Page 52 of Kiss Me Forever

"Why do you think I lied?" he countered.

"Because there's no record of their death." She held his gaze for a long moment. "Nothing to say?"

"Actually, I have a lot to say, but not here and not now. You have a class to get to, don't you?"

She frowned. "Yes, I do, and since I persuaded two of my friends to come with me, I really need to do it with them. Can we talk later tonight?"

"After class. I'll wait for you."

"Okay," she said, surprise in her eyes. "You're going to hang around for an hour? You don't have anything better to do?"

"I have a million better things to do, but I'll wait because you're right, we need to talk. We need to wrap this story up."

"My thoughts exactly. I'm glad we're finally on the same page."

He opened the door for her, and she preceded him down the hall and into one of the studios where Mick and a young guy were getting ready to start the class.

Alex sat down on a bench against the wall as Andrea joined a beautiful brunette that she addressed as Kate and a pretty blonde she called Liz. They were all quite attractive, but as the class progressed, their personalities also became apparent.

Andrea was a scrappy spitfire, Liz seemed cool, controlled and quite capable of delivering a lethal blow to any assailant, and Kate was a smiling, laughing girl, who seemed quite squeamish about violence. But it was hard not to like Kate. She was enthusiastic, if not very effective. Hopefully, none of them would ever have to actually defend themselves.

Andrea looked over at him every now and then, and he could barely take his eyes off of her. He really didn't know what to do about her. How much should he tell her? And more importantly how much information could he trust her with? The answer was very little. She was a reporter. She had a job to do. She wasn't going to leave something important out of her interview piece just because he asked nicely.

But even aside from the issue of the article, he didn't know what to do about her personally. She'd told him he could hurt her. He didn't want that to happen. He also didn't want her to hurt him. And that could happen, too. He hadn't let a woman get this close to him in a long time, especially a woman he hadn't slept with. But their emotional connection was as strong as the physical attraction, and in a few days she'd turned his life upside down. He couldn't imagine not seeing her again. On the other hand, where could any relationship with Andrea go?

No answer sprang to mind. He told himself to stop worrying about a relationship and focus on what he was going to tell her to hopefully derail her pursuit of his past. That was his most immediate problem.

He still hadn't figured that out when the class to an end.

He stood up as Andrea brought her friends over to meet him.

"Alex, these are two of my best friends, Kate Marlow and Liz Palmer."

"Nice to meet you," Kate said, shaking his hand with a warm smile.

"Hello," Liz said, her smile more speculative than warm. "Andrea says she's writing a story about all your accomplishments."

"Yes, and I'm her least favorite assignment," he said lightly.

"I never said that," Andrea said quickly.

"Maybe not in so many words," he conceded. "But we both know you'd rather be interviewing a politician or a medical researcher or someone who's contributed greatly to the world."

"I don't know what you've done for the rest of the world," Kate interrupted. "But you've given me hours of escape and pleasure while playing your game SpookCraft. In fact, I don't think I could have gotten through calculus without it. I learned more about algebraic equations playing that game than I ever did in school."

He smiled. "Good to hear."

"What is SpookCraft?" Andrea asked.

"It's a spy game," Kate said, surprise in her voice. "Alex has sold millions of copies of it. It's been around for seven or eight years now. You didn't know that, Andrea?"

"There are so many games," Andrea said defensively.

"Well, you should know that one," Kate told her. "It's one of the top sellers. I used to try to get you to play it with me in college. Don't you remember?"

"Now that you mention it, I do remember. I just didn't know that was one of Alex's games."

"Almost every game we ever played was made by Alex's company," Liz said.

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