by Joss Wood
Ryan jumped to his feet and walked over to the open door that led onto a small balcony and sucked in the fragrant air. He rested his shoulder against the doorjamb and looked at his father. In a few words he explained about Banks and Jaci’s part in the fiasco. “But, at the end of the day, it was my fault. Who risks a hundred million dollars by having a pretend relationship with a woman?”
“Someone who desperately wanted a relationship but who was too damn scared to admit it and used any excuse he could to have one anyway?”
Bull’s-eye, Father. Bull’s-eye. He had been scared and stupid. But mostly scared. Scared of falling in love, of trusting someone, terrified of being happy. Then scared of being miserable. But hey, he was miserable anyway, and wasn’t that a kick in the pants?
“As glad as I am that you’ve asked me to help, I would’ve thought that you’d rather take a hit on the movie than come to me,” Chad commented, and Ryan, from habit, looked for the criticism in his words but found none. Huh. He was just sitting there, head cocked, offering his help and not looking for a fight. What had happened to his father?
“Why are you being so nice about this?” he demanded. “This isn’t like you.”
Chad flushed. With embarrassment? That was also new. “It isn’t like the person I used to be. Losing Ben made me take a long, hard look at myself, and I didn’t like what I saw. Since then I’ve been trying to talk to you to make amends.”
Now, that was pushing the feasibility envelope. “And you did that by demanding ten million for narrating the documentary about Ben’s life?” He shot the words out and was glad that his voice sounded harsh. Anger he could deal with, since he was used to fighting with his father.
Chad didn’t retaliate and he remained calm. A knock on the door broke the tension and he turned to see Chad’s housekeeper in the doorway, carrying a tray holding a carafe and mugs. She placed it on his desk, smiled when Chad politely thanked her and left the room. Chad, ignoring Ryan’s outburst, poured him a cup and brought it over to him.
Ryan took the mug and immediately lifted the cup to his lips, enjoying the rich taste. He needed to get out of this room, needed to get back to business. He gestured to the contract. “There’s the deal. Get it to your lawyers but tell them that they need to get cracking. I don’t have a lot of time.”
“All right.” Chad nodded. “Let’s go back a step and talk about that demand I made for payment for narrating that movie.”
“We don’t have to... What’s done is done.”
“It really isn’t,” Chad replied. His next question was one Ryan didn’t expect. “Did you want to do that documentary? I know that Ben’s friends were asking you to, that you were expected to.”
God, how was he supposed to answer that? If he said yes, he’d be lying—the last thing he’d wanted at the time was to do a movie about his brother, who died on his way back from a dirty weekend with his fiancée—and if he said no then Chad would want an explanation as to why not. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Tough. I think it’s time that you understood that I made that demand so that you couldn’t do the movie...to give you an out.”
Ryan frowned, disconcerted. Chad jammed his hands into the pockets of his shorts and looked Ryan in the eye. “I knew that Ben was fooling around with Kelly and I told him to stop. It wasn’t appropriate and I didn’t approve. You didn’t deserve that amount of disloyalty, especially not from Ben.”
Chad’s words were like a fist to his stomach, and he couldn’t get enough air to his brain to make sense of his statements. “What?”
“Ben told me that they were just scratching an itch and I told him to scratch it with someone else. He promised me that that weekend would be the last time, that they’d call it off when they got back. I wanted to warn you about marrying her but I knew that you wouldn’t have listened to me.”
“I wouldn’t have,” Ryan agreed. He and Chad had been at odds long before the accident.
Chad dropped his eyes. “My fault. I was a useless father and terrible role model. I played with women and didn’t take them seriously. Ben followed my example.” He walked back to his desk, poured coffee into his own cup and sipped. “Anyway, to come back to the documentary... I knew that asking you to make that film would’ve been cruel so I made damn sure that the project got scuttled.”
Ryan wished he could clear the cobwebs from his head. “By asking for that ridiculous fee.”
“Yeah. I knew that you didn’t have the cash, that you wouldn’t borrow the money to do it and that you wouldn’t ask anyone else to narrate it.” Chad shrugged. “That being said, I still have the script and if you ever want to take on the project, I’ll narrate it, for free.”
Ryan slid down the door frame to sink to his haunches. “God.” He looked up. “I came to ask you for a hundred million and I end up feeling totally floored.”
Chad rubbed the back of his neck. “Neither you nor your mother deserved any of the pain I put you through. I’ve been trying to find a way to say I’m sorry for years.” His jaw set and he looked like the stubborn, selfish man whom Ryan was used to. “And if I have to spend a hundred million to do it then I will.” He grabbed the stack of papers, flipped to the end page and reached for a pen. Ryan watched, astounded, as he dashed his signature across the page.
“Don’t you have to talk to your partners?” Ryan asked.
“I’m the only investor,” Chad said, quickly initialing the pages.
Well, okay, then. “Don’t you think your lawyers should read the contract or, at the very least, that you should?” Ryan asked as he stood up, now feeling slightly bemused. He was still trying to work through the fact that his father had been trying to protect him from further hurt, that Chad seemed to want a relationship with him, that it seemed as if his father had, to some measure, changed.
“No, no lawyers. We’ll settle this now and before you leave town I’ll do a direct deposit into your account for half of the cash. I’ll need some time to get you the other half. A week, maybe. Besides, if you take me for a hundred million then it’s no less than what I deserve for being the worst father in the world.”
Ryan picked his jaw up from the floor. “Chad, hell... I don’t know what to say.”
“Say that you’ll consider me for a part in the movie...any part,” Chad retorted, as quick as lightning.
Ryan had to laugh and felt strangely relieved knowing that his father hadn’t undergone a total personality change.
“I’ll consider it.”
Chad lifted his head and flashed him a smile. “That’s my boy.”
Twelve
In all honesty, Jaci was proud of her heart. It had been kicked, battered, punched, stabbed and pretty much broken but it still worked...sort of, kind of. It still pumped blood around her body but, on the downside, it still craved Ryan, missed him with every beat.
This was the height of folly because his silence over the past ten days had just reinforced her belief that he’d been playing with her, possibly playing her. If he felt anything for her, apart from sex, he would’ve contacted her long before this, but he hadn’t and that was that.
Ryan aside, she had other problems to deal with. Her career as a screenwriter was on the skids and there was absolutely nothing she could do about that. Before she’d left Starfish the office rumors had been flying, and even if she took only 5 percent of what was being said as truth, then she knew that there was more chance of the world ending this month than there was of Blown Away reaching the moviegoing public. And with that went her big break, her career as a screenwriter. She would have to start again with another script and see if her agent could get lucky a second time around. She wasn’t holding her breath...
Being the scriptwriter for a blockbuster like Blown Away—and it would have been a blockbuster, of that she had no doubt—would have got her noti
ced and she would have been on her way to the success that she’d always craved.
She didn’t crave it so much anymore. Since her conversation with her mother and Merry on the terrace at Lyon House, the desire to prove herself to her family, to herself, had dissipated. She knew that she was a good writer, and if it took another ten years for her to sell a script, she’d keep writing because this was what she was meant to do. This was what made her happy, and writing scripts was what she was determined to stick with. She’d keep on truckin’ and one day, someday, her script would see the big screen.
It was wonderfully liberating to be free of that choking need to prove herself... She was Jaci and she was enough. And if that stupid, moron man couldn’t see that, then he was a stupid moron man.
And who was leaning on her doorbell at eleven thirty at night? What was so important that it couldn’t wait until morning?
Jaci hauled herself to her feet and walked to her door. When she pressed the intercom button and asked who was there, there was silence. Yay, now she had a creepoid pressing random doorbells. Well, they could carry on. She was going to bed, where she was determined to not think about stupid men in general and a moronic man in particular.
A hard rap had her spinning around, and she glared at her door. Frowning, she walked back to the door and looked through the peephole and gasped when she saw Ryan’s distorted face on the other side. Now he wanted to talk to her? Late at night when she was just dressed in a rugby jersey of Neil’s that she’d liberated a decade ago, fuzzy socks and crazy hair? Was he insane?
“Let me in, Jace.”
At the sound of his voice, her traitorous heart did a long, slow, happy slide from one side of her rib cage to the other. Stupid thing. “No.”
“Come on, Jaci, we need to talk.” Ryan’s voice floated under the door.
Jaci, forgetting that she looked like an extra in a vampire movie, jerked the door open and slapped her hands on her hips. She shot him a look that was hot and frustrated. “Go away. Go far, far away!”
Ryan pushed her back into her apartment, shut the door behind him and shrugged out of his leather jacket. Despite her anger, and her disappointment, Jaci noticed that Ryan looked exhausted. He had twin blue-black stripes under his eyes and he looked pale. So their time apart hadn’t been easy on him, either, she realized, and she was human enough to feel a tiny bit vindicated about that. But she also wanted to pull him into her arms, to soothe away his pain.
She loved him, and always would. Dammit.
Jaci slapped her hands across her chest. “What do you want, Ryan?”
Ryan shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and rocked on his heels. “I came to tell you that I’ve secured another source of funding for Blown Away.”
Really? Oh, goodie! Jaci realized that he couldn’t hear her sarcastic thoughts, so she glared at him again. “That’s why you’re here?”
Ryan looked confused. “Well, yeah. I thought you’d be pleased.”
Jaci brushed past him, yanked her door open and waved her arm to get him to walk out. When he didn’t, she pushed the words through her gritted teeth. “Get out.”
“The funding isn’t from Banks, it’s from...” he hesitated for a moment before shaking his head. “...someone else.”
“I don’t care if it’s from the goblins under the nearest bridge.”
“Jaci, what the hell? This is your big break. This is what you wanted.” Ryan looked utterly confused and more than a little irate. “I’ve been busting my ass to sort this out, and this is your response?”
“Did I ask you to?” Jaci demanded. “Did I ask you to roar off, ignore me for days, refuse to take my calls and keep me in the dark?”
“Look, maybe I should’ve called—”
“Maybe?” Jaci kicked the door shut with her foot and slapped her hands on his chest, attempting and failing to push him back. “Damn right you should’ve called! You don’t get to fall in and out of my life. I’m not a doll you can pick up and discard on a whim.”
“No, you’re just an enormous pain in my ass.” Ryan captured her wrists with one hand and gripped her hip with his other hand, pulling her into his rock-hard erection. “You drive me mad, you’re on my mind first thing in the morning and last thing at night and, annoyingly, pretty much any minute in between.” He dropped his mouth onto hers and slid his tongue between her lips. Jaci felt her joints melt and tried not to sink into him. He was like the worst street drug she could imagine—one hit and she was addicted all over again.
She felt Ryan’s hands slide up her waist to cover her breasts and she shuddered. One more time, one more memory. She needed it and she needed him.
One more time and then she’d kick him out. Of her apartment and her life.
“There you are,” Ryan murmured against her mouth. “I needed you back in my arms.”
He needed her? Back in his arms? Oh, God, he wasn’t back because he loved her or missed her. He was back because he loved the sex and he missed it. Stiffening, she pulled her mouth from his and narrowed her eyes. “Back off,” she muttered.
Ryan lifted his hands and took a half step away. He ran a hand around the back of his neck and blew air into his cheeks. “Jace, I—”
Jaci shook her head and pushed past him, thinking that she needed some distance, just a moment to get her heart and head under control. She walked into the bathroom and gripped the edge of the sink, telling herself that she had to resist temptation because she couldn’t kid herself anymore; Ryan wanted to have sex and she wanted to make love. Settling for less than she wanted wasn’t an option anymore. She didn’t want to settle for a bouquet of flowers when she needed the whole damn florist. Jaci placed her elbows on the bathroom counter and stared at her pale reflection in the mirror.
She needed more and she had to tell him. It was that simple. And that hard. She’d tell him that she loved him and he’d walk, because he wasn’t interested in anything that even hinted at permanence.
Her expiration date was up.
“You can do this, you are stronger than you think.” Jaci whispered the words to herself.
“You can do what?”
Jaci stood up and slowly turned around to Ryan standing in the entrance to the bathroom, holding the top rim of the door. He looked hot and sexy and rumpled. Still tired, she thought, but so damn confident. God, she needed every bit of willpower she possessed to walk away from him, but if she didn’t do it now she never would.
Jaci pulled in a deep breath. “I’m walking away...from you, from this.”
Ryan tipped his head to the side and Jaci saw the corners of his mouth twitch in amusement. Ooh, that look made her want to smack him silly.
“No,” he calmly stated. He dropped his hands and crossed his arms over that ocean of a chest and spread his legs, effectively blocking her path out of the bathroom.
That just made her mad. “What do you mean no? I am going to leave New York and I am definitely leaving you.”
“No, you are not leaving New York and you are definitely not leaving me.”
Jaci leaned back against the counter and thought that it was ridiculous that they were having this conversation in the bathroom. “I refuse to be your part-time plaything.”
“You’re not my plaything and, judging by the space you take up in my head, you’re not a part-time anything.”
“You run, Ryan. Every time I need you to talk to me, you run,” Jaci cried.
To her surprise, he nodded his agreement. “Because you scare me. You scare the crap out of me.”
“Why?” Jaci wailed, not understanding any of it.
Ryan lifted one powerful shoulder in a long shrug. “Because I’m in love with you.”
No, he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. “You’re not in love with me,” Jaci told him, her voice shaky. “People in love don’t
act like you did. They don’t accuse people of having affairs. They don’t try to hurt the people they love!”
Horror chased pain and regret across his face. “Sorry. God, I’m so sorry that I hurt you,” Ryan said in a strangled voice. “I’d just heard that you discussed us with that horse’s butt and you looked all dewy, and soft, and in love. I thought that you’d gone back to him.”
“Why did you think that?”
“Because it’s the way you look after I make love to you!” Ryan shouted, his chest heaving. “I was jealous and scared and I didn’t want to be in love with you, to expose myself to being hurt. You loved him three months ago, Jaci.”
“That was before I learned that he liked S&M and that he cheated on me. It was before I grew stronger, bolder. It was before I met you. How could you think that, Ryan? How could you believe that I would hurt you like that?”
“Because I’m scared to love you, to be with you.” Ryan’s jaw was rock hard and his eyes were bleak. When he spoke again, his words sounded as if he was chipping them from a mound of granite. “Because all the people who I loved have let me down in some way or the other. I love you, and why would life treat me any different now?” He shrugged and he swallowed, emotion making his Adam’s apple bounce in his strong throat. “But I’m willing to take the chance. You’re that important.”
No, he wasn’t, and he couldn’t be in love with her. It sounded far too good to be true.
“You don’t love me,” Jaci insisted, her voice shaky. Yet she could hear, and she was sure he could, too, the note of hope in her voice.
“Yeah, I do. I am so in love with you. I didn’t want to be, didn’t think I ever would fall in love again, but I have. With you.” He didn’t touch her, he didn’t try to persuade her with his body because his eyes, his fabulous eyes, radiated the truth of that statement. He loved her? Good grief. Jaci gripped the counter with her hands in an effort to keep from hurtling herself into his arms.