by Joss Wood
Ryan leaned his shoulder into the door frame and kept his eyes on her face, which Jaci appreciated. “Hey.”
Soooo sexy. “Hello. What are you doing here? It’s pretty late,” she said, hoping that he missed the wobble in her voice.
“Leroy Banks finally returned my call. Can I come in?”
Jaci nodded and stepped back so that he could walk into the room. Ryan immediately dropped his jacket onto the back of a bucket chair and looked around the room, taking in the minimalist furniture and the abstract art. “Not exactly Lyon House,” he commented.
“Nothing is,” Jaci agreed. Her childhood home was old and stately but her parents had made it a home. It had never been a showpiece; it was filled with antiques and paintings passed down through the generations but also packed with books and dog leashes, coffee cups and magazines.
“Did your mother ever get that broken stair fixed? I remember her nagging your father to get it repaired. She said it had been driving her mad for twenty years.”
Did she hear longing in his voice or was that her imagination? Ryan had always been hard to read, and her ability to see behind the inscrutable mask he wore had not improved with age. And she was too tired to even try. “Nope, the stair is still cracked. It will never be fixed. She just likes to tease my father about his lack of handyman skills. Do you want something to drink? Coffee? Tea? Wine?”
“Black coffee would be great. Black coffee with a shot of whiskey would be even better.”
She could do that. Jaci suggested that Ryan take a seat but instead he followed her to the tiny galley kitchen, his frame blocking the doorway. “So, how are you enjoying work?”
Jaci flashed him a quick smile at his unexpected question. “I’m loving it. I’m working on the romcom at the moment. You said that you want changes done to Blown Away but I need to spend some time with you and Thom to find out exactly what you want and, according to your PA, your schedules are booked solid.”
“I’ll try to carve out some time for you soon, I promise.”
Jaci went up onto her toes to reach the bottle of whiskey on the top shelf. Then Ryan’s body was flush up against hers, his chest to her back, and with his extra height he easily took the bottle off the shelf. Jaci expected him to immediately move away but she felt his nose in her hair, felt the brush of his fingers on her hip. She waited with bated breath to see if he’d turn her to face him, wondered whether he’d place those broad hands on her breasts, lower that amazing mouth to hers...
“Here you go.”
The snap of the whiskey bottle hitting the counter jerked her out of her reverie, and then the warmth of his body disappeared. With a dry mouth and a shaking hand, Jaci unscrewed the cap to the bottle and dumped a healthy amount of whiskey into their cups.
Hoo, boy! And down, girl!
“It’s a hell of a coincidence that you, the sister of my old friend, had a script accepted by me, by us,” Ryan said, lifting his arms up so that he gripped the top of the door frame. The action made his T-shirt ride up, showing a strip of tanned, muscled abdomen and a hint of fabulous oblique muscles. Jaci had to bite her tongue to stop her whimper.
“Actually, I’m not at all surprised that you like the script. After all, Blown Away was your idea.”
“Mine?” Ryan looked confused.
Jaci poured hot coffee into the cups and picked them up. She couldn’t breathe in the small kitchen—too much distracting testosterone—and she needed some space between her and this sexy man. “Shall we sit?”
Ryan took his cup, walked back to the living room and slumped into the corner of her couch. Jaci took the single chair opposite him and immediately put her feet up onto the metal-and-glass coffee table.
Ryan took a sip of his coffee and raised his eyebrows. “Explain.”
Jaci blew air across the hot liquid before answering him. “You came down to Lyon House shortly before you dropped out of uni—”
“I didn’t drop out, I graduated.”
Jaci shook her head. “But you’re the same age as Neil and he was in his first year.”
Ryan shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “Accelerated classes. School was easy.”
“Lucky you,” Jaci murmured. Unlike her siblings, she’d needed to work a lot harder to be accepted into university, which she’d flunked out of halfway through her second year. She thought that she and Ryan had that in common, but it turned out that he was an intellectual like her sister. And brother. And her parents. She was, yet again, the least cerebral person in the room.
Lucky she’d had a lot of practice at being that.
“So, the script?” Ryan prompted.
“Oh! Well, you came home with Neil and the two of you were playing chess. It was raining cats and dogs. I was reading.” Well, she’d been watching him, mooning over him, but he didn’t need to know that! Ever. “You were talking about your careers and Neil asked you if you were going into the movie business like your father.”
Jaci looked down into her cup. “You said that your dad and Ben had that covered, that you wanted your own light to shine in.” His words had resonated with her because she understood them so well. She’d wanted exactly the same thing. “You also said that you were going to go into business management and that you were going to stay very far away from the film industry.”
“As you can see, that worked out well,” Ryan said, his comment bone-dry and deeply sarcastic.
“Neil said that you were fooling yourself, that it was as much in your blood as it was theirs.” Jaci quirked an eyebrow. “He called that one correctly.”
“Your brother is a smart man.”
As if she’d never noticed.
“Anyway, Neil started to goad you. He tossed out plots and they were all dreadful. You thought his ideas were ridiculous and started plotting your own movie about a burnt-out cop and his feisty female newbie partner who were trying to stop a computer-hacking serial bomber from taking a megacity hostage. I was writing, even then, mostly romances but I took some of the ideas you tossed out, wrote them down and filed them. About eighteen months ago I found that file and the idea called to me, so I sat down and wrote the script.” Jaci sipped her coffee. “I’m not surprised that you liked the script but I am surprised that you own a production company and that I’m now working for you.”
Ryan’s eyes pinned her to her chair. “Me, too.” He pushed his hand through his hair. “Talking of non-scriptwriting work—”
Jaci sighed. “Toad of Toad Hall—”
“—has issued his first demand.” Jaci groaned but Ryan ignored her. “He’s invited us to join him at the premiere of the New York City Ballet Company’s new production of Swan Lake.”
Jaci groaned again but more loudly and dramatically this time.
“You don’t like ballet? I thought all girls like ballet,” he said, puzzled. “And didn’t your family have season tickets to the Royal Opera House to watch both ballet and opera?”
“They did. They dragged me along to torture me.” Jaci pulled a face. “I much prefer a rock concert to either.”
“But you’ll do it?”
Jaci wrinkled her nose. “I suppose I have to. When is it?”
“Tomorrow evening. Black tie for me, which means a ball gown, or something similar, for you.” His eyes focused on the rip in her pants before he lifted amused eyes to hers. “Think you can manage that?”
Jaci looked horrified. “You’re kidding me right? Tomorrow?”
“Evening. I’ll pick you up at six.”
Jaci leaned back in her chair and placed her arm over her eyes. “I don’t have anything to wear. That one cocktail dress I brought over was it.”
Ryan took a sip from his cup and shrugged. “Last time I checked, there are about a million clothes stores in Manhattan.”
She’d made a promise to hers
elf that, now that she was free of Clive and free of having her outfits picked apart by the fashion police in the tabloids, she could go back to wearing clothes that made her feel happy, more like herself. Less staid, more edgy. When she left London with the least offensive of the clothes that had been carefully selected by the stylist Clive employed to shop for her, she’d promised herself that she would overhaul her wardrobe. She’d find the vintage shops and the cutting-edge designers and she would wear clothes that were a little avant-garde, more edgy. And she wouldn’t wear another ball gown unless someone put a gun to her head.
Unfortunately, risking so many millions wasn’t a gun, it was a freaking cannon...
She’d thought she was done with playing it safe.
“You’re still frowning,” Ryan said. “This is not a big deal, Jaci. How difficult can shopping be?”
“Only a man would say that,” Jaci replied, bouncing to her feet. She slapped her hands onto her hips and jerked her head. “What do you want me to wear?”
Ryan shrugged and looked confused. “Why the hell should I care?”
“It’s your party, Ryan, your deal. Give me a clue...regal, flamboyant, supersexy?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ryan demanded. “Put a dress on, show up, smile. That’s it. Just haul something out of your closet and wear it. You must have something you can wear.”
He really didn’t get it. “Come with me,” she ordered.
Ryan, still holding his coffee, followed her down the supershort hallway to the main bedroom. Jaci stomped over to the walk-in closet and flung the doors open. She stepped inside and gestured to the mostly empty room. Except for the umber cocktail dress she’d worn the other night, nearly every single item hanging off the rod and on the shelves was a shade of black.
Ryan lifted an eyebrow. “Do you belong to a coven or something? Or did the boring stuff get left behind when they robbed you?”
“I have enough clothes to stock my own store,” Jaci told him with frost in her voice. “Unfortunately they aren’t on this continent.”
Ryan looked at her empty shelves again. “I can see that. Why not?”
Jaci pushed her hair behind her ears. “They are in storage, as I wasn’t intending to wear them anymore.”
“I can’t believe that I am having a conversation about clothes but...and again...why not?”
Jaci stared at the floor and folded her arms across her chest. After a long silence, Ryan put his finger under her chin and lifted her eyes to his. “Why not, Jace?”
“I only brought a few outfits with me to the city. I was going to trawl the vintage shops and edgy boutiques to find clothes that were me...clothes that I liked, that I wanted to wear, clothes that made me feel happy. Now I have to buy a staid and boring ball gown that I’ll probably never wear again.”
Ryan narrowed his eyes. “Why does it have to be staid and boring?”
“You’re in the public eye, Ryan. And there’s a lot riding on this deal,” Jaci pointed out. “It’s important that I look the part.”
The corners of Ryan’s mouth twitched. “If our deal rests on what you are wearing then I’m in bigger trouble than I thought. You’re making too big a deal of this, Jace. Wear whatever the hell you want, wherever and whenever. Trust me, I’m more interested in what’s under the clothes anyway.”
He really wasn’t taking this seriously. “Ryan, impressions matter.”
“Maybe if you’re a politician who has a stick up his ass,” Ryan retorted, looking impatient.
He didn’t understand; he hadn’t been crucified in the press for, among other things, his clothes. He hadn’t been found wanting. She’d had enough of that in the United Kingdom. She didn’t want to experience it on two continents. That was why she was trying to stay out of the public eye, why she was avoiding functions exactly like the one Ryan was dragging her to. And if she had to go, and it seemed as if she had little choice in the matter, she’d wear something that didn’t attract attention, that would let her fly under the radar.
She waved her hand in the air in an attempt to dismiss the subject. “I’ll sort something out.”
Ryan sent her a hot look. “I don’t trust you... You’ll probably end up buying something black and boring. Something safe.”
Well, yes. That was the plan.
Ryan put his hands on his hips. “You want vintage and edgy?”
Where was he going with this? “For my day-to-day wardrobe, yes.”
“And for the ball gown?” Jaci’s shrug was his answer. “I’m taking you shopping,” Ryan told her with a stubborn look on his face.
Ryan...shopping? With her? For a ball gown? Jaci couldn’t picture it. “I don’t think... I’m not sure.”
“You need a dress, and I am going to get you into one that isn’t suitable for a corpse,” Ryan promised her, his face a mask of determination. “Tomorrow.”
“It would be a lot easier if you just excused me from the ballet,” Jaci pointed out.
“Not going to happen,” Ryan said as his eyes flicked from her face to the bed and back again. And, just like that, her insecurities about her clothes—okay, about herself—faded away, replaced by hot, flaming lust. She saw his eyes deepen and darken and she knew what he was thinking because, well, she was thinking it, too. How would it feel to be on that bed together, naked, limbs tangled, mouths fused, creating that exquisite friction that was older than time?
“Jaci?”
“Mmm?” Jaci blinked, trying to get her eyes to focus. When they did she saw the passion blazing in Ryan’s eyes. If that wasn’t a big enough clue as to what he wanted to do then there was also the impressive ridge in his pants. “The only real interest I have in your clothes is how to get you out of them. I really want to peel off that ridiculous shirt and those ratty pants to see what you’re wearing underneath.”
Nothing—she wasn’t wearing a damn thing. Jaci touched the top of her lip with her tongue and Ryan groaned.
“I’m desperate to do what we’re both thinking,” Ryan said, his voice even huskier coated with lust. “But that would complicate this already crazy situation. It would be better if I just left.”
Better for whom? Not for her aching, demanding libido, that was for sure. Jaci was glad that she didn’t utter those words out loud. She just stood there as Ryan brushed past her. At the entrance of her room, he stopped and turned to look back at her. “There’s a coffee shop around the corner from here. Laney’s?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll meet you there at nine to go shopping.”
Jaci nodded. “Okay.”
Ryan’s smile was slow and oh so sexy. “And, Jace? I value authenticity above conventionality. Just an FYI.”
* * *
Ryan left the coffee shop holding two takeout cups and looked right and then left, not seeing Jaci anywhere. The outside tables were full and he brushed past some suits to stand in a patch of spring sunshine, lifting his leg behind him to place his foot against the wall.
He had a million things to do this morning but he was taking a woman shopping. There was something very wrong with this picture. He had a couple of rules when it came to the women he dated: he never slept over, he never took the relationship past six weeks, and he never did anything that could, even vaguely, be interpreted as something a “couple” would do. Clothes shopping was right up there at the top of the list.
A hundred million dollars...
Yeah, that was a load of bull. Jaci could turn up in nipple caps and a thong and it wouldn’t faze him. He didn’t care jack about what Leroy, or people in general, thought. Yet Jaci seemed to be determined to hit the right note, sartorially speaking. Something about their conversation last night touched Ryan in a place that he thought was long buried. He couldn’t believe that the sexy, stylish, so outwardly confident Jaci could be so i
nsecure about what she wore and how she looked. Somebody had danced in her head, telling her that she wasn’t enough exactly as she was, and that made him as mad as hell.
Maybe because it pushed a very big button of his own: the fact that, in his father’s eyes, he’d never been or ever would be the son he wanted, needed, the son he lost. It was strange that he’d shared a little of his dysfunctional family life with Jaci; he’d never divulged any of his past before, mostly because it was embarrassing to recount exactly how screwed up he really was. That’s what happened when you met your father and half brother for the first time at fourteen and within a day of you moving in, your father left for a six-month shoot across the country. He and Ben were left to work out how they were related, and they soon realized that they could either ignore each other—the house was cavernous enough that they could do that—or they could be friends and keep each other company. That need for company turned into what he thought was an unbreakable bond.
Ryan stared at the pavement and watched as a candy wrapper danced across the sidewalk, thinking that bonds could be broken. He had the emotional scars to prove it. All it took was two deaths in a car crash and the subsequent revelation of an affair.
“Hi.”
The voice at his elbow came out of nowhere and the cups in his hands rattled. God, he’d been so deep in thought that she’d managed to sneak up on him, something that rarely happened. Ryan looked into her face, noticed the splash of freckles across her nose that her makeup failed to hide and handed her a cup of coffee. Today she was wearing a pair of tight, fitted suit pants and a short black jacket. Too much black, Ryan thought. Too structured, too rigid.
But very New York.
“Thanks.” Jaci sipped her coffee and lifted her face to the sun. “It’s such a gorgeous day. I’d like to take my laptop and go to the park, find a tree and bang out a couple of scenes.” She handed him a puppy-dog look. “Wouldn’t you rather have me do that instead of shopping?”