Take on Me

by Sarah Mayberry

  Of course, there was that personality of hers to consider, he reminded himself. There was only so much bitchiness a man could tolerate for the sake of a sexy body.

  “Sounds great,” he said.

  “Yeah, it was,” she replied. She shifted her head a little, her hair rippling over her shoulder as she tilted her chin at him. As though she was daring him to challenge her on her answer.

  Definitely something going on there, but he was in no rush to find out. Television production offices were always rife with gossip. All he had to do was tee up the right conversation with the right gossip-monger, and he’d know everything from her shoe size to the last time she flossed.

  “Why don’t I leave you guys to it, then? Sadie probably needs to be brought up-to-date with what’s happened while she’s been away,” Claudia said, moving toward the door.

  Dylan decided to take her departure as the cue to crank things up a little. Time to let Ms. Post know that she wouldn’t have things all her way this time around. Without asking permission, he sank into the chair opposite her desk and propped the ankle of one leg confidently on the knee of the other.

  He’d been thrown off guard for a couple of moments there by the discovery that Sadie the Stick Post had turned into a whole handful of woman. But he was over that now.

  Time to start setting the record straight.

  SADIE FELT A STRESS twitch break out under her eye as Dylan Anderson leaned back in her visitor’s chair and locked his hands behind his head. As though he owned the place, king of all he surveyed.

  She felt as though she was in a human-size snowglobe, and someone had just shaken the crap out of it. In fact, if all her furniture started floating around her, she wouldn’t be a bit surprised—she felt utterly, completely at sea. Flummoxed. Thrown. Terrified. Furious. In fact, there was a whole mental ward of violent emotions wrestling for supremacy in her brain. For the moment, she was a helpless bystander, waiting to see which emotion would be the final victor.

  Dylan Anderson. The Dylan Anderson. Star of her nightmares for at least five years after that horrible, crushing senior prom. The man voted Most Likely to Be Hit by a Car in a Dark Alleyway in her own private, personal yearbook.

  And now he was here. Sitting opposite her—slouching, really, already supremely at ease.

  She wanted to scream. She wasn’t up to this. She was already on her knees after Greg’s betrayal. This was too much.

  Over the years, she’d imagined running into Dylan again. For a while, it had been her favorite indulgent daydream. In her version, she was wearing a designer gown, looking blindingly beautiful as she sauntered up the aisle after accepting her Best Original Screenplay Oscar. He’d fallen on hard times and was working as a seat warmer, filling in for celebrities when they needed to go to the bathroom. Their eyes met briefly—and she sailed right by, cutting him dead, ignoring him completely. Or, in her alternate fantasy, she stopped and took pity on him, insisting he give her a call—she was sure they could find something for him to do around the production office. Emptying bins, cleaning toilets, licking her shoes. That kind of thing.

  Instead she got this—him sitting cockily across from her, making the room feel smaller and putting her whole body on red alert.

  Whenever she’d cast him in one of her revenge fantasies, he’d always been balding and paunchy, with a pronounced stoop. Sometimes she even gave him missing teeth. Why the hell not, after all? It was her fantasy, and she was in charge of hair, wardrobe and makeup.

  But, unfortunately for her, the years had been kind to Dylan. Not just kind, generous. Really, really generous. Although he’d retained his lean, rangy physique, his shoulders had broadened with age, his chest deepened. His thighs were stronger, his biceps more pronounced. She could even see the smooth curve of pecs beneath his dark green T-shirt. He’d moved on from the rebellious long hair of his youth and wore it cropped short and tousled now, one lock flopping over his forehead. Even the lines around his eyes and mouth only made him more attractive, if that were possible. The bastard.

  God, she despised him. For a moment, reconstituted hate threatened to overwhelm her as she stared at him. The things she could say to him. Had wanted to say to him, all those years ago once she’d moved beyond mortification and into rage. In the very early days, she’d written him letters. Long, scathing, insulting letters that told him exactly what she thought of him. She may have even been tempted to deliver one of them to him if he hadn’t disappeared after prom. She’d never seen him again after that night.

  She’d thought him blessedly gone forever from her world until she’d had the horrible shock of seeing his name on the end credits of The Boardroom three years ago. It couldn’t be the same man, she’d told herself. But a subtle check through industry sources had quickly proved it was. It had been the career equivalent of finishing her breakfast cereal to find a cockroach in the bottom of her bowl. No, worse—half a cockroach.

  Since then, she’d checked up on him every now and then, so she knew where he was, what he was doing. Like keeping an eye on a spider that had found its way into her home.

  And now he was here, sitting opposite her, oozing masculine confidence like a miasma, waiting for her to say something.

  Thank God Claudia hadn’t told him about her disastrous wedding. She’d almost sobbed with relief when Claudia had given a tiny shake of her head to indicate he didn’t know anything beyond the fact that she’d gone to the Caribbean. If there was any justice in the world, he’d stay in the dark, too. Just the thought of him knowing about her humiliating private life was enough to make her feel nauseous.

  The silence stretched a long, long time as she tried to shuffle her disordered, chaotic thoughts into some kind of shape. He waited her out, his eyes steady, his expression unreadable. The bastard.

  What got her the most was the benign, butter-wouldn’t-melt way he’d mentioned that they’d gone to school together, and that he didn’t know if Sadie would remember him or not. As though his cruelty hadn’t been one of the pivotal moments of her life.

  The thought that his treatment of her had barely registered a blip on his personal radar was the jolt she needed to find her backbone.

  Last time she’d seen this asshole, he’d bested and humiliated her in grand style.

  He wouldn’t be getting a second shot.

  Squaring her shoulders, she cleared her throat.

  “I gather that you came on board last week, is that right?” she asked.

  To encourage the illusion of professionalism, she grabbed a notepad and pen, and hoped like hell that her hands weren’t shaking with reaction.

  “Yep. Pretty much just picked up where Joss had left things. The team was great, really on top of it all,” he said.

  She bristled at the proprietorial way he handed out the compliment—as if he’d handpicked the team and trained them up personally, not her. As though he was telling her something she didn’t know.

  “Yeah, they’re a great team. Very experienced. I’m surprised Claudia didn’t consider getting one of them to step up, actually.”

  The moment the words were out of her mouth, she knew she’d made a tactical error. For starters, none of the team was really at the stage where they could step up and take over the show at the drop of a hat. And he’d know that after a week with them. The bastard.

  Second—and more importantly—she’d tipped her hand. He knew she didn’t want him here. She could see it in his eyes—along with the fact that he didn’t give a damn how she felt.

  “Guess you’d have to talk to Claudia about that.” He shrugged, supremely cool.

  She swallowed the swearword that sprang instinctively to her lips.

  “Since you seem to have landed on your feet so well, we’d best get straight down to business,” she said tightly, determined not to give him another inch.

  “Sure. You want me to recap last week’s episodes, or did you get a chance to read them before you came in?” he asked.

  She resisted the
urge to respond defensively by blaming her late flight for her lack of preparation. She was his boss, not the other way around.

  “Just walk me through the salient points,” she said calmly.

  “Sure.”

  Tilting her chair back a little, Sadie steepled her fingers and tried to look confident and in control.

  Anything to survive this first encounter with some dignity intact.

  DYLAN TOOK A MOMENT to gather his thoughts before launching into a summary of last week’s stories. Not easy when his eyes kept drifting to the neckline of Sadie’s tight T-shirt.

  “Basically, we picked up on the six strands you guys had going—Gabe and Hannah’s romance, Kirk and Loni’s divorce, Garth’s malpractice suit, Honey’s pregnancy, Luther’s machinations regarding the family business and Angel’s high-school dramas. Going over the previous few weeks’ worth of story lines, I thought we’d pretty much milked the divorce scenario as much as we could. So last week we got Kirk to the point of agreeing in principal to a settlement, and signing the papers,” Dylan said.

  Sadie’s eyes narrowed as she processed what he’d said. Dylan waited and watched, his eyes drifting of their own accord over her face. She had great skin—sun-kissed, clear. Glowing was probably the way the cosmetic companies would describe it. Except it didn’t look as though she was wearing a lot of makeup to him.

  “Future planning for Kirk and Loni is that they reconcile. We don’t want them getting a divorce,” she said.

  “I saw your forward-planning stuff,” he said. “I thought we could get a few more twists and turns in there before we got them back together. So, Kirk’s signed the papers—but he hasn’t sent them anywhere yet.”

  She stared at him, that muscle flexing in her jaw again. Good skin, and great eyes. Why hadn’t he remembered her eyes? She must have had those back in high school, even if the breasts that thrust up beneath her T-shirt had been conspicuously absent back then.

  “And what’s going to stop him from handing the papers over to his lawyer?” she asked.

  “This week, I figure Loni’s going to have a visit from an old flame. Someone to turn the heat up,” he said. He grinned cockily, daring her not to like it.

  “And next week Kirk learns his brother has died?” Sadie asked, carefully not passing comment yet.

  “Maybe. If we can’t find any more twists and turns before we get there,” Dylan said noncommittally.

  Her eyes flashed once, briefly, then the calm, unreadable mask was back in place.

  “That all sounds very interesting,” she said. “Rather than you going through it all verbally, though, I think I’d prefer to read the episodes, so I can really absorb the nuance.”

  Her lips thinned for a moment, but nothing could disguise their plump poutiness for long. She had a very sexy mouth, he judged. Belatedly, he became aware of what he was doing: checking Sadie Post out.

  Wrenching his brain back on track, he focused on the main event.

  “Sure. You’re the boss, after all,” he said.

  She’d been making a note on her pad, but her head shot up at that. They stared at one other for a long moment, then her gaze shifted to something over his shoulder.

  “The rest of the team is here,” she said. “I don’t want to hold you up.”

  He could have sworn she sounded relieved. The suspicion was reinforced when she stood, signaling the meeting was over. She was rattled. He relished the realization, even as he made himself a promise—he planned on shaking her cage a lot more than this over the next few months.

  Instead of responding to her cues, he remained seated, wanting to see how far he could push her. Slowly, deliberately provocative, he slid his eyes over her body.

  What was supposed to be a goad quickly turned into a pleasure tour. It wasn’t exactly a hardship looking at her, he admitted to himself as his gaze lingered on the firm, uptilted mounds of her breasts. She had the sort of lithe, elegant body that would look amazing naked. His eyes dropped to her hips. He hadn’t seen her butt yet, but he bet it was peachy. He wondered what kind of underwear she wore, whether she was a believer in the thong.

  “You know, I would have walked past you in the street,” he said once he’d lifted his eyes back to her face. He was satisfied to see that she was blushing, her eyes sparkling with anger. “You sure have changed a lot.”

  “Yes. You’re still pretty much the same, though,” she said.

  She didn’t mean it as a compliment, he knew.

  He stood, taking pleasure from looking down on her, even if he only had the advantage of an inch or two.

  “You’d be surprised.”

  He drilled her with his eyes before he delivered his parting words.

  “I’m really looking forward to the next few months, Sadie.”

  SADIE CLUTCHED at her desk as he exited her office, allowing herself to at last register how weak her knees were, and that her entire body was trembling with reaction.

  Automatically her eyes followed his rangy body as he walked away, dropping to catalog his strong back and lean, trim hips. Well-worn denim sculpted the perfect male ass she remembered from all those years ago. It was still extremely grab-bable, she decided dispassionately, the kind of perky male butt that made most women drool.

  Every woman except her, of course. She was forever immune to any so-called charm Dylan Anderson had to offer.

  She sank into her chair and stared at the notes she’d taken. Jumbled words and a messy, violent doodle filled the page. A pretty accurate depiction of her mindscape at present.

  She felt blindsided, overwhelmed. He was the enemy. She didn’t want him at Ocean Boulevard. How could Claudia have done this to her?

  As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she wiped it out. This was not Claudia’s fault. If Dylan Anderson wasn’t who he was, he’d be the find of the year. A huge feather in their caps, in fact. He’d been nominated for a number of awards for his work on The Boardroom. As much as it galled her, she knew he was well respected. Admired, even.

  “Gag me with a cheese grater,” she said out loud, reverting to one of her favorite high-school phrases. For some reason, it felt appropriate.

  “Talking to yourself. Second sign of madness.”

  It was Grace, already sliding into her visitor’s chair. Sadie felt pathetically pleased to see her, and had to bite back the overwhelming urge to blurt the whole sad saga out on the spot.

  “I’m not even going to ask what the first sign is,” she said, hiding the revealing doodle in a desk drawer.

  “You know, I can never remember. Is it hairy palms? Or is that masturbation?”

  As always, Grace managed to tease a smile out of Sadie, despite her preoccupation. “Sorry, I didn’t have a Catholic education.” Sadie shrugged.

  “More pity you. If only you knew the guilt you could be enduring on a daily basis,” Grace said as she crossed her legs. Sadie’s eyes were drawn to the dark purple stilettos on her feet.

  “Hey. They’re new,” she said, desperate for distraction.

  “Yep. Found them in a little flea pit off Sunset Strip,” Grace said smugly.

  The fact that Grace wore a lime-green vintage fifties dress with white piping and belt should have made the shoes a big mistake, but, as usual, her friend managed to pull the look off. With her dark burgundy hair worn long with very short, straight bangs, Sadie reflected that Grace had been born about half a century too late.

  “So, what do you think of Mr. Studly?” Grace asked, twirling a strand of hair around her finger.

  “I hate him,” Sadie said, then immediately clapped a hand over her mouth. She honestly hadn’t meant to say anything. She’d planned to hold it all in and try to work out some strategy. But the words had leaped out of her mouth as though they had a life of their own.

  Grace blinked.

  “Really? God, what did he say? He was only in here for half an hour.”

  “We went to school with each other.”

  “No way.” Grace’s eyes
narrowed. “Why am I sensing pent-up teen angst here?”

  Ridiculous tears suddenly welled in Sadie’s eyes and she blinked furiously.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Grace asked, really concerned now. She stood and started to move around the desk to comfort Sadie.

  Sadie held up a hand to forestall her. “Don’t! Please! I don’t want him to know I’m upset,” she said, shooting a wary look out her doorway to where she could see Dylan talking casually to two of his team members.

  “Okay.”

  Grace sank back into her chair, her face creased with worry. “This guy really did a number on you, didn’t he?”

  Sadie took a deep breath and sighed heavily.

  “It’s ancient history. It shouldn’t have this much power over me,” she said ruefully.

  “Yeah, right. In my opinion, the years between thirteen and nineteen keep therapists all over the world in ski holidays and suntans. Kids can be cruel, man,” Grace said.

  “It’s stupid to even think about it. I mean, I’m an adult now. None of that stuff counts anymore,” Sadie said. She didn’t sound even remotely convincing.

  Grace wasn’t buying, either.

  “I think you should tell Claudia,” Grace said firmly.

  “No.”

  “Why not? There’s no way you would have hired this creep on your own. Claudia will understand.”

  Sadie loved that her friend had already consigned Dylan to the creep category without even hearing her story. She was a true friend.

  “I can’t. What am I going to say? ‘He was mean to me in school, make him go away’? There’s no way I can put Claudia in that position.”

  “What’s the point of being friends with the boss if you can’t exploit it a little?” Grace joked.

  Sadie managed a halfhearted smile.

  “What are you going to do, then?” Grace prompted, green eyes worried.

  “I don’t know. Suck it up, I guess. It’s only a six-month contract, right?”