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“As much as writing?” he asked.
She shrugged, but then she decided, why not tell him. “Some days but what I loved about writing was the discovery, digging deeper and asking questions that surprised the people being interviewed. Not in a bad way, but just in a way that pushed them to examine and expand their own responses. I liked that.”
“Do you write anymore?” he asked.
No one ever thought to ask her that, she observed. The truth was there were times when she did miss writing but being an editor, especially one in her position, paid so much better. “No, I don’t. I’m in charge of our entire magazine.”
“Do you like being the boss?” he asked.
“Love it,” she said, with a grin.
She hadn’t realized until she’d gotten a full-time position at FQ that she really loved the competitive nature of her industry. It had also helped her focus on staying healthy. Working in fashion had made her very aware that she had to make her weight loss a permanent thing.
“But enough about me. You must be looking for a huge challenge to take on the Everest Mega Stores on top of running Raleighvale China. Or have you stepped down there?”
“No, I haven’t stepped down. I don’t think I ever will. Raleighvale is in my blood.”
“How?” she asked. He was more open when she asked him about business. That was another interesting note that she mentally tucked away to examine later.
“It’s my own company. I took it over when I was young and made it into the success it is today. There’s a certain sense of pride of ownership that comes with that.”
She nodded. “I’d heard you took over the company from your grandfather.”
“Indeed. I was looking for something to do after college.”
“Did you bum around Europe?” she asked. She couldn’t see that. Steven didn’t seem like the type of man who would be able to just drift.
“No. I spent a few years mining in Staffordshire learning about Raleighvale. When Grandfather wanted to retire, I jumped at the challenge it represented.”
She thought about that. About what it said about Steven that he was the kind of man who could take a few years to do mining. That was tough work. Not the kind of job she would have expected Malcolm Devonshire’s son to do.
“What did Malcolm say about that?” she asked.
“I have no idea. I didn’t ask him.”
She nodded. Her father hadn’t wanted her to move to New York when she’d taken her first magazine job, and when she’d moved to London, he’d been upset as well. But her parents never hesitated to say what was on their mind. In the end they’d understood that she needed her career. Her mother was always asking if a man had broken her heart and Ainsley always changed the subject. Because Steven had broken her heart, but not in a romantic way. He’d done it on a much bigger scale and it had completely changed the woman she had been.
They were small-town folks—mail carriers. Well, her mum now worked mostly at the counter in the local post office. A small branch where she knew just about everyone’s name who came in there.
“I guess that’s a good thing,” she said.
He signaled the waiter and asked for the check. She took her platinum card from her wallet, intending to split the check, but he gave her a look that made her pull it back.
“This isn’t a date,” she said.
“Who said?”
Steven found that behind the slim-fitting clothes and the underlying sexuality of her Betty Page look, Ainsley was a very interesting woman. He wanted to know more about her. He wanted to spend all night talking to her and listening to the way she spoke. He liked her insights and the way she looked at him. For once, he felt as if he were a hollow shell of a man. A man who had only one dimension: business.
But with Ainsley…well, she made him wonder if he had been wrong to keep such a distance between himself and others.
Or maybe this was just the first blush of attraction—that potent combination of lust and intrigue. She was a mystery to him. A woman unlike others he’d met and seduced.
In her there was a sort of innocence—she seemed to be unaware of her appeal to the opposite sex. Men stared at her as she preceded him out of the restaurant, but she ignored their looks. He glared at one man who stared too long and then put his hand on the small of her back.
She was with him. He was glad that he’d thought to bargain for her magazine to do the articles on him and Henry and Geoff because he wanted to have a reason to keep in touch with her.
He was going to ask her out again—that was a given. He needed to have her in his bed. He wanted to see if her mysteries would be solved by making love. He’d found in the past that the appeal of a lot of the women he’d dated vanished after he’d bedded them.
