his instincts. It had made him difficult to coach on the football field. He’d been dubbed the Rebel Quarterback for his penchant for changing a play late in the game, giving his coaches a virtual heart attack. But nine times out of ten he’d won the game. Because his instincts, his feel for the field, had always been dead-on.
But standing here, looking out at the Manhattan skyline from Sophoros’s fiftieth-floor offices, he was about to act against them. After an epic battle between him and the PR team, he had conceded they had to be proactive about the way the Messer case was framed in the media. The interview with NYC-TV, his director of PR had insisted, was the perfect contained opportunity to do so. Isabel Peters was anything but a hard-edged reporter, they could play it as they liked, and the network would syndicate it across the country, allowing him then to go underground, his version of the story out there.
