“Thank you.” He went back to the others then, and she didn’t see him for the rest of the day.
When she got to the house after work, she emailed her approvals from “Mr. Green,” bathed and dressed, and was ready when Miles rang the doorbell at eight. She opened the door to him wearing a short denim skirt, a leather jacket, and heels, and he looked at her warmly, in black leather pants and jacket himself, and she noticed that he had shaved.
“Do you want to come in for a drink?” she offered. She could say that Mr. Green was in seclusion upstairs, without giving anything away. But he lowered his voice immediately in response.
“I don’t want to disturb him. Why don’t we just go.”
Miles led her out to his car parked in front of the house. It was a beaten-up old Jaguar, with cracked leather upholstery and tremendous charm. Miles had his own distinctive style, and he turned to her as they drove away.
“Does he mind you going out with me? I never thought about it till after I suggested dinner.” She reassured him immediately. It was the same question Malcolm had asked her in L.A.
“I’m free to do whatever I like. He doesn’t monopolize my evenings or personal time. He’s a very reasonable person. I’m not his girlfriend,” she stated clearly. “There are no nights or weekends involved.” It seemed like all he needed to know, and Miles seemed more relaxed after that. They talked easily about a variety of subjects on the way to the restaurant, and he was surprised to discover that she had lived in London for almost two years.
“So you haven’t worked for him for that long? I thought your CV said you did.” He was confused.
“I have, I was with him here.”
“I had no idea he spent time in England too. I know he has a place in the wilds of Scotland, but no one mentioned London.”
“We took a flat in Knightsbridge for two years, while he was writing here.” Everything she said to him was a half-truth, and it was exhausting lying all the time and trying to avoid dangerous slips.
The restaurant was as she remembered it from the last time she’d been there, cozy and intimate, without being so dark you couldn’t read the menu, or looking like a location for a tryst for married lovers. It was a perfect place to unwind with a friend after a long day, which was his purpose in bringing her here. She was surprised at how comfortable she was with him, and had been since they met. It was just his style, but the way he spoke to her was warm, and there was something very sexy about him with his rugged good looks.
They ordered dinner, and had a glass of wine, and he sighed as he smiled at her. “You’re too young to have been married yet, I suppose. I just finished a bad divorce, it’s a relief to focus on work. And this is such a great project.” He was so enthused about it that it thrilled Alex every time he said it. He was full of energy and great ideas for the series.
“I’m sorry about your divorce. That must be rough. Do you have children?” She knew very little about him, except that his bio for publicity said he had gone to Oxford and was forty-one years old.
“I have two kids. I married very young, right after college, so they’re fairly grown up, but not entirely yet. My daughter is seventeen, and my son is fifteen. Not easy ages, and they’ve been pulled back and forth quite a lot. Their mother wants to move to South Africa with her boyfriend, who’s from there and still lives there and has his business in Johannesburg, and I don’t want them that far away. I’m very close to my kids,” he said with a bittersweet tone to his voice.
“Are you able to stop her from moving?” He shook his head and Alex felt sorry for him. His eyes told her how painful it was for him.
“The judge ruled against me and said I can’t keep her prisoner here. We have shared custody, and the children love both of us. They don’t want to leave either of us, and the court ruled that we’ll have to send them back and forth as much as possible, which is hard on them. My daughter is in boarding school here, as most kids her age are, and she’ll be going to university next year, but my son is moving to Johannesburg with his mother. And my schedule is crazy, so I can’t always foresee how much free time I’ll have when he’s here. And he doesn’t want to go to boarding school.”
“I didn’t want to either at his age.”
“It’s not as common in the States, but almost everyone does here. He was accepted at Eton, which is a wonderful school, where I went, and he refused to go.” The school he had gone to told her he was from a good family with considerable social standing, but he had none of the snobbishness that usually went with it, and didn’t put on airs. She had met some men in England who went to the best schools and were insufferable. Miles was nothing like them. “Why would you have gone to boarding school? Were you badly behaved so they wanted to send you away?” he teased her.
“No, my father died when I was fourteen, and my mother long before that, so it was a matter of necessity. I had nowhere to live, and couldn’t stay alone in his house with just a housekeeper. It worked out really well in the end. I lived in a convent with a house full of loving nuns. I still stay there when I’m in Boston. I just moved to New York recently.” Her history touched him. She seemed like a very unusual woman and he found her warm and intriguing. He hadn’t figured her out yet, but was trying his best to. He could sense that there was a part of her she didn’t let anyone know or see. She was very guarded, like a child hiding behind a tree, thinking no one could see them, although they were partially visible. Miles was watching her closely and trying to understand her better.
“So when did you meet up with the amazing Mr. Green?” He was fascinated by that too. He was such an extraordinary writer, and he was impressed that the famous writer put so much faith in such a young woman. She was clearly as capable as she had demonstrated so far to them.
“When he wrote his first book. I was nineteen and still in college.”
“And where was that?” She seemed to have moved around a bit. He knew she had spent six months in L.A. working on Green’s movie, and now he knew they’d been in London for two years.
“He spent some time in Boston, and we met then. I’ve been working for him for six years,” she said quietly as their dinner arrived, and he continued questioning her, trying to piece the puzzle of her together. The stabilizing element appeared to be her work for Alexander Green, which was ironically true.