Page 50 of The Money Man
“That makes me feel better.” She glanced out the window again. “Oh, there’s that cool bridge.” She picked up his phone again, cradling it in one hand as she swiped to the app. A vision of her hand cradling his cock seared through his brain before he could stop it and he shifted in his chair.
He should be drinking ice water, not wine.
“It’s the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, designed by Santiago Calatrava,” Alice read. “No wonder it’s so fantastic looking.”
He tried to focus on the bridge instead of on the twists of her bun that he could see when she turned her head. But his fingers twitched with the urge to find the pins holding all that hair so primly in place and release it into waves cascading over her preferably bare shoulders.
This had to be some kind of reaction to the meeting with Ted Murval, something about confronting a criminal and coming out unscathed. But Alice had done the same thing, and she appeared quite enthralled with Dallas rather than him.
“I’ve seen a couple of Calatrava bridges in Europe,” he said. “My favorite of his structures is the art museum in Milwaukee with the wings that furl and unfurl every day. It’s quite a sight.”
That brought her attention back to him. She looked thoughtful as she laid his phone down. “I need to travel more.”
“Sometimes I wish I traveled less,” he said.
“I guess business travel can be tiring, but I wouldn’t mind trying it for a while.”
“Why don’t you? Come work for KRG.” Now where had that come from? Not that he wouldn’t be happy to hire her, but it would make things complicated.Mightmake things complicated ... if he continued to see her. “I’ll get you an assignment in Milwaukee where you can also visit the bronze Fonz.”
She laughed. “So tempting.” She paused a moment but then shook her head. “I’m not cut out for that kind of life.”
“What kind of life do you think it is?”
“High pressure. High risk. And my cats would miss me.”
“You could handle the pressure. Look at how deftly you managed Myron today. Your cats I can’t do anything about.”
She straightened her silverware before meeting his eyes. “As you know, I’m not big on risk-taking.”
“You say that but you flew down here to face someone you know is a criminal.” He reached across the table to twine his fingers with hers because he needed to touch her. “I don’t think you see yourself clearly.”
“Maybe not, but there’s a reason for that.” She gave him a sideways glance. “So tell me the whole story about how your father screwed you up.”
“I wouldn’t call you screwed up.”
She gave him a stern glare. “Don’t change the subject.”
“I wasn’t trying to.” He sat back as the server brought their wine and they had to go through the ritual of tasting. Once they were done, he took a sip of his wine and started at the beginning. “When I got cast as Sky Masterson inGuys and Dollsin seventh grade, Dad lit up like a Christmas tree. I think I got the part because I was the only boy who was taller than Amber Croce, who played Sarah Brown. But I had enough of my father’s DNA to enjoy being on stage, so I kept trying out and I kept getting cast as the male lead.”
“Right, you got cast for your height, not your good looks.” Sarcasm tinged her tone.
He shrugged. His looks were sometimes useful, sometimes detrimental in his life. “That’s also just DNA. Anyway, I thought I wanted to be an actor and applied to colleges with theater arts programs.”
“And accounting programs,” she added.
He took a sip of his wine. “That was a happy accident. The truth was that once I saw how the theater business worked, I realized I should go in another direction. As an actor, you had virtually no control over your career. You auditioned incessantly and hoped that some casting director liked the way you looked and didn’t have to hire the producer’s nephew instead.” He had hated the fact that hard work meant virtually nothing. And he’d seen his father’s bitterness about just missing the big time.
“When did you switch to accounting?”
He looked down into his wine. “Not until I started job hunting. I lied to my father and told him I wasn’t having any luck with auditions, so I had to take a day job at a brokerage firm.”
“And you loved it.”
“I did.” Although he had felt his father’s disappointment weighing him down like a boulder. “The pace. The risk ... but with other people’s money. The numbers flashing by.”
“So why did you quit to go to business school?”
“To get my father off my back.”
