Chapter Nine
Andrea was still ruminating about what Alex could possibly be hiding when she got up Wednesday morning. She took a long, hot shower to get the knots out of her neck and shoulders. It had been another restless night. She certainly hadn't gotten much sleep since she'd met Alex.
She'd just finished drying her hair when her phone rang.
"What are you doing right now?" Alex asked.
Her heart skipped a beat at the sound of his voice. "Uh, waking up."
"I know just the thing to help that."
She was almost afraid to ask. "What's that?"
"A run. I'm just about to go for my morning run. If you want to talk, come with me."
"You want me to interview you while we're running?" she asked in dismay.
"It's the only time I have today. Afraid you can't keep up with me, Andrea?"
Never one to let a challenge pass by, she said, "Of course I can keep up with you. Where do you want to meet?"
"The Marina Green. I'll show you one of my favorite runs."
"Awesome," she replied as she ended the call.
She really wished she'd kept up her gym workouts the past few months. If there was ever a time she needed to keep up on a run, it was probably today.
* * *
"What do you think? Do you want to go another mile?" Alex slowed his run down to a jog as they neared the base of the majestic Golden Gate Bridge. He looked over at Andrea with amusement in his eyes. "Or are you tired?"
She had a pain in her side, but she couldn't tell him that because she was still trying to catch her breath from the two miles they'd just run.
"We'll take a break," he said decisively, slowing down to a walk.
She nodded, relieved by that decision. She walked with him another fifty yards then came to a stop by a low cement wall that ran along the bay.
"Okay?" Alex asked, coming up next to her.
"I'm fine," she finally got out. "How often do you run?"
"Four or five times a week. You?"
"Almost never. But I do the elliptical at the gym when I have time."
"Which is how often?"
"Almost never."
He grinned. "You should have told me."
"I wanted the time to interview you."
"And you hate to admit weakness. It's just like when you didn't tell me you get seasick."
She made a face at him. "You don't have to worry. I'm not going to throw up today."
"Thank God for that. So what do you want to ask me?"
"Many things."
"Let's start with one."
She thought for a moment and then asked the question that had been rolling around in her head all night. "Is there something in your past that you don't want me to know?"
He didn't flinch at her words, but the light left his eyes as he stared back at her. "Why would you ask me that?"
"Just wondering why you're trying to keep me at a distance. I figure there must be a reason why you're so cagey."
"I like my privacy. I don't think anyone in the world would enjoy someone poking their nose into every corner of their life. I doubt you would."
"If I agreed to an interview, I'd expect that."
He waved his hand in the air. "Next question."
"Fine. We'll move on. You push yourself hard in business. I was looking through your company brochure, the list of new releases planned for the coming year. You're moving at a very rapid pace."
"That's the gaming world."
"But you have done so much already. When will it be enough? When will you slow down?"
"I don't know that it will ever be enough, or that I'll ever slow down. I like what I do. My games are not just entertaining; they're educational. And kids need to be able to learn and have fun at the same time."
"So it's truly the games that drive you and not the money?"
"Yes. I can't deny that I enjoy having money now. Not having had it for a lot of years has made me appreciate my good fortune. I don't take it for granted, and I do try to share."
"Which brings us to philanthropy. I've been researching your long list of charity donations. You do spread the wealth around."
"I try."
"I noticed that you've been part of Big Brothers and have been supporting women and family shelters here in the city. Did your experience with foster care lead you in that direction?"
"Absolutely."
"I also read that you're starting a foundation to oversee your philanthropic efforts. Will that foundation be exploring other areas in which you might want to invest?"
"That's their mission. What else?"
She sighed, knowing that she just wasn't asking the right questions, but she couldn't think of how to get him to crack, other than to kiss him. That was the only thing that seemed to loosen him up. But she'd already told herself that wasn't going to happen again.
"Are we done?" Alex asked.
"Not quite. I asked you before about a girlfriend and you said you hadn't been seriously involved with anyone in a few years, but I wonder if you have ever been in love?"
He hesitated. "I don't know about love, but when I was in my early twenties, things got serious with one woman."
"Really?" she asked, surprised that he finally hadn't dodged a question or given her a one-word answer. "Who was it?"
He hesitated as a trio of women came down the trail. After they passed by, he said, "Her name was Valerie. We were together almost a year, but we were young. I was twenty-one and had little to no money at that point. I was scraping by, working a bunch of jobs. She was also twenty-one and eager to live the good life, so eventually she left me for a better prospect. Looking back, it was a good thing. She hated to fly, and she thought video games were stupid."
Andrea saw the hint of pain in his eyes. "You're making light of what must have hurt. No one likes to be used or pushed aside for a better prospect."
"Honestly, she hurt my pride more than anything else. I hated the fact that I had misread her so badly. I thought I knew what she was about, but I didn't. And that surprised me, because even then I considered myself good at being able to read someone's motives. It was a skill I had to learn to survive."
"What do you mean?"
"When I was a teenager, I trusted the wrong person, and I learned a hard lesson. I tried not to make that mistake again, but with Valerie I did just that."
"Who was that first person who abused your trust?"
He didn't answer right away, and she could see conflict in his eyes. "It was one of my foster parents. She wasn't who I thought."
"What did she do?"
"It doesn't matter now."
She hated that he'd cut her off just when things were getting interesting. But with Alex she had the sense that she had to tread carefully or he'd shut down completely.
"What about you?" he asked. "Were you in love with Doug?"
"I thought I was at the time."
"Anyone before him get your heart pounding?"
"I had a high school boyfriend that I adored, but we broke up after graduation, and he moved back east to college. He married someone he met there and I think they already have two kids."
"Did he break your heart?"
"He did," she admitted. "When you're sixteen, a lot of things break your heart. But I try to remember the good times. He was the first person who made me feel happy. For those years after my dad died, I was a little lost, and Charlie made me laugh. He was a funny guy, and he helped me not take my life so seriously."
"It seems like you could still use someone like that in your life," Alex suggested. "You seem to have a one-track mind, and it's all business."
"Not always all business," she reminded him, then was instantly sorry she'd gone down that road when an interested gleam entered his eyes. She cleared her throat. "Let's go back to your past. Did you have anyone in your life after your parents died that lessened the grief?"
"No, I didn't, not for a long time. But I couldn't worry about finding someone to like me; I was more concerned with surviving."
"It was that bad?"
"Yeah, it was that bad," he said grimly.
"Can you give me any examples?"
"I could, but I won't."
"Why not? Why can't you talk to me, Alex?"
"I am talking to you—I've been talking to you. My story has already been told, Andrea, by lots of other reporters, but you don't want that story. You want another one, one that will sell more magazines, one that doesn't exist. Maybe you should just make something up."
"I don't do that, Alex. And I'm just trying to understand you."
"You couldn't begin to understand my life. How could you? You grew up in a fairytale with a father you worshipped and a mother who baked cookies for you when you came home from school and a sister to share your secrets with." He placed his hands on his hips in a belligerent manner, daring her to defy his image of her. "Your biggest problem was probably trying to get your mother to let you wear makeup to school."
Andrea immediately shook her head. "You're more wrong than right, Alex. First of all, my mother loved for me to wear makeup, but I never did, because I was a tomboy. I cut off all my hair when I was eleven because I hated to brush it. Yes, my mother did bake cookies when I came home from school, and, yes, they were amazing, but our relationship was fraught with problems. My mother was always trying to turn me into herself. And I did worship my dad, but he was never around. I admired him greatly. He influenced my life. But the truth is that I barely knew him, and he barely knew me. He was always on the road, always working." She paused for breath. "I know what it feels like to lose a parent, maybe not two, but at least one. So don't try to tell me that there's no way I can understand your life," she finished.
"Did you really cut off your hair?"
She stared at him in amazement. "That's all you took out of what I just said?"
He shrugged. "I got stuck there."
"Yes, I cut it off with garden shears. My mother was so embarrassed she wouldn't go to the PTA meetings for a month. Even Laurel tried to disown me. She locked me in my room when she had a friend come over so I wouldn't be seen." She paused at his sudden smile. "It's not funny."
"Yes, it is. I didn't realize you were that impulsive."
"More like impatient. I used to swim, and when I got out of the pool, it took me an hour to get the tangles out of my long hair. It was painful, too. But I have to admit I looked pretty hideous after I cut it all off. My mother made me go to her hair stylist, who tried to make it look better, but we all just had to live with it for a few weeks." She took a breath. "I remember my mom on the phone with my dad, just ranting about how difficult I was, and how he should come home and help her raise me."
"Maybe that's really why you cut off your hair," Alex suggested.
"No." She wrinkled her brows as she thought about that. "I don't think I did it for that reason. No, it was just the tangles."
"If you say so," he said lightly.
"Now you tell me an embarrassing story," she ordered.
"Me? I don't have any of those. I was perfect."
"Think harder."
"Well, let's see. I was at a party in high school. One of those crazy big bashes where the parents aren't home and everyone is doing a lot of bad stuff."
"Go on."
"I had my eye on this girl. Her name was Shari. She was a cheerleader and a trust fund baby, definitely not someone who was going to look back at me, but I had a thing for her."
"What happened?"
"I drank a lot that night."
"Nothing good usually starts with that statement."
"So true. Shari told me she wanted to go skinny dipping in the pool, shock everyone, but she didn't want to do it by herself."
She groaned. "I think I know where this is going."
"Then you're smarter than me, because I had no clue. All I could think about was seeing her breasts, so I said, let's do it. I stripped down right there on the edge of the pool thinking she was right behind me. After I jumped into the pool, I came back up to see her fully dressed and laughing hysterically with a crowd of her friends."
She felt a wave of sympathy. "That's mean."
"What was even worse was that there was no way I could get out of the pool without showing everything off. I stayed in the water for an hour and a half. Which made things worse, because when I got out of the water…"
Laughing, she put her hand to her mouth as she shook her head. "That is really embarrassing."
"Yeah, you think? I was really happy when I had to change schools three months later. It was the one time I didn't mind being a new face in the classroom."
"Shari is kicking herself right now. She could have had a billionaire boyfriend. And she's probably fat, too."
"I have no idea where she is or what she looks like."
"We could find her on social media."
"I don't want to find her. I don't need to ever see her again."
"If it makes you feel any better, she might have seen that tabloid story about how well-endowed you are." She grinned as his eyebrows arched in surprise. "You didn't see that one? Apparently, some model you hooked up with in Paris told a reporter there that she'd never seen such an incredible—package."
He groaned. "No way. You're making that up. I have a PR department that follows my press around the world and I was never shown that article."
"Maybe they didn't want to embarrass you."
"Well, as you can see, I have nothing left to be embarrassed about."
"Actually, I haven't seen anything," she said, feeling a little reckless and wild.
A new gleam filled his eyes. "We can take care of that anytime." He grabbed her hands and pulled her up against his body. "But I need a little-warm up first."
As he kissed her, Andrea moved closer, sliding her hands under his t-shirt. She caressed the strong planes of his stomach, feeling the muscles clench under her fingers. He smelled like sweat and soap and everything masculine, and the growing hardness at her groin sent a ripping wave of desire through her.
She had never felt such a need for a man, a deep intense longing to be a part of someone. It felt raw and primitive, and she wanted to give in to the moment, to forget about everything but this man—his lips, his hands, his body on hers. She didn't want to just see him, she wanted to touch him, taste him, be with him in every possible way.
Alex's mouth left hers so suddenly she felt a rush of cold, but then his lips trailed a hot path down her face to the curve of her neck, promising more, much more.
"How do you feel about dirt?" he asked in a rough, tender voice. "Because in another minute you're going to be flat on your back."
"Or maybe you will," she replied, meeting his gaze as he lifted his head. "I like to be on top."
He smiled down at her. "Of course you do."
"Do you have a problem with that?"
"You on top of me?" He shook his head. "Sounds like heaven. Tell me when and where."
His words reminded her that this sexy game was quickly getting out of hand. She licked her lips, as his gaze dared her to name a place, a moment. But how could she do that?
She let out a sigh and took a step back.
Disappointment flooded his gaze. She had a feeling the same emotion was showing in her eyes. She'd never been put in this position before. She'd never had to choose between doing her job and seeing someone. But it wasn't just the professional conflict. Deep down, she knew she couldn't take him up on his offer, because she was scared, because he made her dizzy and nervous and needy, and she didn't want to end up giving him everything and getting nothing in return.
"Andrea?" he questioned. "What are you thinking?"
"That we need to stop this."
"Enjoying each other?"
"Yes."
"I thought we were having fun."
"We were, but fun time is over."
"Because…"
"Because I can't have sex with you and write about you at the same time."
He nodded. "And…"
She frowned. "There doesn't have to be more. That's enough."
"There is more," he said with a certainty she couldn't deny.
"Fine. You want me to say it—I'll say it. I don't want to get involved with you, because I don't want you to hurt me. You're way out of my league, like you and Shari. And I don't want to end up naked in the pool."
"I would never do that to you, Andrea. Never."
"Maybe not intentionally, not in a mean way, but I think you could hurt me, and I don't want to take that risk."
He gave her a long look, his eyes filled with emotions she couldn't decipher. "Fair enough. I wouldn't want to hurt you."
She blew out a breath at his response, not quite sure now how she felt about his acquiescence. She'd wanted him to say that he liked her, too, that he saw something in the future, long after the article was done. But he didn't say any of that. Why would he? They'd known each other for a couple of days, and he'd just been having fun with her.
She certainly seemed to be good at putting an end to fun, she thought, feeling a little annoyed with herself. Had she really needed to make such a big statement?
Too impulsive, once again.
Alex glanced down at his watch. "We both need to get to work."
"You go ahead. I'm going to take the way back a little slower."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. I'll be fine. I can go at my own pace and not hold you back."
Her words brought a frown to his mouth. She wanted to ask him what he was thinking now, but he took a quick turn and ran down the path.
As he disappeared around the next curve, she felt a sense of loss. Had she been wrong to push him away so quickly? Would a casual relationship have been better than nothing?
She knew the answer to that—no.
She couldn't do casual with Alex, because she already liked him too much. She just wished he felt the same way, but it was clear now that he didn't. At least he hadn't lied to her. She supposed she should be grateful for that.