Or, was it simply that she knew him better than anyone else ever had...and understood that it was killing him to try to stay away when the very best moments of his life had been with her in his arms?

“I’m happy to give you a lift to Alaska if it will help you with your research.” Hell, he was miles beyond happy about the chance to spend more time with her when he’d missed her more with every hour that had passed since she walked away from him Friday night.

When she was buckled into the seat across from him, he let David and Linda know that they were ready for takeoff. Just as the plane began to taxi down the runway, Tatiana pulled out her script and scowled at it.

Though he had planned to get some work done on the flight, instead of taking out his laptop, he asked her, “How’s your work on your part going?”

Though her scowl deepened, it did nothing whatsoever to detract from her incredible beauty. “Not well. And I’m supposed to do a read-through of a couple of scenes with my male co-star on Thursday so that we can see where we are and feel each other out a bit.” She shook her head as the plane lifted into the air. “I can already tell you how he’s going to feel. He’s going to beg the producer for a new leading lady.”

She looked so upset that Ian didn’t think twice before offering, “Would it help if I read through it with you now?”

Her eyes widened with surprise. “That would be amazing.”

Ian had to move to the seat beside her so that they could share her script. Lord, he thought as he breathed in her scent, it was good to be close to her again. So damned good.

“I’m Rose, and you’ll be reading the part of Aiden, the man who’s...” She lifted her gaze to meet his. “He’s in love with her.”

Her eyes were so green and so beautiful that he nearly forgot that he couldn’t kiss her.

“This is the scene where he finally tells her exactly how he feels, and she reacts badly.” Tatiana’s voice was a little breathless now as she told him, “Aiden leads off the scene when he barges into Rose’s office.”

“Rose.”

“Aiden? What are you doing here? Didn’t you get my message?”

“Did you think I’d just let you leave like that, with a note that said you were sorry, but you couldn’t be with me anymore?”

“I’m already late to my next meeting. I can’t do this now.”

“What about after your meeting, Rose? Will you finally admit that what we have is rare and beautiful and that you love me? Or will I have to come back again tomorrow and the day after that for you to admit it?”

“I do love you! But that doesn’t change anything. I can’t be that girl I used to be, the one you fell in love with. Not now that I have to manage all this. Not when so many people are depending on me to make sure they don’t lose everything if I screw this up. And not when, for the first time in my life I finally feel like I’ve found the place I’m supposed to be.”

“Do you think I’d ever want any less for you? Do you think I can’t see how well the suit, the office, even the pressure of it all, suits you? And do you think I’d ever ask you to give it all up for me? That I won’t love you anymore because you’re not the girl I first fell for?”

“You say that now, that you’ll love me no matter what, but just because it’s easy to say the words doesn’t mean it will be anywhere near easy to actually pull it off. People make promises all the time, but they rarely keep them. And I can’t risk everything here on a promise, on a hope that love will actually last. I just can’t. So, please, I have a meeting now, and I need you to leave. And I won’t change my mind after it. Not today or tomorrow.”

After they read through a couple more pages, Tatiana laid the script down with a sigh on the table in front of them.

“It sounds good. Why are you so frustrated?”

“Good. Not great. I swear, I know the script backward and forward, but I can’t get to the heart of Rose at all. If I can’t root for her, then how is the audience going to be on her side?”

In the same way that Ian analyzed every angle of a potential investment for a business deal, he figured it couldn’t hurt to try the same thing with this character she was so stuck on. “What’s your biggest issue with Rose?”

“Who would choose money over love?”

“Someone who knows just how hard it is not to have money. Someone who knows just how unpredictable love is, that it isn’t all roses and sunsets. Someone who can see the rhyme and reason to making money, but knows there isn’t any whatsoever to love. Someone who’s willing to believe in what she can count and add up, but who has only ever known chaos when it came to her heart.”

“Okay, I can see that makes sense, but this hero, he’s laying it all on the line. He wants to love her. And he’s a good guy. A really good guy. I still don’t see how I can play her so that it makes sense that she’d keep holding back.”

“From the part we read, it sounds to me like she knows the damage love can do. And she also knows that the sacrifice and compromise needed to make it last are bigger than a quick flash of lust and the promises some guy is making to her.”

“He’s not promising her just a quick flash of lust, though. He’s promising her all of him, everything, forever and ever. She’s got to see that.”

“No, I think all she can see is what she’s learned from her own life, her own previous experience with people who made promises they never kept. And now it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than some guy saying he loves her to make her take that risk again. Whereas if she keeps her focus on money and business and how hard and risky it is to take on such a big company with so little experience, she figures she can at least minimize that part of the risk in her life.”

“She’s already a billionaire, though, now that she’s inherited the company. I get that she wants to prove herself, but I don’t understand where the risk is.”

“Even when you’re at a point where money will never be an issue again, it’s impossible to forget that helplessness. That’s why I’ve set up trusts for my family that they don’t know about, but that will kick in for each of them if they ever need it, just in case something goes wrong down the line. For any of them, for any reason, I need to know they’ll be taken care of.”

He didn’t realize just how much he’d shared with her until he saw her expression, but just then, the plane dipped and pitched from side to side. Ian had never been a nervous flier, but though he wasn’t too bothered by the turbulence, Tatiana had tightly crumpled the corner of the script in her hands.

Wanting to soothe her flight nerves, he told her, “I’m sure we’ve just hit a little rough patch and will be through it soon.”

He watched as she deliberately loosened her grip on the pages. “After all the flying I’ve done the past few years, you’d think I’d be better at it.” Turning away from the window as if by doing so she could forget that she was in a little tube shooting through the sky, she said, “Thank you for reading through this with me and talking it over. It helped a lot. More than anything else has so far, actually.”

Just then, the plane did another couple of hard bounces, and her face went white before she plastered on a smile. “I had a really nice chat with my sister this weekend. It sounds like she and Smith are having fun scouting locations in Ireland. Evidently, they closed down the local pub.”

Just hearing Valentina’s and Smith’s names had Ian’s gut twisting with so much guilt that even though Tatiana had told him she wasn’t going to bring anything that had happened on Thursday or Friday night up again—and he should have been glad for the reprieve—he had to know, “Have you told her about us?”

“I promised that what happens while I’m shadowing you stays between us.”