by Lexy Timms
He smiled, and the color deepened, but he didn’t say anything else about her clothes, just offered her his arm. “Shall we? I believe we have dinner reservations in twenty minutes.”
She laid her hand on the crook of his elbow, smiling up at him. “Lead on, good sir.”
They started out into the hall and down to the car, where he helped her in before sliding into his own seat.
“So,” she said when the car had started and they were pulling out into the street. “Where are we going?”
He grinned. “It’s a surprise.”
The sound she made was a little frustrated, but when he glanced over at her she was grinning. “You know just the way to get under a girl’s skin, Alex Reid.”
Laughter bubbled up from his stomach. “Is that so, Dahlia Lloyd? You think it’s a deliberate taunt?”
“I think that it’s cruel to tell a reporter that the place you’re taking her is a surprise. Don’t you know that I can’t stand not knowing?”
“You’ll have to stand it just a bit longer, I think.”
“Cruel,” she said again, on a sigh. “And unusual.”
He turned just long enough to grin at her, but didn’t answer.
There was silence then for a moment, and Alex let his thoughts turn back toward work. He needed to contact the financial department about next quarter’s investment capital. And there was the paperwork for the acquisition of Orion Investments to be completed. He shook his head and tightened his hands a little on the wheel as he merged onto the freeway that wound along the edge of the city. At home, there was the gym, too. Finding someone he actually liked to take care of setting it up had been much harder than he would have thought. It was a home gym. How difficult could buying equipment and having someone move it in be? However, if you were wealthy you were required to hire someone else to furnish it or look like an idiot when you didn’t have the latest Muscle Mania 5000 or whatever it was they were peddling on TV these days. Not to mention the whole problem of a personal trainer, and-
“Alex!”
He shook himself out of the thoughts, turning to look at Dahlia. There was a slight downturn to her lipstick-painted mouth, a crease forming between her dark brows.
“I’ve called your name five times,” she said.
“My apologies.” He flicked his gaze back to the road, but smiled at her. “It’s one of the occupational hazards of a date with a CEO. The work we do is never ending, and we’re always thinking about something that has to be done.” He could see, from the corner of his eye, the moment she decided to let it go, her expression smoothing out and a smile taking the place of the slight frown.
“I suppose I should consider myself lucky to be getting any of your time at all then,” she said, not at all petulant.
“I’m not sure how much luck has to do with it,” he answered. “I couldn’t let such an attractive woman get away without at least asking her to dinner. So here we are.”
There it was again, that charming little blush. He liked it a little more than he should, when he had no intention of asking her out on a second date. Who knew, though? Maybe it would change his mind. Stranger things had been known to happen.
They pulled into the drive of the restaurant, and the valet stepped up as they parked. Alex got out and went around to aid Dahlia in stepping from the car, then tossed his keys to a uniformed young man not much younger than he was. He didn’t feel anywhere near as young as the valet looked. But then, he’d done more in twenty-seven years than some people accomplished in seventy. Maybe it was the weight of the company on his shoulders that made him feel so much older than he was these days. Or maybe it was just having more money in the bank than most people saw in a lifetime. Both of them seemed, at times, to be equally heavy privileges.
“I’ve been trying to get into this restaurant for weeks,” Dahlia sighed suddenly beside him, her head tipped back so she could look up at the lit sign for La Petit Table, one of the most expensive—and most exclusive—places in the city. “That just isn’t fair.”
“There are connections you make when you have money that even journalists can’t manage,” Alex said. He turned his head to smile at her. “Lucky for you, it seems you have one of those connections.”
Her flattered laughter was answer enough.
Inside, the black-coated waiter led to them to their seats, and when the wine had been brought and poured and they were sipping from their glasses, Dahlia smiled across the table at him.
“So,” she said. “Tell me something that I didn’t learn about you in the interview.”
“Off the record?” Alex teased.
She grinned, lifting both shoulders in a shrug. “Come on now, you don’t really think that I’m going to go spilling all your secrets on the seven o’clock news, do you?”
He shook his head at her. “Oh no, Dahlia. I’m afraid any secrets I tell you are going to have to be explicitly off the record, or you’ll have to settle for nothing.”
The corners of her mouth turned down, her eyebrows drawing inward, and she gave him a wide-eyed pleading look that didn’t quite disguise the playful sparkle under the expression. It suited her face well.
“Fine,” he said, sighing. “If you really want to know something that no one else does, you might be surprised to find out that I am an avid collector of porcelain monkey statues.”
Her eyebrows shot upward, and she gave him an entirely disbelieving look. “Porcelain monkey statues,” she repeated.
Alex nodded gravely. “Yes, and I was once reprimanded by a teacher for being too amazing. It just wasn’t fair to all the other children.”
Dahlia laughed. “Beating me at my own game. How rude.”
“It has to happen every now and then, or we lose all sense of humility.”
She leaned forward a little on one arm, giving him a generous view of the assets that were so carefully displayed by the sleek blue dress she wore. “So, Mr. Reid. In all honesty. Off the record entirely. Tell me something that you didn’t tell me in the interview.”
He took a slow sip of his wine, rolling the flavors of it across his tongue and giving her question some thought. On a first date revealing anything too intimate was off limits, but giving her some meaningless factoid she could dig up with an internet connection and twenty minutes of interested searching would be insulting. All the same, he had no intention of giving her anything she could reasonably share with the seven o’clock news, should she feel so inclined. “Very well. If you really want to know, I’ll tell you a secret.”
“Oh?” her eyes lit, and he wasn’t entirely sure he liked the way she looked at him. He wondered if her early refusal to go off record had been quite so playful after all. “Tell me, then.”
“The secret,” he said, leaning a little nearer himself, careful not to let his wine glass tip. “Is that I happen to be developing quite an attraction to this lovely brunette I met the other day.”
Her laugh was a little bit startled, but the smile that went with it as she straightened up in her seat was genuine. “Oh, very smooth, Alex. Very smooth. I can’t even be angry with you for deflecting that one when you did it like that.”
He just smiled, and took another sip of his wine.
It was, over all, a pleasant meal. Alex liked Dahlia well enough, though once or twice he thought he saw her slip again, saw a journalist’s interest rather than a date’s in her wide hazel eyes. He hadn’t lied about his attraction to her, but it was too much of a risk to take. He had known when he began this that he would have to deal with hangers-on and gawkers, women who wanted him for his money and women who wanted him for his power. He hadn’t specifically anticipated women who would date him in order to spread his life story across page six, but maybe he should have. Still, he smiled at her, nodded along to her stories. She smiled back at him, and laughed at his jokes, and he wondered if the flush he had liked was natural or something she had trained herself into. At the end of the night, he didn’t take her home.
He had
considered it, of course. Who wouldn’t? Dahlia Lloyd, whatever else she may be, was a beautiful woman, and the dress she was wearing certainly did her some favors, but he wasn’t going to take a woman he wouldn’t risk sharing his personal history with to bed. Not when it might mean waking up in two days to find an exposé of his bedroom style headlining some gossip rag. Miss Lloyd might be of a much higher caliber than those sorts of magazines, but that didn’t mean that she would be entirely above making a bit of money off them if she couldn’t catch the scoop she so obviously wanted to write herself.
Alex dropped her off at her apartment, ignoring the look that obviously hinted at wanting a goodbye kiss—and more than a kiss—and went back to his car, and then drove to his own large house on the edge of the business district. In the quiet sanctuary of his bedroom, he stripped out of the suit he’d been wearing and carefully hung up the jacket and pants, tossing the shirt he’d been wearing all day in the hamper. He liked his things neat.
Lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling in the dark, he almost wished he’d given into temptation and invited Dahlia home with him after all. What did it matter if she told the tabloids they’d fucked? It was hardly news that he occasionally took a woman home with him. Except that it was, and that was the problem. He wouldn’t have minded a warm body next to his own, but that was the price of the life he led.
As he drifted off to sleep, Alex reminded himself that he needed to call Mark. The missed call notices were piling up, and he couldn’t ignore his brother forever. Tomorrow, he told himself. Tomorrow, he would bite the bullet and make the call.
Chapter 2
Alex woke to the first tentative rays of summer sunlight slipping through the blinds. A moment later, the shrill ring of his alarm had him bounding from the bed to turn it off. He stood, stretching both arms upward and arching backward until he heard something pop, and then he shook the weight of sleep from his hands and went to dress. There wasn’t time for a leisurely breakfast; there never was. He grabbed a coffee on his way in to the office.
An hour and a half later, he was beginning to wish he had just stayed in bed.
It was one of those days where everything that could go wrong seemed to be falling utterly to pieces. Paperwork had been misfiled, forms weren’t coming in on time, and someone had forgotten to call the head advisor for the Richards family and confirm a meeting. It was one of those not-so-rare days where Alex wished he had two hundred of himself to run the business with, or at least a clone he could use to keep track of all the things he needed done, because no one else seemed to be able to do it competently. Why was it so utterly impossible to find decent people who could do whatever it was they were supposed to be doing without being coddled and coaxed through it?
That was a sentiment, he would admit to himself when he wasn’t so busy, that wasn’t entirely fair to his employees. They were good at their jobs; they just weren’t as good as he was. Very few people were. It was why, despite urging from the few friends he actually kept in some regular contact with, he hadn’t hired a personal assistant yet. He just didn’t trust one to properly keep track of his schedule.
“Ms. Campbell,” he called out to the front. “I need you to double check that last email with the Richards’ firm. Make sure that everything has gone through.”
He hit the button to bring the phone conversation back online.
“Yes, Mr. Barret. We’ve sent you the information. The face-to-face meeting will be next Monday. Everything should be in order now.”
The man on the other end of the phone line didn’t exactly sound satisfied, but he eventually let it go and finally hung up. Alex dropped his own phone carelessly on the desk top and rubbed slow circles against his temples with two fingers. What a fiasco. Something was really going to have to be done about the new hire down in client relations. Things like this hadn’t seemed to happen nearly so often before he signed on. Maybe that earlier thought about inept employees wasn’t entirely unfair to every member of his work force.
By lunch time, at least, things seemed to have cleared themselves up for the most part. People retreated to offices to nurse the wounds of tongue-lashings and check and double check to make sure that any part they’d had in the mix-ups wasn’t a part they would have again. Alex, unlike the rest of them, didn’t have any such luxury. He had a meeting. That meant dragging himself from the quiet of his office and the comfort of his chair to drive downtown through the lunch hour traffic in order to seal a deal with a new client. At least there would be food.
After lunch, there was more paperwork. There were more phone calls to be made, and more meetings to attend. The utter disasters of the morning did not, at least, repeat themselves, but Alex still found himself more frustrated than was probably reasonable to be at every snag. Maybe what he needed was a vacation.
By the time he made it home, Alex was hardly in the mood to speak to his brother, let alone voluntarily call him. He dropped into a chair in his kitchen with a sigh, then pulled himself out of it again to go see what had been left in the fridge for him. His cook was a patient man, but not endlessly so. On days that Alex didn’t come in until after seven, he often found his dinner waiting to be reheated. Tonight, dinner turned out to be a roast with carrots and potatoes, and while Alex wouldn’t have admitted to liking such simple food in most of the company he kept during the day, he was inordinately grateful for the familiar, comfortable selection. He popped it in the microwave to warm, and sat down again with his dish. After dinner, he would have to follow through on that plan to call Mark, but until then he was going to enjoy his food.
He did enjoy it; so much so that he was almost in a good mood when he finished. At least until he looked down at the phone again and remembered what he was doing. He sighed and picked it up, scrolling through the recent calls to find the missed one from his brother and prompt the phone to call back.
It rang, twice. Then a third time.
“Alex. How much time does it take to answer your phone?”
A smile tugged at Alex’s mouth, but he didn’t let it form. It fell away again. “More time than I’ve had the last few days, Mark,” he said, and there was nothing friendly in the words.
“You know, you might be a half decent guy if you weren’t such an asshole. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you about something important.”
“And what might that be?”
There was a moment’s silence on the other end of the line, like Mark was gathering himself to say it. Alex’s stomach turned over. What if the news was bad? What if something had happened to their father and he’d been ignoring his brother’s calls? But if that was the case, surely Mark would have found some other way to get hold of him. He knew the number for Reid Enterprises, even if he never used it. His tone, Alex decided after a moment’s reflection, didn’t give the impression that anything terrible had happened. That didn’t mean Mark’s news wasn’t something to worry about, but it wasn’t likely anyone was dead. Alex took a breath.
“I’m getting married.”
So much for not being something bad.
“You’re getting married? You?”
“What, like I’m some special non-marriageable exception to the basic rules of society?”
That wasn’t exactly the way Alex would phrase his thoughts on the matter, but he’d be a whole lot more inclined to believe this marriage was a good idea if he’d heard something about it before this exact moment. Last- minute wedlock almost never worked out well.
“I didn’t even know you were dating anyone.”
“Well…” The sheepish edge to his brother’s smile was audible. “It’s kind of a whirlwind thing. We haven’t actually been dating that long. But you might know that if you bothered to pick up your phone or talk to your family once in a while.”
Of course they hadn’t.
“Oh, because of course I’m the black sheep of the family.”
“Oh shut up, Alex. You’re not a black sheep. You run a billion-dollar investment firm, for fuck
’s sake.”
“I’m well aware of that fact.”
His brother sighed. “The point, Alex, is that I’m getting married Saturday, and I’d like you to be there.”
“You want the CEO of a company that is projected to bring in more than two billion dollars of revenue this year to rearrange his entire schedule in the next two days?” Alex asked flatly.
“I want my brother to be at my wedding,” Mark snapped. “I tried to call you three days ago, but you haven’t been picking up your phone. And I know you saw my calls, Alex. If you choose to ignore me, don’t get mad when you don’t have enough warning.”
A week was not even close to enough warning. Alex considered whether or not he should point that out to his brother. He sighed, and wondered if he still had any Excedrin in the nightstand. “No.”
“What do you mean no?”
“I mean you expected the CEO of a billion-dollar investment firm to change his schedule in a week to suit your whim, and it’s not going to happen. I have to be away on business this weekend. Good luck with your marriage, Mark. I’ll send a wedding gift.” He hung up before his brother could protest any further. The phone rang almost immediately. Alex flicked the switch on the side to silence it and went to take a shower.
Chapter 3
Dinner meetings, Alex reflected on Friday night as he pulled his car into the lot of the third trendy bistro he’d eaten at in the last week, had been inordinately popular lately. He turned the key in the ignition and unfolded himself from the seat of the vehicle to stand and shut the door behind himself. A quick tug or two at the hem straightened the line of his suit jacket. He walked into the restaurant.
Inside, there was a golden glow of lamps and a murmur of subdued conversation; he wasn’t the only one conducting business here today. It was one of the reasons he liked places like this – no loud music piping through the speakers, no shouting over a ruckus.
He had cut the margin close, this meeting scheduled almost directly on the heels of another, but he was still early enough that he had beaten the client. The hostess took him to his table and he sat down to wait, flicking through emails on his phone until a glance up showed the client headed his way. He slid the device back into his pocket, rising to greet the man with a handshake.