“Are you certain of this?” he asked lazily.
“Yes.”
“We shall see.”
“I think I’ll order room service. I’m hungry.” Her appetite had increased over the past couple of days. Maybe the awful morning sickness was finally passing.#p#分页标题#e#
“I have a better idea.”
“What?” she asked, feeling wary.
“Let’s go out.”
“I don’t know…” Being seen in public with a man of Dimitri’s wealth was always a risk for media exposure.
His eyes warmed with sensual lights. “We can stay here if you prefer.”
“I’ll get my jacket.” A woman had to know how to weigh her options and the risk of staying in the suite with a sexually charged Dimitri far outweighed her concern about being caught in his company by the media.
The muted glow of candlelight lent entirely too intimate an aspect to Alexandra’s dinner with Dimitri. He’d surprised her once again by taking her to one of the see and be seen restaurants so popular among the sophisticated New York social set. Dim lighting didn’t stop recognition and surreptitious glances from one table to another.
Alexandra tried to concentrate on the food in front of her and ignore her compelling dinner companion. Dimitri had ordered a much larger meal for her than she usually ate and she had surprised herself by consuming almost all of it. The same thing had happened at lunch that afternoon. If nothing else, sparring with her ex-lover seemed to spur her appetite.
“Xandra—”
“My name is Alexandra,” she said, before he could complete his sentence. “Xandra Fortune is dead.”
Something passed across his face when she made that statement, but in the dim lighting she couldn’t tell if it was pain or irritation. “You had no plans to go back to modeling after the baby was born?” he asked, conspicuously using the past tense for her plans, implying she had new ones.
“No.”
He studied her like a man trying to decipher a complicated puzzle. “Why?”
“There were many reasons.”
“Very cryptic.” He smiled in a way that used to send her pulse to hyperspeed. “Tell me some of them.”
She gave a mental shrug. Why not? This at least was better than arguing over custody rights and his insulting notion that now he believed her about the baby she should fall all over herself getting to the altar before he changed his mind.
“I want to spend more time with my baby than that type of career would allow and it would be too difficult to maintain two separate lives with a baby in tow. It was hard enough for me, but I think a life like that would be confusing and probably even frightening for a child.”
He mulled that over much longer than she thought necessary. “Explain to me again why the Xandra Fortune image.”
Had she explained it a first time? She couldn’t remember. She knew she’d alluded to it. “My mother did not approve of my working. Dupree women do not work,” she said in a fair imitation of her mother’s soft Southern drawl. “But it was my choice of career that really upset her. The idea of her daughter traversing a catwalk in front of her peers or worse, doing swimsuit or lingerie ads sent her into hysterics.”
“You chose to create a different persona rather than give up your desire to become a model?” he asked.
“I didn’t have a choice. It was either pick up a career or see my mother dispossessed and my sister thrown out of boarding school for nonpayment of tuition.”
“Explain this to me. Where was your father?”
“Dead.”
“That is unfortunate. You have my belated condolences.” The words were formal, but the emotion in his voice left her in no doubt to his sincerity.
“Thank you. He was a dear man, a fossil collector. Old bones interested him; business did not. Unbeknownst to the rest of us, the family had been living completely on credit for two years before he died.”#p#分页标题#e#
“When did this happen?”
“Six years ago. I’d just graduated from my last year at Our Lady’s Bower and thankfully the cousin of a school chum had shown some interest in my modeling for his magazine.” She took another bite of her lobster fettuccine. It practically melted in her mouth.
“Our Lady’s Bower sounds like a convent, or something.”
“It is. Dupree girls have been French convent educated for the last six generations.”
“No wonder it was so easy for you to adopt a French persona. Your accent is flawless, your gestures often gallic and your outlook quite European.”
“Yes.” She’d selected France for the debut of Xandra Fortune for those very reasons.