Free Flirting with Danger by Siobhan Darrow Page B

started shouting Ted’s name. Standing up to him took a lot out of me, and I had pushed and fought hard to make a break with him, but now that I succeeded, I was petrified and lost. Ted’s black Labrador, Sonny, found me about an hour later, a very long hour when I didn’t know if I’d be found. Ted had been about to organize a helicopter search.
    Our relief at finding each other patched over the rift for a while, but no matter how afraid I had been on that mountain, I knew I had to go my own way. However, the more he sensed my unavailability, the more he wooed me. He once sent his plane to bring me down from Atlanta to his Florida plantation. It was a grand old Southern mansion fit for Scarlett, and that night Ted fancied himself Rhett Butler. He opened the twelve-foot doors of the columned white mansion in a silk smoking jacket, with the theme from
Gone with the Wind
playing on the stereo. He even has a Rhett Butler mustache and a rougish quality.
    After the fight on the mountain, we made a deal about my job: he was to keep out of my career, and I would stay with him. In a way, having Ted in my back pocket was like a nuclear deterrent. Everyone at CNN knew he was there, but I knew it was best if I never unleashed him. People who worked with me knew how hardI worked, but I knew that others assumed I got ahead at the company because I was Ted’s girlfriend. In the end, I concluded that Ted and I met at the wrong time in my life: my sense of self was still too fragile to get along with such a giant ego. But it was good for me to learn that money, power, and fame weren’t what I was looking for in a mate. It was character-building for a girl who had grown up on food stamps to walk away from a billionaire. I felt I would never thrive or grow in the shadow of that enormous presence.
    When I finally split with Ted, my mother was relieved. “He’s unsuitable,” she said on the phone to me. “I know a good mother would push you into this, but I just think you’ll be miserable.” My mother inherently distrusted anyone who made a lot of money, even if they were nice to animals. Ted has remained a friend. He and Jane Fonda, whom he later married, were both generous with me, often sharing their wisdom and experience.
    Soon after Ted and I stopped seeing each other, I met a young intern named Alessio at the copy machine—from chairman to intern. Alessio had chiseled good looks, the light features of a northern Italian, and a gentle nature. He had come from Italy to spend a few months at CNN. I helped teach him how to produce a show. In exchange, he taught me to roller-skate. We spent lots of lazy days wandering around Atlanta’s Piedmont Park and evenings cooking together. At first it didn’t occur to me that I was falling in love with him; he was just barely a man. One weekend I invited him to go to the beach with me. When he sat down behind me on the sand and pulled me close to him I could feel how much I wanted him as a lover. But I felt like a jaded older woman and worried whether he’d even know what to do. A few hours later he dispelled my fears.
    I was thirty; Alessio was twenty-one. I never expected our relationship to last more than a few weeks, and I think we stayed togethermuch longer because I had no expectations of him. I never believed it would work out, so I never took the relationship seriously enough to get scared. Of the two of us, in many ways he was the older and wiser. He was far more domesticated than I. One of the first things he did after moving in with me was get us matching silverware. Alessio believed in living well. He loved to quote his father: “Americans don’t eat; they feed themselves. They don’t dress; they cover themselves.” He taught me how to make a home. He brought me cappuccino in bed every morning. When he carried the TV and VCR into the bathroom during my bubble bath, I knew this was a man who understood me.
    Life with Alessio in Atlanta had a dreamlike quality. It was the