by Joss Wood
“Yeah, he was...um, what’s the word? Livid?” Ryan could hear the smile in his voice. The jackass was enjoying every second of this. “He told me to tell you to take your movie and shove it—”
“Got it.” Ryan interrupted him. “So, basically, you just called me to screw with me?”
“Basically,” Simons agreed.
Ryan told him to do something physically impossible and disconnected the call. He tossed his mobile through the open window of the car onto the passenger seat and linked his hands behind his neck.
“What’s happened?” Jaci asked, obviously worried.
“That must have been a hell of a cozy conversation you had with Horse-face last night. It sounds like you covered a hell of a lot of ground.”
Jaci frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Your pillow talk torpedoed any chance of Banks funding Blown Away,” he stated in his harshest voice.
Jaci looked puzzled. “What pillow talk? What are you talking about? Has Banks pulled his funding?” Jaci demanded, looking surprised.
“Your boyfriend called Simons and told him the whole story about how we snowed Banks, how we pretended to be a couple because he repulsed you. Nice job, kid. Thanks for that. The movie is dead and so is your career.” He knew that he should shut up but he was so hurt, so angry, and he needed to hurt her, needed her to be in as much pain as he was. He just wished he was as angry at losing the funding as he was at the idea of Jaci sleeping with that slimy politician. Of losing Jaci to him.
Jaci just stood in the driveway and stared at him, her dark eyes filled with an emotion he couldn’t identify. “Are you crazy?” she whispered.
“Crazy for thinking you could be trusted.” Ryan tossed the statement over his shoulder as he yanked open the door to the car and climbed inside. “I should’ve run as hard and as fast as I could right after you kissed me. You’ve been nothing but a hassle. You’ve caused so much drama in my life I doubt I’ll ever dig myself out of it. You know, you’re right. You are the Brookes-Lyon screwup!”
Ryan watched as the poison-tipped words struck her soul, and he had to grab the steering wheel to keep from bailing out of the car and whisking her into his arms as she shrunk in on herself. He loved her, but he wanted to hurt her. He didn’t understand it and he wasn’t proud of it, but it was true. Because, unlike four years ago, this time he could fight back.
This time he could, verbally, punch and kick. He could retaliate and he wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life resenting the fact that death had robbed him of his chance to confront those who’d hurt him. He could hurt back and it felt—dammit—good!
“Why are you acting like this? Yes, I told Clive about Banks, about New York, but I never thought that he would blab to the press! I thought that we were friends again, that we had come to an understanding last night.”
“Yet you still hopped into bed with that horse’s ass.”
“I did not sleep with Clive!” Jaci shouted.
Sure, you didn’t, he mentally scoffed. Ryan started the engine of the car. He stared at the gearshift before jamming it into Reverse. He backed up quickly and pushed the button to take down the window of the passenger door. On the other side of the car stood Jaci, tears running down her face. He couldn’t let her desperate, confused, emotional expression affect him. He wouldn’t let anything affect him again...not when it came to her, or any other woman, either.
He didn’t trust those tears, didn’t trust her devastated expression. He didn’t trust her. At all. “Thanks for screwing up my life, honey. I owe you one.”
* * *
“Have you been fired?” Shona asked, perching her bottom on the corner of the desk Jaci was emptying.
It was Wednesday. Jaci’d been back in New York for two days and she’d sent Ryan two emails and left three voice mails asking him to talk to her and hadn’t received a reply. Ryan, she concluded, was ignoring her.
She’d reached out five times and he’d ignored her five times. Yeah, she got the message.
“Resigned. I’m saving them the hassle of letting me go,” Jaci said, tossing her thesaurus into her tote bag. “Without funding, Blown Away is dead in the water and I’m not needed.”
Shona tapped her fingernails on her desk in a rat-a-tat-tat that set Jaci’s teeth on edge. “I hear that Jax has been in meetings from daybreak to midnight trying to get other funding.”
Jaci wasn’t one to put any stock in office rumors. No, Ryan had moved on. It was that simple.
Thanks for screwing up my life, honey...
Moron man! How dare he think that she’d slept with Clive? Yes, she told Clive about Leroy, but only because a part of her wanted him to see that she was happy and content without him, that she had other men in her life and that she wasn’t pining for him. But she’d forgotten that Clive hated to share and that he still, despite everything, considered her his. Under those genial smiles was a man who had still been hell-bent on punishing her; payback for the fact that she’d had the temerity to move on to Ryan from him. But while she knew that Clive could be petty, she’d never thought that he’d be so vengeful, so malicious as to call up a tabloid reporter and cause so much trouble for her and Ryan.
Oh, she was so mad. How dare Ryan have so little faith in her? How could he think that she would sleep with someone else, and just after they’d shared something so deep, as important as they had earlier that night? She might have a loose mouth and trust people too easily and believe that they were better than they were, but she wouldn’t cheat. She’d been cheated on, so had he, and they both knew how awful it made the other person feel. How could he believe that she was capable of inflicting such pain?
She got it, she did. She understood how much it had to have hurt to be so betrayed by Ben and Kelly and she understood why he shied away from any feelings of intimacy. She understood his reluctance to trust her, but it still slayed her that Ryan didn’t seem to know her at all. How could he believe that she would do that, that she would hurt him that way after everything they’d both experienced? Didn’t he have the faintest inkling that she loved him? How could he be so blind?
“I’m so sorry, Jaci,” Shona said and Jaci blinked at her friend’s statement. She’d totally forgotten that she was there. “Are you going back to London?”
Jaci lifted her shoulders in a slow shrug. “I’m not sure.”
“Sorry again.” Shona squeezed her shoulder before walking back to her desk.
So was she, Jaci thought. But she couldn’t make someone love her. Her feelings were her own and she couldn’t project them onto Ryan. She could, maybe, forgive his verbal attack in the driveway of Lyon House, but by ignoring her he’d shown her that he regretted sharing his past with her, that he didn’t trust her and, clearly, that he did not want to pursue a relationship with her. It hurt like open-heart surgery but she could deal with it, she would deal with it. She was never going to be the person who loved too much, who demanded too much, who gave too much, again.
When she loved again, if she ever loved again, it would be on her terms. She would never settle for anything less than amazing again. She wanted to be someone’s sanctuary, her lover’s soft place to fall. She wanted to be the keeper of his secrets and, harder, the person he confided his fears to. She wanted to be someone’s everything.
Walking away from another relationship, from this situation that was rapidly turning toxic, wasn’t an easy decision to make, but she knew that it was the right path. It didn’t matter that it was hard, that she felt the brutal sting of loss and disappointment. She couldn’t allow it to dictate her life. She was stronger and braver and more resilient than she’d ever been, and she wouldn’t let this push her back into being that weak, insecure girl she’d been before.
It was time that she started protecting her heart, her feelings and her soul. It was time, as her mum had suggested,
to stop standing and start walking.
* * *
Because he’d spent the past week chasing down old contacts and new leads, Ryan quickly realized that there was no money floating around to finance Blown Away. We’re in a recession, we don’t have that much, it’s too risky, credit is tight. He’d heard the same excuses time and time again.
This was the end of the line. He was out of options.
Not quite true, he reluctantly admitted. He still had his father’s offer to finance a movie, but he’d rather wash his face with acid than ask him. He could always come back to Blown Away in the future, but Jaci’s career would take a hit...
Jaci... No, he wasn’t going to think about her at all. It was over and she had—according to the very brief letter she’d left with his PA—released him from her contract.
She was out of his life, and that was good. But his mind kept playing the last scenes of their movie in his head. Instead of fighting the memory, as he had been doing, instead of pushing it aside, he let it run. It wasn’t as if he was doing any work, and maybe if he just remembered, properly, the events of that night, he’d be able to move on. He had to get his life back to normal.
He remembered the wedding, how amazing Jaci looked in that pale pink cocktail dress with the straps that crisscrossed her back. Her eyes looked deep and mysterious and her lips had been painted a color that matched her dress. He’d kept his eyes on her all night, had followed her progress across the tented room, watched her talk to friends and acquaintances, noticed how she refused the many offers to dance. After the meal, the horse’s ass had approached her and she’d looked wary and distant. They’d talked and talked and Clive kept moving closer and Jaci kept putting distance between them.
Ryan frowned. She had done that. He wasn’t imagining that. Clive had eventually left her, looking less than happy. Then he’d joined her at that table and they’d chatted and the pinched look left her eyes. Her attention had been on him, all on him; her eyes softened when they looked at him. Her entire attention had been focused on him; she hadn’t looked around. Clive had been forgotten when they were together.
She’d been that into me...
So how had she gone from being so into him to jumping into bed with Whips? Did she? Are you so sure that she did? Ryan picked up his pen and tapped it against his desk. He had no proof that Jaci had slept with Clive, just his notoriously unreliable gut instinct. And his intuition was clouded by jealously and past insecurities about being cheated on...
He wished he could talk to someone who would tell him the unvarnished, dirty truth.
Jaci’s ball-breaker sister would do that. Merry had never pulled her punches. Ryan picked up his mobile and within a minute Meredith’s cut-glass tones swirled around his office. “Are you there, you ridiculous excuse for a human being?”
Whoa! Someone sounded very irritated with him. That was okay because he was still massively irritated with her sister. “Did she sleep with Whips and Chains?” he demanded.
“We video chatted last night and she looked like death warmed up. I have never seen her so unhappy, so...so...so heartbroken. She cries herself to sleep every night, Ryan, did you know that?”
Ryan’s heart lurched. “Did. She. Sleep. With. Him?”
There was a long, intense silence on the other end of the phone and Ryan pulled the receiver away, looked at it and spoke into it again. “Are you there?”
“Oh, dear Lord in heaven,” Merry stated on a long sigh. Her voice lost about 50 percent of its tartness when she spoke again. “Ryan Jackson, why would you think that Jaci slept with Clive?”
“That morning she looked...” Ryan felt as if his head was about to explode. “... God, I don’t know. She...glowed. She looked like something wonderful had happened. Your dad told me that they were in her bedroom so I presumed that they’d...reconciled.”
“You are an idiot of magnificent proportions,” Merry told him, exasperated. “Now, listen to me, birdbrain. Clive came to pick up some stuff of his she was storing at Lyon House. That’s the only reason he was there. Yes, she told him about New York, how happy she was there. Because she’s a girl and she has her pride, she wanted Clive to know how happy and successful she was, how much she didn’t need him. She told Clive about Banks, and you, because she wanted to show him that there were other men out there, rich, powerful and successful men, who wanted and desired her. She wanted him to know that she didn’t need him anymore because she was now a better version of who she used to be with him.”
Ryan struggled to keep up. “She told you all that?”
“Yeah. She’s proud of who she is now, Ryan, proud of the fact that she picked herself up and dusted herself off. Sure, she should never have told Clive what she did but she never thought that he would talk to the press... I would’ve suspected him but she’s not cynical like me. Or you.”
“I’m not cynical,” Ryan objected but he knew that he was. Of course he was.
Merry snorted. “Sure, you are. You thought Jaci slept with her ex because she looked happy. Anyway, Jaci blames herself for you losing the funding. She blames herself for all of it. Her dream is gone, Ryan.”
He’d made a point of not thinking about that because if he did, it hurt too damn much. He rubbed his eyes with his index finger and thumb. “I know.”
“But worse than that, she’s shattered that you could think that she slept with Clive, that she would cheat on you. She feels annihilated because she never believed that you could think that of her.”
Ryan rested his elbow on his desk and pushed the ball of his hand into his temple. He felt as if the floor had fallen out from under his feet. “Oh.” It was the only word he could articulate at the moment.
“Fix this, Jackson,” Merry stated in a low voice that was superscary. “Or I swear I’ll hurt you.”
He could do that, Ryan thought, sucking in air. He could...he could fix this. He had to fix this. Because Jaci had been hurt and no one, especially not him, was allowed to do that.
The fact that Merry would—actually—hurt him was just an added incentive.
* * *
There was only one person in the world whom he would do this for, Ryan thought, as the front door to Chad’s house opened and his father stood in the doorway with an openly surprised look on his face.
Ryan held his father’s eyes and fought the urge to leave. He reminded himself that this was for Jaci, this was to get her the big break that she so richly deserved. Shelving Blown Away meant postponing Jaci’s dream. He couldn’t do that to her. Once the world and, more important, other producers saw the quality of her writing, she’d have more work than she could cope with and she’d be in demand, and maybe then they could find a way to be together. Because, God, he missed her.
He loved her, he needed her, and there was no way that he could return to her—to beg her to take him back—without doing everything and anything he could to resurrect her dream. She’d probably tell him to go to hell, and he suspected that he had as much chance of getting her back as he did of having sex with a zombie princess, but he had to try. Writing made her happy and, above all, he wanted her happy.
With or without him.
“Are you going to stand there and stare at me or are you going to come in?” Chad asked, that famous smile hovering around his lips.
Yeah, he supposed he should. Bombshells shouldn’t be dropped on front porches, especially a porch as magnificent as this one. Ryan walked inside the hall and looked around; nothing much had changed since the last time he was here. What was different, and a massive surprise, was the large framed photograph of Ben and himself, arms draped around each other’s shoulders, wearing identical grins, that stood on a hall table. Well...huh.
“Do you want to talk in the study or by the pool?” Chad asked.
Ryan pushed his hand through his hair. “Study, I guess.” He f
ollowed his father down the long hallway of the sun-filled home, catching glances of the magnificent views of the California coastline through the open doors of the rooms they passed. He might not love his father, but he’d always loved this house.
Chad opened the door to the study and gestured Ryan to a chair. “Do you want a cup of coffee?”
Ryan could see that Chad expected him to refuse but he was exhausted, punch-drunk from not sleeping for too many nights. He needed caffeine so he quickly accepted. Chad called his housekeeper on the intercom, asked for coffee and sat down in a big chair across the desk from him. “So, what’s this about, Ryan? Or should I call you Jax?”
“Ryan will do.” Ryan pulled out a sheaf of papers from his briefcase and slapped them on the table. “According to the emails you’ve sent me in the past, you are part of a group prepared to invest in my films. I’d like to know whether you, and your consortium, would like to invest in Blown Away.”
Chad looked at him for a long time before slowly nodding. “Yes,” he eventually stated, quietly and without any fanfare.
“I need a hundred million.”
“You could have more if you need it.”
“That’ll do.” Ryan felt the pure, clean feeling of relief flood through him, and he slumped back in his chair, suddenly feeling energized. It had been a lot easier than he expected, he thought. He was prepared to grovel, to beg if he needed to. Asking his father for the money had stung a lot less than he expected it to. Because Jaci, and her happiness, was a lot more important to him than his pride.
It was that simple.
“That’s it? Just like that?” Ryan thought he should make sure that his father didn’t have anything up his sleeve, a trick that could come back and bite him on the ass.
Chad linked his hands across his flat stomach and shrugged. “An explanation would be nice but it’s not a deal breaker. I know that you’d rather swallow nails than ask me for help, so it has to be a hell of a story.”