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She waved her arms and pushed herself back to the center of the pool. She’d done everything she could to convince Alex she was telling the truth but it was like talking to a wall. The man she’d met in London was gone. And the aloof stranger who’d replaced him unnerved her. So did the ever-present heat between them. He might hate her for what she’d done, but he still wanted her. That hadn’t gone away. It’d made her flee dinner on the intimate little terrace last night like a woman possessed.
Twenty-four hours, she told herself. Twenty-four hours and she’d be out of danger. But she needed him to talk first.
“You researching cloud formations?”
The sardonic observation from a deep, amused male voice had her yanking herself upright and feeling for the bottom. But the water was too deep and she plunged, her arms and legs flailing. Kicking back to the surface, she pulled in a breath, coughing and sputtering.
“Do you always sneak up on people like that?”
“I thought you said you were a champion swimmer...”
“That doesn’t help when you scare the life out of me.” She pushed her soaking hair out of her face and took in yet another of the gorgeous designer suits that molded every lean muscle of his body into a work of art.
His gaze slid over her. She’d put her minuscule bikini on while he was out. What had possessed her to do that?
He shrugged out of his jacket and threw it on a lounger. “Don’t you have piles of research to do? Five miles to run? Fifty laps to swim?”
She eyed him. “You’re one to talk. You never stay still either.”
“Yes, but I do know how to relax.” He sank down on his haunches beside the edge of the pool. “This,” he said, nodding his head toward her, “gives me hope for the control freak in you.”
“I am not a control freak.”
“Sure you are.” He whipped off his tie and threw it on top of his jacket. “You even eat with everything perfectly segmented. Meat first, potatoes next, vegetables last.”
Her cheeks, already warm from the heat of the sun, got about five degrees hotter. “That’s because I like the vegetables the least. That doesn’t equal a control freak.”
“Says a lot about a person.” His gaze sharpened on her. “In London, you said you’ve always been afraid of things blowing up in your face.” He tipped his head to one side. “What are you afraid of now, Izzie? That you’ll give in to this heat between us?”
Yes, she thought desperately. She pulled her gaze resolutely away from his. “I was just about to get out. Can we start early then? We have a lot of ground to cover.”
“Sure.” He held out a hand.
She shook her head. “I’ll get out in a sec. You go change first.”
He gave her a thoughtful look. “You don’t want to get out of the pool in that bikini, do you?”
Damn right she didn’t.
“Coward,” he mocked. “I’ve seen you naked. What’s a bikini?”
She surveyed the distance between her and the stairs at the other end of the pool.
“You’ll never make it.”
She looked back at him. He was laughing at her. “Okay, you’ve had your fun. Go inside, change and we’ll meet back here.”
“Nicely asked but no. I can’t leave you unattended in the pool. I could be sued if anything happens to you.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she sputtered. “I’ve been out here for ho—”
He grabbed her arm and hauled her dripping up onto the pool deck. “Problem solved.”
Problem started. Heat flared between them, her soaking-wet body dripping all over his designer suit as he kept a firm grip on her wrist. “Alex—”
“All week you’ve been sending out these mixed signals, Iz.” He released her wrist to slide a hand around her waist and pull her closer. “Which is it—you want me or you don’t?”
“Don’t.” She pressed a hand hard against his chest and shoved him away. “You are the most egocentric—” She stopped in her tracks as he rocked back on his heels to steady himself, sidestepped to keep his balance, missed the concrete entirely and fell into the pool.
Her hands flew to her mouth as he came to the surface, biting out some choice swear words. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.”
He swiped the water from his face, slicking his dark hair back. “Somehow I find that hard to believe.”
She shoved her hands on her hips. “It’s your fault. I’m trying to keep things business between us...”
“Liar,” he muttered, wading toward the steps, his wet clothes weighing him down. “You’ve been wondering as much as I have what it would be like to do it again.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m going to,” she growled. She picked up her towel, threw it on the pool deck for him and stalked inside past the flabbergasted-looking housekeeper who was standing with a tray of drinks in her hands watching Alex climb out of the pool.
* * *
A much calmer, pulled-together Izzie returned to the terrace ten minutes later, showered and composed. Alex had changed into a similar outfit to hers—shorts and a T-shirt that did a whole lot for his tanned, muscular legs and washboard abs. She resolutely removed her gaze from him. No more mixed signals. “Ready?”
He nodded and led the way down the steep set of stairs to the beach. She’d suggested a walk instead of their usual session on the terrace, thinking maybe if she wasn’t sitting across from him with a pad of paper and a tape recorder, he’d open up.
At the bottom of the old wooden stairs, she kicked off her shoes and sank her toes into the sand. Alex did the same and they started walking.
“Did you manage to meet your dad for lunch?”
She nodded.
“How is he?”
“He’s...fine. Better than I’ve seen him for a while.”
“Did he ever find someone else? After your mother left?”
She shook her head. “I wish he would.”
“Why do you think he hasn’t?”
“I think he’s still in love with my mother.”
“After all this time?”
“Crazy, huh?”
His gaze sharpened on her face. “You think he’s a fool?”
She threw him a sideways look. “She destroyed him when she walked out. She never deserved him. So yes, I do.”
Her sweet, loving father had worshipped the ground her mother had walked on. He’d been doing the music for one of her films when they’d met and fallen head over heels for the beautiful, charismatic actress. Unfortunately, he’d idealized her as the silver screen legend she was rather than the flawed woman he’d married. Had never wanted to see how unhappy she was with small-town life in Palo Alto until the day she’d walked out the door. Her stomach twisted. The sight of their father falling apart wasn’t one two teenage girls should have had to deal with. And yet they had.
“The blame is rarely one-sided.” Alex kicked a sharp seashell out of the way, the still-scorching hot sun pouring down on them. “Marry two people long enough and they’ll find a way to hate each other.”
“Wow. I thought I was cynical.”
“If you’ve done your homework you’ll know my parents’ marriage was disastrous.”
She had. Knew Hristo and Adelphe Constantinou had separated when Alex was a teenager and his mother had married another very rich man in a scandal that had rocked New York society.
“It was not a nice divorce,” she commented.
“It was not. Are we on the record now?”
“Yes.”
She watched the now-familiar shield come down over his face, wiping his expression clean of emotion. As it did every time things turned personal.
“Tell me about your relationship with your father.”
“That has nothing to do with this story.”
“I disagree.” She shot him a sideways look. “You need to start talking to me, Alex, or we’ll go with Messer’s story and leave you out.”
He lifted his shoulders. “That might be tough when your boss wants my story, not Messer’s.”
True. But he still needed to talk. She pressed her lips together. “I get that your PR person wants you to stay on message. But you have to give me something. You know we want to highlight your football background and for that I need to understand your beginnings.”
A frown creased his brow. “My father was a workaholic who spent every waking hour of his life building C-Star Shipping. He didn’t care about anyone or anything that didn’t involve his company. End of story.”
Ouch. So the rumors about Alex and Hristo Constantinou’s relationship were true. “What caused the falling-out between you and your father?”
“We had a philosophical disagreement about whether or not I would run C-Star Shipping,” he said flatly. “We parted ways after that.”
“What do you mean, parted ways?”
His expression went from blank to ice-cold. “I mean we parted ways.”
The rumor was that Hristo had disowned him. She’d thought it was just some crazy angle the press had blown up, but apparently it was true. Wow. She was speechless for a moment, the black-and-white of it all blowing her away. When she’d been a teenager, she would have died for the talent and charisma to follow in her mother’s footsteps. The heir apparent to run C-Star Shipping, Alex had chosen to follow his own path and his father had disowned him for it. It was as though you couldn’t win no matter what you did. Or maybe that was just when you had megalomaniac parents like theirs? Hristo Constantinou was an autocrat who ruled his empire with an iron fist. Had Alex’s insubordination simply been too much for him to take?
