Reckless Hearts: A Billionaire Romance (9 page)

This was dangerous. Explosive, even. I needed to get a handle on things.

I tried bringing the fire hose to bear on the situation. "Since you seem so willing to share things about yourself, why don't you tell me something I don't know about you?"

We walked through a small meadow, the sunlight a welcome change from the shade of the canopy. On the other side of it, a startled squirrel scampered up an elm in a scrabble of claws.

"I'm not exactly an open book, but what do you want to know?" he said.

"Let's start with the basics. Where did you grow up?" Owen didn't have any hint of an accent that I could detect. He would have a great career as a news anchor if the billionaire CEO thing fell through.

"Here and there," he said, pausing while he considered the best way over the fallen hulk of a log lying across our path.

"Oh, you mean Here, Missouri, and There, Michigan, right? I've been to those places. Great libraries. Drop the mystery stuff for once."

It was my turn to get over the log. This one was much wider than the last one. I doubted even Owen could get his arms all the way around it. So I accepted his hand, but hopped down without his help, jerking my hand out of his before I thought too much about how it felt against my palm.

"My dad was in the army. We moved around quite a bit. The places we stayed in the longest were Fort Hamilton here in New York and Fort Benning in Georgia."

I considered all that for a while. Wondered what it might have been like, moving around all the time. Spending maybe a year or two in one place. Three or four in another if you were lucky.

Depending on your personality as a child, I suppose it would either have been an adventure or a great misfortune. And so far I couldn't quite tell which was the case for Owen.

I grew tired of listening to the birds chatter and the squirrels chitter. "I don't hear any Georgia in you."

"I was 16 when we moved there. I suppose your speech patterns are probably pretty set around that age."

"What about the rest of your family?" I said.

"You had your question. Now it's my turn. Don't worry, we're getting pretty close now. Maybe five more minutes. We'll be able to hear it soon."

"That's fair," I said. I didn't realize that this was going to be a shot-for-shot type of interview. "Though I thought you already knew everything about me already."

He guided us through a dense copse of elm, the bark sticky with sap so that I tried not to touch it.

I looked behind us and thought that I didn't know how to get back to the Jeep. I depended on him out here. I had to trust him out here.

"Not everything. Just enough to get me interested. You have this whole innocent country girl thing going for you, but if I look at you in the right light I see a young woman made hardened and cynical by the world. You're a walking dichotomy."

That was a new one for me. And I believe he meant it as a compliment, too. I was an enigma to solve, a puzzle for which he had all the pieces but lacked the picture on the box to guide their placement.

"I don't hear a question in there," I said. Then I stopped. I could hear it, then. Water burbling over rocks, that slosh as it rounded some bend. It did sound close.

"That's because I haven't asked you one yet."

"Well, do me a favor and get on with it."
A little harsh, aren't we?
I regretted the terse note in my voice. He wanted to talk to me, to learn more about me and so far I was rude to him at every opportunity.

I reminded myself that he could lose me out here and that maybe it would be better to be nice, or at least civil.

I didn’t know why I was being so much of a jerk to him. A defense mechanism, I guess. I knew there was something between us. But I also knew that something would get between me and school.

"Why that school? I'm pretty sure that you could have gotten into pretty much any college in the country. Why that little snobby 'university college' and not Harvard, Yale, Berkeley? You could have taken your pick of any ivy off the wall you wanted."

That's an easy one
, I thought, relieved that he didn't choose something like: Have you ever been in love? Are you afraid of strong emotions and that's why you push everyone away? Questions like that.

"The grant," I said.

"The Duvall thing?"

"That's the one."

"You know there are Rhodes scholarships out there for probably about the same amount of money. Maybe not quite the prestige or the exclusivity, but close."

I stumbled over a root I missed, not paying attention to my feet. I reached out and grabbed at the nearest tree branch, keeping my balance. Owen tried grabbing me at the same time, but I waved him away.

"I don't like sports," I said, "Never have. Trust me, I looked into it."

"Don't like sports or aren't good at them?" he said. I eyed those broad shoulders of his, wondering how many cheerleaders he'd impressed with those puppies back in high school. Quarterback, MVP, all that and more I bet.

"Both. I just don't do other people. You should see me when the prof hands out a group assignment. The Duvall Grant only lets you go to one school, but if I can get through it and put it on my resume I'm set. I can get any job I like, do anything I want."

"And what would that be?" he said. He stopped and turned around to face me, the interest plain on his face.

"Uh-uh, that's another question. You're breaking the rules."

"I set them. I can break them if I like."

I don't know whether he planned it or not, but he stopped in a ray of light poking in through the leaves, one foot up on another one of those gnarled roots. He cut quite the dashing figure.

Maybe I don't mind so much if he breaks the rules
. I stood on the other side of the root, close enough to reach out and touch his knee if I wanted to. Close enough for the two of us to lean forward and meet in the middle.

Something about standing still and being alone with him gave me tingles all the way down to my toes. Like his natural magnetism intensified in those instances. It, he, pulled at me.

I even wet my lips and caught myself wondering if I had good breath or not.

I reined myself in, leaning away. He looked disappointed.
Good, let him be
. Except disappointment lingered in me, too.

"I think if you set the rules, then you are the person, above anyone else, who needs to stick to them. Lead by example," I said.

"That's an admirable way to think. A good ideal to strive for. But that's the thing about ideals, they're too perfect to ever realize in this imperfect world."

"Is that your excuse for trying to break the rules? Because it sounds like an excuse to me."

"Sometimes you need to break rules to get what you want."

I let my eyes slide off him. Something silvery flashed through a knot of brush and roots.

Pointing, I said, "Is that the stream?"

He looked back over his shoulder. "That's it. My favorite spot is over here."

We walked parallel to the line of brush until we came to a natural arched doorway in it created by a big old maple's branch.

The rushing burble of the water intensified, the sound no longer screened. The stream was maybe three or four feet at its deepest, ten feet or so at its widest. And clear like you might expect to find in the mountains, though we were far from those.

Rocks lined the bottom, the scales of the tiny fish darting about beneath the ripples on the surface catching the sun.

He took me to an elbow in the stream where a large weeping willow grew, its leaves almost touching the water.

"It's a nice quiet spot. Hey, don't go too close to the rocks. They're slippery," he said.

I ignored him, wanting to get a closer look at some large and lazy fish treading water just off the rock-lined bank.

"You just get ready to answer my next question and not worry about me," I said.

I leaned over, trying for a better angle on the fish. Not close enough. A nice sized rock poked out of the water so close it almost touched the bank.

Green algae crawled up its sides, but the top looked clear. If I could get one foot on it, I could get the angle I wanted. And the fish stayed where he was, as though urging me on.

"It's nice here. Peaceful. People always like the sound of a burbling stream. I think my father used it have it on cassette a long time ago. I prefer a live show to a performance, however," Owen said.

I let him talk. I was good at that. And I found that if you let people talk enough, they'd eventually say something worth hearing.

"Almost... there..." I said, stretching my leg out. My toe touched the top of the rock, then the rest of the sole. I stood there, one foot on the bank, one on the rock. Most of my weight still rested on the bank.

I tested my perch, putting a little more weight on it, then a little more after that. It kept holding. It must have been a big rock, most of it buried in the mud and muck of the stream bed.

"If he wanted to put me to sleep he'd play it. I don't know why, but the sound has always calmed me. Maybe that's why I like it out here so much. Hey, that looks a little precarious."

"Just keep listening to your babbling brook why don't you? Hah!" I said. I found my balance. And that pretty little fish stayed right where he was.

I don't know if my weight shifted, if the algae covered more of the rock than I thought, or if I plain sucked at standing up. Whatever happened, I started slipping.

First a little. Enough for me to clench my teeth and suck a shocked breath through them. Then more. I overcompensated in my panic, leaning farther back than I needed.

"Oh!" I said. My arms wind milled. It didn't work. I was about to belly flop right into the stream. Right onto those rocks that before had looked  like they lurked a few safe feet beneath the surface but now seemed just inches below.

Before I could do more than dip a toe in Owen grabbed me, wrapping his arms around my waist.

He lifted me away from danger and set me down on the shore. His arms stopped gripping, his hands falling to my hips and staying there. I had clasped my hands against my chest, and they stayed there, trapped between my body and his. He had me.

"Thanks," I said. He was warm against me, and solid. His shirtsleeves bunched around his arms, showing those off, too.

"You're welcome," he replied. He didn't let go, either.

I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. All the heat in my body started concentrating lower and lower into a tight little ball, my heart pumping with eagerness to fuel it.

I knew I should ask him to let me go. No,
tell
him to let me go. I couldn't get the words out. They stayed stuck in my throat, accidentally lodged there when I swallowed earlier.

This close, I could smell his aftershave. Was that a note of coconut? I loved coconut. I could also see the tiniest flecks of emerald green in his brown eyes. They seemed to glint, reminding me of looking out across a field of snow on a sunny day and watching the light catch in each individual little prism.

"I have a question for you," Owen said.

"It's not your turn."

"You should let me have this one." His fingers pressed against me and I managed to stifle the squeak the wanted to escape from me.

"O... Okay. What is it?"

"What would you do if I kissed you right now?"

My breath caught. My body filled with what I can only describe as a slippery heat. From somewhere I managed to scrounge up my last little bit of resistance, that last little bit of aloofness that I liked to surround myself with.

"Slap you, I think. I don't like you, remember?"

"That's what you think."

Then he leaned in to kiss me. Time slowed. The possibilities sped through my mind.
I could let him. He's probably a good kisser. He looks like a good kisser.

I almost gave in. Then I thought that this was it, this was the thing I feared most. I was letting someone shift my path, divert my course like a beaver's dam could divert Owen's precious little stream.

I couldn't let that happen. Not yet.

"Stop," I said. Then I pushed him away. He didn't try to hold on.

And then I stayed true to my word. I lifted my hand, open palm, and tried to slap him. He caught my wrist before I closed even half the distance I needed to.

Then he wrapped his other arm around my waist and pulled me against him, our hips touching. He pinned my other arm to my side, and forced the hand I'd tried to slap him with to the small of my back.

My heart just about burst from my chest.

In fact, it felt like it did burst out when he kissed me. I didn't even struggle, because I knew that this was what I'd wanted all along. I just didn't want to admit it. Not to myself. Especially not to him.

The heat of his mouth matched the heat inside of me. Bested it, even. His lips pushed softly against mine. Electricity passed between us, every inch of my body pebbling with gooseflesh.

He
is
a good kisser
, I thought. It was about all I could think. My mind reeled. I melted against him, my muscles going slack as the resistance drained out of me. He leaned over me, arching my back and neck further, kissing me harder.

My lungs started burning for air. I ignored it.

Was this what I missed out on concentrating on school like I did? What else was I missing out on?

Maybe he'll show me.

Then he ended it, leaning away, leaving me flushed and hot all over. I sucked in a breath and let it out in a shuddering sigh. He still held me up, if only because he realized that if he let go now I would collapse like a wet strand of spaghetti.

"Why did you stop?" I said.

"Because I know you wanted more."

"Excuse me?" I said, the muscles in my back finding some stiffness again.

"You heard me."

"If you know I want more, then why stop? That doesn't make any sense. You don't make any sense."

He let go of me then. To my credit, I didn't stumble. My irritation and surprise held me up as well as his arms did.

"Really?" he said, "Then tell me. Tell me you want me. Tell me that you want me to kiss you again and I will. I'll kiss you and do anything else you want me to if you just say the words."