are the other things?”
“Your body. And its various charms. I thought I made that clear.”
She frowned. He expected her to...well, to get angry. Or shrink up against the wall like all bookish virgins should do. Instead, she walked through the plane and took the seat opposite from him, crossing her legs at the ankles and folding her hands in her lap. “You’re very blunt.”
“Yes. I find it frightens people. Which I very much enjoy.”
“I’m not certain if I’m blunt in quite the same way you are. But I do tend to say whatever pops into my mind. Often it’s about something unrelated to the situation. That also seems to frighten people. Men specifically.”
“The reason you don’t receive many compliments?”
“My mother always told me to keep conversation to the topic of the weather. But we live on an island. Unless a hurricane or tsunami is threatening, the weather isn’t all that interesting.”
“That’s the point. A great many men prefer their women to be dull on the inside and shiny on the outside.”
“You among them?”
He chuckled. “Oh, I am chief among them.”
She tilted her head to the side, a rather bemused and curious expression on her face. “Why is that?”
“Why is what, cara mia?”
“Why do so many men prefer their women to be quite the opposite of what one should prefer in a person?”
“Because. Those sorts of men, myself included, don’t want women for sparkling conversation. They want them for one thing, and one thing only.”
She sighed, a rather heavy, irritated sound. “I imagine you mean sex.”
He was momentarily surprised by her directness. Not that directness shocked him in any manner; it was simply that this kind of directness coming from her was shocking.
“Yes,” he said, not seeing why he shouldn’t be equally direct in return.
“Predictable. I suppose that’s why my mother is able to skip through life behaving so simply. She’s a prime example of what you’re talking about. Someone who is all sparkle and shine. My father no longer even possesses any shine. But I imagine in his case it’s the promise of money and an eventual payoff that bring women into his bed.”
“That sounds quite familiar to me.”
She studied him, a confused expression crossing her face. “But—and I’m speaking in a continued metaphor—you seem to be quite shiny.”
He laughed. No one had ever characterized him as shiny before. “I wasn’t thinking of myself. It’s true, I have my own set of charms that bring females into my bed. Money. Looks, so they tell me. But in this case I was thinking of my parents.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. It sounds very much like they would have been friends with yours.”
“Do your parents enjoy drugs, wild affairs and questionable fashion sense?”
He laughed, but this time the sound was bitter. “They liked nothing more. In fact, they loved it so much it killed them.”
She seemed to shrink in her seat, the regret on her face pronounced. “Oh. I’m sorry. I should not have made light of it. Not without knowing your background.”
He picked up his clear mug of coffee and turned it until the light coming from outside the plane window caught hold of the amber liquid, setting it ablaze. “One must make light of these things. Otherwise, it’s all darkness, isn’t it?”
“Some things are only dark, I fear.”
He shrugged, taking another drink. “They don’t have to be.”
“How did your parents die?”
The question struck him. She genuinely didn’t know. But then, it stood to reason. She’d had no idea who he was when they had first met. Rare was the person who didn’t know his entire family history before introducing themselves to him. She was an odd creature. And her cleverness was still off-putting. But he found small pieces of her to be a breath of fresh air he hadn’t realized he’d been craving.
“They died in a car accident,” he said. “They were having one of their legendary fights. Fueled by alcohol, drugs and a sexual affair. Basically, all of their favorite things combined into one great fiery ball of doom.”
“Oh. That’s awful.”
“Yes. I suppose it is. But I was very young. And not much a part of their lives.” He did his best to keep the memories of that night from crowding in. Snowy. The roads filled with ice. His parents shrieking obscenities. And a small boy standing out in the cold, looking lost and lonely. “I find them a tragedy. A cautionary tale. I might be a bit jaded, but I’m not a total libertine. I suppose I have their tragedy to thank for that.”
She nodded, as though she completely understood what he was talking about. He had no doubt she had little experience of libertines outside the pages of a book.
“If it weren’t for my parents,” she said, her words coming slowly, “who knows how I would be? It is their example that has kept me so firmly planted in the estate in Aceena. It’s their example that has caused me to crave a quieter existence.”
That surprised him. It seemed she did understand. At least a little bit better than he had guessed she might. A little bit better than most.
All of his siblings had started life with the same parents he had, and yet he had been the only one affected in quite this way.
His twin brothers were hellions. They were playboys who lived their lives entirely as they saw fit. At least, they had been before their respective true loves had come into their lives.
But always, they had lived with much more passion than Alex ever had. Even now that they had settled down, they continued to live with more passion and emotion than Alex would ever consider.
“Everything makes much more sense if you see life as a business,” he said, speaking the thought before he had decided he would.
“Do you think so?”
He nodded. “Yes. Business is sensible. Everyone is in it to make money. That’s the bottom line. Because of that, everyone’s motives are transparent from the beginning. They’re going to serve themselves. Sometimes favors are traded. Contracts are drawn up, terms are met.”
“A bit more clear-cut than people,” she said.
“I’ve always found it slightly strange that divorce is much easier than breaking a business contract. If people took marriage as seriously as they took business deals, the world would be a different place.” He leaned back in his chair. “Of course, you could go about metaphorically hopping into bed with other partners after taking on exclusive deals with another. But you would quickly lose your credibility, and your business with it. It wouldn’t serve your bottom line. Personal relationships are
