Just To Be With You

“Sounds good.” Especially since between now and next Tuesday, Ian planned to find a good half-dozen more ways to sweeten the deal so that Flynn wouldn’t be able to say no. “If you’ve got a few more minutes, any chance you can take me through that new technology you mentioned yesterday?”

Flynn’s face lit at the chance to switch from business to technology, and though he had finally seemed to completely forget Tatiana’s presence as he pulled out his tablet and started talking Ian through his newest innovation, Ian hadn’t.

Not for one single second.

CHAPTER FIVE

“I thought I worked hard,” Tatiana said five hours later when they were in the back of his town car on the way to a lunch meeting, “but I’m starting to feel like being on a movie set is closer to hanging out at the spa compared to what you do every day.” She didn’t need to refer to the schedule Ian’s assistant had given her, because she’d memorized it. “I assumed all you did was play with money and keep your eye on changing market conditions, but so far today you’ve already had meetings about a major tech acquisition, expanding your office further into Asia, a huge fundraising event that you’ve been spearheading, and now we’re heading to lunch to discuss chemistry with a professor from the University of Washington.”

It was the first chance she’d had to talk privately with Ian since his first meeting of the day, and though she’d done nothing more than sit in on his meetings to take notes, she felt worn out simply from observing his pace, his intensity, his drive. Slipping off her heels for a few precious moments, she unbuttoned her blue blazer, loosened her hair from its twist, and slid her feet beneath her on the leather seat.

She felt good about how well she’d blended in this morning. Even Ian had seemed to forget all about her. Not that she had stopped reacting to him, however. All morning in his presence she’d felt overly warm, as though her body was constantly on alert for something.

No, not just something. For a look. For a touch. And, in her most hopeful moments, for a kiss. One stolen in a deserted hallway as he pressed her up against the wall, his muscles hard against hers, his lips hot as they devoured hers.

Heat swamped her again as she fumbled for the button that would lower the window. Finally, it let in the cool, damp air. She lifted her hair off her neck and let it blow over her.

“How,” she asked him as the heat of his gaze on her kept her warm despite the cold rushing through the window, “do you do it?”

“How do I do what, exactly?”

Tatiana wanted to know so many things about him that, honestly, even she wasn’t sure which question she was asking in that moment. She wanted to know how he made her feel so much, so quickly, and with so little effort. She wanted to know what had put the darkness into his eyes, and the hard edges around his mouth where smile lines should be. She wanted to know how he could sit at a dining table with a family who wanted nothing more than to love him, but still hold himself just far enough away from them so that they couldn’t get all the way past his walls.

But since she also wanted to understand the businessman she’d observed during the past five hours, she asked, “How do you run at this pace, hour after hour, day after day, without getting even the slightest bit winded?”

“It’s my job.”

She held in an irritated sigh. She’d known he was going to be a tough nut to crack, hadn’t she? Heck, his mother had all but held up flashing neon signs of the words struggle and determination while they were making dinner.

“Yes, but it’s a job you no longer need to work at half as hard as you do, especially when you’ve already had more success than most people could ever dream of. Take Flynn Thomas and his company. I know you’re excited about the chance to work with him and he’s clearly brilliant at what he does, but I’m sure you could get him to take the deal without offering to give up so much of your own time and energy. And yet, you didn’t hesitate to give him your word that you wouldn’t hand him or his company off to anyone else.”

“The same thing could be said of you and acting—that you no longer need to work at it half as hard as you do when you’ve already had so much success. But that isn’t stopping you from taking on new roles, is it?”

Tatiana understood this was Ian’s way of trying to deflect her question away from himself. All morning she’d watched as he talked with employees and colleagues, and while he remembered the details of all their lives, he made absolutely certain that the personal conversations he had with people never circled back around to him. And she’d also noticed how careful all of those people were to stay perfectly within the boundaries he set for them.

When, she wondered, was the last time anyone had thrown caution to the wind and tried to smash through those boundaries?

It was tempting to try to do just that in the back of his town car while they were stuck in lunchtime traffic. But it was still too soon. Way too soon. Hurling herself like a wrecking ball at his stiff and starched-up boundaries within the first five hours of shadowing him wouldn’t do either of them any good.

Patience. Somehow, she needed to find a little of it.

So, instead of pressuring him to answer her question just yet, she answered his. “I keep taking new roles because I love what I do.” And her love for what she did for a living, at least, really was that simple. “Being an actor was always my dream. I love to make people happy, to know that I’ve helped them forget about their lives for a little while. Make believe, and disappearing into characters while in front of the camera, is just as much fun for me now as it was when I was a little girl wearing a tiger costume in my first commercial for a zoo. Because even when the outfit got hot and scratchy and all I could think about was yanking it off and throwing the stuffed head as far as I could, I already had enough passion and desire for acting to say my lines another dozen times until the director was satisfied. And what I remember most of all about that day is that when I was done, I felt like I’d achieved something really great. Not just filming a zoo commercial, but that I’d faced the challenge down…and won.”

It was precisely what she was hoping to do again with this new role. Just as soon as she figured out her character’s motivations, which would hopefully happen any day now. Especially considering the studio had tens of millions of dollars riding on her new film.

“Now that I think about it,” she said, “I don’t really need you to tell me how you do what you do. I think I can understand that well enough from my personal experience with my career. What I’d rather understand is why.”