One Night to Risk It All(32)

“Naturally not. Come to think of it, you aren’t much of a romantic, are you?”

He shook his head. “I’ve never had much practice with it. But I would like to think I romanced you that night we were together.”

“You seduced me. Completely different. I wasn’t looking for romance.”

“So you were looking for sex?”

“No,” she said. “But I think that’s why it worked.”

She sat down and grabbed the bottle out of the bucket, eyeing the cork warily. “It has a cork.”

“Yes.”

“These things freak me out. You do it.” She handed him the bottle and he took it, working the metal cage off the cork so that it popped up. She winced at the sound. “Gah. I always expect it to fly out and poke someone in the eye.”

He laughed. “Not likely. But then, caution isn’t a bad thing.”

“That’s certainly been my motto in life.”

He arched a brow as he poured her a glass of the sparkling juice.

“It has been. For...a while. Because...because bad things happen to you when you put yourself out there, you know?”

He nodded slowly. “No,” he said, the words at odds with the gesture. “I don’t. Because I never put myself out there.”

“So you never have girlfriends, do you?”

“No. One-night-stand stuff. Sometimes women who hang around for a couple of weekends. Nothing more than that.”

Strangely, it didn’t really bother her to hear him say that. She would have been more disturbed in some ways if there had been a woman in his life that he loved.

And she really didn’t want to know why that was.

Silly since she’d been in love before. Even if it had turned out badly. Sillier still because she didn’t love Alex and she didn’t want him to love her, either. But nothing about her feelings for him were logic-centered. None at all.

“That seems smart,” she said. “I mean, in some ways. It wouldn’t really work for me, I bet, because the guys would go to the press.” She hadn’t meant to tread that close to the truth of her past.

“It must be inconvenient. For my part, as rich as I am, only financial magazines seem to care.”

“It surprises me because your face would sell magazines.”

“I’m content out of the spotlight.”

Her heart bumped into her breastbone. “If you’re seen with me...I mean, when people find out...you’ll be in the spotlight. You know that, right? Your anonymity is sort of over.”

“I can deal with that,” he said, pulling the covers off of their dinner to reveal some sort of fish dish. It had crispy skin. And a head. Oh, Lord, it had a head. She didn’t mind fish, usually, but after spending so much time in Greece and then on his island, she was concerned she was going to grow gills.

“I love the sea,” she said. “I’m underwhelmed by seafood, to be honest.” She poked at it with her fork. “Daaaaang. It has a head.”

He laughed at her, then bent across the table and took her plate, and his, and put them back by a nearby tray. “Hold that thought.”

He went back into the hotel room and she couldn’t help but watch his butt as he went. She looked away and back down into her drink and she didn’t realize he’d returned until he spoke. “I ordered a pizza. What’s the point of all this pretension?”

She laughed. “A pizza?”

“I was promised it would be here in ten minutes.”

“Tell me there are no anchovies on it, because if there are, we haven’t solved any of my problems.”

“No anchovies. Promise.”

“Good. What did you get?”

“Pineapple.”

“I love!”

“Me, too.”

A strange sort of calm settled between them, and it felt more disturbing than the tension from earlier. This wasn’t like it had been a month ago. Not entirely. There was an edge of comfort, of domesticity to this that hit a nerve in her.

They tried to make clumsy small talk until they heard the knock at the door and he went off for the pizza, setting the box on their table.

She laughed. “So much for romance.”

He shrugged. “This is better. It’s real, anyway.”

“True.” She flipped up the lid on the box and took out a piece of pizza, chewing through the burn of the first bite. Worth the pain to get the cheese at the optimum point. “So,” she said, after she swallowed. “Do you get pizza often?”

He looked down, then back up, and she was hit, once again, with the full impact of his beauty. “Do you want to know a secret?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He leaned in, the look in his eyes intent. “After I left my...the compound, I didn’t have any money. So I slept where I could and ate what I could, and I still felt better about it because I wasn’t a part of that horrible place.”

“I can understand that.”

“But once I started making money, and I got my own apartment...I didn’t want to buy filet mignon or lobster. I’d had all that. Living in that house... It was the darkest pieces of glamor and excess. Junkies throwing up in the halls, people having sex in public. But then we’d sit down to some formal dinner like this insane family or something. Anyway, I never wanted to revisit that. I’d never just had a pizza. I ordered it almost every night for a...a long time.”