Green Tea Won't Help You Now! (4 page)

"How charming! By Lake Tahoe?"

"Yes, that's where they grew up and that's where they want to die. Our family's very connected to the land. My sister's family lives there too."

"I see."

"What about your mom?"

"My mum?"
 

She lives on a finca on Mallorca and cannot get over the fact that she's a billionaire because she inherited her younger son's money after he crashed into an oak-tree with my father's Lamborghini...?

"They're not together anymore. She's living in the countryside, goes to church a lot."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be, it's been a long time ago."

"Any brothers or sisters?"

Good lord, here we go...

"Yes... I have a brother and a sister."

"What do they do?"

Let's see. My sister spends her time buying art and organising charity events. She's married without kids to a gay childhood friend who happens to own a private bank in Geneva.
 

"My sister's a social worker and her husband works in a bank."

"They sound pretty normal."

"Mmh-mhh."

"Your brother?"

"I used to have two brothers actually. But Simon died."

He looked at me from the driver's seat, obviously concerned. "Shit, I mean, I'm sorry. You don't have to tell me, of course. I'm asking you all these questions..."

"No, it's fine. He stole a car when he was fourteen and hit a tree."

"Man, that's bad..." His jaw clenched and his brows drew together. He had to think I was a character from Eastenders or some other soap opera.

I confess, I liked the idea. I have always been a sucker for drama and I could not resist pushing it a little further. "Yes, my father started drinking then and my mother left him..."

"So you had to make it all on your own?"

I sighed. "There was my older brother..."

"What does he do?"

Currently, he's cruising the Mediterranean on his classic super-yacht, Myrtle, together with his extremely gorgeous and extremely pregnant, half-German wife and her best friends, who happen to be my guru and his ob-gyn wife, because they have the sick idea the child has to be born on board of Myrtle. He used to be one of the world's sharpest venture capitalists, but nowadays he mainly works on historical boats, plays polo and saves the turtles on his very own private island...?

"He's working on a shipyard as a carpenter... his wife's pregnant."

"Gotta make ends meet, huh?"

His eight-billion-dollar-ends, yes...

"They're doing alright."

"Good to know. How did you get into yoga?"

I was ditched by my Monte Carlo based yacht-broker boyfriend with whom I had shared a coke addiction on five continents. I spent a few months in a big buck rehab, it did not work out. I collapsed wearing a tailor made Gucci dress on my brother's, no wait... was it my sister's or my uncle's or my great-aunt's mega-yacht? Anyway, I took my private jet to Berlin, where I was cured by an Aston Martin driving yogi and his fairy princess wife.

"I had some issues with my sinuses and somebody told me to try yoga. So I tried it and it really helped, so I pursued it further."

"I understand." He seemed to be thinking about something because he did not say anything for a while. From the corner of my eye I watched him. One arm was resting on the car's side, the other one held the stirring wheel. He had very beautiful hands. Strong but elegant. His wrists were nicely defined and his forearms were so strong. Ooh, I had an instant fantasy about how he would—
 

"How did you pay for the studio?" His icy gaze was on me again.
 

"It has no ocean view...," I replied, trying to keep my three-year-charged libido out of my voice.

"Come on, you know what I mean, Venice is still Venice."

"Yes and you even underestimated my studio because it's bordering on the Grand Canal."

"How could you afford it?"

This was a pitfall, but I had been asked this question a lot of times before and the response had become automatic. "I inherited some money from my granddad and I decided to buy the place on the spur of a moment. It was an old live-in garage. Completely run down. It took me over a year to redecorate."

"How did you make money?"

"I worked as a private yoga teacher and an acupressure therapist." It was actually true, but I had mostly done it to establish a name for myself and to acquire students for the studio.
 

"Ah, now I get it. — You know, yoga honestly intrigues me. Since we decided to produce a clothing line for it, I have done a lot of research. You see, I come from a highly competitive and dangerous sport. It's you against the others and then it's also you against the mountain. I used to have training plans and nutrition plans and I needed to focus all the time. Yoga, on the other hand, is totally anti-competitive and not dangerous, although what you did earlier looked pretty dangerous to me. Anyway, it seems like you can never do yoga better than anybody else. You're not even competing with yourself. Even somebody like a super-yogi is not better at it than a beginner. Am I saying it right? Such a strange concept. You probably won't know what it's like to compete on an international level in a sport that can kill you, but I'm sure you can imagine it to a certain extent."

In fact, I had a very good idea what it meant to compete on an Olympic level in a sport that might kill you. Like my mother and my grandfather before me, I had kept on a Heresford family tradition. I had been on the British eventing team and I would even have gone to the Beijing Olympics had my horse Sinclair de Beausejour not died of a colic two months earlier. It had been everything I had aspired to for over a decade and I think the horse's death was the event that finally sent me over the edge of reason. (And if you do not know what eventing is, look it up on youtube. It can most definitely kill you).

Well, this was not the moment to reveal to Alexander Silverston how I had hurled myself and a five-hundred-thousand dollar horse over brick walls and trees at neck breaking speed.
 

"There
are
yoga competitions."

"Are there?"

"Sure... in America it's all about the posture, a bit like figure skating. Well, I don't hold much on them, but in India, they have a different tradition. Maybe you could compare it to a philosophers' debate."

"Interesting. Look, here we are."

We took a left turn and drove onto La Spiaggia's parking lot.

Five

The Pizzeria La Spiaggia is situated on a rocky bit of beach, directly by the water, just off Highway 1. Contrary to common belief, the Malibu beach houses you see in so many TV shows and Hollywood movies, are not as idyllic and off the beaten path as one might think. In fact the Pacific Coast Highway thunders past right in front of them. I admit, once you advance a little further west in the direction Malibu Road, beyond Malibu Point, things are improving, but generally speaking, you live by the motorway.

The pizzas at la Spiaggia were said to be so large they had to be shared, so we ordered one Margherita for the both of us. When it came to drinks, Alex wanted to order red wine, but I had to chime in.

"I'm sorry, but I don't drink alcohol."

"Right, you're a real yogi. I should've guessed."

I refrained from telling him that, even if I was a yoga instructor, I was far from living an authentic yogic lifestyle. I was simply a recovering substance abuser.

"I'll have a coke," I decided. Caffeine is the only drug I am still allowed these days. "Real Italians don't drink wine with pizza anyway, they have a beer or a coke. Even if most non-Italians are unaware of the fact."

"What? I don't believe you."

"Google it."

"Been to Italy a lot?"

Beware! Another pitfall alert!
 

"No, but my brother's wife's from there."
Not completely untrue.
I looked at the Italian waiter. "Am I right?"
 

The man seemed to weigh his tip against his employer's wrath for serving a six dollar beer instead of a hundred dollar wine bottle.

"Don't be shy," Alex encouraged him with a wink.

"The lady is right..." the waiter concurred. "Beer and coke is the tradition. Not wine."

"I'll have a beer then. — You know," he was addressing me again, "I've been to Italy a lot in my career and no one ever told me."

"They probably didn't dare... you're twice as tall as the average Italian man."

"I guess I am."

I wanted to take the conversation away from myself as fast as possible. So I picked up the only thing connecting us so far.
 

"Why is it so very important to you and your company to bring down one tiny unimportant yoga studio?"
 

The topic needed to be out of the way. How else could we have sky shattering sex later on, in his designer villa, in front of a glittering backdrop if there was still this conflict between us?

He did not answer for about ten seconds or so. Then, he shrugged. "Why shouldn't I tell you, right? I guess you ought to know."

The waiter arrived with our drinks and forced a premature halt to Alex's account.
 

We cheered and he began once more. "This is not the first time I wanted to take Hard Pack to Wall Street. Three years ago, everything was ready for us to go public. We planned it in great detail, when suddenly the private equity firm who is supporting me, pulled back and said the company was not fit for the stock market, the brand was not solid enough, the risks involved were too high. Without them, it was just impossible to do it. They owned too much of me. Then, because of the new developments, two of my top managers left the company. They had better offers. It was like a death blow. I told our backers we were ready, I told them we were hot shit. But they disagreed. They said, we would have to wait much longer and broaden our horizon to get our focus away from snow sports... that we needed to be the next Nike or Adidas if we really wanted to go public."

"But, why didn't they say so beforehand? Why did they drop you like a hot potato?"

"That's exactly what I asked them and they said their hand had been forced by new information they had received by sources they would not reveal. In reality I think it was only because of some personal whim."

"Haven't you tried to get other backers?"

"Sure have, but you know, it's like it always is. They all said the same: If they don't think you have it, why should we? I was naive, I admit it. The world of money is quite small, after all and I'm just not thinking like those people. Where I come from you stick to your guns. My company was solid then and it's solid now. I don't want this to happen again. I don't want to give them any occasion to doubt the stability of my company."

"I understand."

"Like I said earlier today, I will recompense you for the money you lost."

He would be able to recompense me with his skin in about two hours and a half! Dear, oh dear, I was not sure whether I would be able to swallow even one bite of pizza. He was so glorious in the candlelight... as if he was hewn from a rock of gold. But he was not pure or holy. There was a certain challenge in his expression, a spark, and it made my belly tight with desire. Hell, I sound like a bodice ripper!

"As I said before, I'll be fine."

His eyes flashed. "I'm sure you will be..."

Heat rushed through me and I held on to my coke. I had an urge to lift my foot up and place it between his thighs, or, alternatively, to tell him to follow me to the bathroom/beach/nearest bush and just do me, slalom style.
 

"--- up?"

"Sorry?" I had only watched his mouth, not listened to what he had said.

"Where exactly did you grow up?"

"In Cambridgeshire."
 

"That's not far from London, right? Was it a village or a small town...? Come on, tell me everything."
 

It was a castle which was owned by my grandpa. Later, I resided in another castle called St. Cecil's, which is also known to be Britain's most expensive girl's school... my winter breaks I spent in St. Moritz or Courchevel, Christmas in the Caribbean, and summers on the family estancia near Buenos Aires.

"A village."

"Cool, I'm not the only country bumpkin around here."

"No."

Well, to be honest, I had spent more time in our London house than anywhere else, but I felt he and I should bond a little more.

"So why LA?" He leaned forward, placed his elbows on the table and folded his hands together, coming closer.
 

Shivers of anticipation tingled on my spine. "I could ask you the same."

"Hey," he granted me a broad grin and to my utter delight, I discovered he had a dimple in one cheek. "I'm a Californian down to the bone. Where else should I live?"

"I don't know? San Diego? San Francisco?"

"Both great cities, but Los Angeles has this magnetism. It's like a planet. I believe that San Francisco and San Diego are just too small for me. No, I guess, small's the wrong word. They're just not big enough. There's no better place to be alone than in a big city, I don't want this to sound like some esoteric b.s., but I feel very close to the person I really am here in LA. Ever been to Shanghai?"

"No, I haven't." I could not be sure though. During the time I flew around the globe with Kyle on the wings of benzoylmethylecgonine, or cocaine, to use the more commonly known name of the stuff, I had been to quite a few places I could not even remember nowadays. I would have to check my passport.

"You should go, it's incredible. Twenty-four million people and you feel a calmness like nowhere else. I often travel to China because that's where our clothes are produced. I'll say it right away before you ask me if they are and there's that awkward moment where you lecture me on sustainability and worker's rights. We operate with the highest safety standards and we are trying to use eco-friendly materials. You know, the Chinese have a far more pressing urge to save the globe than we have. If you saw the smog cloud they live under... they're really pushing to go green."