Take on Me

by Sarah Mayberry

  So, he hadn’t meant to be a smart-ass. Some of her tension eased as she slid into the chair.

  “How can I help?” she asked, making a Herculean effort to sound normal and pretend she hadn’t unzipped Dylan’s fly less than twenty-four hours ago and helped herself to what she’d found inside.

  “We’re kicking off Angel’s love triangle this week, and I wanted your take on the two guy characters,” he said.

  He leaned back in his chair as he spoke, and Sadie tried to ignore how broad his shoulders looked in the charcoal polo shirt he was wearing.

  “Okay. Um, there are two main players apart from Angel, who we all know, of course, because she’s a regular character on the show,” Sadie babbled, trying desperately to gather her thoughts. If only he wasn’t so attractive. And such a jerk. “The nerdy friend, Calvin, is Angel’s constant companion, and the bad boy is in her math class. Calvin is your classic unsung, untested hero. Lacking self-esteem, but all heart. Once he gains some confidence, he’s going to turn into Angel’s knight in shining armor. And, of course, underneath his glasses and bad haircut he’s pretty cute.”

  Dylan nodded as he took notes. “And the bad boy?”

  Sadie swallowed nervously and reached for something to occupy her hands. As usual, the big meeting table was littered with notebooks, coffee cups, crumb-covered plates and pens and pencils. She settled on an oversize pencil that someone had brought back from Hawaii.

  “The bad boy is just that—bad. Late for class. Never does his homework. Talks back to the teacher. His one redeeming feature is that he’s a hunk. Angel being a teen, that’s the bit she’s interested in. She has a crush a mile wide,” Sadie explained.

  She clenched the pencil hard in her hand as she spoke. When she’d mapped out this story with the team at their forward planning weekend, she’d willingly channeled her high-school experiences with Dylan into Angel’s character. It was something everyone on the story team did—steal from real life to feed the voracious story machine of the show. Not for a second did she ever think she’d be sitting opposite Dylan outlining the story inspired by her own secret crush on him. This was where the whole “being cursed” thing gained traction big-time—really, could she be any unluckier?

  “So, what’s the bad boy’s story? Does he know she likes him? Angel’s a pretty hot chick,” Dylan said.

  Sadie frowned. “He has no idea. And Angel’s pretty, but she’s not spectacular. We deliberately play her down so we can do stories like this and give the ordinary teens in our audience someone to identify with. Our bad boy’s too busy trying to pick up cheerleaders to notice her,” Sadie said firmly.

  Dylan made another note. “So, this guy is dumb? Is that it? Nothing but a dumb hunk?”

  Sadie shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Until a week ago, she’d have answered yes to that question. But clearly Dylan Anderson was not dumb.

  “He hates school,” she improvised. “He’s too busy being the party king to care. He thinks high school is going to last forever and he’s always going to be on top.”

  “So he is dumb. And shallow,” Dylan said flatly.

  “He’s really only a distraction to stop Angel from looking too close to home for a while. But soon she’s going to work out that her nerdy sidekick is her dream man,” Sadie said defensively.

  “Do you have any objection to us making the bad boy as three dimensional as possible?” Dylan asked.

  Sadie shrugged, acutely uncomfortable. It was almost as though Dylan knew she’d based the character on him. But even in her heightened state of paranoia she knew that wasn’t possible.

  “Sure. Go for it. I always like shades of gray in a story,” she said.

  Dylan nodded and flicked over a page on the forward planning notes he was following. She saw he had underlined certain passages for ease of reference, and remembered how well prepared he’d been in every meeting they’d had so far. Whatever else she thought of him, he took his work very seriously.

  “I see there’s a crisis in a few weeks’ time, where nerdy kid is going to leap to Angel’s defense when bad boy picks on her. Did you have any ideas about how this might play out?”

  Sadie slid the big pencil back and forth between her fingers nervously. She’d had lots of ideas about how those scenes might play out—but since her real-life teen costar was sitting at the other end of the table, she decided it would be better to play dumb.

  “I’ll leave that with you. As long as Angel gets a sharp lesson in contrasts. Just because the bad boy is beautiful doesn’t mean he’s worth knowing, that kind of thing,” Sadie said.

  “Okay, fine.” Dylan’s eyes dropped to her hands, and Sadie glanced down to see that she’d wrapped her hand around the fat pencil and was absent-mindedly sliding her palm up and down the lacquered wood.

  Her eyes widened as she registered how suggestive the action was, and she dropped the pencil as though she’d been electrocuted. Feeling a full body blush coming on, she shot to her feet.

  “If that’s all, I’ve got a paper full of desk to get to,” Sadie mumbled. She grimaced. “I mean, a desk full of paper,” she said swiftly.

  The blush was setting her ears on fire by the time she’d exited the room. Prickles of sweat broke out under her arms, and she dove into her office with a sigh of relief.

  Despite a few minor hiccups, she’d survived. Dylan had behaved professionally, and so had she. If she could get through another twenty-four weeks or so like that, Dylan’s contract would be finished, Joss would be back and her moment of temporary insanity in Dylan’s office would be dust.

  Someone made a desperate squeaking noise, and Sadie realized it was her.

  Things were pretty bad when a girl didn’t believe her own line of bull.

  BY FRIDAY, Dylan was feeling distinctly edgy, despite the fact that hostilities between him and his blond-haired opponent had been notably subdued for the past few days. He figured that was something to do with the bout of all-consuming sex they’d had in his office on Tuesday night. Nothing like mutual orgasm to bring about world peace. Unfortunately for his personal equilibrium, however, schtupping Sadie hadn’t put paid to his body’s obsession with her. He’d woken every night since with a raging hard-on with Sadie’s name all over it. But he refused to give in to the demands of his hormones. He was old enough to want more from sex than just mindless friction. At the very least, he wanted to not actively dislike his bed partner. Sadie didn’t even qualify on that most basic level.

  Although she had her moments, he had to admit. Such as yesterday, when he’d arrived at work to find half a dozen big bags of candy on the story-room table. Lara and Ben had crowed with delight and dived straight in. Later he’d learned that Sadie often treated the story team, be it with bottles of wine for post-work drinks on a Friday, or with sugar to help keep them going through the long plot meetings.

  And she was a lot less uptight than he’d imagined. The sound of her laughter was always echoing through the office. Most of the time it was when she was hanging with Grace or Claudia, but she seemed to get on well with everyone. Except for him, of course. He told himself that was because he was the only one who knew what she was really like.

  But he still found himself following her with his eyes when she came into his orbit. It was impossible for him not to notice her. For starters, she was so much taller than the other women in the office. And she had those amazing legs. Every time he scanned their lean length he remembered the feel of them wrapped around his hips as he thrust into her. Reason enough to look away, many men would think. Wiser men than him, unfortunately.

  No wonder he was starting the day feeling cranky and tired and pushed to the limit. He made himself a double-shot espresso in the kitchen, and slid into his chair at the head of the story table with an old man’s sigh. He was looking forward to the weekend. It wouldn’t be a complete break, as he’d spend part of each day blocking out ideas for the following week’s stories, and he had a number of his own projects on the go. The importan
t thing was that anything he did would be a Sadie-free activity—exactly what the doctor had ordered.

  “Have you got a minute?”

  Dylan looked up from the draft story lines he’d been reviewing to see Sadie standing in the doorway, a sheaf of papers in hand. He was getting used to the two of them being the first people into the office in the morning. Not that they ever exchanged more than the minimum of words, but he was always aware that she was around.

  “At your service,” he said.

  She shot him a hard look for his provocative choice of words and propped herself at the end of the table, almost as though she was afraid to come any closer. He allowed himself one quick full-body scan before putting his libido back on a tight leash. The sleeveless red cotton peasant top she was wearing was open at the throat, offering a glimpse of the shadow between her breasts. The fabric frothed out loosely over her chest and stomach, but was gathered in again around her waist. A frilly hem sat over the waistband of a pair of well-worn denims that made her legs appear to go on forever. She was wearing her black cowboy boots again, and the mere sight of them was enough to send his thoughts winging back to Tuesday night. He slammed down on the desire easing into his veins and forced his focus to work.

  “What’s up?” he asked neutrally.

  She tapped one of the draft scene breakdowns she was holding. He’d e-mailed the drafts to her last night so he could pass her notes onto the team today.

  “This story with Angel and the bad boy,” she said.

  “Jack,” Dylan said. For some reason, the way she referred to the bad boy character so impersonally really got on his nerves.

  “Fine, Jack. I see in Wednesday’s episode you have Angel trying to get his attention and flirting with him.”

  “Yeah. And he ignores her, as we discussed,” Dylan said.

  Sadie shook her head. “She would never try to get his attention like that. It’s out of character for her. She’s shy, she’s got low self-esteem. She’s very inexperienced with boys. And she thinks this guy is a god. She would never try to get him to look at her.”

  Dylan snorted. “Girls are born flirting,” he said.

  “Not all girls,” Sadie said vehemently. A little too vehemently, Dylan noted.

  “So, what does she do, then? Just stare at him when he’s not looking?” Dylan asked. “That’s not going to make the greatest TV in the world.”

  “It’s about small moments. She doodles his name in her book, then has to hide it when he looks across. She hangs out near his locker so she can be near him. And she tries to shield him when the teacher has it in for him. With good direction, we can get those moments. She really loves this guy, remember. She adores him.”

  Sadie’s cheeks were flushed, and she didn’t quite meet his eye as she delivered her feedback.

  “And this guy has no idea she likes him? Teenage boys aren’t that dumb,” Dylan said disbelievingly.

  She looked directly at him then, her eyes oddly fierce.

  “Yeah, they are.”

  There was a long moment of silence, then Sadie broke their eye lock and shuffled her papers around. Dylan studied her closely, trying to work out what was going on.

  “I wanted to talk to you about the bad boy’s scenes, too,” she said.

  “Jack,” Dylan corrected her again.

  “Right, Jack. He’s too nice,” she said.

  “What?” Dylan asked, a little taken aback. “He smokes, he hassles the girls in the corridor, he gets kicked out of class. What more do you want?”

  “This scene with the teacher telling him he’s dumb and that he should just quit school now and save them the trouble of kicking him out. I don’t believe it. It’s like a scene out of Dickens or something,” Sadie said.

  “It happens,” Dylan said flatly.

  “I think it makes him too likable. He’s supposed to be the enemy,” she said.

  “I thought you liked shades of gray in your stories?” he asked. “He’s a person, too. He has dreams, fears, motivations. Don’t you think it makes it more interesting if we know what makes him tick, why he behaves the way he does?”

  Sadie made a disparaging noise. “It’s not hard to work out. He thinks he’s God’s gift to women, and he’s too lazy to work hard for anything else in his life.”

  “I think you’re wrong. I think he’s a kid who’s had it tough. I think his parents are both blue collar workers who don’t give a damn about education and don’t believe in him. And I think he’s had trouble with school since the moment he started because no one ever took the time to understand he learned differently from the other kids.”

  Too late Dylan realized that he’d just laid a whole lot of himself out on the table. But to his everlasting relief, Sadie didn’t appear to pick up on the unusual level of passion in his tone.

  “What do you mean, learns differently? You mean he’s got a learning disorder?” she asked, a frown pleating her forehead.

  Dylan shrugged, backing off now. What was he playing at, true confessions? She was the last person he wanted to trust with the knowledge of his dyslexia.

  “Not necessarily. Maybe he’s got eye trouble or something, or a hearing problem and he can’t understand what the teacher is saying half the time,” he hedged.

  She cocked her head to one side, considering the idea. “That’s kind of interesting,” she said reluctantly. “The big bad hunk with a hidden weakness.”

  “It’s a difference, not a weakness,” Dylan heard himself say defensively.

  This time she picked up on his tone, and the look she shot him was searching. She didn’t say anything further, though, simply flicked through her notes some more.

  “Can you get the story liners to adjust the episodes more in line with Angel’s character, please?” she asked, obviously preparing to leave.

  “What about the material with Jack?”

  She shrugged. “Leave it in. You’re right, it’s more complex this way.”

  Dylan raised his eyebrows to signal his surprise at her ready capitulation. She read him straight-off.

  “Pretty soft for a tyrant, aren’t I?” she said.

  She leaned forward to pass the notes over, and his eyes automatically dipped into the shadow of her cleavage. Their fingers accidentally brushed as he took the papers, and a surge of pure lust rocked him. God, he wanted her again. Too much.

  His eyes lifted to her face. Her cheeks were faintly flushed, her eyelids at half-mast. As he watched, the tip of her tongue darted out to moisten her full lower lip.

  “It’s not going to happen again,” he said suddenly.

  She blinked, then took a step back.

  “Of course not.”

  “It was a mistake. A big one,” Dylan said, determined to kill whatever it was that burned between them. “We don’t even like each other.”

  “It’s not going to happen again,” she confirmed.

  “Just so we’re agreed.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Turning on her heel, she left. For the life of him, he couldn’t stop himself from following the wiggle of her butt in her faded denims.

  It doesn’t matter, he assured himself. She doesn’t want it, and you don’t even like her. It’s never going to happen again.

  SADIE WAS DETERMINED to spend the weekend doing work. She didn’t have to, but she was so confused and messed up that she needed something to take her mind off its interminable circling.

  An hour into her Saturday morning revision of the week’s story lines, she knew she’d made a mistake. She couldn’t read a scene without remembering Dylan pitching the idea. His voice kept popping up in her subconscious, and even though she kept pushing it away, it had the same effect thoughts of Dylan had had all week: it made her horny.

  Which lead her straight back to being messed up. Despite their agreement that there was no chance of a rematch, she’d still woken this morning panting for breath, a handful of vivid-sense memories firmly imprinted in her mind: the feel of Dylan sliding inside
her for the first time; the fierce hunger in him as he tongued her breasts; the clench of his fingers on her hips as he shuddered out his climax. If her dreams had carried on to the inevitable conclusion, she might have been almost grateful for the release. But they didn’t. She always woke before her dream-self could be satisfied, and as a result she was now strung tight as a bow. A very turned-on, horny, desperate bow.

  Worse, as she sat in her living room reading over the work Dylan and the team had produced for the week, she was forced to admit the realization that had been growing inside her since she’d returned from holidays—he was incredibly talented. It wasn’t just that he knew how to build tension to a cliff-hanger that demanded their audience tune in the following day. It was the nuance, the feeling he captured between the characters. And, typically, it was Angel’s school love triangle that showcased his skill to perfection. It was all there—the small looks, the hesitations, the accidental touches, the unconscious snubs. He’d captured it all in painful, sensitive detail.

  How could this be the same person who had treated her so cruelly all those years ago? It was a question that had reared up in her mind a number of times over the past week. She needed to hold on to the old anger so badly; his humiliation had been such a pivotal moment in her life. But the more she saw and heard of Dylan, the more trouble she was having reconciling the smart-ass loner of her memories with the articulate, witty, clever man of today.

  He’d incorporated all her changes with no argument whatsoever. He clearly wanted what was best for the show. He wanted to make good drama—as she did. And, scarily, their ideas about what made good drama were uncannily attuned. The clashes of the Tuesday morning pitch meeting aside, he’d taken on board all her suggestions and comments, bar a few exceptions. And even then, he’d made his version so undeniable she’d been forced to concede that it was the right way to go. Such as with the whole to-kiss-or-not-to-kiss issue with Loni’s ex-boyfriend, J.B. Dylan had gone with his angle, having Loni kiss her old flame. But he’d done it so convincingly, mining all the nuances so well, that Sadie couldn’t in all conscience put her foot down for the sake of it. It was good. Better than that—it was great.