“How,” she asked him as the heat of his gaze on her kept her warm despite the cold rushing through the window, “do you do it?”
“How do I do what, exactly?”
Tatiana wanted to know so many things about him that, honestly, even she wasn’t sure which question she was asking in that moment. She wanted to know how he made her feel so much, so quickly, and with so little effort. She wanted to know what had put the darkness into his eyes, and the hard edges around his mouth where smile lines should be. She wanted to know how he could sit at a dining table with a family who wanted nothing more than to love him, but still hold himself just far enough away from them so that they couldn’t get all the way past his walls.
But since she also wanted to understand the businessman she’d observed during the past five hours, she asked, “How do you run at this pace, hour after hour, day after day, without getting even the slightest bit winded?”
“It’s my job.”
She held in an irritated sigh. She’d known he was going to be a tough nut to crack, hadn’t she? Heck, his mother had all but held up flashing neon signs of the words struggle and determination while they were making dinner.
“Yes, but it’s a job you no longer need to work at half as hard as you do, especially when you’ve already had more success than most people could ever dream of. Take Flynn Thomas and his company. I know you’re excited about the chance to work with him and he’s clearly brilliant at what he does, but I’m sure you could get him to take the deal without offering to give up so much of your own time and energy. And yet, you didn’t hesitate to give him your word that you wouldn’t hand him or his company off to anyone else.”
“The same thing could be said of you and acting—that you no longer need to work at it half as hard as you do when you’ve already had so much success. But that isn’t stopping you from taking on new roles, is it?”
Tatiana understood this was Ian’s way of trying to deflect her question away from himself. All morning she’d watched as he talked with employees and colleagues, and while he remembered the details of all their lives, he made absolutely certain that the personal conversations he had with people never circled back around to him. And she’d also noticed how careful all of those people were to stay perfectly within the boundaries he set for them.
When, she wondered, was the last time anyone had thrown caution to the wind and tried to smash through those boundaries?
It was tempting to try to do just that in the back of his town car while they were stuck in lunchtime traffic. But it was still too soon. Way too soon. Hurling herself like a wrecking ball at his stiff and starched-up boundaries within the first five hours of shadowing him wouldn’t do either of them any good.
Patience. Somehow, she needed to find a little of it.
So, instead of pressuring him to answer her question just yet, she answered his. “I keep taking new roles because I love what I do.” And her love for what she did for a living, at least, really was that simple. “Being an actor was always my dream. I love to make people happy, to know that I’ve helped them forget about their lives for a little while. Make believe, and disappearing into characters while in front of the camera, is just as much fun for me now as it was when I was a little girl wearing a tiger costume in my first commercial for a zoo. Because even when the outfit got hot and scratchy and all I could think about was yanking it off and throwing the stuffed head as far as I could, I already had enough passion and desire for acting to say my lines another dozen times until the director was satisfied. And what I remember most of all about that day is that when I was done, I felt like I’d achieved something really great. Not just filming a zoo commercial, but that I’d faced the challenge down...and won.”
It was precisely what she was hoping to do again with this new role. Just as soon as she figured out her character’s motivations, which would hopefully happen any day now. Especially considering the studio had tens of millions of dollars riding on her new film.
“Now that I think about it,” she said, “I don’t really need you to tell me how you do what you do. I think I can understand that well enough from my personal experience with my career. What I’d rather understand is why.”
Though he’d rather flippantly responded to her first question by saying it was his job, she didn’t think he’d do the same thing now. Already, she’d learned that while he wasn’t the easiest person to do business with, he was fair. And he respected a well-thought-out question just as much as he did a well-researched answer.
“I was twenty-one when I started Sullivan Investments.”
Over and over throughout the years, people had remarked to her about how much she’d accomplished at her age. Still, she was a little stunned to think that he’d begun his rapid climb to the top when he was two years younger than she was now.
“So this was always what you wanted, the same way I wanted to act?”
“No,” he said in a low voice, “not always.”
When he didn’t say anything more for a few long moments, she nearly reminded him that she’d signed an NDA and wouldn’t ever repeat what he told her now to anyone. Only, she suddenly realized, this wasn’t business anymore. It was no longer research.
It was personal.
“What did you want, Ian?” She gestured out the still-open window at the tall, shiny skyscrapers. “Before all of this?”
He was looking directly at her, but his eyes were slightly unfocused, as though he was looking through her into the past. “I wanted to play football.”
She’d seen him throw the ball, knew just how well it fit into his hands. “I’ve only shadowed you for a few hours, but one thing I already know for certain is that when you want something, you get it. So it wasn’t that you weren’t good enough, was it?”
His eyes cleared as he refocused his gaze on her. “I was good. But things changed and football didn’t make sense anymore.”
“Why?”
“How many times are you going to say that word to me?”
She didn’t hesitate before answering him with the truth. “Lots and lots of times.”
Irritation warred with amusement on his face, and she thought she saw the corner of his mouth twitch as he said, “If I answer this why, will you do us both a favor and not say it again during the rest of this ride, at the very least?” As soon as she nodded, he said, “I went into the investment business in college so that I could pitch in during a rough time my dad was having with his job. Once I started working, I quickly found out that I was good at it.”