Page 9 of Kiss Me Forever

"We've done well," he said. "As for the leap, I took a job at a game company."

"Were you really a janitor there?"

"I see you already know the answer."

"I only had about an hour to prep for this dinner, so I don't know that much, and I'd prefer to hear your story from you."

"I was hired as part of the cleaning crew, yes. I wanted to be in that industry and that was the only job I was qualified to do. Three months in, I became friendly with one of the tech guys. He let me sit with him when I was off work. I learned a lot in those sessions, and it was his mentoring that encouraged me to take some computer programming classes at the local community college. Soon I was giving him ideas, and he was creating them. The ideas turned out to be winners, and eventually the head of the company took notice. He gave me a real job on the development team, and that's when my career took off."

"How old were you then?"

"Nineteen."

"That's impressive. How long did you stay with that company?"

"Three years. At twenty-two, I wanted to launch my own game. I quit and created my own company. That tech guy became the head of my development team."

"So the mentor becomes your employee?"

"More like my partner. Cameron is brilliant and he now runs a staff of thirty-seven developers located around the world."

"And how many people does your company employ worldwide?"

"At last report, we were around three hundred and twenty-five employees."

She really wished she wasn't so impressed with his story, but he certainly had created an empire from very little. "Tell me about your family. I know that your parents were killed in a car crash when you were twelve. What happened to you after that?"

"I bounced around the system for a few months until they located my aunt. She took me in, and I lived with her until she died. When she passed away, I was eighteen and almost done with high school, so the foster system was not interested in me; I was on my own."

"That's sad," she murmured.

A curtain had come down over his gaze, and she couldn't read his expression at all now.

"It was a long time ago. To be frank, I'd prefer not to relive my past. A lot of people in this world have difficult childhoods. I'm not unusual in that regard. I think it's more important to focus on the present and the future."

"I can understand that. But my profile is about you, the man, and where you come from is important."

"I just told you where I come from. There's nothing else to say."

She seriously doubted that, but she could see by his stiffening jaw that she was not going to get anything more out of him right now. So she would drop it—for the moment. She looked down at her empty plate and stabbed her fork at the last roasted potato. With that gone, she leaned over to spear an errant carrot on Alex's plate.

His hand came down on her wrist in a harsh, unyielding grip. "Don't."

She looked at him in amazement, the intensity in his voice catching her completely off guard. "I'm sorry. Were you going to eat that?"

"Yes."

A look came into his eyes that made her catch her breath. Finally, there was emotion in those green eyes, and pain—a remembrance of something old, something that must have hurt him deeply. She didn't know what to say. His reaction was so out of character and in such ridiculous proportion to her meaningless act.

She cleared her throat, trying to ease the tension in his face. "Can I have my hand back if I promise not to trespass again?"

Alex looked down at her wrist trapped in the grip of his hand. He quickly released her. "I'm sorry. If you're still hungry, we can order something more. They make an excellent chocolate mousse here. Or carrot cake, that's always been my favorite."

Andrea waited for him to stop talking, and her silence forced him to look into her eyes. "Are you all right?" she asked.

"I'm fine. Do you want something else to eat?"

"No."

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