promise I’ll do my best, Alex,” Jenna said.
“Okay. I’ll get the rest of my lunch.” Alex reached for a drawer.
“No need. I’m taking you out of here.” Wyatt’s jaw was rock-solid, his look grim. Something was wrong.
Alex stopped arguing and followed him.
He handed her into his black sports car and drove to an exclusive, out of the way restaurant. She looked at the prices on the menu and flinched.
“Thank you for taking me to lunch, but I—Why are you looking like a thundercloud?”
“This isn’t working.”
Her heart fell. “I told you the first day that I might not be the right person for the job.”
He glared at her. “You are the right person.”
“But you just said…”
“I didn’t think I would have to drag you from the clutches of an insane jerk. Nor did I think I would have to kidnap you to get you to take a break. Most people stop working at designated times to rev their engines and just get some fresh air. That’s why it’s called a break, Alexandra.”
Okay, now she saw the trouble. Wyatt took the hotel seriously. Everything about the hotel, including his employees’ welfare. “I don’t want you to worry about what happened the other day with that…that…”
“Gorilla,” Wyatt supplied.
“He wasn’t that big.”
“He was a lot bigger than you.” Oh, clearly this topic had been festering inside him.
“You could have simply come to me and forbade me from interfering in altercations between guests.”
He gave her a “you’ve got to be kidding” look. “You’re the woman who told me that you tend to be overzealous about helping people. You ignored my memos about breaks and lunches. You implied that you make decisions based on emotions.”
“I did not.”
“Didn’t you? Well, somehow I must have just gotten that impression. Oh, yes, now I remember how. Maybe because you squeezed yourself in between that boy and the man, so that you would take the pummeling if he decided to let his fists fly.”
“You would have done the same.”
“Maybe.” How ridiculous. Of course he would. The only thing that had saved that jerk of a man from a punch in the jaw had been the fact that Wyatt knew how to exercise self-control. Except when he was tasting a woman’s lips.
Alex frowned to herself, but Wyatt had moved on.
“It doesn’t matter if I would have, anyway. I’m taller, bigger and stronger than you. He could have hurt you.”
“But I’m fine.”
“You’re not. You’re pushing yourself and not getting away from your desk enough.”
Again Randy’s words about guilt nudged at her. “I don’t want you to feel guilty just because I forgot to take much of a lunch break today. I was getting to it.”
He gave a harsh bark of a laugh. “You,” he said, pointing a breadstick at her, “are a workaholic.”
She laughed and picked up her own breadstick. “You ought to know. You’re one, too.”
But he was still frowning. “Seriously, Alex. Cesar, who works the night desk, told me that you came downstairs the other day to help Lois out when things got busy, and then you slipped in two extra tour groups. After hours.”
“Work is how—” she began, and then stopped. How could she put this? Work is how I keep my mind off you? Or worse…
Reality struck. Work, helping people, was how she’d always tried to impress those she cared about, the way she’d tried to win their affection. The possibility that she was doing that now made her ill; it totally frightened her. Because Wyatt was the one man she’d never even stood a chance of winning. He’d told her so. Randy had told her that. Everyone had told her. And yet she couldn’t stop. With the awards, there was too much at stake. Reports of Champagne’s new improvements were coming in daily.
“What does this award mean to you?” she asked.
He frowned. “It doesn’t mean life or death,” he said. “It doesn’t mean I want you making yourself sick.”
“Okay. I promise I won’t make myself sick. I’ll be reasonable.”
He looked incredulous.
“I’ll be more reasonable than I have been,” she said. “Why do you want to win? Why are you working so hard to obtain it?”
His jaw tensed.
“Please,” she said. “Tell me.”
His eyes turned fierce and angry. “I don’t want to want it, but I do. It would be…validation.”
Something in his eyes reminded her of Randy’s comment about Wyatt’s past. Let that be a warning, she told herself. It had been a girl from Leo’s past and a woman from her stepfather’s past that had taken them out of her life. Men with dark, secret pasts had never been good for her. “I want to help you win,” she said.
“And I want to win. But not by harming your health. I can’t be abusive, Alex, demanding that everyone jump in an effort to make me happy. I don’t want and I can’t have a slave.”
That cool edge that always tinged his voice was gone, replaced by something much more raw. Alex wanted to know what that was about, but Wyatt clearly didn’t want to share anything that personal. And maybe…Was she afraid to know more? Afraid of what she might feel?
She studied him, looked down at the table, then up again.
“You don’t have to worry. I won’t be a slave for any man. I’ve willingly volunteered to be a lesser person before and I’m through with that. It hasn’t worked out well for me. But nothing you’ve asked me to do falls into that category.”
His green gaze held her captive. “You’re going to have to explain that ‘lesser person’ part.”
Alex tried to look away, tried to think of some light way to laugh and brush away this question. Opening her soul to Wyatt would be a mistake. It would be a connection…and there could be no connections with this man.
“Oh, you know, it was just one of those minor ‘left over from my childhood’ things. After you have not one father but two fathers walk out the door, you tend to try a little too hard to salvage your relationships. You give a little too much of yourself. I might have subverted my needs to others once or twice, but, as I said, that’s completely in the past. It’s irrelevant.”
She had tried to say it in an offhand, breezy manner, but Wyatt wasn’t looking breezy. “Elaborate on subverting your needs to others.”
