mouth curved. “I’m not talking about basic needs.”
“I also swim,” he said, and her mouth curved wider, drawing Alex’s attention to it. It was delicious, full and lush. He wanted to feel it against his own.
“Doesn’t that count as working out?”
“So does fulfilling my, ah, basic needs.”
She laughed softly, the sound no more than a breath. “So you must be very fit.”
“You’ll have to judge for yourself.”
“Is that a promise?”
“More just a statement of fact.”
Her smile widened, revealing a dimple in one cheek. “Does it relax you?” she asked and for a second he thought she was talking about sex. Then he remembered what they’d been at least pretending to talk about. Swimming.
“I’ve learned to let it relax me.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
“I didn’t learn to swim until I was in high school.” Alex paused; suddenly he could almost smell the chlorine and sweat of Walkerton Prep’s pool. Could feel the hard shove on his back.
“Alex.” He glanced up, blinking, and saw Chelsea giving him a teasing smile. “Whatever you’re thinking about, it feels like a bit of a buzz kill.”
He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Maybe, but it motivated me to learn how to swim.” She raised her eyebrows, waiting, and he continued. “I got a scholarship to Walkerton Prep. You know it?”
“The boarding school in Connecticut? Who doesn’t? It seems like everyone with money is trying to get their kid in there.”
“Exactly. I fulfilled their diversity quotient, I guess. Half-Dominican kid from the Bronx.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said, and her voice had turned thoughtful, her head tilted to one side as she gazed at him.
“Which part? Dominican or the Bronx?”
Her mouth curved again in a small smile; she really did have the most amazing lips. “Both, I guess. But you were telling me how you learned to swim.”
“We had to take swimming at Walkerton. The first day one of the kids in my class pushed me into the deep end of the pool, when the coach was in his office.” Alex swallowed; he could still remember the feel of the water closing over his head, filling his mouth and nose as he choked and flailed and a dozen preppy boys watched him dispassionately.
“Did he know you couldn’t swim?”
“Oh, yeah.” He’d had the naïve idiocy to share that little nugget of information before he’d been pushed. He shook his head, managed a wry smile even as surprise rippled through him that he was telling this to Chelsea Maxwell. He didn’t talk about his years at Walkerton Prep to anyone. He didn’t like to remember the lonely boy he’d been, desperate to fit in, to matter. He would have sold his soul then, just to belong. Thank God Jaiven had snapped him out of it with a right hook to his eye. Thank God he’d learned to be harder, tougher, and to stamp all over spoiled, entitled kids like that. “Fortunately the coach returned before I deep-sixed it. But I think those kids would have let me drown.”
“That’s awful.” Chelsea was quiet for a moment, her expression serious and yet somehow closed. “But I believe it,” she added, and there was too much understanding in that statement, too much experience. He almost asked her about it, and then decided not to.
If he thought sex might complicate things, some kind of emotional connection would screw it up completely. He didn’t go there. Ever.
“Well, like I said, it motivated me. I learned how to swim and I ended up on the varsity diving team. I ended up being captain my senior year, which infuriated the guys who tried to drown me. Sweet revenge.”
“I bet.”
“In college I learned how to scuba dive, and now I spend a lot of time in the water.”
“Do you like it?” she asked, and he saw a gleam of shrewdness in her eyes that jolted him. No one had asked him that before.
“Do you think I’d do it if I didn’t?” he asked back, and she tilted her head as her gaze swept over him.
“You’re a control freak, right? Absolutely. Anything to feel in control.”
He laughed and held up his hands in mock defeat, even though her insight made him feel a little more exposed than he’d have preferred. “Well, you’re right, Miss Maxwell. I still hate the water. But I do it.”
She nodded slowly. “I understand that.”
Her tone was heartfelt, and again he wondered. Wanted to know what she hated and still did. Her show? He knew she was hungry to prove herself professionally but did she actually dislike going on the pink sofa with those washed-up stars?
Something else he wasn’t going to ask. He didn’t actually want to know this woman. He just wanted to use her.
In more ways than one.
“Shall we order?” he asked and she nodded again. After the waiter had come and gone he decided to steer the conversation onto safer ground. Keep it innocuous, at least for the moment.
“So you’re from Alabama, right?” And just like that she tensed right up, her expression closing like a fan. Interesting. Strange, but interesting.
She took a sip of water and then slowly, carefully put the glass back on the table. “Yes,” she said, and even that seemed like more information than she was comfortable imparting.
“You’ve lost your accent.”
Her face was utterly blank as she gazed at him. “Yes.”
Alex leaned back in his chair. “Why do I get the feeling you don’t like to talk about your past?”
“It’s not very interesting.”
“And if I’m interested?”
“Somehow I doubt you actually are. But you can read my bio online.”
“I have.” He’d read the question-and-answer interview with her on her show’s website. He’d started out as a journalist; he did his homework, just like Chelsea. According to her bio, she’d an idyllic childhood in Alabama, all homemade cookies and trips to the state fair, and then she’d joined AMI as an intern when she was twenty-two. There was the inevitable list of awards and charities she supported, and that was it.
Pretty bland, really, and she obviously liked it that way, for she shrugged now, the movement invariably drawing his gaze to her breasts, their round shape outlined in cream cashmere. He wanted to slowly peel that dress off her, and soon. “Then you know all there is to know.”
He raised his eyebrows as well as his gaze. “Which is nothing.”
She just shrugged again, and he felt a sharp spike of curiosity again. Who was this woman?
Better not to wonder. Not to know.
Their appetizers came then and they didn’t talk about anything more alarming than industry gossip and news for the rest of the meal, which suited Alex fine. He was at a good restaurant with a beautiful woman, and he intended to enjoy it for a little while.
And then he intended to enjoy a whole lot more.
* * *
What was it about this man, Chelsea wondered, that made her say things? Feel things? She’d told more about herself to Alex than she had to any other person, except for Michael and her sister Louise. And she barely knew the man. Admittedly, what she’d told wasn’t that much, but she still felt exposed. He could dig into her history now, search Alabama records, and knowing him, he’d find something. He’d find too much.
Her