“Interesting seeing you again, Ryan,” Jaci said in a catch-a-clue voice.

A puzzled frown pulled his brows together. “Maybe we should have coffee, catch up.”

“Honey, you don’t even know who I am, so what, exactly, would be the point? Goodbye, Ryan.”

“Okay, busted. So who are you?” Ryan roughly demanded. “I know that I know you …”

“You’ll work it out,” Jaci told him and heard him utter a low curse as she walked away. But she wasn’t sure if he would connect her with the long-ago teenager who’d hung on his every word. She doubted it. There was no hint of the insecure girl she used to be … on the outside anyway. Besides it would be fun to see his face when he realized that she was Neil’s sister, the woman Neil wanted him to help navigate the “perils” of New York City.

“Then how about another kiss to jog my memory?” Ryan called out just as she was about to walk into the ballroom.

She turned around slowly and tipped her head to the side. “Let me think about that for a minute … mmm … no.”

But hot damn, Jaci thought as she walked off, she was tempted.

Taking the Boss to Bed

Joss Wood

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JOSS WOOD wrote her first book at the age of eight and has never really stopped writing. Her passion for putting letters on a blank screen is matched only by her love of books and traveling—especially to the wild places of Southern Africa—and possibly by her hatred of ironing and making school lunches.

Fueled by coffee, when she’s not writing or being a hands-on mum, Joss—with her background in business and marketing—works for a nonprofit organization to promote the local economic development and collective business interests of the area where she resides. Happily and chaotically surrounded by books, family and friends, she lives in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, with her husband, children and their many pets.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Extract

Copyright

One

Jaci Brookes-Lyon walked across the art deco, ridiculously ornate lobby of the iconic Forrester-Grantham Hotel on Park Avenue to the bank of elevators flanked by life-size statues of 1930s cabaret dancers striking dance poses. She stopped next to one, touching the smooth, cool shoulder with her fingertips.

Sighing through pursed lips, she looked at the dark-eyed blonde staring back at her in the supershiny surface of the elevator doors in front of her. Short, layered hair in a modern pixie cut, classic, fitted cocktail dress, perfect makeup, elegant heels. She looked good, Jaci admitted. Sophisticated, assured and confident. Maybe a tad sedate but that could be easily changed.

What was important was that the mask was in place. She looked like the better, stronger, New York version of herself, the person she wanted to be. She appeared to be someone who knew where she was going and how she was going to get there. Pity, Jaci thought, as she pushed her long bangs out of a smoky eye, that the image was still as substantial as a hologram.

Jaci left the elevator and took a deep breath as she walked across the foyer to the imposing double doors of the ballroom. Here goes, she thought. Stepping into the room packed with designer-dressed men and women, she reminded herself to put a smile on her face and to keep her spine straight. Nobody had to know that she’d rather stroll around Piccadilly Circus naked than walk into a room filled with people she didn’t know. Her colleagues from Starfish were here somewhere. She’d sat with them earlier through the interminably long awards ceremony. Her new friends, Wes and Shona, fellow writers employed by Starfish, had promised to keep her company at her first film industry after-party, and once she found them she’d be fine. Between now and then, she just had to look as if she was having fun or, at the very least, happy to be surrounded by handsome men and supersophisticated women. Dear Lord, was that Candice Bloom, the multiple Best Actress award winner? Was it unkind to think that she looked older and, dare she even think it, fatter in real life?

Jaci took a glass of champagne from a tray that wafted past her and raised the glass for a taste. Then she clutched it to her chest and retreated to the side of the room, keeping an eye out for her coworkers. If she hadn’t found them in twenty minutes she was out of there. She spent her entire life being a wallflower at her parents’ soirees, balls and dinner parties, and had no intention of repeating the past.

“That ring looks like an excellent example of Georgian craftsmanship.”

Jaci turned at the voice at her elbow and looked down into the sludge-brown eyes of the man who’d stepped up to her side. Jaci blinked at his emerald tuxedo and thought that he looked like a frog in a shiny suit. His thin black hair was pulled back off his forehead and was gathered at his neck in an oily tail, and he sported a silly soul patch under his thin, cruel mouth.

Jaci Brookes-Lyon, magnet for creepy guys, she thought.

He picked up her hand to look at her ring. Jaci tried to tug it away but his grip was, for an amphibian, surprisingly strong. “Ah, as I thought. It’s an oval-faceted amethyst, foiled and claw-set with, I imagine, a closed back. The amethyst is pink and lilac. Exquisite. The two diamonds are old, mid-eighteenth century.”

She didn’t need this dodgy man to tell her about her ring, and she pulled her hand away, resisting the urge to wipe it on her cinnamon-shaded cocktail dress. Ugh. Creep factor: ten thousand.

“Where did you get the ring?” he demanded, and she caught a flash of dirty, yellow teeth.

“It’s a family heirloom,” Jaci answered, society manners too deeply ingrained just to walk off and leave him standing there.

“Are you from England? I love your accent.”

“Yes.”

“I have a mansion in the Cotswolds. In the village Arlingham. Do you know it?”

She did, but she wouldn’t tell him that. She’d never manage to get rid of him then. “Sorry, I don’t. Would you exc—”

“I have a particularly fine yellow diamond pendant that would look amazing in your cleavage. I can just imagine you wearing that and a pair of gold high heels.”

Jaci shuddered and ruthlessly held down a heave as he ran his tongue over his lips. Seriously? Did that pickup line ever work? She picked his hand off her hip and quickly dropped it.

She wished she could let rip and tell him to take a hike and not give a damn. But the Brookes-Lyon children had been raised on a diet of diplomacy and were masters of the art of telling someone to go to hell in such a way that they immediately started planning the best route to get there. Well, Neil and Meredith were. She normally just stood there with a mouth full of teeth.

Jaci wrinkled her nose; some things never changed.

If she wasn’t going to rip Mr. Rich-but-Creepy a new one—and she wasn’t because she had the confrontational skills of a wet noodle—then she should remove herself, she decided.

“If you leave, I’ll follow you.”

Dear God, now he was reading her mind? “Please don’t. I’m really not interested.”

“But I haven’t told you that I’m going to finance a film or that I own a castle in Germany, or that I own a former winner of the Kentucky Derby,” he whined, and Jaci quickly suppressed her eye roll.

And I will never tell you that my childhood home is a seventeenth-century manor that’s been in my family for over four hundred years. That my mother is a third cousin to the queen and that I am, distantly, related to most of the royal families in Europe. They don’t impress me, so you, with your pretentious attitude, haven’t a chance.

And, just a suggestion, use some of that money you say you have to buy a decent suit, some shampoo and to get your teeth cleaned.

“Excuse me,” Jaci murmured as she ducked around him and headed for the ballroom doors.

As she approached the elevators, congratulating herself on her getaway, she heard someone ordering an elderly couple to get out of the way and she winced as she recognized Toad’s nasally voice. Glancing upward at the numbers above the elevator, she realized that if she waited for it he’d catch up to her and then she’d be caught in that steel box with him, up close and personal. There was no way he’d keep his hands or even—gack!—his tongue to himself. Thanks, but she’d rather lick a lamppost. Tucking her clutch bag under her arm, she glanced left and saw an emergency exit sign on a door and quickly changed direction. She’d run down the stairs; he surely wouldn’t follow.

Stairs, lobby, taxi, home and a glass of wine in a bubble bath. Oh, yes, that sounded like heaven.

“My limousine is just outside the door.”

The voice to her right made her yelp and she whirled around, slapping her hand to her chest. Those sludgy eyes looked feral, as if he were enjoying the thrill of the chase, and his disgusting soul patch jiggled as his wet lips pulled up into a smarmy smile. Dear God, he’d been right behind her and she hadn’t even sensed him. Street smarts, she had none.

Jaci stepped to the side and looked past him to the empty reception area. Jeez, this was a nightmare... If she took the stairs she would be alone with him, ditto the elevators. Her only option was to go back to the ballroom where there were people. Across the room, the elevator doors opened on a discreet chime and Jaci watched as a tall man, hands in the pockets of his tuxedo pants, walked out toward the ballroom. Broad shoulders, trim waist, long legs. His dark hair was tapered, with the top styled into a tousled mess. He had bright, light eyes under dark brows and what she imagined was a three-day-old beard. She knew that profile, that face. Ryan?

Neil’s Ryan? Jaci craned her neck for a better look.

God, it was the grown-up version—and an even more gorgeous version—of that young man she’d known so long ago. Hard, tough, sexy, powerful; a man in every sense of the word. Jaci felt her stomach roll over and her throat tighten as tiny flickers of electricity danced across her skin.

Instant lust, immediate attraction. And he hadn’t even noticed her yet.

And she really needed him to notice her. She called out his name and he abruptly stopped and looked around.

“Limo, outside, waiting.”

Jaci blinked at Mr. Toad and was amazed at his persistence. He simply wasn’t going to give up until he got her into his car, into his apartment and naked. She’d rather have acid-coated twigs shoved up her nose. Seeing Ryan standing there, head cocked, she thought that there was maybe one more thing she could do to de-barnacle herself.

And, hopefully, Ryan wouldn’t object.

“Ryan! Darling!”

Jaci stepped to her right and walked as fast as she possibly could across the Italian marble floor, and as she approached Ryan, she lifted her arms and wound them around his neck. She saw his eyes widen in surprise and felt his hands come to rest on her hips, but before he could speak, she slapped her mouth on his and hoped to dear Lord that he wouldn’t push her away.

His lips were warm and firm beneath hers and she felt his fingers dig into her hips, their heat burning through the fabric of her dress to warm her skin. Her fingers touched the back of his neck, above the collar of his shirt, and she felt tension roll through his body.

Ryan yanked his head back and those penetrating eyes met hers, flashing with an emotion she couldn’t identify. She expected him to push her away, to ask her what the hell she thought she was doing, but instead he yanked her closer and his mouth covered hers again. His tongue licked the seam between her lips and, without hesitation, she opened up, allowing him to taste her, to know her. A strong arm around her waist pulled her flush against him and then her breasts were flat against his chest, her stomach resting against his—hello, Nelly!—erection.

Their kiss might have lasted seconds, minutes, months or years, Jaci had no idea. When Ryan finally pulled his mouth away, strong arms still holding her against him, all she was capable of doing was resting her forehead on his collarbone while she tried to get her bearings. She felt as if she’d stepped away from reality, from time, from the ornate lobby in one of the most renowned hotels in the world and into another dimension. That had never happened to her before. She’d never been so swept away by passion that she felt as if she’d had an out-of-body experience. That it had happened with someone who was little more than a stranger totally threw her.

“Leroy, it’s good to see you,” Ryan said, somewhere above her head. Judging by his even voice, he was very used to being kissed by virtual strangers in fancy hotels. Huh.

“I was hoping that you would be here. I was on my way to find you,” Ryan blithely continued.

“Ryan,” Leroy replied.

Knowing she couldn’t stay pressed against Ryan forever—sadly, because she felt as if she belonged there—Jaci lifted her head and tried to wiggle out of his grip. She was surprised when, instead of letting her go, he kept her plastered to his side.

“I see you’ve met my girl.”

Jaci’s head snapped back and she narrowed her eyes as she looked up into Ryan’s urbane face. His girl?

His.

Girl?

Her mouth fell open. Bats-from-hell, he didn’t remember her name! He had no idea who she was.

Mr. Toad pulled a thin cheroot from the inside pocket of his jacket and jammed it into the side of his mouth. He narrowed his eyes at Jaci. “You two together?”

Jaci knew that she often pulled on her Feisty Girl mask, but she’d never owned an invisibility cloak. Jaci opened her mouth to tell them to stop talking about her as if she wasn’t there, but Ryan pinched her side and her mouth snapped shut. Mostly from indignant surprise. “She’s my girlfriend. As you know, I’ve been out of town and I haven’t seen her for a couple of weeks.”

Weeks, years... Who was counting?

Leroy didn’t look convinced. “I thought that she was leaving.”

“We agreed to meet in the lobby,” Ryan stated, his voice calm. He brushed his chin across the top of her head and Jaci shivered. “You obviously didn’t get my message that I was on my way up, honey.”

Honey? Yep, he definitely didn’t have a clue who she was. But the guy lied with calm efficiency and absolute conviction. “Let’s go back inside.” Ryan gestured to the ballroom.

Leroy shook his head. “I’m going to head out.”

Thank God and all his angels and archangels for small mercies! Ryan, still not turning her loose, held out his right hand for Leroy to shake. “Nice to see you, Leroy, and I look forward to meeting with you soon to finalize our discussions. When can we get together?”

Leroy ignored his outstretched hand and gave Jaci another up-and-down look. “Oh, I’m having second thoughts about the project.”

Project? What project? Why was Ryan doing business with Leroy? That was a bit of a silly question since she had no idea what business Ryan, or the amphib, was in. Jaci sent her brand-new boyfriend an uncertain glance. He looked as inscrutable as ever, but she sensed that beneath his calm facade, his temper was bubbling.

“I’m surprised to hear that. I thought it was a done deal,” Ryan said, his tone almost bored.

Leroy’s smile was nasty. “I’m not sure that I’m ready to hand that much money to a man I don’t know all that well. I didn’t even know you had a girlfriend.”

“I didn’t think that our business deal required that level of familiarity,” Ryan responded.

“You’re asking me to invest a lot of money. I want to be certain that you know what you are doing.”

“I thought that my track record would reassure you that I do.”

Jaci looked from one stubborn face to the other.

“The thing is... I have what you want so I suggest that if I say jump, you say how high.”

Jaci sucked in breath, aghast. But Ryan, to his credit, didn’t dignify that ridiculous statement with a response. Jaci suspected that Leroy didn’t have a clue that Ryan thought he was a maggot, that he was fighting the urge to either punch Leroy or walk away. She knew this because his fingers were squeezing her hand so hard that she’d lost all feeling in her digits.

“Come now, Ryan, let’s not bicker. You’re asking for a lot of money and I feel I need more reassurances. So I definitely want to spend some more time with you—” Leroy’s eyes traveled up and down her body and Jaci felt as if she’d been licked by a lizard “—and with your lovely girlfriend, as well. And, in a more businesslike vein, I’d also like to meet some of your key people in your organization.” Leroy rolled his cheroot from one side of his mouth to the other. “My people will call you.”

Leroy walked toward the elevators and jabbed a finger on the down button. When the doors whispered open, he turned and sent them an oily smile.

“I look forward to seeing you both soon,” he said before he disappeared inside the luxurious interior. When the doors closed, Jaci tugged her hand from Ryan’s, noting his thunderous face as he watched the numbers change on the board above the elevator.

“Dammittohellandback,” Ryan said, finally dropping her hand and running his through his short, stylishly messy hair. “The manipulative cretin.”

Jaci took two steps backward and pushed her bangs out of her eye. “Look, seeing you again has been...well, odd, to say the least, but you do realize that I can’t do this?”

“Be my girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

Ryan nodded tersely. “Of course you can’t, it would never work.”

One of the reasons being that he’d then have to ask her who she was...

Besides, Ryan, as she’d heard from Neil, dated supermodels and actresses, singers and dancers. His old friend’s little sister, neither actress-y nor supermodel-ly, wasn’t his type, so she shrugged and tried to ignore her rising indignation. But, judging by the party in his pants while he was kissing her, maybe she was his type...just a little.

Ryan flicked her a cool look. “He’s just annoyed that you rebuffed him. He’ll forget about you and his demands in a day or two. I’ll just tell him that we had a massive fight and that we split up.”

Huh. He had it all figured out. Good for him.

“He’s your connection, it’s your deal, so whatever works for you,” she said, her voice tart. “So...’bye.”

Ryan shoved his hand through his hair. “It’s been interesting. Why don’t you give him ten minutes to leave then use the elevators around the corner? You’d then exit at the east doors.”

She was being dismissed and she didn’t like it. Especially when it was by a man who couldn’t remember her name. Arrogant sod! Pride had her changing her mind. “Oh, I’m not quite ready to leave.” She looked toward the ballroom. “I think I’ll go back in.”

Jaci saw surprise flicker in his gorgeous eyes. He wanted to get rid of her, she realized, maybe because he was embarrassed that he couldn’t recall who she was. Not that he looked embarrassed. But still...

“Interesting seeing you again, Ryan,” she said in a catch-a-clue voice.

A puzzled frown pulled his brows together. “Maybe we should have coffee, catch up.”

Jaci shook her head and handed him a condescending smile. “Honey, you don’t even know who I am so what, exactly, would be the point? Goodbye, Ryan.”

“Okay, busted. So who are you?” Ryan roughly demanded. “I know that I know you...”

“You’ll work it out,” Jaci told him and heard him mutter a low curse as she walked away. But she wasn’t sure if he would connect her with the long-ago teenager who’d hung on his every word. She doubted it. Her mask was intact and impenetrable. There was no hint of the insecure girl she used to be...on the outside, anyway. Besides, it would be fun to see his face when he realized that she was Neil’s sister, the woman Neil, she assumed, wanted him to help navigate the “perils” of New York City.

Well, she was an adult and she didn’t need her brother or Ryan or any other stupid man doing her any favors. She could, and would, navigate New York on her own.

And if she couldn’t, her brother and his old friend would be the last people whom she’d allow to witness her failure.

“Then how about another kiss to jog my memory?” Ryan called out just as she was about to walk into the ballroom.

She turned around slowly and tipped her head to the side. “Let me think about that for a minute... Mmm...no.”

But hot damn, Jaci thought as she walked off, she was tempted.

Two

Jaci slipped into the crowd and placed her fist into her sternum and tried to regulate her heart rate and her breathing. She felt as if she’d just experienced a wild gorge ride on a rickety swing and she was still trying to work out which way was up. She so wanted to kiss him again, to taste him again, to feel the way his lips moved over hers. He’d melted all her usual defenses and it felt as if he was kissing her, the real her. It was as if he’d reached inside her and grabbed her heart and squeezed...

That had to be a hormone-induced insanity because stuff like that didn’t happen and especially not to her. She was letting her writer’s imagination run away with her; this was real life, not a romantic comedy. Ryan was hot and sexy and tough, but that was what he looked like, wasn’t what he was. As you do, everybody wears masks to conceal who and what lies beneath, she reminded herself. Sometimes what was concealed was harmless—she didn’t think that her lack of confidence hurt anybody but herself—and occasionally people, including her ex-fiancé, concealed secrets that were devastating.

Clive and his secrets... Hadn’t those blown up in their faces? It was a small consolation that Clive had fooled her clever family, too. They’d been so thrilled that, instead of the impoverished artists and musicians she normally brought home to meet her family, she’d snagged an intellectual, a success. A politician. In hindsight, she’d been so enamored by the attention she’d received by being Clive’s girlfriend—not only from her family but from friends and acquaintances and the press—that she’d been prepared to put up with his controlling behavior, his lack of respect, his inattention. After years of being in the shadows, she’d loved the spotlight and the new sparky and sassy personality she’d developed to deal with the press attention she received. Sassy Jaci was the brave one; she was the one who’d moved to New York, who walked into crowded ballrooms, who planted her lips on the sexiest man in the room. Sassy Jaci was who she was going to be in New York, but this time she’d fly solo. No more men and definitely no more fading into the background...

Jaci turned as her name was called and she saw her friends standing next to a large ornamental tree. Relieved, she pushed past people to get to them. Her fellow scriptwriters greeted her warmly and Shona handed her a champagne glass. “Drink up, darling, you’re way behind.”

Jaci wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like champagne.” But she did like alcohol and it was exactly what she needed, so she took a healthy sip.

“Isn’t champagne what all posh UK It girls drink?” Shona asked cheerfully and with such geniality that Jaci immediately realized that there was no malice behind her words.

“I’m not an It girl,” Jaci protested.

“You were engaged to a rising star in politics, you attended the same social events with the Windsor boys, you are from a very prominent British family.”

Well, if you looked at it like that. Could she still be classified as an It girl if she’d hated every second of said socializing?

“You did an internet search on me,” Jaci stated, resigned.

“Of course we did,” Shona replied. “Your ex-fiancé looks a bit like a horse.”

Jaci giggled. Clive did look a bit equine.

“Did you know about his...ah...how do I put this? Outside interests?” Shona demanded.

“No,” Jaci answered, her tone clipped. She hadn’t even discussed Clive’s extramural activities with her family—they were determined to ignore the crotchless-panty-wearing elephant in the room—so there was no way she would dissect her ex–love life with strangers.

“How did you get the job?” Shona asked.

“My agent sold a script to Starfish over a year ago. Six weeks ago Thom called and said that they wanted to develop the story further and asked me to work on that, and to collaborate on other projects. So I’m here, on a six-month contract.”

“And you write under the pen name of JC Brookes? Is that because of the press attention you received?” Wes asked.

“Partly.” Jaci looked at the bubbles in her glass. It was easier to write under a pen name when your parent, writing under her own name, was regarded as one of the most detailed and compelling writers of historical fiction in the world.

Wes smiled at her. “When we heard that we were getting another scriptwriter, we all thought you were a guy. Shona and I were looking forward to someone new to flirt with.”

Jaci grinned at his teasing, relieved that the subject had moved on. “Sorry to disappoint.” She placed her glass on a tall table next to her elbow. “So, tell me about Starfish. I know that Thom is a producer but that’s about all I know. When is he due back? I’d actually like to meet the man who hired me.”

“He and Jax—the big boss and owner—are here tonight, but they socialize with the movers and shakers. We’re too far down the food chain for them,” Shona cheerfully answered, snagging a tiny spring roll off a passing tray and popping it into her mouth.

Jaci frowned, confused. “Thom’s not the owner?”

Wes shook his head. “Nah, he’s Jax’s second in command. Jax stays out of the spotlight but is very hands-on. Actors and directors like to work for him, but because they both have a low threshold for Hollywood drama, they are selective in whom they choose to work with.”

“Chad Bradshaw being one of the actors they won’t work with.” Shona used her glass to gesture to a handsome older man walking past them.

Chad Bradshaw, legendary Hollywood actor. So that was why Ryan was here, Jaci thought. Chad had received an award earlier and it made sense that Ryan would be here to support his father. Like Chad, Ryan was tall and their eyes were the same; they could be either a light blue or gray, depending on his mood. Ryan might not remember her but she recalled in Technicolor detail the young man Neil had met at the London School of Economics. In between fantasizing about Ryan and writing stories with him as her hero inspiration, she’d watched the interaction between Ryan and her family. It had amused her that her academic parents and siblings had been fascinated by the fact that Ryan lived in Hollywood and that he was the younger brother of Ben Bradshaw, the young darling of Hollywood who was on his way to becoming a screen legend himself. Like the rest of the world, they’d all been shocked at Ben’s death in a car accident, and his passing and funeral had garnered worldwide, and Brookes-Lyon, attention. But at the time they knew him, many years before Ben’s death, it seemed as if Ryan was from another world, one far removed from the one the Brookes-Lyon clan occupied, and he’d been a breath of fresh air.

Ryan and Neil had been good friends and Ryan hadn’t been intimidated by the cocky and cerebral Brookes-Lyon clan. He’d come to London to get a business degree, she remembered, and dimly recalled a dinner conversation with him saying something about wanting to get out of LA and doing something completely different from his father and brother. He visited Lyon House every couple of months for nearly a year but then he left the prestigious college. She hadn’t seen him since. Until he kissed the hell out of her ten minutes ago.

Jaci pursed her lips in irritation and wondered how he kissed women whose names he did know. If he kissed them with only a smidgeon more skill than he had her, then the man was capable of melting polar ice caps.

He was that good and what was really, really bad was that she kept thinking that he had lips and that she had lips and that hers should be under his...all the damn time.

Phew. Problematic, Jaci thought.

* * *

Ryan “Jax” Jackson nursed his glass of whiskey and wished that he was in his apartment stretched out on his eight-foot-long couch and watching his favorite sports channel on the huge flat-screen that dominated one wall of his living room. He glanced at his watch, grateful to see that the night was nearly over. He’d had a run-in with Leroy, kissed the hell out of a sexy woman and now he was stuck in a ballroom kissing ass. He’d much rather be kissing the blonde’s delectable ass... Dammit, who the hell was she? Ryan discarded the idea of flicking through his mental black book of past women. He knew that he hadn’t kissed that mouth before. He would’ve remembered that heat, that spice, the make-him-crazy need to have her. So who was she?

He looked around the room in the hope of seeing her again and scowled when he couldn’t locate her. Before the evening ended, he decided, he’d make the connection or he’d find her and demand some answers. He wouldn’t sleep tonight if he didn’t. He caught a flash of a blond head and felt his pants tighten. It wasn’t her but if the thought of seeing her again had him springing up to half-mast, then he was in trouble. Trouble that he didn’t need.

Time to do a mental switch, he decided, and deliberately changed the direction of his thoughts. What was Leroy’s problem tonight? He’d agreed, in principle, to back the film and now he needed more assurances? Why? God, he was tired of the games the very rich boys played; his biggest dream was to find an investor who’d just hand over a boatload of money, no questions asked.

And that would be the day that gorgeous aliens abducted him to be a sex slave.

Still, he was relieved that Leroy had left; having his difficult investor and his DNA donor in the room at the same time was enough to make his head explode. He hadn’t seen Chad yet but knew that all he needed to do was find the prettiest woman in the room and he could guarantee that his father—or Leroy, if he were here—would be chatting her up. Neither could keep his, as Neil used to say, pecker in his pants despite having a wife at home.

What was the point of being married if you were a serial cheater? Ryan wondered for the millionth time.

Ryan felt an elbow in his ribs and turned to look into his best friend’s open face. “Hey.”

“Hey, you are looking grim. What’s up?” Thom asked.

“Tired. Done with this day and this party,” Ryan told him.

“And you’re avoiding your father.”

Well, yeah. “Where is the old man?”

Thom lifted his champagne glass to his right. “He’s at your nine o’clock, talking to the sexy redhead. He cornered me and asked me to talk to you, to intercede on his behalf. He wants to reconnect. His word, not mine.”

“So his incessant calls and emails over the past years have suggested,” Ryan said, his expression turning cynical. “Except that I am not naive to believe that it’s because he suddenly wants to play happy families. It’s only because we have something he wants.” As in a meaty part in their new movie.

“He would be great as Tompkins.”

Ryan didn’t give a rat’s ass. “We don’t always get what we want.”

“He’s your father,” Thom said, evenly.

That was stretching the truth. Chad had been his guardian, his landlord and an absent presence in his life. Ryan knew that he still resented the fact that he’d had to take responsibility for the child he created with his second or third or fifteenth mistress. To Chad, his mother’s death when he was fourteen had been wildly inconvenient. He was already raising one son and didn’t need the burden of another.

Not that Chad had ever been actively involved in his, or Ben’s, life. Chad was always away on a shoot and he and Ben, with the help of a housekeeper, raised themselves. Ben, just sixteen months older than him, had seen him through those dark and dismal teenage years. He’d idolized Ben and Ben had welcomed him into his home and life with open arms. So close in age, they’d become best buds within weeks and he’d thought that there was nothing that could destroy their friendship, that they had each other’s backs, that Ben was the one person who would never let him down.

Yeah, funny how wrong he could be.

Ben. God, he still got a lump in his throat just thinking about him. He probably always would. When it came to Ben he was a cocktail of emotions. Betrayal always accompanied the grief. Hurt, loss and anger also hung around whenever he thought of his best friend and brother. God, would it ever end?

The crowds in front of him parted and Ryan caught his breath. There she was... He’d kissed that wide mouth earlier, but between the kiss and dealing with Leroy he hadn’t really had time to study the compact blonde. Short, layered hair, a peaches-and-cream complexion and eyes that fell somewhere between deep brown and black.

Those eyes... He knew those eyes, he thought, as a memory tugged. He frowned, immediately thinking of his time in London and the Brookes-Lyon family. Neil had mentioned in a quick email last week that his baby sister was moving to New York... What was her name again? Josie? Jackie... Close but still wrong... Jay-cee! Was that her? He narrowed his eyes, thinking it through. God, it had been nearly twelve years since he’d last seen her, and he struggled to remember the details of Neil’s shy sibling. Her hair was the same white-blond color, but back then it hung in a long fall to her waist. Her body, now lean, had still been caught in that puppy-fat stage, but those eyes... He couldn’t forget those eyes. Rich, deep brown, almost black Audrey Hepburn eyes, he thought. Then and now.

Jesus. He’d kissed his oldest friend’s baby sister.

Ryan rubbed his forehead with his thumb and index finger. With everything else going on in his life, he’d completely forgotten that she was moving here and that Neil had asked him to make contact with her. He’d intended to once his schedule lightened but he never expected her to be at this post-awards function. And he certainly hadn’t expected the shy teenager to have morphed into this stunningly beautiful, incredibly sexy woman; a woman who had his nerve endings buzzing. On the big screen in his head he could see them in their own private movie. She’d be naked and up against a wall, her legs around his waist and her head tipped back as he feasted on that soft spot where her neck and shoulders met...

Ryan blew out a breath. He was a movie producer, had dabbled in directing and he often envisioned scenes in his head, but never had one been so sexual, so sensual. And one starring his best and oldest friend’s kid sister? That was just plain weird.

Sexy.

But still weird.

As if she could feel his eyes on her, Jaci turned her head and looked directly at him. The challenging lift of her eyebrow suggested that she’d realized that he’d connected the dots and that she was wondering what he intended to do about it.

Nothing, he decided, breaking their long, sexually charged stare. He was going to do jack about it because his sudden and very unwelcome attraction to Jaci was something he didn’t have time to deal with, something he didn’t want to deal with. His life was complicated enough without adding another level of crazy to it.

Frankly, he’d had enough crazy to last a lifetime.

* * *

Jaci stumbled through the doors to Starfish Films at five past nine the next morning, juggling her tote bag, her mobile, two scripts and a mega-latte, and decided that she couldn’t function on less than three hours of sleep anymore. If someone looked up the definition of cranky in the dictionary, her picture next to the word would explain it all.

It hadn’t helped that she’d spent most of the night reluctantly reliving that most excellent kiss, recalling the strength of that masculine, muscular body, the fresh, sexy smell of Ryan’s skin. It had been a long time since she’d lost any sleep over a man—even during the worst of their troubles she’d never sacrificed any REMs for Clive—and she didn’t like it. Ryan was sex on a side plate but she wasn’t going to see him again. Ever. Besides, she hadn’t relocated cities to dally with hot men, or any men. This job was what was important, the only thing that was important.

This was her opportunity to carve out a space for herself in the film industry, to find her little light to shine in. It might not be as bold or as bright as her mother’s but it would be hers.

Frowning at the empty offices, she stepped up to her desk and dropped the scripts to the seat of her chair. This was the right choice to make, she told herself. She could’ve stayed in London; it was familiar and she knew how to tread water. Except that she felt the deep urge to swim...to do more and be more. She had been given an opportunity to change her life and, although she was soul-deep scared, she was going to run with it. She was going to prove, to herself and to her family, that she wasn’t as rudderless, as directionless—as useless—as they thought she was.

This time, this job, was her one chance to try something different, something totally out of her comfort zone. This was her time, her life, her dream, and nothing would distract her from her goal of writing the best damn scripts she could.

Especially not a man with blue-gray eyes and a body that made her hormones hum.

Shona peeked into their office and jerked her head. “Not the best day to be late, sunshine. A meeting has started in the conference room and I suggest you get there.”

“Meeting?” Jaci yelped. She was a writer. She didn’t do meetings.

“The boss men are back and they want to touch base,” Shona explained, tapping a rolled-up newspaper against her thigh. “Let’s go.”

A few minutes later, Shona pushed through the door at the top of the stairs and turned right down the identical hallway to the floor below. Corporate office buildings were all the same, Jaci thought, though she did like the framed movie posters from the 1940s and 1950s that broke up the relentless white walls.

Shona sighed and covered her mouth as she yawned. “We’re all, including the boss men, a little tired and a lot hungover. Why we have to have a meeting first thing in the morning is beyond me. Jax should know better. Expect a lot of barking.”

Jaci shrugged, not particularly perturbed. She’d lived with volatile people her entire life and had learned how to fly under the radar. Shona stopped in front of an open door, placed her hand between Jaci’s shoulder blades and pushed her into the room. Jaci stumbled forward and knocked the arm of a man walking past. His coffee cup flew out of his hand toward his chest, and his cream dress shirt, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, bloomed with patches of espresso.

He dropped a couple of blue curses. “This is all I freakin’ need.”

Jaci froze to the floor as her eyes traveled up his coffee-soaked chest, past that stubborn, stubble-covered chin to that sensual mouth she’d kissed last night. She stopped at his scowling eyes, heavy brows pulled together. Oh, jeez...no.

Just no.

“Jaci?” Coffee droplets fell from his wrist and hand to the floor. “What the hell?”

“Jax, this is JC Brookes, our new scriptwriter,” Thom said from across the room, his feet on the boardroom table and a cup of coffee resting on his flat stomach. “Jaci, Ryan ‘Jax’ Jackson.”

* * *

He needed a box of aspirin, to clean up—the paper napkins Shona handed him weren’t any match for a full cup of coffee—and to climb out of the rabbit hole he’d climbed into. He’d spent most of last night tossing and turning, thinking about that slim body under his hands, the scent of her light, refreshing perfume still in his nose, the dazzling heat and spice of her mouth.

He’d finally dozed off, irritated and frustrated, hours after he climbed into bed, and his few hours of sleep, starring a naked Jaci, hadn’t been restful at all. As a result, he didn’t feel as if he had the mental stamina to deal with the fact that the woman starring in his pornographic dreams last night was not only his friend’s younger sister but also the screenwriter for his latest project.

Seriously? Why was life jerking his chain?

His mind working at warp speed, he flicked Jaci a narrowed-eyed look. “JC Brookes? You’re him? Her?”

Jaci folded her arms across her chest and tapped one booted foot. How could she look so sexy in the city’s uniform of basic black? Black turtleneck and black wide-leg pants... It would be boring as hell but she’d wrapped an aqua cotton scarf around her neck, and blue-shaded bracelets covered half her arm. He shouldn’t be thinking about her clothes—or what they covered—right now, but he couldn’t help himself. She looked, despite the shadows under those hypnotically brown eyes, as hot as hell. Simply fantastic. Ryan swallowed, remembering how feminine she felt in his arms, her warm, silky mouth, the way she melted into him.

Focus, Jackson.

“What the hell? You’re a scriptwriter?” Ryan demanded, trying to make all the pieces of the puzzle fit. “I didn’t know that you write!”

Jaci frowned. “Why should you? We haven’t seen each other for twelve years.”

“Neil didn’t tell me.” Ryan, still holding his head, kneaded his temples with his thumb and index finger. “He should’ve told me.”

Now he sounded like a whining child. Freakin’ perfect.

“He doesn’t know about the scriptwriting,” Jaci muttered, and Ryan, despite his fuzzy shock, heard the tinge of hurt in her voice. “I just told him and the rest of my family that I was relocating to New York for a bit.”

Ryan pulled his sticky shirt off his chest and looked at Thom again. “And she got the job how?”

Thom sent him a what-the-hell look. “Her agent submitted her script, our freelance reader read it, then Wes, then me, then you read the script. We all liked it but you fell in love with it! Light coming on yet?”

Ryan looked toward the window, unable to refute Thom’s words. He’d loved Jaci’s script, had read it over and over, feeling that tingle of excitement every time. It was an action comedy but one with heart; it felt familiar and fresh, funny and emotional.

And Jaci, his old friend’s little sister, the woman he’d kissed the hell out of last night, was—thanks to fate screwing with him—the creator of his latest, and most expensive, project to date.

And his biggest and only investor, Leroy Banks, had hit on her and now thought that she was his girlfriend.

Oh, and just for kicks and giggles, he really wanted to do her six ways to Sunday.

“Could this situation be any more messed up?” Ryan grabbed the back of the closest chair and dropped his head, ignoring the puddles of coffee on the floor. He groaned aloud. Banks thought that his pseudo girlfriend was the hottest thing on two legs. Ryan understood why. He also thought she was as sexy as hell.

She was also now the girlfriend he couldn’t break up with because she was his damned scriptwriter, one of—how had Banks put it?—his key people!

“I have no idea why you are foaming at the mouth, dude,” Thom complained, dropping his feet to the floor. He shrugged. “You and Jaci knew each other way back when, so what? She was employed by us on her merits, with none of us knowing of her connection to you. End of story. So can we just get on with this damn meeting so that I can go back to my office and get horizontal on my couch?”

“Uh...no, I suggest you wait until after I’ve dropped the next bombshell.” Shona tossed the open newspaper onto the boardroom table and it slid across the polished top. As it passed, Ryan slapped his hand on it to stop its flight. His heart stumbled, stopped, and when it resumed its beat was erratic.

In bold color and filling half the page was a picture taken last night in the reception area outside the ballroom of the Forrester-Graham. One of his hands cradled a bright blond head, the other palmed a very excellent butt. Jaci’s arms were tight around his neck, her mouth was under his, and her long lashes were smudges on her cheek.

The headline screamed Passion for Award-Winning Producer!

Someone had snapped them? When? And why hadn’t he noticed? Ryan moved his hand to read the small amount of text below the picture.

Ryan Jackson, award-winning producer of Stand Alone—the sci-fi box office hit that is enthralling audiences across the country—celebrates in the arms of JC Brookes at the Television and Film Awards after-party last night. JC Brookes is a scriptwriter employed by Starfish Films and is very well-known in England as the younger daughter of Fleet Street editor Archie Brookes-Lyon and his multi-award-winning author wife, Priscilla. She recently broke off her longstanding engagement to Clive Egglestone, projected to be a future prime minister of England, after he was implicated in a series of sexual scandals.

What engagement? What sexual scandals? More news that his ever-neglectful friend had failed to share. Jaci had been engaged to a politician? Ryan just couldn’t see it. But that wasn’t important now.

Ryan pushed the newspaper down the table to Thom. When his friend lifted his eyes to meet his again, his worry and horror were reflected in Thom’s expression. “Well, hell,” he said.

Ryan looked around the room at the nosy faces of his most trusted staff before pulling a chair away from the table and dropping into it. It wasn’t in his nature to explain himself but this one time he supposed, very reluctantly, that it was necessary. “Jaci and I know each other. She’s an old friend’s younger sister. We are not in a relationship.”

“Doesn’t explain the kiss,” Thom laconically stated.

“Jaci, on impulse, kissed me because Leroy was hitting on her and she needed an escape plan.”

That explained her first kiss. It certainly didn’t explain why he went back for a second, and hotter, taste. But neither Thom nor his staff needed to know that little piece of information. Ever.

“I told him that she was my girlfriend and that we hadn’t seen each other for a while.” Ryan kept his attention on Thom. “I had it all planned. When next we met and if Leroy asked about her, I was going to tell him that we’d had a fight and that she’d packed her bags and returned to the UK. I did not consider the possibility that my five-minute girlfriend would also be my new scriptwriter.”

Thom shrugged. “This isn’t a big deal. Tell him that you fought and that she left. How is he going to know?”

Ryan pulled in a deep breath. “Oh, maybe because he told me, last night, that he wants to meet the key staff involved in the project, and that includes the damned scriptwriter.”

Thom groaned. “Oh, God.”

“Not sure how much help he is going to be.” Ryan turned around and looked at a rather bewildered Jaci, who had yet to move away from the door. “My office. Now.”

Well, hell, he thought as he marched down the hallway to his office. It seemed that his morning could, after all, slide further downhill than he’d expected.

Three

Jaci waited in the doorway to Ryan’s office, unsure whether she should step into his chaotic space—desks and chairs were covered in folders, scripts and stacks of papers—or whether she should she just stay where she was. He was in his private bathroom and she could hear a tap running and, more worrying, the steady stream of inventive cursing.

Okay, crazy, crazy morning and she had no idea what had just happened. It felt as if everyone in that office had been speaking in subtext and that she was the only one who did not know the language. All she knew for sure was that Jax was Ryan and Ryan was Neil’s friend—and her new boss—and that he was superpissed.

And judging by their collective horror, she also knew that Banks’s clumsy pass and her kissing Ryan had consequences bigger than she’d imagined.

Ryan walked out of the bathroom, shirtless and holding another dress shirt, pale green this time, in his right hand. He was coffee-free and that torso, Jaci thought on an appreciative, silent sigh, could grace the cover of any male fitness magazine. His shoulders were broad and strongly muscled as were his biceps and his pecs. And that stomach, sinuously ridged, was a work of art. Jaci felt that low buzz in her stomach, the tingling spreading across her skin, and wondered why it had taken her nearly twenty-eight years to feel true attraction, pure lust. Ryan Jackson just had to breathe to make her quiver...

“You used to be Ryan Bradshaw. Why Jackson?” Jaci blurted. It was all she could think of to say apart from “Kiss me like you did last night.” Since she was already in trouble, she decided to utter the only other thought she had to break the tense, sexually saturated silence.

Ryan blinked, frowned and then shook his shirt out, pulling the fabric over one arm. “You heard that Chad was my father, that Ben was my brother, and you assumed that I used the same surname. I don’t,” Ryan said in a cool voice.

She stepped inside and shut the door. “Why not?”

“I met Chad for the first time when I was fourteen, when the court appointed me to live with him after my mother’s death. He dumped my mother two seconds after she told him she was pregnant and her name appeared on my birth certificate. I’d just lost her, and I wasn’t about to lose her name, as well.” Ryan machine-gunned his words and Jaci tried to keep up.

Ryan rubbed his hand over his face. “God, what does that have to do with anything? Moving rapidly on...”

Pity, Jaci thought. She would’ve liked to hear more about his childhood, about his relationship with his famous brother and father, which was, judging by his pain-filled and frustrated eyes, not a happy story.

“Getting back to the here and now, how the hell am I going to fix this?” Ryan demanded, and Jaci wasn’t sure whether he was asking the question of her or himself.

“Look, I’m really sorry that I caused trouble for you by kissing you. It was an impulsive action to get away from Frog Man.”

Ryan shoved his other arm into his sleeve and pulled the edges of his shirt together, found the buttons and their corresponding holes without dropping his eyes from her face.

“He was persistent. And slimy. And he wouldn’t take the hint!” Jaci continued. “I’m sorry that the kiss was captured on camera. I know what an invasion of your privacy that can be.”

Ryan glanced at the paper that he’d dropped onto his desk. “You seem to know what you’re talking about.” Ryan tipped his head. “Sexual scandals? Engaged?”

“All that and more.” Jaci tossed her head in defiance and held his eyes. “You can find it all online if you want some spicy bedtime reading.”

“I don’t read trash.”

“Well, I’m not going to tell you what happened,” Jaci stated, her tone not encouraging any argument.

“Did I ask you to?”

Hell, he hadn’t, Jaci realized, as a red tide crept up her neck. Jeez, catch a clue. The guy kissed you. That doesn’t mean he’s interested in your history.

Time to retreat. What had they been talking about? Ah, their kiss. “Look, if you need me to apologize to your girlfriend or wife, then I will.” She thought about adding “I won’t even tell her that you initiated the second kiss” but decided not to fan the flames.

“I’m not involved with anyone, which is about the only silver lining there is.”

Jaci pushed her long bangs to one side. “Then I really don’t understand what the drama is all about. We’re both single, we kissed. Yeah, it landed up in the papers, but who cares?”

“Banks does and I told him that you’re my girlfriend.”

Jaci lifted her hands in confusion. This still wasn’t any clearer. “So?”

Ryan started to roll up his sleeves, his expression devoid of all emotion. But his eyes were now a blistering blue, radiating frustration and a healthy dose of anxiety. “In order to produce Blown Away, to get the story you conceived and wrote onto the big screen, to do it justice, I need a budget of a hundred and seventy million dollars. I don’t like taking on investors, I prefer to work solo, but the one hundred million I have is tied up at the moment. Besides, with such a big budget, I’d also prefer to risk someone else’s money and not my own. Right now, Banks is the only thing that decides whether Blown Away sees the light of day or gets skipped over for a smaller-budget film.

“I thought that we were on the point of signing the damn contract but now he just wants to jerk my chain,” Ryan continued.

“But why?”

“Because he knows that I caught him hitting on my girlfriend and he’s embarrassed. He wants to remind me who’s in control.”

Okay, now she got it, but she wished she hadn’t. She’d put a hundred-million deal in jeopardy? With a kiss? When she messed up, she did a spectacular job of it.

Jaci groaned. “And I’m your screenwriter.” She shoved her fingers into her hair. “One of the project’s key people.”

“Yep.” Ryan sat down on the edge of his desk and picked up a glass paperweight and tossed it from hand to hand. “We can’t tell him that you only threw yourself into my arms because you found him repulsive... If you do that, we’ll definitely wave goodbye to the money.”

“Why can’t I just stay in the background?” Jaci asked. She didn’t want to—it wasn’t what she’d come to the city to do—but she would if it meant getting the film produced. “He doesn’t know that I wrote the script.”

Ryan carefully replaced the paperweight, folded his arms and gave her a hard stare. After a long, charged minute he shook his head. “That’s problematic for me. Firstly, you did write that script and you should take the credit for it. Secondly, I don’t like any forms of lying. It always comes back to bite me on the ass.”

Wow, an honest guy. She thought that the species was long extinct.

Jaci dropped into the nearest chair, sat on top of a pile of scripts, placed her elbows on her knees and rested her chin in the palm of her hand. “So what do we do?”

“I need you as a scriptwriter and I need him to fund the movie, so we do the only thing we can.”

“Which is?”

“We become what Leroy and the world thinks we are, a couple. Until I have the money in the bank, and then we can quietly split, citing irreconcilable differences.”

Jaci shook her head. She didn’t think she could do it. She’d just come out of a relationship, and she didn’t think she could be in another one, fake or not. She was determined to fly solo. “Uh...no, that’s not going to work for me.”

“You got me into this situation by throwing yourself into my arms, and you’re going to damn well help me get out of it,” Ryan growled.

“Seriously, Ryan—”

Ryan narrowed his eyes. “If I recall, your contract hasn’t be signed...”

It took twenty seconds for his words to sink in. “Are you saying that you won’t formalize my contract if I don’t do this?”

“I’ve already bought the rights for the script. It’s mine to do what I want with it. I did want some changes and I would prefer it if you write those, but I could ask Wes, or Shona, to do it.”

“You’re blackmailing me!” Jaci shouted, instantly infuriated. She glanced at the paperweight on his desk and wondered if she could grab it and launch it toward his head. He might not lie but he wasn’t above using manipulation, the dipstick!

Ryan sighed and placed the paperweight on top of a pile of folders. “Look, you started all this trouble, and you need to figure out how to end it. Consider it as part of your job description.”

“Don’t blame this on me!”

Ryan lifted an eyebrow in disbelief and Jaci scowled. “At least not all of it! The first kiss was supposed to be a peck, but you turned it into a hot-as-hell kiss!” Jaci shouted, her hands gripping the arms of the chair.

“What the hell was I supposed to do? You plastered yourself against me and slapped your mouth on mine!” Ryan responded with as much, maybe even more, heat.

“Do you routinely shove your tongue into a stranger’s mouth?”

“I knew that I’d met you, dammit!” Ryan roared. He sprang to his feet and stormed over to his window and stared down at the tiny matchbox cars on the street below. Jaci watched as he pulled in a couple of deep breaths, amazed that she was able to fight with this man, shout at him, yet she felt nothing but exhilaration. No feelings of inadequacy or guilt or failure.

That was new. Maybe New York, with or without this crazy situation, was going to be good for her.

“So what are we going to do?” Jaci asked after a little while. It was obvious that they had to do something because walking away from her dream job was not an option. She was not going to go back to London without giving this opportunity her very best shot. Giving up now was simply not an option. She had to prove herself and she’d do it here in New York City, the toughest place around. Nobody would doubt her then.

“Do you want to see this film produced? Do you want to see your name in the credits?” Ryan asked without turning around.

Well, duh. “Of course I do,” she softly replied. This was her big break, her opportunity to be noticed, to get more than her foot through the door. She’d been treading water for so long, she couldn’t miss this opportunity to ride the wave to the beach.

“Then I need Banks’s money.”

“Is he the only investor around? Surely not.”

“Firstly, they don’t grow on trees. I’ve also spent nearly eighteen months thrashing out the agreement. I can’t waste any more time on him and I can’t let that effort be for nothing.”

There was no way out of this. “And to get his money we have to become a couple.”

“A fake couple,” Ryan hastily corrected her. “I don’t want or need a real relationship.”

Jeez, chill. She didn’t want a relationship, either.

“So I can see some garden parties in the Hamptons in our future. Maybe theater or opera tickets, dinners at upscale restaurants because Banks will want to show me how important he is and he’ll want to show you what you missed out on.”

“Oh, joy.”

Ryan shoved his hands in his hair and tugged. “We don’t have a choice here and we have to make this count.”

Jaci rubbed her hands over her face. Who would’ve thought that an impulsive kiss could lead to such a tangle? She didn’t have a choice but to go along with Ryan’s plan, to be his temporary girlfriend. If she didn’t, months of work—Ryan’s, hers, Thom’s—would evaporate, and she doubted that Ryan and Thom would consider working with her again if she was the one responsible for ruining their deal with Banks.

She slumped in her chair. “Okay, then. It’s not like we—I—have much of a choice anyway.”

Ryan turned and gripped the sill behind him, his broad back to the window. He sighed and rubbed his temple with the tips of his fingers, his action telling her that he had a headache on board. Lucky she hadn’t clobbered him with that paperweight; his headache would now be a migraine.

“For all we know, Leroy might change his mind about socializing and we’ll be off the hook,” Ryan said, rolling his head from side to side.

“What do you think are the chances of that happening?” Jaci asked.

“Not good. He doesn’t like the fact that I have you. He’ll make me jump through hoops.”

“Because you’re everything he isn’t,” Jaci murmured.

“What do you mean?”

You’re tall, hot and sexy. Charming when you want to be. You’re successful, an acclaimed producer and businessman. You’re respected. Leroy, as far as she knew, just had oily hair and enough money to keep a third-world economy buoyant. Jaci stared at her hands. She couldn’t tell Ryan any of that; she had no intention of complimenting her blackmailer. Even if he could kiss to world-class standards.

“Don’t worry about it.” Jaci waved her words away and prayed that he wouldn’t pursue the topic.

Thankfully he didn’t. Instead he reached for the bottle of water on his desk and took a long sip. “So, as soon as I hear from Banks I’ll let you know.”

“Fine.” Jaci pushed herself to her feet, wishing she could go back to bed and pull the covers over her head for a week or two.

“Jaci?”

Jaci lifted her eyes off her boots to his. “Yes?”

“We’ll keep it completely professional at work. You’re the employee and I’m the boss,” Ryan stated. That would make complete sense except for the sexual tension, as bright and hot as a lightning arc, zapping between them. Judging by his hard tone and inscrutable face, Ryan was ignoring that sexual storm in the room. She supposed it would be a good idea if she did the same.

Except that her feet were urging her to get closer to him, her lips needed to feel his again, her... God, this was madness.

“Fine. I’ll just get back to work then?”

“Yeah. I think that would be a very good idea.”

* * *

When Jaci finally left his office, Ryan dropped into his leather chair and rolled his head from side to side, trying to release the tension in his neck and shoulders. In the space of ten hours, he’d acquired a girlfriend and the biggest deal of his life was placed in jeopardy if he and Jaci didn’t manage to pull off their romance. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he told Jaci that Leroy would be furious if he realized that Jaci was just using him as an excuse to put some distance between her and his wandering hands...but hell, talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time!

It was the kiss—that fantastic, hot, sexy meeting of their mouths—that caused the complications. And, dammit, she was right. The first kiss, initiated by her, had been tentative and lightweight and he was the one who’d taken it deeper, hotter, wetter. Oh, she hadn’t protested and had quickly joined him on the ride. A ride he wouldn’t mind taking to its logical conclusion.

Concentrate, moron. Sex should have been low on his priority list. It wasn’t but it should have been.

When he’d come back down to earth and seen Banks’s petulant face—pouty mouth and narrowed eyes—he’d realized that he’d made a grave miscalculation. Then he’d added fuel to the fire when he’d informed him that Jaci was his girlfriend. Banks wanted Jaci and didn’t like the fact that Ryan had her, and because of that, Ryan would be put through a wringer to get access to Banks’s cash.

Like his father, Banks was the original playground bully; he instantly wanted what he couldn’t and didn’t have. Ryan understood that, as attractive as he found Jaci—and he did think that she was incredibly sexy—for Leroy his pursuit of her had little to do with Jaci but, as she’d hinted at earlier, everything to do with him. With the fact that she was with him, that he had her...along with a six-two frame, a reasonable body and an okay face.

This was about wielding power, playing games, and what should’ve been a tedious, long but relatively simple process would now take a few more weeks and a lot more effort. He knew Leroy’s type—his father’s type. He was a man who very infrequently heard the word no, and when he did, he didn’t much care for it. In the best-case scenario, they’d go on a couple of dinners and hopefully Leroy would be distracted by another gorgeous woman and transfer his attention to her.

The worst-case scenario would be Leroy digging his heels in, stringing him along and then saying no to funding the movie. Ryan banged his head against the back of his chair, feeling the thump of the headache move to the back of his skull.

The thought that his father had access to the money he needed jumped into his brain.

Except that he’d rather drill a screwdriver into his skull than ask Chad for anything. In one of his many recent emails he’d skimmed over, his father had told him that he, and some cronies, had up to two hundred million to invest in any of his films if there was a part in one of his movies for him. It seemed that Chad had conveniently forgotten that their final fight, the one that had decimated their fragile relationship, had been about the industry, about money, about a part in a film.

After Ben’s death, his legions of friends and his fans, wanting to honor his memory, had taken to social media and the press to “encourage” him—as a then-indie filmmaker and Ben’s adoring younger brother—to produce a documentary on Ben’s life. Profits from the film could be donated to a charity in Ben’s name. It would be a fitting memorial. The idea snowballed and soon he was inundated with requests to do the film, complete with suggestions that his father narrate the nonexistent script.

He’d lost the two people he’d loved best in that accident, the same two people who’d betrayed him in the worst way possible. While he tried to deal with his grief—and anger and shock—the idea of a documentary gained traction and he found himself being swept into the project, unenthusiastic but unable to say no without explaining why he’d rather swim with great whites in chum-speckled water. So he’d agreed. One of Ben’s friends produced a script he could live with and his father agreed to narrate the film, but at the last minute Chad told him that he wanted a fee for lending his voice to the documentary.

And it hadn’t been a small fee. Chad had wanted ten million dollars and, at the time, Ryan, as the producer, hadn’t had the money. Chad—Hollywood’s worst father of the year—refused to do it without a financial reward, and in doing so he’d scuttled the project. He was relieved at being off the hook, felt betrayed by Ben, heartbroken over Kelly, but he was rabidly angry that Chad, their father, had tried to capitalize on his son’s death. Their argument was vicious and ferocious and he’d torn into Chad as he’d wanted to do for years.

Too much had been said, and after that blowout he realized how truly alone he really was. After a while he started to like the freedom his solitary state afforded him and really, it was just easier and safer to be alone. He liked his busy, busy life. He had the occasional affair and never dated a woman for more than six weeks at a time. He had friends, good friends he enjoyed, but he kept his own counsel. He worked and he made excellent films. He had a good, busy, productive life. And if he sometimes yearned for more—a partner, a family—he ruthlessly stomped on those rogue thoughts. He was perfectly content.

Or he would be if he didn’t suddenly have a fake girlfriend who made him rock-hard by just breathing, a manipulative investor and a father who wouldn’t give up.

Four

Jaci, sitting cross-legged on her couch, cursed when she heard the insistent chime telling her that she had a visitor. She glanced at her watch. At twenty past nine it was a bit late for social visits. She was subletting this swanky, furnished apartment and few people had the address, so whoever was downstairs probably had the wrong apartment number.

She frowned and padded over to her front door and pressed the button. “Yes?”

“It’s Ryan.”

Ryan? Of all the people she expected to be at her door at twenty past nine—she squinted at her watch, no, that was twenty past ten!—Ryan Jackson was not on the list. Since leaving his office four days before, she hadn’t exchanged a word with him and she’d hoped that his ridiculous idea of her acting as his girlfriend had evaporated.

“Can I come up?” Ryan’s terse question interrupted her musings.

Jaci looked down at her fuzzy kangaroo slippers—a gag Christmas gift from her best friend, Bella—and winced. Her yoga pants had a rip in the knee and her sweatshirt was two sizes too big, as it was one of Clive’s that she’d forgotten to return. Her hair was probably spiky from pushing her fingers into it and she’d washed off her makeup when she’d showered after her run through Central Park after work.

“Can this wait until the morning? It’s late and I’m dressed for bed.”

She knew it was ridiculous but she couldn’t help hoping that Ryan would assume that she was wearing a sexy negligee and not clothes a bag lady would think twice about.

“Jaci, I don’t care what you’re wearing so open the damn door. We need to talk.”

That sounded ominous. And Ryan sounded determined enough, and arrogant enough, to keep leaning on her doorbell if he thought that was what it would take to get her to open up. Besides, she needed to hear what he had to say, didn’t she?

But, dammit, the main reason why her finger hit the button to open the lobby door was because she wanted to see him. She wanted to hear his deep, growly voice, inhale his cedar scent—deodorant or cologne? Did it matter?—have an opportunity to ogle that very fine body.

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