If anything, the admiration in her eyes grew. Samara leaned forward, fully engaged in the topic. “What changes? Are you thinking of making the lateral move to clean energy?”
“Eventually. It’s not realistic to get out of oil completely, no matter how shitty I think the downsides are. But it’s a finite resource and eventually the world is going to wise up to that fact. Renewable energy is one of the fastest-growing industries out there, and I want Morningstar to be on the cutting edge of that wave.” He stopped short. “Shit, I’m sorry. I promised we wouldn’t talk business, and that lasted a grand total of five minutes.”
“This isn’t business. This is hopes and dreams.” She lowered her voice. “And secrets.”
He searched her face, but there was nothing but honest curiosity there. “Are you interested in clean energy?”
“Only distantly. I’ve been so focused on doing my job that there’s not much room left for the kind of research you’re talking about.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Beyond that, it’s not my call to make. I don’t head up any departments, and I’m not even part owner in Kingdom Corp. Employees might be the lifeblood of the company, but we don’t have much control about the direction it goes in.”
He started to press her, but stopped. No business tonight.
The waitress appeared at their table. As she went over the specials and wine selections, Beckett’s attention kept drifting back to Samara. The dying sunset painted her in shadows, making her beauty look otherworldly. He wanted to touch her, to bring her back to earth, to keep her with him always.
Slow down. You don’t have a right to ask her that, and if you do, it’ll ruin the night.
Tomorrow they would go back to the viper’s pit that Houston had become. He would track down Walter and put pressure on him in an effort to persuade the man to talk. Lydia would undoubtedly have some nasty surprise waiting for him. He’d doubled security on Morningstar before he left, but there was nothing stopping her from trying to bribe them away as well.
“Sir?”
He’d been staring instead of listening, but asking the waitress to repeat herself would just waste everyone’s time. “I’ll have the special with whatever wine you think would pair best.”
She hesitated but seemed to understand that he didn’t give a fuck what kind of wine she brought. “Sure thing.”
Samara took a sip of her water. “Where did you go this afternoon?”
“I went to see Elliott Bancroft.” It felt good to say it aloud, like he’d just removed a weight that had settled over him from the moment he decided to track down his aunt’s husband. It was a low move, something his father would have been proud of. He told himself that fact didn’t matter, but Beckett wasn’t sure if he believed it.
“What? You’re joking.” She set her glass down and leaned closer. “Oh shit, you’re not joking.”
“I need more information on her—and I’m not going to keep putting you in the middle.”
“News flash, Beckett—you’re putting me in the middle right now.” She picked up her cloth napkin and then set it down again. “Maybe this was a mistake.”
“No. Wait.” He held up a hand. “I’m sorry. That was out of line and I shouldn’t have shared it.”
“Don’t you see? It’s not about sharing or not sharing. You and she are diametrically opposed, and if you ask me to choose sides, you have to know which one I’m going to land on.”
He did. He wished it wasn’t the truth, but he did know. Beckett took her hand. “I’m sorry. Let’s pretend it never happened.”
“Fat chance of that.”
The waitress swooped in with their wine, not a moment too soon. Beckett’s was a bold red with faint spicy undertones. He waited for the woman to leave again before focusing on Samara. “When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?”
She hesitated, but finally relaxed. “I wanted to be a flight attendant.” She took a hasty sip of her white wine. “There was this commercial that played all the time when I was…I don’t know. Six or seven. I can’t even remember what airline it was for, but the flight attendants were pictured visiting these exotic locales and traveling around the world. It seemed like a dream come true for me—to travel and be paid for it.” She made a face. “And then I turned twelve and realized that flight attendants don’t make much money and they spend all their time being harassed by asshole people on the plane, which pretty much killed that dream.”
“That would do it.” He chuckled. Beckett took another drink of his wine and turned the conversation away from anything resembling their current troubles. No business. No Lydia. Nothing too close to what put them on this path to begin with.
It was easy being with Samara.
So fucking easy.
Without their roles as rivals standing between them, he found her humor just as tempting as her intelligence and her drive. They traded embarrassing stories from their formative years. Her sewing her own prom dress and going stag when her date didn’t show. His one and only game on the football team that ended with him getting into a fight with his own team’s quarterback. By the time they’d finished their meal, both were relaxed and he’d actually managed to
