“He’ll get over it.”
She twisted the sheet around her finger. “Everything depends on my anchor appearance now.”
He captured her hand in his. “You’ll be great.”
She stared at her tiny hand wrapped in his much larger one. “I have a history of blowing these things when they matter most.”
He lifted a brow.
“My mother set up a big interview for me with a national news show when I was fresh out of school. I blew it badly. It’s been my Achilles’ heel ever since.”
He shook his head. “You’re beating yourself up over something that happened when you were still wet behind the ears?”
“It’s hard not to when nothing you’ve ever done lives up to your mother’s expectations.”
He frowned. “Why do you care so much about what she thinks? You could spend your whole life looking for parental approval and never get it.”
He should know. She retrieved her hand from his. “I’m doing this for myself. I need to prove I can do this.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded and held out his hand. “Come here.”
The dark glitter in his eyes made her pulse quicken. “I have a flight to catch.”
“Stay. Fly back on Monday with me.”
She shook her head. “I need to get back to New York and talk to James.”
“One day isn’t going to make a difference. Call him. Tell him I’m being difficult.”
“You are difficult.”
“Then it’s the perfect excuse, isn’t it?” He rolled her beneath him, his muscular thighs pinning her to the mattress. And then she didn’t care about James, her flight or anything but the hedonistic side of her that seemed to have taken over.
Hedonism seemed less than a solid choice on Tuesday morning as Izzie stood in front of her boss in his office, her romantic, off-the-charts-hot weekend with Alex a distant memory in the frantic buzz of the newsroom.
“Tell me you have an update for me,” he prompted impatiently, from behind his paper-cup-strewn desk.
Her stomach rolled as though she was on the high seas. “I need you to give the Constantinou story to someone else.”
He screwed up his face. “Sorry?”
She picked a spot on the wall several centimeters to the right of his face and kept her eyes glued there. “I need you to give the story to someone else.”
He sat up straight. “Why?”
She swallowed hard. “Because Alex and I are involved.”
“Define involved.”
“Involved.”
“You’re sleeping with him?”
She nodded.
He raked his hands through his hair and threw her a disbelieving look. “Since when? Was this going on that night at the Met?”
“No.” Which was the truth. Technically. She gave him an imploring look. “We confronted our feelings this weekend and I—”
“Dammit, Iz.” He slammed his hand on his desk so hard brownish liquid from an old coffee sloshed over a pile of papers. He cursed and shoved them out of the way. “You were screwing him while you were supposed to be getting the story?”
She felt the blood drain from her face. “That is not what happened. I didn’t intend on having anything to do with him and then things—things just happened.”
“While you’re working on the most important story of your career?” he roared. “How could you be so stupid? You of all people, Iz. You’ve always put your career first—been clear on your priorities.”
Apparently not anymore. She pushed her hair out of her face with a shaky hand. “We have something, James.”
Her boss snorted. “He’s a man. A goddamned shark. You think you’re going to be any different than any of the other woman in this town he’s gone through?”
Her chest tightened. “It’s done. I can’t take it back.”
He pressed his hands to his temples and pushed out of his chair, pacing to the other side of the room. “You’ve been off ever since you came back from Italy. Did you actually get concussed in that elevator? What is wrong with you?”
She wasn’t actually sure.
“My God, Izzie.” He looked at her disbelievingly. “This story would have given you exactly what you needed to win this anchor job.”
She bit her lip. “I’ll have to prove myself in the audition.”
“That would be the understatement of the year.” He let out a long breath. “Did you at least get anything good out of him?”
“Not much,” she lied, her insides twisting. “The man is a closed book.”
His mouth tightened. “I could make a crude remark right about now but I’m going to abstain.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “Would you rather I’d kept my mouth shut?”
“I’d prefer it if I had my smart, rational reporter back.”
Bile climbed the back of her throat. “James—”
He waved her out of his office with a dismissive hand. “I need to figure this out. Go out there and do your job. If you can.”
Humiliation and confusion mixed to form a potent cocktail as she left, tail between her legs. She went out, shot her story on a heroic mutt who’d saved an elderly lady from having her purse snatched, filed it on autopilot and escaped home before James could give her one more pained look, as though she was his deviant teenager.
Alex had flown her home this morning, then left immediately on business to Toronto, which left her alone in her cozy little apartment with only her mad actions to keep her company. She poured herself a glass of the emergency chardonnay she kept in the fridge for girlfriend visits, stepped over her still-unpacked suitcase and collapsed on the sofa. She’d done the right thing. She knew she had. She was just going to have to put her head down, knock this audition out of the park, and everything would work out.
Wouldn’t it?
Alex Constantinou is a shark. She flinched at James’s depiction of the man she’d just thrown a piece of her career away for. Was she was a total idiot? Had her near miss in that elevator spurred deviant behavior rather than the courageous sort she was aiming for? Because right now the shark was out wining and dining a client who could be a six-foot amazon for all she knew. And could she really compete with that?
She groaned and covered her face with a pillow. Those two days in Malibu had made her feel things she’d never even knew existed—mad, unexplainable feelings for a man who was as interesting and smart as he was sexy and gorgeous. When they hadn’t been in bed together, they’d spent the day on the beach, gone out to dinner and barbecued on the housekeeper’s night off. Their discussions, ranging from politics to classic literature to the science of a good run had proved that their natural chemistry together was just as strong out of bed as in it. But even if they had that, was it enough that she should think she was any different? Or was James right and she was risking everything she’d ever wanted for a man who would move on when the wind turned?
An image of her mother walking out the front door of their little bungalow flashed through her head. She’d stood there crying, certain she was leaving for good this time, her father’s blank face as he’d tried to fight back tears forever imprinted on her mind.
Her throat ached; her eyes burned at the memory. After that had come the seemingly endless amount of tears her father hadn’t been able to hide. His complete and utter dissolution. Her and Ella’s attempts to make everything right when nothing was.