#1 New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods reunites a mother and daughter and demonstrates that real love knows no limits

Callie Smith’s quest for success far from her Iowa roots has caused a rift with her hardworking family. And with neither her Wall Street career nor her marriage going as planned, she starts to question the choices she’s made.

But when charismatic network president Jason Kane pursues her to save a failing soap opera, her life is soon full of more twists than a TV story line. Suddenly she gets to know a whole new side to her mother, and also has the opportunity to save a friend’s life. Most unexpected of all, she leaves heartache behind and tunes in to the love of a lifetime.

Praise for #1 New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author

“Sherryl Woods returns with her usual wit and style in this latest tale of romance and suspense. Don’t miss out on the newest winner by Ms. Woods.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Woods is a master heartstring puller.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Sherryl Woods writes emotionally satisfying novels about family, friendship and home. Truly feel-great reads!”

—#1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber

“Woods really knows what readers have come to expect from her stories, and she always gives them what they want.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Love, marriage, family, and forgiveness all play an important part in Woods’s latest richly nourishing, holiday-spiced novel.”

—Chicago Tribune on A Chesapeake Shores Christmas

“Warm, complex, and satisfying.”

—Library Journal on Harbor Lights

Temptation

#1 New York Times Bestselling Author

Sherryl Woods

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Friends,

For a very long time I reported on the television industry, and from that day to this I’ve been a self-confessed soap opera fan. Temptation was written with much love and respect for a genre of programming that networks have treated very shabbily in recent years.

More than that, though, it’s a story of a woman coming to grips with the many unexpected changes in her life, building a new relationship with her estranged family and forging even stronger bonds with the people she loves.

I hope you’ll enjoy this chance to catch up with a book that means a lot to me, and that Callie’s story will make you laugh, shed a tear or two and sigh with satisfaction as she makes her way into an even brighter future.

All best,

Sherryl

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

1

Jason Kane had finally seen a woman he wanted and no one in the whole incompetent world of television seemed to know who she was.

Okay, that was a slight exaggeration, he admitted as he replayed the brief scene. Surely some of those idiots on the set of Within Our Reach, his network’s failing soap, knew her. She’d just sashayed across the screen in today’s episode, wearing a formfitting uniform and displaying more shapely leg than any cop he’d ever seen on the streets of New York.

Unfortunately, they hadn’t deigned to give her a credit. He’d run through the crawl listing the actors a half dozen times to no avail. He’d checked with the casting people, who seemed to have a vague recollection of the walk-on part but not the actress who’d gotten it. He’d had his secretary on the phone to the producers for the past hour. All she’d discovered was that the woman seemed to be a friend of someone connected to the show. That someone, whoever it was, had called in a favor to get her the tiny, nonspeaking role. Given the lack of a Social Security number on record, she apparently hadn’t been paid a dime.

He played the video again, second-guessing himself, wondering if perhaps his initial reaction—okay, his first dozen reactions—had been aberrations. He homed in on her in the crowded scene, just as he had every other time. His body tightened with masculine appreciation, just as it had before. His pulse kicked in...again. His gut instinct, said to be the best in the entire television industry, went on red alert as he studied the close-up image enlarged to three times life-size on the giant screen before him. Her cute little tush and long, long legs might have aroused his most basic carnal instincts, but it was that image on the screen that had held his cooler, more professional fascination.

Her blond hair feathered softly around a delicate face so exquisite it would have had Marlene Dietrich in her prime weeping with envy. Her mouth was a lushly sculpted work of art. Her eyes, an impossible shade of vivid, summer-sky blue, were capable of such intense scrutiny he knew without a doubt that she could render a man weak with no more than a glance. In that bit part as a cop, every movement of her body, every expression that crossed her face, had hinted subtly of intriguing interrogation techniques.

So, he thought with yet another sigh of pure, heartfelt satisfaction, it hadn’t been a fluke. She had a rare quality that eluded most women, no doubt about it. Even more important for television, the camera was able to capture it.

At thirty-five Jason Kane was a connoisseur of women, just as he was of fine wine and gourmet cuisine. He’d had to cultivate the latter, but his appreciation of women was pure instinct. He admired their beauty, reveled in their intelligence and enjoyed their sensuality, though not always in that order.

In his capacity as president of TGN—Trans-Global Network—he had been surrounded by some of the most gorgeous stars in the world. He’d worked with some of the brightest and most ambitious females ever to grace an executive suite.

And he had slept with... Well, the indiscreet truth of it was, he had slept with more than his share of the most incredible, most inventive, most incendiary ladies ever to don—or slide out of—a negligee.

But not a one held a candle to the charisma of that anonymous blonde whose perfect face was frozen on the giant screen in his office. Mysterious and a little sad, she fascinated him even more deeply than she affected his libido. His determination to have her doubled. He would pursue her as relentlessly as he had every other important acquisition he’d made in his life. There was no question in his mind that he would succeed.

“That,” he snapped to the three junior executives who had been frantically scribbling notes all during the last-ditch strategy meeting to save the failing soap, “is what that show needs to drag it out of the ratings gutter.”

When no one else had been able to devise a plan to rescue the show, Jason had taken it on himself. It was exactly the sort of challenge he loved. Hiring an unknown and making her a star would be the kind of bold, unexpected move he’d built his reputation on.

“Work with the producers,” he instructed. “Get her under contract, long-term. Tell the writers I want her on-screen in a story line so hot it’ll give the censors heartburn. Tell ’em to get her out of that uniform.”

“But, boss, she plays a cop,” Freddie Cramer had the temerity to point out.

Freddie Cramer was a recent graduate of UCLA. He couldn’t seem to decide between Hollywood’s casual chic of jeans, open-necked dress shirt and jacket and New York’s more formal pinstriped suit. It was almost the only decision Freddie had trouble with. Today, probably in deference to the somber nature of the meeting, he’d gone with the pinstripes. Freddie was a big believer in ambience.

Freddie was also the only one in the whole bunch of junior executives who didn’t cower when Jason spoke. To everyone else’s astonishment and Jason’s private amusement, Freddie’s career at TGN was flourishing. He’d be a vice president before he turned thirty, maybe even before he hit twenty-five. If any of the others had had the guts to ask why, Jason would have explained that he didn’t need to be surrounded by people who shared his opinion. Heads bobbing dutifully in agreement meant nothing to him.

He wanted people to argue with him, to keep him on his toes. He might be the person who was single-handedly bringing this second-class network into ratings contention for the first time in its history, but he wasn’t infallible. Not that he wanted too many people to figure that out just yet.

Freddie Cramer didn’t question Jason’s intelligence. He honed it. He didn’t threaten Jason’s power. He ensured it. Jason prayed daily for more men and women of Freddie’s ilk to cross his path.

“No cop’s on duty twenty-four hours a day,” he shot right back. “If the writers can’t figure out a way to make it happen, fire ’em and get me new writers. This show needs a dramatic overhaul, and this woman is going to be the linchpin for it. I want her in a front-burner story line within a month. Any questions?”

Naturally it was Freddie who dared one, even as the others dashed for the door, scrambling eagerly to do his bidding. “Who is she?” he asked, bringing his colleagues to a halt, their expressions suddenly uncertain.

Jason, his gaze once more glued to the screen and that incredible frozen image, said quietly, “That, gentlemen, seems to be the million-dollar question.”

Whoever she was, Jason predicted with absolute certainty that not only her life but his own was about to be turned upside down.

The last time he’d felt the same surge of confidence and anticipation, he’d taken over an entire network. Surely one petite woman with an air of mystery about her would be a snap by comparison.

2

Callie Smith felt as if she’d been run over by a truck. Looked pretty much like it, too, she decided with brutal honesty as she gazed into the mirror above the sink in her minuscule bathroom.

Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from what felt like a solid two months of crying. Her skin was blotchy. Her hair had defied every weakhearted attempt she’d made to coax some curl into it.

Terence Walker peered over her shoulder and shook his head at her reflection. “Girl, you look sorrier than any cat Grandma ever dragged in.”

“Thank you for that pick-me-up,” she commented snidely to her neighbor and best friend. “Go away.”

Unfortunately, Terry was not the sort of man easily dissuaded once he’d set his mind to something. Callie had learned that the hard way in the months since she’d been dumped by her Wall Street brokerage firm and her husband in a depressing burst of downsizing on all fronts of her life. Terry was harder to shake than a nagging midwinter cough and, especially on days like today, twice as irritating.

“This can’t go on,” he declared. “You’ve been a mess since that jerk you were married to walked out that door and flew to the Caribbean for a quickie divorce so he could marry the bimbo in spandex.”

“That was six months ago. I’m over that,” she said blithely. It wasn’t entirely true, but she was convinced if she repeated it often enough, it would become true. Time, that reported healer, was crawling by at a snail’s pace, it seemed.

“And losing your job two months ago? Are you over that, too?” Terry pressed.

Callie frowned. It probably said a lot about her priorities that that blow had been even harder to take. She’d never depended on a man, even her husband, for her sense of self-worth, but her self-esteem and her ambition were inextricably tied together. Still, she said determinedly, “I will be.”

“Right,” Terry said with a familiar disbelieving note in his voice. “The bottom line here is, you have to pull yourself together.”

“For what?” she demanded, sniffling and patting ineffectually at her eyes with a damp cloth in an attempt to reduce the puffiness. She flatly refused to smooth on the hemorrhoid cream that Terry had assured her in a recent makeup tip session would work wonders. “I have no job. I have no love life. What’s left?”

“Living, for one thing,” Terry said. “Being forced to move back to Iowa and raise corn, for another. It could come to that, you know.”

That dire reminder was almost enough to shake her out of her lethargy. Going home to the Iowa farm she’d always despised was a fate not to be endured.

Born Calliope Jane Gunderson almost thirty years ago, she had been named for a musical instrument in what must have been the last bit of whimsy in which her stern, rigid, Iowa-bred mother had ever indulged. Callie had always suspected she’d been conceived in the back of her father’s pickup during the Iowa State Fair as a calliope played in the background. She’d never dared to ask either of her parents if some momentary lapse in judgment explained why two such wildly different and totally incompatible people had married.

Growing up in that strained household hadn’t exactly been a picnic for her or her younger sister, Eunice. They had led a cold, harsh, sometimes desperate life, made more difficult by the lack of joy or affection between her parents. Eunice had married a dry, humorless man just like their father and was currently withering away on a farm of her own.

Callie had fled at the first opportunity. She had gravitated to New York the way a thirsty man might crawl toward an oasis in the middle of the desert. She loved the neon, the frenzied energy, the vibrant culture, the ethnic diversity, the quaint boutiques. She hadn’t even minded the dirt and grime so much. After all, she had grown up on unrelenting acres of the stuff.

Now, it appeared, she was facing a return to more of the same unless she could haul herself out of this depression and pull her life together. If she hadn’t known that already deep in her gut, Terry’s constant reminders would have drilled it into her. She scowled at his reflection in the mirror.

“If this is your idea of cheering me up, it’s a good thing you didn’t choose comedy as a career,” she said.

“I didn’t choose comedy because I am a certifiable hunk,” he retorted immodestly, grinning back at her and preening outrageously.

It was true. He had been blessed with the kind of interesting, rough-hewn features and muscular body that made women want to throw themselves at his feet and beg for just one of his endearing, crooked smiles. Ever since he’d become the leading actor on Within Our Reach, they had been doing just that with such regularity that Callie was embarrassed on behalf of the entire female half of the population.

Didn’t they have lives? Didn’t they realize that the character Terry played was make-believe? Apparently not, if the mail he periodically carted home was any indication. They really, really wanted his well-developed and carefully maintained thirty-three-year-old body.

“Stop bragging,” she muttered, giving up on salvaging her face for the moment and turning away from the mirror. “One word to the soap opera magazines about your true sexual preferences and you’ll be back trying to find work in some pitiful chorus line off Broadway.”

“Discovering that I’m gay might force the writers to adjust the story line the teensiest little bit,” he admitted without taking offense at the threat of blackmail. “But I could draw a whole new audience.”

That was Terry, ever the optimist. No wonder he was wearing on her nerves. She wanted to sulk. In fact, she had been sulking off and on for most of the past six months. Just as Terry had diagnosed, it had begun with the departure of her husband and showed no signs of letting up. It was starting to put a strain on their friendship, if not her bank account, which was large enough to weather a few more months of self-pity if she stayed out of Bloomingdale’s.

She scowled at him again. “Funny, I’ve never heard that the networks were battling for that particular demographic.”

“I don’t see why. We’re young. We’re upwardly mobile. We buy cars and clothes and beer.”

Callie patted his sexily stubbled cheek. “Give it up. This is daytime TV we’re talking about. The culture of Middle America. They’ll never let you kiss on-screen again.”

As she headed into the kitchen to see if there was anything in the refrigerator that could still be considered edible, Terry trailed after her.

“Speaking of kissing on-screen,” he said, automatically leaning against the counter and striking a camera-ready pose that would have set most female hearts tripping. “Rumor has it that the network boss man himself has taken an interest in the show. He’s out to spice up the ratings with some new femme fatale. When the word came down today, all the actresses on the set were in an absolute tizzy. I’ve never seen so many cell phones in use at one place at one time. Every agent in town must have been getting a blistering earful. I can’t imagine why. At the rate soap time moves, it’ll be months before the character does more than say hello.”

Terry loved industry gossip. Since his long-time lover was bored to tears by what he considered to be the shallowness of television, Callie heard more than she’d ever wanted to know about Terry’s coworkers.

She knew, for instance, that the sweet little ingenue on the show had slept with almost every male in the cast and crew. She also had it on excellent authority that the man who played a pious, self-righteous physician with such dedication was addicted to cocaine. And the show’s Emmy Award−winning villain was the softest touch on the set, to say nothing of being an Olympic-caliber ladies’ man.

About the only thing she could say for being the beneficiary of all of this inside information was that it made the calls she received from Eunice almost bearable. Her sister was a die-hard viewer of Within Our Reach. Feeding her the show’s latest gossip usually kept Callie from having to discuss anything at all about Iowa.

Lately, though, it was getting harder and harder to put off hearing about her mother’s inability to cope with the farm now that her father was dead. Regina Gunderson was only in her fifties, but she had arthritis. She had a bad heart. In fact, she had so many ailments, Callie had given up trying to keep track of them all. No one had expected her to outlive her husband, but Jacob Gunderson had died of a stroke while harvesting last year’s crop of corn.

Ever since the funeral, Eunice had been growing more and more determined to get the message across that, unless Callie had a very good reason for staying in New York, she ought to be at home bailing out that failing farm and taking care of Mama. The loss of her job and the failure of her marriage were a pretty good indication that she was washed up in the big city, according to Eunice.

Although she loved her mother and felt bad about her plight, she shuddered at the thought of going home, then dismissed it for now. She’d find work sooner or later. In the meantime, she was more interested in dinner.

She sighed heavily when her search of the refrigerator revealed nothing more than a spotty banana and a suspiciously green chunk of what must once have been cheese.

When she glanced up, she discovered Terry regarding her speculatively. “What?”

“I have just had a very bizarre thought.”

“What else is new? Your thought process should be analyzed by some government grant,” Callie observed. She eyed him hopefully. “Did you bring chicken soup, by any chance?”

“No, you’re not sick. You’re depressed.”

“You used to bring chicken soup.”

“I used to bring gin, too, but then I saw how maudlin it made you,” he retorted. “If you mope around much longer, you can forget about little dabs of Preparation H. The best pancake makeup in the business won’t hide those puffy circles under your eyes.”

Callie frowned. “Is that supposed to upset me?”

“It would if you were thinking what I’m thinking.”

“I’m thinking we ought to order in Chinese.”

Terry shook his head. “Too much water retention. We’ll go out for a nice, healthy salad as soon as Neil gets home,” he suggested, referring to his live-in companion. “But that wasn’t what I was thinking. I was thinking that you could very well be the woman who has all the actresses feeling so threatened.”

Callie froze at the suggestion. She stopped rummaging around in her nearly bare cupboards to stare at him. Surely she couldn’t have heard him correctly. “Me?” she said eventually.

“Don’t look so shocked. Word is that the woman Jason Kane is so hot to sign had a bit part on the show that aired a week ago. It just occurred to me. That fits you, dearie. I’m sure of it.”

Callie had pretty much blocked the memory. The walk-on had been Terry’s bright idea, another of his maddening attempts to get her out of her apartment and back into life. Stumbling from four decorator-designed rooms on the Upper West Side onto a soundstage filled with set-designed rooms in the fictional town of Glen River Falls hadn’t struck her as a giant leap back into reality, but it had made Terry happy.

It had also killed ten hours that otherwise would have been spent bemoaning her fate and considering whether murder was too good for her ex-husband and her ex-boss.

The possibility that anyone had noticed her on-screen seemed completely ludicrous. Even Eunice claimed she’d blinked and missed it.

It hadn’t exactly been a star-making role. Callie had walked from one corner of the dreary police headquarters set to the other. She had accomplished it without falling on her face or tripping over a cable. She had paused on cue and given one long, lingering look toward the camera, a look that supposedly conveyed all sorts of dire portent. Aside from shoving Terry out of the way of an unscripted falling file cabinet, that was it. The sum total of her acting experience, now and forever, amen. She had every intention of keeping it that way.

“You’re delusional,” she said just as the phone rang. “Work on getting back to reality while I grab this.”

Five minutes later, head spinning, she hung up and stared at Terry.

“What is it, dollface? You’re white as a sheet. Was it bad news? Did something happen on the farm?” He pushed her none too gently onto a chair. “Head down. Don’t faint on me, please. As cute as some of those paramedics are, I really hate to cause a commotion by calling 9-1-1.”

He hunkered down in front of her, hands on her thighs. “Callie, sweetie, are you okay? Talk to me.”

“You...” Hysteria bubbled up in her throat. “You were right.”

“Well, hallelujah! The girl finally sees what a genius I am!” He gave her a puzzled look. “Right about what?”

“It appears that Within Our Reach wants to hire me back.”

“There now, see? I told you so,” he exulted. “For another walk-on?”

Still dazed by the obscenely generous offer that had been rattled off, Callie could only shake her head.

“Recurring status?”

Apparently not even the ever-optimistic, ever-supportive Terry had bought that stuff about her being a femme fatale. Boy, was he in for a surprise.

“On contract,” she said in a squeaky voice that would have made the producer who’d given her the news shudder. She gazed at Terry in total bewilderment. “It seems they want to make me a star.”

3

“What do you mean she said no?” Jason Kane shouted at Freddie Cramer, who’d opted for a very sober navy suit to deliver his bad news. “What kind of actress says no to a chance to become a television star overnight?”

Freddie swallowed hard but didn’t back up so much as an inch. “She’s not an actress.”

“Then what the devil was she doing in the middle of our soap?”

“It’s a long story. At least, she says it’s a long story,” he added in a rush. “She wouldn’t explain to the producer. She wouldn’t explain to me. In fact, she hung up on me. Twice.” He sounded stunned and a little hurt by her audacity.

Jason felt his blood begin to pump a little faster. The producers at Within Our Reach, despite their admirable award-winning track records, were wimps. He knew that firsthand. They’d been so busy bowing and scraping the last time he’d visited the set, it was a wonder they hadn’t tripped over their own feet.

Freddie was made of tougher stuff, but he was at heart a gentleman. If a lady slammed a phone down in his ear, he would take that as a final answer.

Jason was not so easily intimidated. He had learned long ago to fight fiercely for what he wanted. Nothing had ever come easily. He actually thrived on hard, demanding work. Resigned that this was going to be up to him, he held out his hand.

“Give me the address and the phone number for this—what did you say her name is?”

“Calliope Jane Gunderson Smith, according to the call sheet they finally found for that day’s taping.”

“My God!”

“She prefers Callie,” Freddie said helpfully.

“I imagine she would.” Jason tucked the address into his pocket and buzzed for his secretary. “Call this number and see if anyone answers. If they do, let me know and tell my driver to be down front in ten minutes.”

“You’re going to see her?” Freddie asked, looking a little awed that Jason intended to personally handle what was essentially a casting matter.

“I’m going to see her,” Jason confirmed. Obviously no one else could be trusted to get the job done. And experience had taught him that the element of surprise was a distinct advantage.

Assured that Miss Calliope Jane Gunderson Smith was indeed at home, Jason set out to make her his.

* * *

Forty-five minutes later, after belatedly realizing it would have been faster to walk the twenty blocks than to deal with Manhattan’s midmorning gridlock, he emerged from his limo. In front of him was an elegant old brownstone that had apparently been converted into apartments during the ongoing gentrification of the Upper West Side.

“Should I wait, sir?” Henry asked.

“Please,” Jason said, then added with grim determination, “This won’t take long.”

He stood for a minute and assessed the building, its facade primped up by paint and a recent sandblasting. Living there had to cost a pretty penny. It increased his speculation about Miss Calliope Jane Gunderson Smith, who had dared to turn down the opportunity of a lifetime.

He glanced at the slip of paper in his hand. Naturally the irritating woman lived on the top floor. There was no elevator. He trotted up the four flights of stairs and leaned on the buzzer, already thinking of what a pleasure it was going to be to tame her.

Correction, to hire her, he reminded himself sternly.

“Who is it?” a muffled voice inquired.

That voice had a nasal quality that was worrisome, but an image of that incredible face, which he’d viewed again and again since first discovering it, stopped him from bolting.

“Jason Kane.”

“Who?”

Clearly this woman wasn’t going to do a lot for his ego. Fortunately, it was healthy enough without her adulation, or even her recognition, for that matter. He reminded himself once again that he was here to hire her, not to seduce her. Although in this business the two sometimes seemed a lot alike, he conceded.

“Jason Kane, president of TGN.”

He thought he heard her sigh.

“Miss Smith?”

This time she did sigh. “Yes,” she conceded with unmistakable reluctance.

“I’d like to talk, if you have a moment,” he said, thinking of all the other women in the world who would have had the door open in a millisecond just at the sound of his voice or the mention of his name. The fact that he had to cajole this one into opening it so much as a crack increased his fascination with her. It had been a very long time since a professional or personal challenge had seemed so promising.

“I know why you’re here. I really don’t think there’s anything left to say,” she declared flatly, still from behind that firmly closed door. “I appreciate the offer, really I do, but it’s not for me.”

No was Jason’s least favorite word. He might say it a lot, but he rarely heard it. Rejection wasn’t even in his vocabulary. His determination mounted. “Perhaps I can change your mind,” he suggested with more modesty than his well-tested powers of persuasion called for.

“I don’t think so.”

“I’d like to try.”

“Really, there’s nothing you can say that all those other people haven’t said. That Freddie Cramer person was quite persistent.”

Persistent but unsuccessful, Jason thought derisively. Winning was the only thing he credited with any respect. “Five minutes,” he bargained.

“Will you go away, if I say no?” she inquired rather plaintively.

“Not likely.”

She muttered something decidedly unladylike. “Do you have some ID?”

He chuckled at the display of temper, even as he admired the caution. “Business card or photo ID?”

“Both, if you don’t mind.”

He slid his driver’s license and his embossed business card under the door. He sensed he was being studied through the tiny, round peephole. A minute later, he heard locks clicking and a chain being removed. His adrenaline kicked in as he waited for the door to open.

No stripper had ever been more adept at inspiring a man’s anticipation. His breath snagged in his throat as the door handle turned. His heartbeat escalated more than it had when he’d climbed those four flights of stairs.

And then he saw her.

Sweet heaven, she was a mess, he thought, his spirits sinking. If he’d been anticipating heaven, this was definitely hell. With a cool, practiced eye, he ignored the bizarre leap of his pulse and examined her critically from head to toe to see if the disaster was fixable.

She was wearing a once-red T-shirt that had apparently had an unfortunate encounter with some bleach. Her jeans were practically threadbare, which aroused his masculine curiosity but did little to accentuate her beauty. Her hair had gone way past the tousled look. Seemingly untouched recently by brush or comb, it appeared to have been styled by nervous fingers, or by an electrical jolt.

She looked bone-deep weary, cranky and about as far from sophisticated as it was possible for any woman to get. Crying, which he deduced was responsible for her nasal voice and her red-rimmed eyes, definitely did not become her. It also terrified him. He truly hated coping with a bawling female.

Worse, though, he couldn’t imagine a single, solitary viewer envying Calliope Jane Gunderson Smith.

Nor could he envision anyone wanting desperately for her to find true love in the arms of the soap’s hottest hunk—that Terence Walker. Walker looked a little muscle-bound to him, but the ratings among women eighteen to forty-nine suggested he was alone in his opinion.

At any rate, based on the raw material in front of him, it seemed unlikely that this woebegone waif, barely five feet two and unlikely to be more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, could be transformed into a femme fatale. What on earth had he seen when he’d viewed that video? For the first time in a very long time, Jason was forced to question his instincts. He was thoroughly unaccustomed to self-doubt. He didn’t like it.

Then he took a look into those cornflower-blue eyes. Even red-rimmed and puffy, they still sparkled, most likely with irritation. He lowered his glance to pursed lips so generous it was all he could do to tear his gaze away. Hope—and that something indefinable deep inside him—rebounded. He hadn’t been mistaken, after all. Fixing her up would definitely be a challenge of monumental proportions, the very kind he loved.

It was a good thing, too. He really hated being wrong. He’d always figured the day that golden gut of his failed him would be the day he needed to get out of the television industry and into something safe, maybe reopen his father’s plumbing business back in Virginia in memory of the man he’d loved and watched being destroyed by his mother. Given how he felt about the tedium of fixing leaks and installing copper pipes, he prayed daily that his instincts would last forever.

Before he could begin his persuasive sales pitch, Callie Smith crossed her arms over her meager chest and announced, “You’re wasting your time. I’m not an actress.”

“You were on Within Our Reach, though. Was that some sort of lark?” he asked, an unmistakable note of derision in his voice.

“Not exactly. Terry, that’s Terence Walker,” she added helpfully, as if he might be unfamiliar with his own show’s star. “He lives downstairs.”

Jason felt an odd surge of envy for the fortunate Terry. He couldn’t help wondering just how close the two of them were. Women all over the country were clamoring for more of the sexy actor. Were they after something on which Callie Smith already had a claim?

“Anyway,” she continued, “Terry thought it would give me something to focus on besides my unfortunate lack of employment and my divorce.”

Jason seized on the revelations. They didn’t answer his questions about her relationship with Terry Walker, but a woman with no income and no husband was a prime candidate for a contract with a couple of extra zeros tacked on to the offer. He promptly felt as if he were back on familiar turf. Negotiating a deal was right up there with good sex when it came to setting his adrenaline flowing.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he announced, noting the sudden dull flush that climbed into her cheeks.

She hugged her arms a little more tightly around her middle. “I’m not surprised. As I’m sure you can see, I’m really not star material.”

There was a note of defeat in her voice that made him feel like a heel for giving her a moment’s doubt about the future he envisioned for her. She might claim not to want the career he was offering, but she unmistakably needed the hope he was holding out.

“Not about hiring you,” he reassured her. “It’s just that negotiations this delicate, this promising, should take place over lunch.”

She drew herself up stiffly, pride radiating from every tiny pore. “I’m not starving, Mr. Kane. I can afford to buy food.”

“You may not be starving, Miss Smith, but I am. Talking money always makes me work up a big appetite.” He gestured toward the door. “Shall we?”

Her gaze went from his expensive, charcoal-gray suit to the white monogrammed cuffs just peeking out from the sleeves. She lingered on his Italian silk tie, then dropped her glance to the tips of his pricey leather loafers. The survey was so slow, so thorough, that Jason felt his blood heat, despite the fact that he knew its intent was more fashion assessment than seduction.

When she was done with her survey, she met his gaze. Her lips curved ever so slightly. “I really don’t think I’m dressed for lunch, do you?”

He grinned at the massive understatement and decided at once it was meant as a challenge. “You’ll do,” he said briskly.

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. People will think you took pity on some stray, homeless woman.”

“It will be good for my image,” he assured her. “Too many people think I’m coldhearted.”

She considered that, then nodded. “I suppose we could go to the place on the corner. The pizza’s not bad, though you don’t look much like a pizza kind of person.”

“Actually, I was thinking the Plaza,” he countered on sheer impulse. “The Oak Room, perhaps.”

“They’d throw me out on my ear,” she said with certainty.

“Not if you’re with me. Care to test it?”

For the first time since he’d walked into her apartment, he saw a little flare of defiance spark to life in her eyes. It transformed her. It also made him want to strangle the people responsible for dousing it in the first place. The husband who’d left and the boss who’d let her go were clearly fools.

“I’m game, if you are,” she said. Her chin rose a notch at the dare. “Let me slip on some shoes and grab my jacket.”

He wondered if she would also use the time to comb her hair and daub on some makeup. He was rather hoping she wouldn’t, if only because it would mean she was enjoying holding his feet to the fire.

Sure enough, she returned in minutes wearing worn-out, red high-top sneakers and a too-large baseball jacket, but no makeup. He couldn’t tell about her hair because she’d also added a baseball cap. He noticed the jacket and cap were for two highly competitive National League teams.

“Is that why your marriage ended?” he inquired, gesturing toward the team insignias.

An honest-to-God grin spread across her face. “It should have been a hint, shouldn’t it? Actually, the marriage ended over something far more serious....”

She allowed the thought to linger long enough for him to conjure up all sorts of dire scenarios of incompatibility before she added, “My use of his razor.”

Oddly relieved by the flip explanation, Jason nodded. “Definitely a breach of marital etiquette, all right.”

“He’s lucky I didn’t use it on his throat when I found out about the other woman,” she murmured, slamming her door emphatically and twisting the various keys in the locks with visible anger.

“Touché,” Jason said, thinking the man truly had been an idiot to walk away from a woman with such fire.

Downstairs, he ushered her across the street to his limo. His longtime driver swept open the door for her without so much as a blink. Jason resolved to give him a very large bonus at the end of the month.

“The Plaza, Henry.”

That drew the tiniest hint of surprise, but nothing more. “Of course, sir.”

As they rode toward the famed hotel on Central Park South, Jason studied the woman seated next to him. Despite her initial resistance to the idea of going out to lunch with him, she was now seated as regally as any queen. She didn’t gaze around curiously, indicating this wasn’t her first trip in such a luxurious car. She exited the limo in front of the Plaza with the same sort of aplomb, bestowing one of those rare, intoxicating smiles on the visibly bemused doorman. The man practically tripped over his own feet trying to open the door for her. He pretty much ignored Jason.

Jason was suddenly struck by the possibility that this was Callie’s natural habitat, far more than any pizza joint on the corner in her neighborhood. He knew it when the maître d’ in the Oak Room nodded politely at him, but beamed at Miss Calliope Jane Smith.

“Ms. Smith, it’s been too long,” he said, clasping her hand in his. “We’ve missed you.”

She beamed at him. “Thank you, Charles. It’s good to see you, too.”

“I felt terrible when I heard what happened, just terrible.”

Jason had no idea if the man was referring to the loss of her job or her divorce. Maybe the remark had been all-encompassing, which meant that Charles knew things about Callie Smith that Jason intended to find out before this lunch was over.

“Thank you,” she said as Charles led them immediately to the best table in the room. “I appreciate your concern.”

“You’re getting along okay?” Charles inquired, sincere worry written all over his face. “If you need anything, anything at all, I’d be happy to help.”

“I’m getting along,” she reassured him.

When they’d been left alone, Jason regarded her with amusement. “You knew perfectly well you’d never be thrown out of here on your tush, didn’t you?”

“It was always a possibility,” she corrected, an impish grin in her eyes. “Charles can be temperamental.”

Jason had seen the genuine warmth in the older man’s gaze. Whatever temperamental outbursts he might be prone to, Jason doubted one would ever be directed toward the woman seated opposite him.

After they’d ordered—the sensible fish for him, an enviably thick, juicy burger for her—he leaned back and studied her.

The dark circles under her eyes and the weary slump to her shoulders hadn’t vanished, but there was a bit more life in her expression.

“So, tell me how you and Charles came to be such pals,” he suggested. “He usually radiates polite indifference to the customers.”

“He mentioned to me once that he had a little nest egg put aside that wasn’t growing fast enough to suit him. I offered a few suggestions. He tripled it. He’s grateful,” she said succinctly.

“You have a nose for investments?”

“I’m a broker,” she said, then amended, “Or at least I was until a few months ago. Our firm downsized. I was one of the last ones hired, so I was one of the first fired. It didn’t seem to matter that I was making a fortune for the company and for my clients.”

Jason had to struggle to hide his astonishment. He tried to reconcile this bedraggled, ill-clad waif with the kind of barracudas who thrived on Wall Street in their expensive, stylish power suits. He couldn’t.

Still, this latest discovery told him he’d seriously miscalculated the kind of negotiations that would lure her into the TGN fold. Cold hard cash and a simple appeal to her vanity were exactly the wrong things to offer. He had to make her see the long-term future she could have, the example she could become with her combination of brains and beauty, the good she could do for charity, perhaps.

First, though, he had to see if she had exhausted all of the possibilities for another job on Wall Street. He didn’t want her dallying with acting only until something in her field came along. This part on Within Our Reach was intended to be more than a quick fix. He needed a long-term commitment from her, a year at the very least. If things panned out as he expected, the soap could go on forever with Callie as its leading lady.

“Surely there are other jobs for someone with your qualifications,” he suggested.

“Of course,” she agreed. “If I’d been willing to move to some other city and start over. Even my own firm offered me that. So did half the other brokerages I contacted within hours after being canned. The rest were firing staff of their own.”

“You didn’t want to move because New York is where it’s happening in the financial world,” he concluded.

She lifted her gaze to his. “It was more than that. Going anyplace else would have been admitting defeat.”

The response told him quite a bit about her determination and her priorities. He could understand that sort of drive, that sort of stubborn will. He’d needed it in spades for his own career climb.

“And, therefore,” he surmised, “anything less than another position in the thick of the action was not to be tolerated.”

“Exactly.”

He leaned toward her. “Shall I tell you what I see for you in the future?”

She regarded him with a wry expression. “Is looking into crystal balls one of your hobbies?”

“No, making things happen is one of my skills,” he declared flatly.

She shivered a little. Jason grinned. He enjoyed the effect such unbridled confidence had on people. “Gives you goose bumps just hearing such self-assurance, doesn’t it?”

She leaned forward then. “Oh, I definitely think you’re full of it, Mr. Kane.”

“Jason,” he corrected, deliberately ignoring the jibe, “since you and I are going to be very close.”

“I doubt that, Mr. Kane.”

He sat back and took a long, slow swallow of coffee, assessing his next step. “Are you a gambling woman, Callie?”

“I never gamble,” she insisted.

“And yet you played the stock market with millions of dollars of other people’s money.”

“I took informed risks.”

He grinned at the distinction. “Whatever. You spent your entire career researching companies, then placing bets on which ones would beat the odds, correct?”

“Something like that.”

“Do you know anything about TGN?”

“The basics, of course.”

“Know anything about the turnaround it’s made in the past three years?”

For an instant she looked uneasy. “That you’re credited with making it happen,” she conceded. “The story made headlines as well as reassuring nervous stockholders. The price of shares has climbed as a result.”

“What did that tell you about me?”

“That you’re smart and relentless,” she said at once.

“Exactly. Are you willing to gamble against a man like me getting my way?” he inquired lightly.

She sat up a little straighter at that, squaring her shoulders, lifting her chin. “You’re forgetting who you’re dealing with, Mr. Kane. I’m not an out-of-work actress. I’m no airhead. I’m not a pushover. And I’m not desperate.”

He lifted her hand, as soft and light as a bird, and touched his lips to the delicate knuckles. A surprising shudder swept through both of them at the contact. “A challenge only makes things more interesting, wouldn’t you say?”

She swallowed hard and practically yanked her hand from his. “You’ve guessed wrong this time, Mr. Kane. I am not an actress,” she repeated stubbornly. “I don’t want to be a star.”

“So you’ve mentioned,” he said without the slightest hint that he found the adamant rejection nearly as insulting as she’d clearly meant it to be. He’d trained himself to respond to subtleties, and her physical reaction to him told him far more than her deliberately dismissive attitude. She was susceptible to him and she didn’t like it. He, to the contrary, found her responsiveness illuminating.

He directed a look straight into those baby-blue eyes of hers and dropped his voice to a seductive pitch. “I think changing your mind is going to be downright fascinating for both of us.”

4

Callie was still regarding the huge, newly arrived arrangement of flowers from Jason Kane with dismay when the phone rang. She could barely find it—for all the flowers had been crammed on every available surface over the week since she’d had lunch with the arrogant, pushy network president. She couldn’t imagine what good he thought this display of excess would accomplish. Maybe he hoped she had allergies that would eventually drive her out of her apartment and into his stupid show.

“Yes, hello,” she said, then sneezed. Maybe she was allergic, dammit.

“Callie?”

Eunice, she thought with a sigh at the sound of her sister’s whining voice. “Yes.”

“You sound funny, like your nose is all stopped up or something. You haven’t been crying again, have you?”

Ironically, Callie realized she hadn’t shed a tear since her lunch with Jason Kane. It might be smart not to analyze that phenomenon too closely.

“No,” she said, “but you sound as if you have been.”

That was enough to encourage Eunice to launch into a familiar litany of her problems.

“It’s Mother. She’s driving me to distraction, Callie. She tried to run the tractor this morning, even though I told her over and over that Tom would come by as soon as he’d finished our fields and plow hers.”

“Has it occurred to you that perhaps she’d prefer to be independent, rather than relying on you and your husband?” It was the one area in which Callie could totally sympathize with her mother. She could imagine the kind of price tag that came with Eunice and Tom’s so-called help. Endless reminders of their generosity, no doubt.

“Of course she’d rather be independent,” Eunice snapped. “That’s not the point. She can’t do the work. She’ll wind up having a heart attack or something. And the other day in town she practically ran over Mr. Casey because she won’t wear the glasses the doctor prescribed. She’s fallen twice. Sooner or later, she’s bound to break her hip. I’m scared to death she’s going to burn the house down because she gets so distracted when she’s cooking that she forgets all about whatever she’s left on the stove.”

She heaved a put-upon sigh. “I’m telling you, Callie, I can’t take it anymore. You have to come home. She cannot be left in that big old house alone. And she certainly can’t come here. Tom would have a fit.”

Callie barely resisted the desire to scream, even though she suspected Eunice had plenty of cause to be anxious.

“It wouldn’t work for the two of us to be under the same roof, either,” she explained with careful patience. “In case you’ve forgotten the cold wars waged before I left home—Mother and I have never gotten along. She blames me... Well, who knows what she blames me for? Her whole miserable life, I suppose.” She couldn’t help the rare note of confusion that crept into her voice with the admission.

“I swear to you, Callie, if you don’t come back and take some responsibility for this, I’ll...I’ll...”

“What, Eunice? What will you do?” Callie prodded, tired of the guilt her sister had been heaping on her ever since the day she’d left Iowa.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love her mother. She did. But Regina Gunderson had not done anything to allow that love to flourish. Occasionally, in the darkest moments of the night, Callie regretted that their relationship wasn’t stronger, but she’d tired of making efforts that were never returned. She’d long since stopped trying to figure out exactly what she was to blame for. She’d just accepted that the gulf between her and her mother was wider than any Iowa river at flood stage.

“I’ll pack her bags and send her to New York, that’s what I’ll do,” Eunice threatened.

Callie sucked in her breath, stunned by the possibility that Eunice might very well do as she’d said. “That’s blackmail,” she accused.

“You bet it is. I’m telling you I am at the end of my rope. It would be one thing if she were the least little bit grateful, but she’s not. Tom’s about had it, too, and you know what a saint he’s been about helping out ever since Daddy died. I’m not ruining my marriage over this.”

It was not the first time Eunice had declared her marriage on the brink of disaster. If it wasn’t their mother’s demanding, ungrateful attitude, then it was the failure of the corn crop or the lousy supper Eunice had fixed because she was too tired to stand in front of the stove for an hour.

Callie could have told her that Tom Foster was a selfish pig, who liked to throw his weight around just to keep his wife in a constant state of terror, but she kept silent. That was one realization her sister was going to have to come to all on her own. She wouldn’t welcome Callie’s observations or her advice.

“Give me a couple of days,” she said. “I’ll think of something to help Mother.”

Jason Kane’s job offer flashed through her mind. The money would offer a solution, a way to pay for a competent farmhand, she thought, then dismissed the idea as ridiculous. She was not an actress. It was absurd to think about wasting all of her education, all of her experience in business, to prance around playing a cop.

Maybe she was more Regina Gunderson’s daughter than she’d ever realized. She could just imagine her mother’s reaction to her choosing a frivolous career like acting, rather than something solid and dependable. In their family the sternest of work ethics had prevailed. A career in make-believe hardly qualified.

No, taking that job was out of the question. Resisting Jason Kane and all of his considerable powers of persuasion was essential, too. He was clearly a give-him-an-inch-he’d-take-a-mile kind of man. There had to be another way.

“Maybe we could sell most of the land,” she began.

“Mother wouldn’t hear of it,” Eunice declared before she could finish the thought.

“She might have to,” Callie said grimly. “Especially if it meant she could keep the house and hire someone to help out.”

“But that land is our inheritance,” Eunice protested.

That, of course, was the real source of her sister’s objection, Callie knew. She and Tom wanted that land. Tom envisioned himself as some sort of land baron, the corn king of Iowa.

“Let me think about it,” Callie repeated.

“I’m giving you until the end of the week, then, so help me, Mother will be on the first flight to New York.” She slammed the phone down, apparently so Callie would get the message that she meant business.

“Well, that was pleasant,” she muttered to herself.

A key turned in her door just as Terry called out, “Knock, knock, dollface. I know you’re home because I can hear you talking to yourself.”

“Unless you have a very large bottle of gin with you, go away.”

Terry ignored the warning and came on in. “Uh-oh, Eunice must have called again,” he said, regarding her sympathetically. “Why don’t you change your number and not tell that witch?”

“Because that witch is my sister,” she said, unwilling to admit how much appeal his suggestion held, especially after a conversation like the one they’d just had. Maybe she’d move while she was at it, so no one could find her at all.

Terry sat down beside her, shifted her bare feet into his lap and began to massage them. This, she reminded herself, was why she put up with Terry’s tart tongue and his interference in her life. She sighed with pure pleasure, finally beginning to relax.

“I thought sisters were supposed to share some special bond,” he said.

“So they say,” she said wearily.

“On a scale of one to ten, how much guilt did she dump on you this time?”

“Seven,” she said. “But that wasn’t the worst of it.” She summarized Eunice’s threat to send Regina Gunderson to New York, if Callie didn’t come home to take over her care.

“There’s an obvious solution,” he said with such nonchalance that every muscle in Callie’s body tensed all over again.

“What?” she asked cautiously, though she knew perfectly well where he was headed. She’d taken a trip down that very road herself only moments before.

“You could become a star, darling.”

She promptly removed her feet from his lap and drew her knees to her chest. “Forget it,” she insisted. She might have been down that road, but she’d turned back.

He gestured toward Jason Kane’s latest floral offering. “Am I wrong or is Mr. Kane still in hot pursuit?”

“So it seems.”

“Would it be so terrible seeing your face on the cover of all the soap opera publications? Would it offend your sensibilities to be envied by several million women because you get something they all want—namely, me.”

“I already have you.”

He leered at her suggestively. “Who knows, a couple of love scenes with you, and I might go straight.”

She scowled at him. “I know for a fact that sexier women than I have tried and failed. Besides, you and Neil have a better relationship than most heterosexual couples I know. Why would I want to interfere with that?”

“The challenge, of course.” He regarded her speculatively. “Unless you’d prefer the challenge of getting Jason Kane’s pants off, something I hear is not all that difficult, by the way. Be careful with that one, dollface. He’s wicked.”

Callie prayed she wasn’t blushing, since that very idea had crossed her mind a time or two over lunch. The reaction had stunned her. She’d been pretty much convinced that all men were lower than slime ever since her divorce. Not that she intended to admit that Jason Kane had stirred any sort of response at all, especially to a man who would use it against her every chance he got. Badgering and blabbing were two of Terry’s less attractive traits.

“I am not interested in getting anybody’s pants off,” she said adamantly. “And aren’t we getting a little far off the subject?”

“Which is?”

“What to do about my mother.”

“I thought that was what we were talking about. If you become a rich, successful star, you’ll be able to set your mother up with twenty-four-hour companions, if that’s what she needs. You’ll be able to hire some big burly guy to run the farm.”

Terry seemed unduly fascinated by the latter. Callie shook her head. “You are such a fraud. I can’t imagine how Neil puts up with you.”

“That’s personal, darling. Now, come on, say you’ll at least give serious consideration to Jason Kane’s offer. If I have to do one more love scene with Penelope Frogface—”

“Her name is Frontier,” Callie chided.

“Whatever. She wears too damned much Giorgio. One of these days I’m going to start sneezing and never stop. They’ll have to close down the set and have it fumigated before I’ll go back to work. It’s up to you to save us all from that.”

“It is not up to me to do any such thing.”

“Besides that, a good friend would want to help out,” he added slyly.

Callie eyed him warily. “With what?” she asked, certain that the subject had slipped away from excessive perfume.

“I seem to be getting these odd little notes,” he confided with an air of mystery.

“Fan mail?”

His expression turned rueful. “Not exactly. My fans love me.”

Something in his voice alerted her that this was more serious than he was pretending with all of these enigmatic hints. “Terry, exactly what’s in these notes?”

He hesitated so long, Callie doubted it was just for dramatic effect. He seemed almost frightened to describe the notes aloud. “Terry?”

“I suppose someone totally paranoid might call them threats,” he conceded eventually.

Callie stared at him. “Threats? What kind of threats? Dear heaven, have you told the police?”

“Darling, first of all, I am not that paranoid yet. Second, I couldn’t possibly tell the police and risk the publicity.”

Since Callie had never heard of an actor being averse to publicity, she guessed that these threats must have something to do with Terry’s relationship with Neil. “Is someone threatening to reveal that you’re gay?”

“It’s nothing as overt as that,” he admitted. “But it sure is pointing in that direction. I mean, what else could it be?”

“And you think someone on the show is behind them?”

“It has to be. The notes keep turning up in my dressing room with no postage, even though they’re usually stuck in with the fan mail.” He looked vaguely shaken by the implications.

Callie thought of the file cabinet that had inexplicably fallen during her one scene on the show. “Terry, is it possible when that file cabinet fell it was no accident?”

The question shook him visibly. The color drained from his face. “Of course not,” he denied a little too heatedly. “I’m sure someone just tripped and knocked it over.”

“Who?” Callie asked reasonably. “No one admitted to it.”

“With the director carrying on the way he was, would you admit you’d caused an entire scene to be reshot?”

“No, I suppose not, but what if—”

“Forget it. The letters are probably nothing.”

“Then why did you bring them up?”

“Why else? To get you to take the job,” he said airily. His expression sobered. “Of course, just in case I’m wrong, you really would be doing me a huge favor if you came to work on the show and helped me figure out who’s behind this.”

It seemed everyone had new career plans for her. “I’m a stockbroker, not a private eye,” she reminded him.

“But you’d be playing a cop,” he said, as if that automatically would give her the requisite investigative skills. Terry had long since blurred the distinction between reality and fiction.

Callie groaned. She could tell he was dead serious about this. She wanted to help him, she really did.

“Terry, I’m having enough trouble with my own life without worrying about the little blips shaking up your serenity. If you think this is serious, you have to tell a real cop, not some pseudo-cop being played by a pseudo-actress.”

“Sweetie, I know your problems are real, but at least you have a solution right in front of you.” He plucked a business card out of his pocket and held it out. “The answer to your prayers is only a phone call away.”

Callie eyed the card warily. “Unless that card belongs to a good psychiatrist, I don’t want any part of it.”

“Next best thing,” he assured her. “A network president with the power to whisk away all your problems, answer all your prayers. Sort of a combination shrink and priest.”

“How much did he pay you to do the commercial for him?” she inquired irritably just as the doorbell rang.

Terry jumped up before she could budge. “Not nearly as much as he paid me to see that he got in here to talk to you tonight,” he admitted, flinging open the door to reveal a casually attired, devastatingly handsome Jason Kane on the doorstep. “Bye-bye, sweetie.” He turned and winked at her. “You, too, Callie.”

“Quite an exit,” Jason said, standing just inside the open doorway as if he actually meant to give her a choice about whether he stayed or went.

“Quite an entrance,” she retorted. “I’m not sure which of you has better timing.”

Hands shoved in his pockets, Jason rocked back on his heels and surveyed the room. “I see you got the flowers.”

“Yes, thank you,” she said politely. “I’ve been meaning to call.”

“But you were afraid to risk another round with my powers of persuasion,” he suggested.

“I was busy,” she corrected defensively, knowing that he was exactly right. She hadn’t wanted another encounter with the kind of temptation Jason Kane represented. It would be too easy to get swept up in the glamorous world he was offering her. Her inbred puritanical ethic required that success come through hard work, not some ridiculous fluke. She wasn’t too crazy about testing his impact on her senses, either. She hadn’t needed Terry’s warning to know that Jason Kane was a dangerous man.

“New job keeping you busy?” he inquired.

“No.” She had to fight to keep a defensive note from her voice.

“Volunteer work, perhaps?”

“No.”

“A new relationship?”

There was a dark glint in his eyes with that last one. Callie shuddered and reminded herself never to cross Jason Kane.

“I’m sure you have more important things to worry about than how I spend my days,” she said.

“Not lately, as a matter of fact. Recently you’ve become my number-one priority.”

“Why doesn’t that reassure me?” she muttered under her breath. She glanced up to find amusement dancing in his gray eyes. He was clearly enjoying this cat-and-mouse game they were playing. She found that extremely irritating.

“Don’t you have a home to get to?” she inquired testily, though she’d already gathered from Terry that Jason did not. Of course, that didn’t mean that he hadn’t once had a marriage that had fallen victim to the obsessive work habits she was beginning to suspect he had.

“Maybe some little kids who miss their daddy and are waiting to be tucked in?” she added hopefully.

He shook his head. “Nope. I’m free as a bird. I thought maybe we could take a little stroll over by Central Park. You look as if you could use a little fresh air, maybe some exercise.”

“Do you moonlight as a personal trainer?”

“Only when I anticipate great rewards for my efforts.”

“I don’t do aerobics.”

“You should. It relieves stress.” He shrugged. “Of course, so does sex.” He eyed her hopefully. “Would you prefer that?”

Callie met his gaze evenly. “I doubt you could keep up with me.”

He chuckled. “Now, that, Miss Calliope Jane Smith, is a very dangerous dare.”

He wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t guessed the minute the words were out of her mouth. She couldn’t imagine what had come over her. She did not engage in provocative repartee with men who were virtual strangers. She didn’t engage in such banter with anyone, except perhaps for Terry, but he hardly counted. He was her buddy. They’d been taunting each other from the day he’d moved in downstairs. It had driven her homophobic husband batty. She couldn’t classify Jason Kane in the same category as either Terry or the departed Chadwick Smith III. He clearly might take her up on her challenge. It was too late, though, to back down.

“I suppose that depends on which of us has the most at risk,” she countered.

“An interesting way of looking at it,” he said. “So, what about that walk? Maybe dinner. A little pleasant conversation.”

“About?”

“You are a suspicious little thing, aren’t you? Do you think I have an ulterior motive for showing up here?”

“Of course. You probably have those contracts you want me to sign tucked in your back pocket. You’ll wait till I’ve had a few glasses of wine, then pluck them out, hand me a pen and, bam, I’ll be yours.”

He held his arms up in the air. “Care to frisk me?”

She chuckled to spite herself. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

“You bet.” He grinned. “So would you.”

Callie shook her head, feigning awe. “I didn’t know it was possible for an ego to get so huge without exploding from all the hot air.”

“Perhaps you should make it your mission to cut me down to size,” he said, reaching down to grab her hand and help her up from the sofa. “Come on, it’ll be more fun than sitting here wallowing in self-pity all night.”

“I do not wallow in self-pity,” she grumbled, but she didn’t resist nearly as hard as she should have. She was still muttering about his arrogance as they passed by Terry’s open door two flights down.

“Behave outrageously, darlings,” he called out. “I’ll be waiting up to hear all about it when you come in.”

Jason tucked her arm through his. “I guess we’ll have to work really hard to make his wait worthwhile.”

“You wish,” Callie muttered.

She waited all evening for Jason to bring up the job on Within Our Reach, but he never once mentioned the show. Instead, he deliberately baited her about everything. There wasn’t an opinion she held about which he didn’t claim to believe the opposite. She was so riled up by the time they’d finished dinner, it was a wonder she didn’t have serious heartburn.

“Do you really believe all that hogwash?” she demanded when they finally got back to her building.

“Which hogwash is that?”

“All of it, every word that has come out of your mouth since we walked out of here four hours ago.”

Cool gray eyes attempted to feign innocence. “I can’t imagine why you would think I’d lie.”

“To make me mad,” she guessed.

“Never.” He grinned. “Perhaps to make you start living again.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Worked, too, didn’t it?”

Before she could argue that point as well, he turned on his heel and walked away, whistling lightly. She stared after him in confusion.

“What was that all about?” she murmured, touching her forehead where the skin still burned from the all-too-brief brush of his lips. What kind of sneaky, low-down tactics was Jason Kane using on her now? If he thought he could seduce her into agreeing to join the soap opera cast, he was very much mistaken. If he thought he could seduce her at all, for that matter, he was out of his mind.

Brave words, she thought as she sank onto the top step and wrapped her arms around her knees. She was trembling from head to toe, which pretty much told the story. Jason Kane could have her any time he put his mind to it.

Her only hope was that he had a short attention span. Perhaps if she failed to give in on any front, he’d tire of the chase.

Then she recalled that dangerous gleam in his eyes earlier, when she’d dared him about his sexual prowess. The memory made her groan. There wasn’t a male on the face of the earth who would ever walk away from a comment like that. She’d given him something to prove, something far more intriguing than the simple challenge of getting her to accept a job offer. No wonder he hadn’t mentioned the show all evening. She’d changed not only the rules of their game but the prize.

And judging from his smug expression as he’d walked away, he was ninety-eight percent certain that victory was within his grasp.

It was amazing how quickly life could take a totally unexpected twist and wind up with more complications than any soap opera script ever devised. Add in that earlier call from Eunice and her life was just about out of control.

5

Jason stared at the latest dismal ratings for Within Our Reach and muttered a string of expletives that had his junior executives turning pale. He scowled at Freddie.

“Is that new story line sketched out yet? The one for Ms. Smith?”

“Actually...”

He sensed he was about to hear a litany of excuses. “Is it or isn’t it?” he demanded.

Freddie drew in a deep breath. “The writers are a little concerned that they might be wasting time since Ms. Smith hasn’t even agreed to take the part yet.” His brow knit worriedly. “She hasn’t, has she?”

“Not yet,” Jason conceded irritably. “But she will. It’s only a matter of time.”

He thought of the evening he had spent with her just the night before. She was definitely weakening. Her startled expression when he’d kissed her, then the fleeting glimpse of wistfulness he’d caught in her eyes, had told him quite a bit about her current state of mind.

Of course, her resistance to him wasn’t exactly the issue. If he were being entirely truthful, he would have to admit that she was still pretty adamant about not taking the job. It occurred to him that she might be viewing it as some sort of windfall, perhaps even charity. Maybe he hadn’t explained the stakes for the network clearly enough.

The sponsors were already getting restless. He doubted if he could hold them off with promises for much longer. Another week or two of ratings like the ones he had before him and they’d be yanking their ads in droves or demanding price cuts that wouldn’t sustain the show’s costs.

Maybe he hadn’t fully expressed the bind he was in, the favor she would be doing him and her friend Terry, who stood to lose a job along with a lot of other people if Jason had to cancel the long-running series.

A smile slowly worked its way across his face as he considered this last. He’d seen for himself how tight Callie and Walker were. She was definitely the kind of compassionate, loyal woman who would do anything for a friend, maybe even take a job she claimed not to want.

“A few more days,” he told Freddie, exuding more confidence than he had felt only moments earlier. “Tell those writers by the time they deliver that outline, I’ll deliver Callie Smith.”

“Can you be a little more specific?” Freddie pleaded. “I think a firm date would reassure them.”

It was Thursday now. He glanced at his calendar and saw that he was tied up for the rest of the day, that evening and most of Friday. He didn’t bother checking Saturday or Sunday. Anything he had scheduled for the weekend could be canceled.

“Monday morning,” he said, his expression every bit as grim as if he were setting a deadline for a major military maneuver, which, in a manner of speaking, he was. He was about to launch a full-scale assault on Callie, the likes of which she’d never seen before.

He hadn’t looked forward to anything with more enthusiasm since he’d single-mindedly gone after the presidency of TGN. There were a lot of doubters at the network who’d said he couldn’t get that, either. Some of the most vocal were now working for very small independent stations in cities it was very difficult to find on a map.

* * *

When no flowers arrived on her doorstep on Thursday, Callie considered it a reprieve. When none turned up on Friday, she had to acknowledge the tiniest hint of disappointment. Apparently Jason Kane’s attention span was even shorter than she’d hoped. She indulged in half a bag of Hershey’s Nuggets to console herself. To her deep regret, the chocolate didn’t vastly improve her mood. All that sugar and caffeine just made her jittery.

What she really needed to boost her self-esteem was a job. Not a job as an actress but one in her chosen profession. It was time to aggressively go about getting one. She prayed that this wouldn’t be one more futile attempt like all the others she had made with compulsive urgency in the first forty-eight hours after being fired. She had driven herself into an exhausted frenzy trying to find something new, only to be left feeling like even more of a failure. A month later she had tried, and failed, again. Maybe the third time would be the charm.

Filled with renewed determination, she flipped open her address book to the listings for brokerage firms and began making calls to various friends she’d made in the business.

As it turned out, two more had been fired. One had taken a transfer to Cleveland. And the others were all too nervous about their own shaky futures to be of much help to anyone who might ultimately be competing with them for the last remaining broker’s job in the universe.

Callie finished the bag of candy, which did nothing for her mood and made her feel physically crummy to boot. At least her inability to find so much as a lead on a job took a backseat to her now-queasy stomach.

Then images of acre upon acre of corn flashed before her eyes as she envisioned the rest of her life. She really was a dismal failure, just as her parents had always predicted she would be. She had failed at marriage and failed at her career. Eunice had already seen it. Soon everyone in Iowa would know it, as well.

“Too many grandiose ideas,” her mother had said with her lips pursed tightly as Callie had waited at the train station nearly ten years earlier. “They’ll be your downfall, you mark my words.”

“You’ll be back with your tail tucked between your legs,” her father had added.

They’d been no more supportive of her marriage. Maybe they had seen what she hadn’t, that she could never fulfill the expectations of a man like Chad Smith, who’d grown up with wealth and power and class. Discovering that her replacement’s credentials had more to do with her swimsuit size and her pedigree than her wit or intelligence had left her bitter and disillusioned, a reaction that admittedly was out of proportion to his actual worth, net or otherwise.

Maybe she was doomed to live out her days all alone on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Her skin would burn in the unrelenting summer sun, wrinkling up until she looked like a raisin. She’d be reduced to chopping off her own hair with a pair of kitchen shears or letting it grow until she could wind it into a tight little bun like the one her mother had worn as far back as she could remember. She was doomed to wind up her life right where she’d started it, in the middle of a cornfield.

It didn’t take long for misery and defeat to spread through her like an eager virus. Tears trickled down her cheeks. The last remaining bit of spunk that had gotten her out of Iowa in the first place drained away in another soggy bout of uncharacteristic self-pity.

Naturally, that was when Jason Kane chose to make yet another of his unannounced entrances into her life. Callie stared at the door as he continued to pound on it and call out her name.

“Go away,” she shouted back in a voice that was husky from crying.

To her shock and outrage, she heard a key turn in the lock. Blast Terry to hell! she thought. The lousy traitor had given the man his key.

“If you open that door, I am dialing 9-1-1,” she threatened.

The door swung open. She picked up the phone. Jason smiled. It was a terrific smile, crooked, endearing. She forced herself to look away, focusing on the phone’s keypad as she determinedly punched the nine.

“You don’t want to do that,” he said softly, plucking the phone from her hand.

“Yes, I do,” she said stubbornly, trying to snatch it back. He lifted it beyond her reach.

“You won’t when you see what I’ve brought for dinner,” he promised.

“I’m not hungry,” she said with absolute sincerity. The very thought of food on top of all that chocolate was enough to make her stomach flip over.

Or perhaps that was its indignant response to the sight of Jason strolling straight past her into the kitchen, two plastic bags of groceries in his hands. She noticed he’d tucked her portable phone into his back pocket as a safety precaution.

Thoroughly disgruntled, she followed him. “You really are an arrogant son of a gun, aren’t you?” She didn’t wait for a reply before adding, “Has it ever occurred to you that I might have plans on a Friday night? Didn’t it cross your mind that you should call before dropping by with dinner?”

“No,” he said. “Where are your pots and pans?”

“No what?”

“No, I don’t think I’m arrogant. Just confident. No, it didn’t occur to me you had plans. You haven’t been out on a date since your divorce.”

“Let me guess, Terry filled you in on the sorry state of my social life,” she said irritably. She was going to strangle the blabbermouth. She really was.

“He’s a very accommodating man,” Jason said approvingly.

“Especially to the man who controls his paycheck.”

“It didn’t require blackmail, sweetie. He’s worried about you. He thinks I’m the answer to your prayers.”

“So he’s said.”

“In more ways than one,” Jason added.

“Terry is a hopeless romantic,” she acknowledged, then scowled. “I’m not.”

“That’s understandable,” he soothed, “especially given your recent difficulties in the marriage department.”

He made it sound as if she had an irritating malady that could be fixed right up with a couple of exposures to the right medicine—namely, him. Although she wouldn’t have admitted it for anything, he might just possibly be right. She was feeling marginally better even though the aroma of the garlic he was sautéing was enough to cause her to seriously regret following him into the kitchen.

“What you need is a distraction,” he added, as if he’d read her mind. “A little taste of success. Take me, for example. With a little effort, you could probably win my heart. I’ll play hard to get, of course. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m easy. The challenge and the ultimate victory will do wonders for your self-esteem.”

Callie shook her head at the glib nonsense. “Maybe you’d better let me worry about my self-esteem. Your methods seem a little self-serving.”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing for the past few months? Sitting around here worrying about your self-esteem? Where has it gotten you?”

She had no ready response for that. Nor was she willing to tell him it had actually been six months, ever since she’d found out about the bimbo in spandex, as Terry had rather inaccurately dubbed her. Women like that wore cotton or very expensive silk. And dumb as they might be, they would almost never be described by anyone as bimbos, no matter how outrageously they behaved. Avoiding such a label was one of the privileges of class, she supposed.

“See, even you can’t deny that I’m right about this,” he said triumphantly when she remained silent. “I think you need an expert.”

“And you’re willing to sacrifice yourself on that particular altar?”

He deftly chopped up an onion and tossed it into the skillet. Only then did he glance her way. The heated, wicked gleam in his eyes could have melted steel, turned it right into a little puddle of molten metal.

“It would be my pleasure,” he said softly.

Callie’s already tremulous insides did yet another nervous little flip. Why in God’s name did brash, bold men like Jason Kane turn her otherwise intelligent brain to mush?

“And what do you get out of this bargain?” she asked.

“Sweetheart, I should think that’s obvious.”

Her chin set stubbornly. She was determined to have him spell it out for her. “Not to me.”

His gaze heated another ten degrees. “Satisfaction,” he said in a slow, lazy way that gave the word more interpretations than Webster had ever dreamed of.

Callie sank onto the closest chair and tried to keep from reaching for a towel to fan her suddenly overheated skin. Her reaction to Jason Kane was disturbing. Very disturbing. She was actually tempted to go along with this bargain of his—her ingrained Middle American moral fiber be damned.

“Bad idea,” she muttered under her breath.

Jason chuckled. “But you are thinking about it, aren’t you?” He tucked a finger under her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. “Tell the truth.”

“No,” she lied very firmly, looking straight into those challenging eyes. “Never in a million years.”

He laughed. “Sweetheart, you are seriously overestimating your willpower or underestimating my powers of persuasion.”

It was quite possible, Callie thought with a sigh of heartfelt regret, that he was right.

* * *

Dinner wasn’t nearly the disaster it might have been, Callie decided as she sipped a glass of wine a couple of hours later. Jason definitely knew his way around a kitchen, even hers. He should have looked a little silly with one of her ruffled aprons tied around his middle, but he was far too masculine for that. The pink gingham had merely shrouded one of the more fascinating parts of his anatomy, a part Callie had no business looking at, anyway.

She jerked her gaze away only to encounter a pair of gray eyes dancing with amusement.

“See anything you like?” he inquired.

“I was just wondering whether that tomato sauce would come out in the wash,” she retorted.

“Should I strip down so you can find out?”

“You wish. Besides, it’s only on the apron.”

“Oh, I’ll bet if I looked hard enough I could find a splash or two on my shirt, maybe a little dab on my pants,” he said with a wicked glint in his eyes. “I’m a messy cook.”

He sounded proud of the fact. “Is that the technique you always use to get out of your clothes right after dinner?” Callie asked.

“You have to admit it’s more original than saying I’m going to slip into something more comfortable. Women have been saying that for eons.”

“Maybe the women in your circle. When they’re not at work, my friends are almost always wearing the most comfortable clothes they own.”

He surveyed her denim cutoffs and oversize T-shirt. “So I’ve noticed. Is that the full extent of your wardrobe?”

“Actually, I was once one of Bloomingdale’s best customers. I have an entire closet filled with outrageously expensive power suits. However, I almost never wear them when sitting around the house, especially when I am not expecting company,” she added pointedly.

“Does that mean if I plan to take you to the theater tomorrow night, I should tell you now?”

“Unless you don’t mind being totally embarrassed by your date’s attire,” she said without thinking. When the implication of his question sank in, she promptly tensed. “Are you asking me to go to the theater?”

He paused as if to give the matter some thought, then nodded. “Sounded that way to me.”

“Why?”

“To see a play?” he suggested, as if he, too, were struggling to understand what had motivated the invitation.

Callie scowled at him. “I meant, why you and me?”

“Gee, that’s a tough one,” he taunted. “How about because I have tickets, I don’t have a date and you seem to be presentable enough.”

Disappointed despite herself by the mundane response, she muttered irritably, “That sort of flattery will win a girl’s heart every time.”

He grinned unrepentantly. “I told you I was going to play hard to get.”

Two could play at that game, Callie decided as a matter of self-preservation. Jason Kane clearly had ulterior motives up the wazoo, but there was no point in missing out on the theater because of them. She was confident she could hold her own in any battle of wits with him if she concentrated very hard on not falling prey to his charms.

“Comedy, drama or musical?” she demanded as if it truly mattered. The truth was, she loved it all. Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway. She would have squandered half her income on tickets if she’d had the time to use them. She hadn’t been inside a theater, though, since she’d lost her job.

He tilted his head consideringly. “You strike me as a musical kind of gal.”

“Drama,” she retorted, to be perverse.

He plucked two tickets from his shirt pocket and held them out. They were for the Tony Award−winning drama currently on Broadway.

“Why did you get tickets for a drama if you thought I was a musical kind of girl?”

“Maybe I didn’t buy them for you,” he suggested mildly. “Or maybe I just knew you’d be perverse, say drama to spite me and I’d be able to catch you in your own trap.”

“Has anyone ever suggested to you that you have a devious mind?”

“Hourly,” he said with a note of pride. “And in most media reports describing my talents.”

“It’s not something I’d brag about if I were you,” she commented drily.

“So, do you want to have dinner before the theater or after?”

“Have I said I was going?”

“That’s a given. We’re talking about dinner.”

“After,” she said.

He grinned.

“Let me guess. You already have reservations for six.”

“Wrong. Reservations at Tavern on the Green for ten-thirty.”

Her expression brightened despite her attempts to control her reaction. “How did you know—”

“That it’s your favorite?”

“Never mind. Terry, of course.”

“In my business, it pays to do research,” he retorted, neither confirming nor denying his source.

“I thought you dealt with Nielsen and Arbitron, not the FBI.”

He chuckled. “Does the FBI have a file on your restaurant preferences?”

“If they’ve met Terry, they probably do,” she grumbled as Jason stood and held out his hand.

“Come on. Walk me out. I’d better let you get your beauty sleep.”

“Are you implying it will take eighteen hours or so of rest for me to look decent enough to be seen with you?”

“Actually, I was offering a polite excuse for my departure, even though I know you’d rather I stay here and ravage your body all night long.”

Indignation promptly roared through her. “Why you egotistical—”

“Tsk-tsk, is that any way to talk about the man who’s going to make you a star?”

“You’re not going to make me anything,” she shot right back in a determined effort to keep the game alive, even though she sensed it was all but over.

“We’ll see,” he murmured, leaving her still sputtering on the fourth-floor landing.

She leaned over the railing and shouted after him. “I’m a stockbroker, dammit!”

“You were a stockbroker,” he called from right outside Terry’s door, which immediately popped open.

“A lovers’ tiff?” Terry inquired.

“The first of many, I’m sure,” Jason agreed in a stage whisper designed to be heard in the rafters.

Callie wondered how much damage one of those many vases of flowers Jason had sent would do if she sent it crashing down on his head. Probably none. His head was clearly made of concrete.

It was a little late to change her mind and tell him not to bother showing up tomorrow night. Besides, why should she turn down a chance to see a play and to have an outrageously expensive meal at one of her favorite restaurants just to make a point? If he wanted to waste his money trying to bribe her into becoming an actress, so be it. It was probably all on his expense account, anyway. After the turnaround he’d accomplished at TGN, the network could afford it.

“Callie?”

At the sound of his voice, she peered over the railing once more. “What?”

“We’re out the door at seven-fifteen. I really hate to be late when the seats are front row center.”

“I am never late.”

“No last-minute primping.”

“I never primp.”

He grinned at that. “Can’t blame a man for hoping,” he said.

She would have grabbed the vase after that, but it was too late. He was already gone.

“Whew!” Terry murmured, moving into full view in the hall and gazing up at her. “Darling, if he weren’t so blatantly heterosexual, I might fall for him myself.”

“Maybe you should be ready at seven-fifteen tomorrow night, instead of me.”

Neil stuck his head out at that. “I don’t think so,” he said quietly. “If Terry spends any more time with people in television, his few remaining brain cells will rot. You go on your own date.”

“It’s not a date,” Callie declared.

“It sounded like a date to me,” Terry taunted. “Neil, what did it sound like to you?”

“Let’s see, you’re getting dressed up, going to the theater and then out to eat. Definitely a date,” he confirmed.

“A date is social, this is business,” Callie argued.

“Business is lunch at the Four Seasons,” Terry corrected. “A date is an attractive man asking an attractive woman to spend Saturday night with him.” He leered. “Al-l-l night long.”

Callie trembled despite herself. What worried her was the fact that Terry’s interpretation of Jason’s wicked intentions didn’t frighten her nearly as much as it should have. Somewhere deep inside she was apparently hoping that he was right.

6

There had been a time in Callie’s life when she’d taken for granted an evening such as the one Jason had planned. Tonight, though, she felt as if she were back in college, about to go on a date—okay, Terry and Neil had convinced her that’s what it was—with the most exciting, mysterious man on campus.

She retrieved a simple teal silk slip dress from the back of her closet, dug out her sexiest lace panties and matching garter belt, a pair of her sheerest iridescent hose and a strappy pair of high heels.

She spent a full hour soaking in a fragrant bubble bath, then fiddled with her makeup for another hour. Yes, she was primping, but it had nothing to do with Jason’s wistful taunt. She had too much pride to go out tonight looking like a frump. The possibility of running into a former client, her ex-boss or her ex-husband and the bimbo dictated being dressed to the nines.

At seven-ten, Terry and Neil declared her efforts a success. At seven-fifteen, Jason looked as if he might faint dead away. All in all, she considered the reactions very rewarding. Bring on old Chad and her pedigreed replacement.

A half hour later she was wishing she’d said no to the entire evening. Nothing in her life had prepared her for an evening out with a man as eligible and recognizable as Jason. Before they’d even entered the theater, their picture had been snapped more times than hers and Eunice’s had been for the family album back in Iowa.

“Who’s the woman?” several photographers inquired as they snapped away.

They directed the question to Jason, as if she weren’t perfectly capable of responding herself. She found that almost as irritating as the rude, intrusive nature of their behavior. Her natural instinct for privacy was deeply offended, which was one very good reason why she couldn’t imagine taking a job on a daytime television show.

Within Our Reach might be failing, but it still had millions of fans and hundreds of promotional opportunities. She’d seen what had happened to Terry. Everyone wanted a piece of him for this event or that interview. Some might consider all that attention flattering. Just the thought of it made her shudder. She watched Jason closely to see how he intended to handle all of the probing questions about the new woman on his arm.

“You’ll have to wait to find that out,” he informed the photographers with the taunting skill of a true marketing genius. He slid his arm possessively around her waist, his hand resting an indecent inch or two below where it belonged. “I expect to have an announcement any day now.”

She glared at him, but he was oblivious. He was too busy answering another barrage of questions. She was smart enough to see that adjusting the placement of his hand would only draw attention to it. The next thing she knew her butt would be on the front page of some tabloid. She would get even, though. She really would.

“Can’t you at least tell us her name?” one man pleaded.

Jason smiled down at her. “Oh, I think I’ll keep that to myself a while longer, as well.”

“A wise decision,” she muttered under her breath.

Taking the very broad hint, he reluctantly broke away from the throng of photographers and ushered her into the theater.

“Sorry about that,” he murmured as he led the way down the aisle to their seats.

“Are you really?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I suspect you of making absolutely sure that those men were out there tonight. What did you do, call every tabloid in town?”

“Why would I do a thing like that?”

His innocence seemed genuine, which meant he was the one who ought to take up acting. “To give me a taste of the glamour that awaits me if I accept your offer,” she suggested. “Maybe to give the Within Our Reach promotion machine a jump start.”

She regarded him with a scathing look. “And to give you a chance to cop a feel when I couldn’t protest without causing a scene.”

“Interesting theories,” he agreed. “But would I have dared that, given your tendency to dress down for most occasions? As for your being disinclined to cause a scene, I haven’t noticed that your moods are exactly predictable.”

She considered his response. It was true. She’d given him very little reason to expect that she would gussy up in her fanciest clothes tonight. As perverse as she’d been from the moment they’d met, she might very well have worn yet another pair of jeans and perhaps her red high-top sneakers. Would he have risked having photographers on the scene for that? She doubted it, although Jason had been turning her preconceived notions about him upside down from the moment they’d met. He wasn’t nearly as stuffy and driven as she would have guessed him to be from the articles she’d read on the internet after he’d left the night before.

As for her accusation that he’d used the opportunity to cop a feel, they both knew he didn’t have to be in public to accomplish that. He was sneaky enough to try it whenever he was of a mind to. To her deep regret, she hadn’t exactly been resisting him.

“Okay, maybe I misjudged you about this,” she conceded. “But did you have to make it sound as if you were about to make some big announcement about the two of us?”

That innocent expression came back. “Is that what I did?”

“Any journalist worth his salt in that crowd of vultures will have my name and the details of our association before tomorrow’s editions,” she predicted.

“I guess we’d better think of something to announce, then,” he said, as if he’d unwittingly trapped himself and was resigned to his fate.

“Such as?”

“Our engagement?” he suggested a little too lightly for her to take him seriously.

“Very funny.”

“It would fulfill their expectations,” he pointed out.

Callie shook her head. “I don’t think so. I refuse to fake an engagement just to get you out of a PR nightmare you created yourself.”

“Hey, I’m past thirty. It’s time to settle down. The engagement wouldn’t have to be fake.”

She regarded him grimly. “Oh, yes, it would.”

He sighed, though she thought he didn’t look quite as brokenhearted as she might have wished.

“Then I’ll just have to sign you for a major role on Within Our Reach,” he said. He patted his pocket. “I have the contract right here.”

“I love a man who’s prepared for all eventualities. Is the engagement ring in the other pocket?” she inquired acidly.

He grinned. “Care to feel around for it?”

“You wish.” She scowled at him. “As for that contract, it’s ruining the lines of your jacket. I suggest you rip it to shreds and toss it in the nearest wastebasket during the first intermission.”

He shrugged and plucked it from his pocket. “I’ll do it now if it’ll make you happy,” he said, tearing it in half without missing a beat.

The gesture was a little too accommodating. Callie suspected the papers were perfectly blank, just meant to taunt her.

“Let me see those,” she said, reaching for them just as the house lights went down.

“Too late,” he said as darkness fell.

For the next hour the best drama on Broadway unfolded before her eyes, but Callie couldn’t think of anything except those papers Jason had just destroyed.

No, she corrected. That wasn’t entirely true. She was reasonably aware of the arm he’d stretched across the back of her seat. And she was shivery from the skimming touch of his fingers on her bare shoulder. All in all, Jason was doing a bang-up job of getting under her skin tonight.

In the lobby at intermission she demanded to see the papers, piecing the two sections together to study the front page. It was a contract, all right. A very lucrative contract. Her mouth gaped when she saw the outrageous sum he was willing to pay her to star in the daytime show. It was less than he was paying Terry, but Terry was a seasoned actor with proven credentials in attracting viewers. She was an unknown who belonged on Wall Street, not some West Side soundstage. It reinforced her belief that television was too far from reality to be taken seriously.

She gazed up into eyes that were watching her perfectly blandly. “You don’t even know if I can act.”

“You can,” he said.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because for the past week you’ve been pretending to dislike me. The act was amazingly believable,” he assured her, then grinned. “At least to anyone who wasn’t close enough to look into those blue eyes of yours.”

“I wasn’t acting,” she swore.

“Want to bet?” he murmured, already leaning down to claim her lips before she could even form a protest.

Right there in the lobby of the theater, with tourists from Michigan and Texas and Ohio looking on with fascination, with dressed-up New Yorkers totally oblivious, he kissed her, slowly and methodically and convincingly. Weak-kneed, Callie clung to his shoulders. Her resistance turned to ashes, burned to bits by the incendiary nature of that kiss.

Okay, she decided when she could form a coherent thought again, maybe she did like him just a little. But she really hated herself for the weakness.

* * *

Sunday morning, after a night during which her torrid dreams had starred the infuriating Jason, Callie had just about decided she ought to be sentenced back to Iowa. Clearly she was too easily manipulated by a sexy smile and a little persistence. At some point, she had actually considered taping that contract back together just to earn another one of Jason’s devastating kisses.

The memory warmed her and made her want things she had no business wanting, especially with so many strings attached. Just as she yawned and stretched languorously, someone knocked. Since she wasn’t quite sure which of the males in her life was in possession of her key at the moment, she hopped out of bed and dragged on her rattiest old robe. She refused to give Jason the idea that she cared what he thought of her attire.

“Who is it?” she called out as she crossed the living room.

“Me,” Jason responded.

“And me,” Terry added.

“And me,” Neil chimed in.

Good grief, didn’t anyone sleep in on Sunday mornings anymore? She threw open the door and planted herself squarely in their path, as if that would bar them if they were intent on coming in.

“To what do I owe all this?” she asked.

“We were on our way out to brunch, when Jason came along and suggested we all go together,” Terry explained, not quite meeting her eyes. “Get moving, dollface. We’re starved.”

Somehow Callie didn’t believe for an instant that this could be explained away as innocently as Terry was suggesting. “You just happened to meet in the hall?” she asked skeptically.

“Cross my heart,” Jason swore.

“Ditto,” Terry said.

“Neil, you’re awfully quiet,” Callie observed. “Do you have a different version you’d like to share?”

Neil exchanged a highly suspect look with Terry’s boss, then shook his head. “Nope.”

“Satisfied?” Jason asked.

Callie supposed she was going to have to be. Based on prior experience, she knew a woman didn’t have a chance of getting at the truth if men conspired to keep it from her. Her ex-husband had kept quite a lot of truths from her. It had tarnished her views on the male of the species for all time.

“Give me ten minutes,” she said, turning away and leaving them to decide for themselves whether to wait inside or out.

When she emerged from her bedroom fifteen minutes later, she found them sprawled all over her living room furniture. Jason was settled in an easy chair, glancing through a magazine. Terry was stretched out on the sofa, eyes closed. Neil was perched awkwardly on a dainty chair meant for someone far smaller than his six feet two.

Callie gathered from the lack of clutter that Neil had spent most of the time tidying up as he did every time he walked into her apartment. Neil was compulsively neat, which probably explained why Terry retreated to her place so often. His own always looked as if it was about to be photographed for some interior-design magazine.

“Ready?” Jason inquired, glancing up. “Ah, I see we’re back to casual wear.”

Callie’s cheeks burned at the implied criticism. It was true, she had deliberately tugged on a decrepit pair of jeans that had been ripped or worn through in several places. She’d topped the jeans with a badly wrinkled T-shirt in a fetching shade of faded blue.

“The peekaboo effect is really quite enticing,” Terry observed. “Don’t you think so, Jason?”

“That’s certainly one word for it,” he agreed.

Callie frowned. “I don’t have to come along.”

“Yes,” Jason said. “You do.”

“Says who?” she shot back.

“Play nice, children,” Terry instructed. “We’re all going.”

He ushered them out the door with the skill of a parent dealing with a couple of squabbling toddlers. Callie was pretty sure she saw him glance at Neil and roll his eyes. She couldn’t say she blamed him. There was some evidence that he was dealing with a couple of stubborn, spoiled brats. Callie resolved to behave for the rest of the morning. It wasn’t Terry’s or Neil’s fault that she and Jason couldn’t spend more than twenty minutes together before tempers flared.

She was about to fall into step with Terry, when Jason linked his arm through hers and pulled her alongside him.

“You know why you’re so cranky, don’t you?” he inquired with a lazy drawl, pitched for her ears only.

She had noticed before that he lapsed into something bordering on a Southern accent whenever it suited him. “Where are you from?” she asked, hoping to divert his attention. She’d guessed from his comment that whatever was on his mind was likely to set her teeth on edge.

“Virginia,” he said. “Trying to change the subject?”

“You bet.”

“I don’t blame you. Acknowledging that you’re sexually frustrated must be embarrassing.”

Callie stopped in her tracks, causing Terry and Neil to come up short or run right over her. Hands on hips, she scowled up at Jason.

“How dare you!”

“Actually, I dare quite a lot,” he said. “Come on. You’re blocking traffic.”

She dug in her heels. “I wouldn’t go anywhere with you if you had the key to a buried treasure worth millions,” she declared flatly.

Terry groaned. Neil sighed heavily.

“Well, I wouldn’t,” she insisted. “I’m going home.”

Jason shook his head. “See what I mean? She’s frustrated.”

Terry regarded the pair of them worriedly. “Jason, could I give you just the teeniest bit of advice? Pointing out that Callie is sexually frustrated may not be the most diplomatic, gentlemanly thing to do.”

“No, it’s not,” Callie concurred. “Especially since it’s his fault.”

The last slipped out before she realized the implication. “Oh, jeez,” she murmured, covering her face with her hands as Terry murmured, “My, my, Mr. Kane. I gave you more credit than that.”

It was Neil who took pity on her. He tucked an arm around her waist and urged her forward. “Pay no attention to the two of them. They’re in television, you know. No class. No manners.”

“You’re telling me,” she retorted, scowling at her two tormentors.

Neil continued to soothe her with his sympathetically derisive analysis of their companions. Before she realized it, he had guided her down the street and straight to a table at a sidewalk café near Lincoln Center. Terry and Jason, apparently content to let Neil smooth over the troubled waters they’d stirred up, slid up to the table as quietly as the pair of snakes they were.

When Jason hitched his chair a little too close to hers, Callie shot him a venomous look. He rested his arm across the back of her seat, then tugged her menu over so he could share it. There was a cozy sort of intimacy to his behavior that truly irked her under the circumstances.

“Do you have any idea how furious I am with you?” she inquired curiously.

“About?”

“That little remark you made back there.”

“Just telling the truth.”

“Don’t you think the topic called for a little discretion?”

“What’s wrong? We’re among friends.”

“My friends,” she pointed out. “Why would you say something like that in front of anyone?”

He looked vaguely unsettled by her continued irritation. “Actually, it was a diversionary tactic.”

She stared at him blankly. “Diversionary? I don’t get it.”

“You will,” he said grimly.

“When?”

He glanced at the clusters of people seated around them, until he apparently found what he was seeking. “Now,” he said. “Over there.”

Callie followed the direction of his gaze and gasped as she saw a picture of the two of them kissing plastered across the front page of the Sunday edition of one of New York’s tabloids. The headline trumpeted the question Has Network Romeo Found His Juliet?

“Oh, my God,” she murmured, thunderstruck. That would certainly secure her a lot of respect the next time she went job hunting.

“It’s a really good picture,” Terry ventured.

Callie stared at him. “You’ve seen it?”

“I ran out and bought a copy as soon as Jason called this morning.”

“So this was a setup,” she said, glaring at the whole traitorous lot of them. She waved a finger under Jason’s nose. “You didn’t just bump into them into the hallway. You invited them along to protect you, didn’t you?”

“Actually, I was thinking more in terms of moral support for you,” he said.

“I’ll bet.”

“It’s true,” Terry said. “He thought it would be better for you to see it surrounded by your best friends, just in case you turned out not to be a publicity hound like most of the people in television.”

“We’re supposed to help you get over the shock,” Neil said, shooting a condemning look at Jason that made it clear whose fault he thought it was that she was in shock at all.

“It’s not so bad, really,” Terry tried to reassure her. “It’ll be forgotten by tomorrow. Remember that time the soap opera magazine reported I was having a steamy affair with my leading lady? No one even remembered her name a few weeks later.”

“That’s because you angled to have her fired for planting the rumor in the first place,” Callie reminded him.

Terry shrugged unrepentantly. “She couldn’t act worth beans, anyway.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Callie asked. “Send a letter to all the TGN stockholders and enclose a copy of the front page of the paper and suggest Jason be voted out of office?”

“An intriguing form of retribution,” Jason agreed, not looking the least bit panicked, probably because he owned a very large chunk of that stock himself. “Of course, I’ve long since convinced them that any time my name is mentioned, the network’s call letters are, as well. It’s good PR.”

“Sounds a little self-serving to me,” Callie contended. “It protects your butt since you seem like the kind of man who gets caught with his pants down relatively frequently.” She paused, then added, “Pun absolutely intended.”

“Maybe we should be thinking about a way to capitalize on this,” Jason suggested with just the faintest hint of caution in his voice as he watched Callie closely.

“I don’t think I like the sound of that,” she said.

“There’s bound to be a lot of fascination now that people have gotten a look at that picture,” Jason insisted, trying to sound as if the idea had just occurred to him. “It’s the perfect time to announce that you’re the new star of Within Our Reach. People will think we were just sealing the deal with a kiss.”

“Not that kiss,” Terry commented drily. “You link the deal and that kiss and you’ll be in court for sexual harassment.”

Callie gritted her teeth. “Forget the kiss. I am not the new star of anything. Why can’t you get that through your head?”

“Because I know what I’m doing,” Jason responded. “You’ll be spectacular.” He glanced toward Terry for support.

“You do have the kind of face the camera loves,” Terry concurred. He grabbed a paper someone had left behind on a neighboring chair. “Just look at this. You’re beautiful, darling.”

Despite herself, Callie found herself transfixed. It wasn’t so much that she looked glamorous and sophisticated that stunned her. It was the luminous expression on her face as Jason’s lips claimed hers. The photographer must have caught her before fascination had been transformed into irritation. She practically glowed. Jason appeared no less enchanted. No wonder the copywriters had jumped to all sorts of wild conclusions about their relationship.

“I don’t know,” she said, her certainty wavering for the first time. Would it be so terrible to take the job, especially considering what the amount of money mentioned in that contract would allow her to do to make her mother’s life easier?

“Trust me, darling. Would I lie to you?” Terry asked.

“In a heartbeat,” she asserted as her common sense reasserted itself. She could not allow herself to be manipulated into doing something that was totally alien to her talents and her personality. Not that closing huge stock deals didn’t occasionally require a bit of acting, but the audience was very limited.

“His motives are especially suspect when you might be the only thing between him and the unemployment line,” Neil contributed darkly.

Callie looked from Neil to Terry to Jason. “What does he mean? You aren’t holding his job hostage to make sure I take this role, are you? Not even you would stoop that low.”

“No, it’s not like that,” Jason said, though he didn’t look particularly wounded by the charge, which meant she probably had some part of it right.

“The show is in serious trouble, though,” he added. “The ratings are down.”

“They’re in the toilet,” Terry confirmed.

“The sponsors are threatening to bail on us. No sponsors, no show. That’s the nature of the business,” Jason said. “But the minute I saw you on-screen, I knew we had a chance to turn things around.”

“Could you dump a little more pressure on her?” Neil asked with disgust. “Talk about a couple of manipulating bastards.”

Callie reached over and patted his hand. “It’s okay. They’re not going to pressure me into doing anything,” she assured him. Then she looked at Jason. “Is the show really in that much trouble? Are you seriously considering canceling it?”

“It may be the only option,” Jason confirmed.

He said it so bluntly that she knew at once he wasn’t playing mind games with her. Cancellation had been discussed at very high levels at the network.

“What about new writers? A hot new story line?” she suggested.

“That’s where you come in,” he explained.

“Wouldn’t you be better off hiring some recognized actress who knows what the heck she’s doing?”

“Too expensive,” he insisted. “Besides, this will make a terrific sort of Cinderella story. The media will be all over it.”

“Like vultures,” Neil commented.

Callie sighed. She looked at Terry and thought of those vicious notes he’d wanted her to investigate, the mysterious falling cabinet. Then she considered the all-too-real threat of cancellation. Guilt weighed heavily on her.

Even so, she knew she was going to have to let him down. As silly as it seemed given her lack of alternatives, she couldn’t walk away from the profession she’d chosen to play at acting.

She gazed at Terry with regret. “I’m sorry. I really am. I can’t do it. I’m a stockbroker,” she insisted one last time, “not an actress.”

“That’s okay, dollface,” he reassured her. “If you can’t, you can’t. I’ll survive.”

Jason scowled at him. “Walker, you’re not the only one whose career is at stake,” he reminded him.

“Oh?” Neil said nastily. “Yours, too?”

“I was referring to the rest of the cast.” He fixed his gaze on Callie. “Please, it’s not as if I’m asking you to work the coal mines or to dig ditches. It’s an acting job, a very lucrative acting job. You might have fun.”

“And I might be publicly humiliated.” She met his gaze evenly. “No. I’m sorry. I can’t do it.”

She looked around the table. Terry appeared resigned. Jason seemed to be gearing up for another battle. Only Neil shot her a look of understanding, even as he tried to cheer up Terry.

“I have to go,” she said suddenly, tossing her napkin onto the table and taking off. To her relief, no one followed. She wasn’t sure she could have said no a second time, knowing how much depended on her relenting.

Miserable over having to let Terry down twice when he’d asked for her help and furious with Jason for putting her in that position in the first place, she detoured to Central Park West and walked along the edge of the park to get a grip on her mixed emotions before finally venturing home again.

When she eventually trudged up the stairs, she fully expected Terry’s door to be thrown open and at least two people to accost her for another round of badgering. When the door remained tightly shut, she sighed and continued to climb. She couldn’t help wondering if her friendship with Terry would weather her letting him down.

Not until she turned on the third-floor landing and started up the last flight of steps did she realize that someone was waiting in the shadows.

“Jason?”

When no one replied, her steps became slower and more cautious. “Who’s there?”

“Callie?” a frail, tentative voice called out.

Callie stopped in her tracks as the voice registered. “Mother? Is that you?”

“Yes.”

She took the remaining steps two at a time to see for herself. Sure enough, sitting on the top step and huddled against the wall in a coat far too warm for the beautiful spring day was Regina Gunderson.

“Mother, what on earth? What are you doing here?”

“Eunice said she’d told you I was coming.”

Callie thought back to the threat her sister had made a few days earlier. She’d forgotten all about it. Or maybe she’d just taken for granted that Eunice’s temper would cool and the latest crisis would pass. Apparently it hadn’t. The proof was right before her.

An hour ago she would have sworn that her life couldn’t possibly get any more depressing, any more complicated. She sighed heavily. It appeared she’d been wrong about that, too.

7

Eunice had lied. Regina had figured that much out the minute she got a good look at Callie’s face. Her daughter no more wanted her in New York than she wanted to be here.

The city hadn’t improved in the thirty years since she’d last seen it. It was filthy and, if the TV news shows were anything to judge by, it was overrun by thugs and gangs. From the minute she’d gotten into a cab at LaGuardia Airport, she’d been overwhelmed by the changes...all for the worse, from what she could see. The enormity of what she’d done by leaving the safety of the farm had terrified her.

The changes weren’t restricted to the city, either. Callie was showing signs of similar wear and tear. Her beautiful, full-of-life daughter appeared to have been beaten down by the twists her life had taken. First the divorce, then losing that job she’d been so crazy about. It was little wonder she appeared shell-shocked.

Regina regretted that more than she could ever say. She knew, though, that Callie would never believe her if she told her that she had envied her for breaking free of the farm, for fighting to go her own way. She had left such support unspoken for far too long, convinced that her loyalties lay with Jacob, who had violently opposed Callie’s leaving home, especially to go to New York.

Still, feeling a little blue was no excuse for letting herself go to seed. If Callie had tried to wear those decrepit clothes she had on to go out in Iowa on a Sunday, Regina would have sent her back to her room to change. Her own circumstances were so uncertain, however, that she kept that opinion to herself and tried not to let her dismay show on her face.

“I suppose you’re going to send me straight back,” she said to her daughter.

Even she recognized the odd combination of resignation and hope in her voice. She’d viewed this trip as a mixed blessing from the beginning. If she’d had her way, she’d have stayed on the farm where she’d spent the past thirty years of her life, but Eunice had insisted that Callie wanted her to come. She had practically packed her bags for her. Relief had shone on her face when she and that sorry husband of hers had dropped Regina at the airport. They’d stood at the gate until the last possible minute, probably to be sure she didn’t flee the plane before takeoff.

Regina would never understand her younger child’s compulsive need to meddle in her life. She understood her son-in-law far more clearly. He was as transparent as an old piece of lace. Tom wanted the farm. Everything he did, every helpful gesture, was meant to ingratiate himself with her so that she would see that he and Eunice got all of it when she died, cutting Callie off completely.

It just proved they didn’t know her at all. Even though she knew perfectly well that Callie wanted no part of the farm, her oldest was entitled to her share and Regina meant to see she had it. If Callie turned right around and sold it or gave it to her sister, that was her decision.

She risked another look at her daughter. “Do you want me to go?” she asked straight out. “Will I be in your way here?”

“Of course not,” Callie declared with obviously forced enthusiasm.

Unlike Eunice, Callie was a lousy liar. The truth was plain as could be on her face. A deep sorrow spread through Regina when she thought of the wide gulf between herself and her firstborn child. She knew, too, where the blame for that could be placed, squarely on her own doorstep.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Callie insisted despite whatever reservations she was harboring. “I’ve been asking you to come ever since I moved to New York.”

That was true, Regina conceded. But her husband had never wanted to set foot in a city he claimed was so filled with evil and she’d never been brave enough to cross him. Besides, she’d always feared that coming back to New York would remind her of all she had given up so many years ago. Her regrets ran deep enough as it was.

“I’m tired,” she said because she couldn’t bear to force more lies from Callie’s lips. “I think I’d like to rest for a bit.”

“Don’t you even want to take a look around the apartment?” Callie asked.

“Maybe later,” she said wearily, ignoring the vague note of hurt in her daughter’s voice. Maybe later she wouldn’t feel this deep resentment at having been shuffled off like an unwanted piece of furniture.

Callie nodded, then led the way to the guest room. She had a sympathetic expression on her face, as if she could read her mother’s mind.

Maybe she could, Regina thought as she slid between the cool, expensive sheets on the antique brass bed just like the one in Callie’s room back home. She turned her face toward the wall to avoid meeting her daughter’s eyes. After all, they’d both been trapped by Eunice and her selfish, controlling ways.

* * *

“How could you?” Callie demanded in a hushed, furious voice the minute she got through to her sister. “Why didn’t you warn me she was coming? She was sitting out here in the hallway all alone like some poor, homeless woman. It was awful, to say nothing of dangerous. What if she’d gotten lost coming from the airport? Or hadn’t had enough money for the cab? If she can’t cope in Iowa, how did you think she’d manage here?”

“I told you I was putting her on a flight to New York unless you came up with a better solution,” Eunice reminded her, her tone self-righteous. “I gave you until the weekend.”

“You still could have let me know she was on the way.”

“So you could have tried to buy more time with promises you never intended to keep?”

“So I could have met her at the airport or at least been here to welcome her.”

“Yeah, right,” Eunice said sarcastically. “Let’s not kid ourselves. You’re not mad because I didn’t tell you. You’re mad because she’s there.”

Callie clung to her patience by a thread. “Maybe so,” she admitted honestly. “It’s not the best time for me, but I wouldn’t have let her see it. She’s our mother, for goodness’ sake, not a shipment of corn.”

“I’m surprised you’re aware of the distinction, for all the effort you’ve put into her care.”

“God, Eunice, you are such a selfish pig,” Callie muttered, and slammed the phone down before she really got angry. Maybe in her own way, she was just as selfish, she admitted to herself, but she wasn’t cruel. That was the real difference between her and her sister.

As her mother slept—or hid out in her room, which is what Callie suspected she was doing—Callie considered her options. Her bank account, healthy enough when she’d first lost her job, was dwindling. There were no alimony payments. Pride had kept her from accepting one thin dime of Chad’s guilt money. She wasn’t in any immediate danger of starvation, even with another mouth to feed. But she could no longer be quite as cavalier about her joblessness.

Then she considered the size of the salary in that contract Jason had been waving under her nose. It was on a par with what she’d been earning on Wall Street and then some. Temptation whispered through her. If she accepted the offer, there would be enough money to send her mother back home and hire help for her, if that was what her mother wanted.

In addition, Terry’s job would be safe, as well as the jobs of all those other cast and crew members Jason was threatening with unemployment. She wasn’t entirely sure how seriously to take his remarks about canceling the soap, but it had been evident to her earlier that Terry was taking him seriously.

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