Changing Constantinou's Game

by Jennifer Hayward

  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 f
or 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?

  “What did your mother think of all this? Didn’t she have any say in it?”

  “She was out of the picture by then. She’d married Jack Sinclair and my father never gave her any true power in the company despite all the family money she sank into it.”

  “What about your sisters? Why couldn’t they have taken the reins?”

  His mouth curled. “My father would never have put a woman at the helm.”

  “What are they like, your sisters?” She asked the question more out of curiosity than a need to know.

  His face took on a decidedly softer edge. “They’re all completely different. Agape, whose dress you wore, she’s the oldest, an event planner in New York. Bubbly, always talking too much. Gabby is a librarian, has middle-child syndrome. Always trying to please everyone. And Arty—” his mouth curved as Izzie gave him a curious look “—short for Artemis, and yes my mother really called her that, and yes we teased her about it and called her a goddess her entire life, is finishing up her final year at law school. Whip smart.”

  She smiled. “They sound completely different. Which one are you closest to?”

  He shrugged. “All of them, really. They came to live with me when I turned pro. Agape and I are the most alike, I guess.”

  “Agape is the one coming tomorrow night?”

  “Yes. She helped me plan the party.”

  Which reminded her that her time to get him to talk was running out. She dug in. “Back to Frank Messer then. You’ve said Mark created Behemoth. Messer claims he did. How do you reconcile that?”

  “Developing a game like Behemoth involves hundreds of people. Come take a tour of our development facility. It’s mind-boggling how much work goes into a title. For years. Messer played a key role, yes, but so did dozens of other designers. The platform, the starting point, was Mark’s vision. The patents rightfully belong to Sophoros.”

  “Then why did you pay him off?”

  He scowled. “We were rewarding him for everything he’d put into the company. He deserved it for his tenure.”

  “He says you took unfair advantage of him. Bullied him into it.”

  “Funny he should be saying that now when the game is a raging success.” Sarcasm dripped from his voice. “He was fine enough with the money before.”

  “He says he has proof he created the platform.”

  “Then let him bring it forward. It doesn’t exist.”

  Fine. She was starting to get that feeling the more unforthcoming Messer became on that point. She took a deep breath. “I need to ask you about the night your career ended.”

  A wary expression slid over his face. “What’s there to ask? I came back too soon, tore my rotator cuff and it was over.”

  She bit down on her lip. Forced herself to go on. “I talked to your coach, Brian Sellers. And to Dr. Forsyth. They both said you weren’t supposed to play that night, Alex. Dr. Forsyth had given you strict orders to stay on the bench for at least another month. And Sellers had backed him up.”

  His jaw tightened. “I felt fine so I decided to play.”

  She struggled to keep up with him as his strides lengthened. “But why would you do that? You’d told Coach Sellers you weren’t going to play. Why risk your career?”

  He stopped in his tracks, the hint of a storm brewing in his blue eyes. “I thought I was fine. I made a mistake. That’s all there is to it.”

  She pressed sweaty palms to her thighs, telling herself to just get it over with. “But Gerry Thompson was already starting. You didn’t have to go out there. Surely your career was more important than one game?”

  “What the hell would you know about it?” he roared, his sudden explosion making her take a step back in the sand. His eyes blazed, skin stretched taut across his cheekbones. “How could you have any idea about the pressure I was under? About what I was risking by not playing? The media—you,” he said, pointing a finger at her, “you wanted my head on a platter.”

  Izzie’s heart was pounding as if it were going to jump out of her chest, but she pressed on. “You needed to prove to your father you could be a success. You played because failure was not an option.”

  “I didn’t care what the hell my father thought,” he ground out. “Christós, Izzie, have you listened to a word I’ve said? I thought I was fine so I played. That’s it.”

  “I know about the illegal painkillers.” She forced the words past her constricted throat. “I know you had someone supply you with a street-level narcotic that allowed you to play that night...that allowed you to mask your injury. That there were some who worried you might have become...dependent on it.”

  His tanned face turned ashen. “Who told you that?”

  “I can’t reveal my source.”

  He stood there utterly silent, feet spread apart, fists clenched at his sides, the absolute devastation on his face shaking her to the core. But it was nothing compared to the look of white-hot rage that was spreading across it now, making her breath catch in her throat, making her take another step backward.

  When he finally spoke, it was in a voice so lethally quiet she had to strain to hear it over the crash of the waves.

  “We are done with this conversation. I will answer the question about why I played on camera next week, at which time I’ll give the answer I just did. And that will be the last time it’s mentioned, ever, or this story will not happen.” He trained his gaze on her face. “Do you understand?”

  She nodded, hands, knees, everything shaking as he stalked down the beach away from her. Her brain spun. How could one night have possibly been more important than an entire golden career? Brian Sellers had characterized Alex as a man who’d never taken an unsure step in his life. So what had happened that night to push him over the edge? To make him play when there was no way he should have ever taken a step onto that field?

  CHAPTER NINE

  THIRTY LAPS OF his fifty-metre pool was generally pretty cathartic for Alex. But after spending the last twenty-four hours ruminating over yesterday’s conversation with Izzie and facing demons he’d thought long ago put to bed, it wasn’t having the desired effect.

  Biceps crying out from the vicious workout, he stepped out of the shower, toweled himself off and stalked into the bedroom where he rifled through his closet for his tuxedo shirt. He should have listened to his instincts and never agreed to do the interview. Because those questions Izzie had asked yesterday, the pieces of his past she was digging up, were nobody’s business but his own. She and James Curry were clearly taking this interview in a whole different direction from what they’d agreed upon, and the private life he’d guarded so closely for so long was in danger of being blown wide open by a woman he had severely conflicting feelings about.

  He jammed his hand against the closet door, dropped his head and let out a string of curses. How had Izzie found out about the illegal painkillers? The only person who knew he’d taken them was his former teammate, Xavier Jones. And Xavier wouldn’t have talked to a reporter. No way.

  But then again, he thought, agitation rocketing through him, what did it really matter now? His football career was history. He’d paid for his mistake in the worst way possible. And he’d moved on. He didn’t need football anymore.

  So why did he feel gutted? As if someone had sliced him wide open? Because the only thing worse than reliving it all over, a little voice in his head said, would be to be made into a pity party all over again. To have the whole world know his shame. He’d worked too hard building Sophoros into an international powerhouse to let the media make a tragedy of him a second time. To overshadow everything he’d done since.

  He would not let it happen. Could not.

  He yanked his shirt out of the closet, found some boxers, and pulled t
hem on. He would do exactly as he’d said. He’d do this interview, he’d draw the lines, then he’d never talk about it again. No one could prove anything. And as for Izzie? He grimaced as he did up the finicky little pearl buttons on the shirt. He was at a loss. Ever since she’d walked into his life, she’d been driving him slowly, surely mad. And it wasn’t getting any better. When he should be thinking about Frank Messer and the case his lawyers were mounting against him, he was wondering instead how to get her into bed. How to satisfy the craving in him that ached for another taste of her.

  His shirt finally done up, he located his tuxedo trousers, pulled them on and went searching for his bow tie. He should hate Izzie for setting him up. For digging into his painful past. But the satisfaction of harboring that against her was being called into question after the conversation he’d had with Laura Reed this morning. He and his head of PR had been covering some items that couldn’t wait until he was back in New York when Laura’s tone had changed into that serious, “you need to listen to me” one she reserved for the most important points. “Alex,” she’d censured. “I met James Curry at an industry breakfast this morning. He asked me what the deal was with you. Said you tore into him at the Met fund-raiser about him setting you up...and he still couldn’t figure out what you were talking about.”

  “The guy’s an underhanded son of a bitch,” he’d replied. “Let’s leave it at that.”

  “He’s an important son of a bitch,” Laura had reminded him drily. “He’s the news director at one of New York’s most influential television stations. You want him on your side. I don’t know what issue you have with him, but he’s a straight shooter, Alex. In my ten years of working with him I’ve never seen him do anything unethical. Set anyone up. So whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong. Kiss and make up and play nice.”

  He’d muttered something to pacify her, then moved on. But the conversation had been playing over in his head ever since. Izzie had steadfastly stuck to her story that their meeting in the elevator had been a coincidence. His receptionist in London had confirmed she’d lied to Izzie about his whereabouts to get rid of her per his standing instructions to do so. Which left him wondering if maybe their elevator meeting had just been a bizarre coincidence.