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“I’m not an It girl,” Jaci protested.
“You were engaged to a rising star in politics, you attended the same social events with the Windsor boys, you are from a very prominent British family.”
Well, if you looked at it like that. Could she still be classified as an It girl if she’d hated every second of said socializing?
“You did an internet search on me,” Jaci stated, resigned.
“Of course we did,” Shona replied. “Your ex-fiancé looks a bit like a horse.”
Jaci giggled. Clive did look a bit equine.
“Did you know about his...ah...how do I put this? Outside interests?” Shona demanded.
“No,” Jaci answered, her tone clipped. She hadn’t even discussed Clive’s extramural activities with her family—they were determined to ignore the crotchless-panty-wearing elephant in the room—so there was no way she would dissect her ex–love life with strangers.
“How did you get the job?” Shona asked.
“My agent sold a script to Starfish over a year ago. Six weeks ago Thom called and said that they wanted to develop the story further and asked me to work on that, and to collaborate on other projects. So I’m here, on a six-month contract.”
“And you write under the pen name of JC Brookes? Is that because of the press attention you received?” Wes asked.
“Partly.” Jaci looked at the bubbles in her glass. It was easier to write under a pen name when your parent, writing under her own name, was regarded as one of the most detailed and compelling writers of historical fiction in the world.
Wes smiled at her. “When we heard that we were getting another scriptwriter, we all thought you were a guy. Shona and I were looking forward to someone new to flirt with.”
Jaci grinned at his teasing, relieved that the subject had moved on. “Sorry to disappoint.” She placed her glass on a tall table next to her elbow. “So, tell me about Starfish. I know that Thom is a producer but that’s about all I know. When is he due back? I’d actually like to meet the man who hired me.”
“He and Jax—the big boss and owner—are here tonight, but they socialize with the movers and shakers. We’re too far down the food chain for them,” Shona cheerfully answered, snagging a tiny spring roll off a passing tray and popping it into her mouth.
Jaci frowned, confused. “Thom’s not the owner?”
Wes shook his head. “Nah, he’s Jax’s second in command. Jax stays out of the spotlight but is very hands-on. Actors and directors like to work for him, but because they both have a low threshold for Hollywood drama, they are selective in whom they choose to work with.”
“Chad Bradshaw being one of the actors they won’t work with.” Shona used her glass to gesture to a handsome older man walking past them.
Chad Bradshaw, legendary Hollywood actor. So that was why Ryan was here, Jaci thought. Chad had received an award earlier and it made sense that Ryan would be here to support his father. Like Chad, Ryan was tall and their eyes were the same; they could be either a light blue or gray, depending on his mood. Ryan might not remember her but she recalled in Technicolor detail the young man Neil had met at the London School of Economics. In between fantasizing about Ryan and writing stories with him as her hero inspiration, she’d watched the interaction between Ryan and her family. It had amused her that her academic parents and siblings had been fascinated by the fact that Ryan lived in Hollywood and that he was the younger brother of Ben Bradshaw, the young darling of Hollywood who was on his way to becoming a screen legend himself. Like the rest of the world, they’d all been shocked at Ben’s death in a car accident, and his passing and funeral had garnered worldwide, and Brookes-Lyon, attention. But at the time they knew him, many years before Ben’s death, it seemed as if Ryan was from another world, one far removed from the one the Brookes-Lyon clan occupied, and he’d been a breath of fresh air.
Ryan and Neil had been good friends and Ryan hadn’t been intimidated by the cocky and cerebral Brookes-Lyon clan. He’d come to London to get a business degree, she remembered, and dimly recalled a dinner conversation with him saying something about wanting to get out of LA and doing something completely different from his father and brother. He visited Lyon House every couple of months for nearly a year but then he left the prestigious college. She hadn’t seen him since. Until he kissed the hell out of her ten minutes ago.
Jaci pursed her lips in irritation and wondered how he kissed women whose names he did know. If he kissed them with only a smidgeon more skill than he had her, then the man was capable of melting polar ice caps.
He was that good and what was really, really bad was that she kept thinking that he had lips and that she had lips and that hers should be under his...all the damn time.
Phew. Problematic, Jaci thought.
* * *
Ryan “Jax” Jackson nursed his glass of whiskey and wished that he was in his apartment stretched out on his eight-foot-long couch and watching his favorite sports channel on the huge flat-screen that dominated one wall of his living room. He glanced at his watch, grateful to see that the night was nearly over. He’d had a run-in with Leroy, kissed the hell out of a sexy woman and now he was stuck in a ballroom kissing ass. He’d much rather be kissing the blonde’s delectable ass... Dammit, who the hell was she? Ryan discarded the idea of flicking through his mental black book of past women. He knew that he hadn’t kissed that mouth before. He would’ve remembered that heat, that spice, the make-him-crazy need to have her. So who was she?
He looked around the room in the hope of seeing her again and scowled when he couldn’t locate her. Before the evening ended, he decided, he’d make the connection or he’d find her and demand some answers. He wouldn’t sleep tonight if he didn’t. He caught a flash of a blond head and felt his pants tighten. It wasn’t her but if the thought of seeing her again had him springing up to half-mast, then he was in trouble. Trouble that he didn’t need.
Time to do a mental switch, he decided, and deliberately changed the direction of his thoughts. What was Leroy’s problem tonight? He’d agreed, in principle, to back the film and now he needed more assurances? Why? God, he was tired of the games the very rich boys played; his biggest dream was to find an investor who’d just hand over a boatload of money, no questions asked.
And that would be the day that gorgeous aliens abducted him to be a sex slave.
Still, he was relieved that Leroy had left; having his difficult investor and his DNA donor in the room at the same time was enough to make his head explode. He hadn’t seen Chad yet but knew that all he needed to do was find the prettiest woman in the room and he could guarantee that his father—or Leroy, if he were here—would be chatting her up. Neither could keep his, as Neil used to say, pecker in his pants despite having a wife at home.
What was the point of being married if you were a serial cheater? Ryan wondered for the millionth time.
Ryan felt an elbow in his ribs and turned to look into his best friend’s open face. “Hey.”
“Hey, you are looking grim. What’s up?” Thom asked.
“Tired. Done with this day and this party,” Ryan told him.
“And you’re avoiding your father.”
Well, yeah. “Where is the old man?”
Thom lifted his champagne glass to his right. “He’s at your nine o’clock, talking to the sexy redhead. He cornered me and asked me to talk to you, to intercede on his behalf. He wants to reconnect. His word, not mine.”
“So his incessant calls and emails over the past years have suggested,” Ryan said, his expression turning cynical. “Except that I am not naive to believe that it’s because he suddenly wants to play happy families. It’s only because we have something he wants.” As in a meaty part in their new movie.
“He would be great as Tompkins.”
Ryan didn’t give a rat’s ass. “We don’t always get what we want.”
“He’s your father,” Thom said, evenly.
That was stretching the truth. Chad had been his guardian, his landlord and an absent presence in his life. Ryan knew that he still resented the fact that he’d had to take responsibility for the child he created with his second or third or fifteenth mistress. To Chad, his mother’s death when he was fourteen had been wildly inconvenient. He was already raising one son and didn’t need the burden of another.
Not that Chad had ever been actively involved in his, or Ben’s, life. Chad was always away on a shoot and he and Ben, with the help of a housekeeper, raised themselves. Ben, just sixteen months older than him, had seen him through those dark and dismal teenage years. He’d idolized Ben and Ben had welcomed him into his home and life with open arms. So close in age, they’d become best buds within weeks and he’d thought that there was nothing that could destroy their friendship, that they had each other’s backs, that Ben was the one person who would never let him down.
Yeah, funny how wrong he could be.
Ben. God, he still got a lump in his throat just thinking about him. He probably always would. When it came to Ben he was a cocktail of emotions. Betrayal always accompanied the grief. Hurt, loss and anger also hung around whenever he thought of his best friend and brother. God, would it ever end?
The crowds in front of him parted and Ryan caught his breath. There she was... He’d kissed that wide mouth earlier, but between the kiss and dealing with Leroy he hadn’t really had time to study the compact blonde. Short, layered hair, a peaches-and-cream complexion and eyes that fell somewhere between deep brown and black.
Those eyes... He knew those eyes, he thought, as a memory tugged. He frowned, immediately thinking of his time in London and the Brookes-Lyon family. Neil had mentioned in a quick email last week that his baby sister was moving to New York... What was her name again? Josie? Jackie... Close but still wrong... Jay-cee! Was that her? He narrowed his eyes, thinking it through. God, it had been nearly twelve years since he’d last seen her, and he struggled to remember the details of Neil’s shy sibling. Her hair was the same white-blond color, but back then it hung in a long fall to her waist. Her body, now lean, had still been caught in that puppy-fat stage, but those eyes... He couldn’t forget those eyes. Rich, deep brown, almost black Audrey Hepburn eyes, he thought. Then and now.
Jesus. He’d kissed his oldest friend’s baby sister.
Ryan rubbed his forehead with his thumb and index finger. With everything else going on in his life, he’d completely forgotten that she was moving here and that Neil had asked him to make contact with her. He’d intended to once his schedule lightened but he never expected her to be at this post-awards function. And he certainly hadn’t expected the shy teenager to have morphed into this stunningly beautiful, incredibly sexy woman; a woman who had his nerve endings buzzing. On the big screen in his head he could see them in their own private movie. She’d be naked and up against a wall, her legs around his waist and her head tipped back as he feasted on that soft spot where her neck and shoulders met...
Ryan blew out a breath. He was a movie producer, had dabbled in directing and he often envisioned scenes in his head, but never had one been so sexual, so sensual. And one starring his best and oldest friend’s kid sister? That was just plain weird.
Sexy.
But still weird.
As if she could feel his eyes on her, Jaci turned her head and looked directly at him. The challenging lift of her eyebrow suggested that she’d realized that he’d connected the dots and that she was wondering what he intended to do about it.
Nothing, he decided, breaking their long, sexually charged stare. He was going to do jack about it because his sudden and very unwelcome attraction to Jaci was something he didn’t have time to deal with, something he didn’t want to deal with. His life was complicated enough without adding another level of crazy to it.
Frankly, he’d had enough crazy to last a lifetime.
* * *
Jaci stumbled through the doors to Starfish Films at five past nine the next morning, juggling her tote bag, her mobile, two scripts and a mega-latte, and decided that she couldn’t function on less than three hours of sleep anymore. If someone looked up the definition of cranky in the dictionary, her picture next to the word would explain it all.
It hadn’t helped that she’d spent most of the night reluctantly reliving that most excellent kiss, recalling the strength of that masculine, muscular body, the fresh, sexy smell of Ryan’s skin. It had been a long time since she’d lost any sleep over a man—even during the worst of their troubles she’d never sacrificed any REMs for Clive—and she didn’t like it. Ryan was sex on a side plate but she wasn’t going to see him again. Ever. Besides, she hadn’t relocated cities to dally with hot men, or any men. This job was what was important, the only thing that was important.
This was her opportunity to carve out a space for herself in the film industry, to find her little light to shine in. It might not be as bold or as bright as her mother’s but it would be hers.
Frowning at the empty offices, she stepped up to her desk and dropped the scripts to the seat of her chair. This was the right choice to make, she told herself. She could’ve stayed in London; it was familiar and she knew how to tread water. Except that she felt the deep urge to swim...to do more and be more. She had been given an opportunity to change her life and, although she was soul-deep scared, she was going to run with it. She was going to prove, to herself and to her family, that she wasn’t as rudderless, as directionless—as useless—as they thought she was.
This time, this job, was her one chance to try something different, something totally out of her comfort zone. This was her time, her life, her dream, and nothing would distract her from her goal of writing the best damn scripts she could.
Especially not a man with blue-gray eyes and a body that made her hormones hum.
Shona peeked into their office and jerked her head. “Not the best day to be late, sunshine. A meeting has started in the conference room and I suggest you get there.”
“Meeting?” Jaci yelped. She was a writer. She didn’t do meetings.
“The boss men are back and they want to touch base,” Shona explained, tapping a rolled-up newspaper against her thigh. “Let’s go.”
A few minutes later, Shona pushed through the door at the top of the stairs and turned right down the identical hallway to the floor below. Corporate office buildings were all the same, Jaci thought, though she did like the framed movie posters from the 1940s and 1950s that broke up the relentless white walls.
Shona sighed and covered her mouth as she yawned. “We’re all, including the boss men, a little tired and a lot hungover. Why we have to have a meeting first thing in the morning is beyond me. Jax should know better. Expect a lot of barking.”
Jaci shrugged, not particularly perturbed. She’d lived with volatile people her entire life and had learned how to fly under the radar. Shona stopped in front of an open door, placed her hand between Jaci’s shoulder blades and pushed her into the room. Jaci stumbled forward and knocked the arm of a man walking past. His coffee cup flew out of his hand toward his chest, and his cream dress shirt, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, bloomed with patches of espresso.
He dropped a couple of blue curses. “This is all I freakin’ need.”
Jaci froze to the floor as her eyes traveled up his coffee-soaked chest, past that stubborn, stubble-covered chin to that sensual mouth she’d kissed last night. She stopped at his scowling eyes, heavy brows pulled together. Oh, jeez...no.
Just no.
“Jaci?” Coffee droplets fell from his wrist and hand to the floor. “What the hell?”
“Jax, this is JC Brookes, our new scriptwriter,” Thom said from across the room, his feet on the boardroom table and a cup of coffee resting on his flat stomach. “Jaci, Ryan ‘Jax’ Jackson.”
* * *
He needed a box of aspirin, to clean up—the paper napkins Shona handed him weren’t any match for a full cup of coffee—and to climb out of the rabbit hole he’d climbed into. He’d spent most of last night tossing and turning, thinking about that slim body under his hands, the scent of her light, refreshing perfume still in his nose, the dazzling heat and spice of her mouth.
He’d finally dozed off, irritated and frustrated, hours after he climbed into bed, and his few hours of sleep, starring a naked Jaci, hadn’t been restful at all. As a result, he didn’t feel as if he had the mental stamina to deal with the fact that the woman starring in his pornographic dreams last night was not only his friend’s younger sister but also the screenwriter for his latest project.
Seriously? Why was life jerking his chain?
His mind working at warp speed, he flicked Jaci a narrowed-eyed look. “JC Brookes? You’re him? Her?”
Jaci folded her arms across her chest and tapped one booted foot. How could she look so sexy in the city’s uniform of basic black? Black turtleneck and black wide-leg pants... It would be boring as hell but she’d wrapped an aqua cotton scarf around her neck, and blue-shaded bracelets covered half her arm. He shouldn’t be thinking about her clothes—or what they covered—right now, but he couldn’t help himself. She looked, despite the shadows under those hypnotically brown eyes, as hot as hell. Simply fantastic. Ryan swallowed, remembering how feminine she felt in his arms, her warm, silky mouth, the way she melted into him.
Focus, Jackson.
“What the hell? You’re a scriptwriter?” Ryan demanded, trying to make all the pieces of the puzzle fit. “I didn’t know that you write!”
Jaci frowned. “Why should you? We haven’t seen each other for twelve years.”
“Neil didn’t tell me.” Ryan, still holding his head, kneaded his temples with his thumb and index finger. “He should’ve told me.”
Now he sounded like a whining child. Freakin’ perfect.
“He doesn’t know about the scriptwriting,” Jaci muttered, and Ryan, despite his fuzzy shock, heard the tinge of hurt in her voice. “I just told him and the rest of my family that I was relocating to New York for a bit.”
Ryan pulled his sticky shirt off his chest and looked at Thom again. “And she got the job how?”
Thom sent him a what-the-hell look. “Her agent submitted her script, our freelance reader read it, then Wes, then me, then you read the script. We all liked it but you fell in love with it! Light coming on yet?”
Ryan looked toward the window, unable to refute Thom’s words. He’d loved Jaci’s script, had read it over and over, feeling that tingle of excitement every time. It was an action comedy but one with heart; it felt familiar and fresh, funny and emotional.
And Jaci, his old friend’s little sister, the woman he’d kissed the hell out of last night, was—thanks to fate screwing with him—the creator of his latest, and most expensive, project to date.
And his biggest and only investor, Leroy Banks, had hit on her and now thought that she was his girlfriend.
Oh, and just for kicks and giggles, he really wanted to do her six ways to Sunday.
“Could this situation be any more messed up?” Ryan grabbed the back of the closest chair and dropped his head, ignoring the puddles of coffee on the floor. He groaned aloud. Banks thought that his pseudo girlfriend was the hottest thing on two legs. Ryan understood why. He also thought she was as sexy as hell.
She was also now the girlfriend he couldn’t break up with because she was his damned scriptwriter, one of—how had Banks put it?—his key people!
“I have no idea why you are foaming at the mouth, dude,” Thom complained, dropping his feet to the floor. He shrugged. “You and Jaci knew each other way back when, so what? She was employed by us on her merits, with none of us knowing of her connection to you. End of story. So can we just get on with this damn meeting so that I can go back to my office and get horizontal on my couch?”
“Uh...no, I suggest you wait until after I’ve dropped the next bombshell.” Shona tossed the open newspaper onto the boardroom table and it slid across the polished top. As it passed, Ryan slapped his hand on it to stop its flight. His heart stumbled, stopped, and when it resumed its beat was erratic.
In bold color and filling half the page was a picture taken last night in the reception area outside the ballroom of the Forrester-Graham. One of his hands cradled a bright blond head, the other palmed a very excellent butt. Jaci’s arms were tight around his neck, her mouth was under his, and her long lashes were smudges on her cheek.
The headline screamed Passion for Award-Winning Producer!
Someone had snapped them? When? And why hadn’t he noticed? Ryan moved his hand to read the small amount of text below the picture.
Ryan Jackson, award-winning producer of Stand Alone—the sci-fi box office hit that is enthralling audiences across the country—celebrates in the arms of JC Brookes at the Television and Film Awards after-party last night. JC Brookes is a scriptwriter employed by Starfish Films and is very well-known in England as the younger daughter of Fleet Street editor Archie Brookes-Lyon and his multi-award-winning author wife, Priscilla. She recently broke off her longstanding engagement to Clive Egglestone, projected to be a future prime minister of England, after he was implicated in a series of sexual scandals.
What engagement? What sexual scandals? More news that his ever-neglectful friend had failed to share. Jaci had been engaged to a politician? Ryan just couldn’t see it. But that wasn’t important now.
Ryan pushed the newspaper down the table to Thom. When his friend lifted his eyes to meet his again, his worry and horror were reflected in Thom’s expression. “Well, hell,” he said.
Ryan looked around the room at the nosy faces of his most trusted staff before pulling a chair away from the table and dropping into it. It wasn’t in his nature to explain himself but this one time he supposed, very reluctantly, that it was necessary. “Jaci and I know each other. She’s an old friend’s younger sister. We are not in a relationship.”
“Doesn’t explain the kiss,” Thom laconically stated.
“Jaci, on impulse, kissed me because Leroy was hitting on her and she needed an escape plan.”
That explained her first kiss. It certainly didn’t explain why he went back for a second, and hotter, taste. But neither Thom nor his staff needed to know that little piece of information. Ever.
“I told him that she was my girlfriend and that we hadn’t seen each other for a while.” Ryan kept his attention on Thom. “I had it all planned. When next we met and if Leroy asked about her, I was going to tell him that we’d had a fight and that she’d packed her bags and returned to the UK. I did not consider the possibility that my five-minute girlfriend would also be my new scriptwriter.”
Thom shrugged. “This isn’t a big deal. Tell him that you fought and that she left. How is he going to know?”
Ryan pulled in a deep breath. “Oh, maybe because he told me, last night, that he wants to meet the key staff involved in the project, and that includes the damned scriptwriter.”
Thom groaned. “Oh, God.”
“Not sure how much help he is going to be.” Ryan turned around and looked at a rather bewildered Jaci, who had yet to move away from the door. “My office. Now.”
Well, hell, he thought as he marched down the hallway to his office. It seemed that his morning could, after all, slide further downhill than he’d expected.
Three
Jaci waited in the doorway to Ryan’s office, unsure whether she should step into his chaotic space—desks and chairs were covered in folders, scripts and stacks of papers—or whether she should she just stay where she was. He was in his private bathroom and she could hear a tap running and, more worrying, the steady stream of inventive cursing.