by Peggy Jaeger
“God! I’ve never seen so many obnoxious three-year-olds in my entire existence. I swear, they brought, like, an entire preschool to the pool. What a pai—”
Stacy turned and placed a smile on her face, only to drop it a tad as she watched Melora’s squinted gaze go from her father, to her, and then back to settle on Nikko.
“What’s going on?” the teen asked, an accusation loud and crystal clear in her tone.
“Nothing,” her father said, slipping his hands into his pants pockets. He tossed a quick chin thrust at Stacy and added, “We were just finishing up with the production meeting.”
“I’ll go make sure everything’s set for the morning,” Stacy said, moving past them to the door.
“Hold up a sec,” Melora said, her gaze darting to her father.
Stacy stood at the door, her hand grasping the knob. She tried to calm her breathing, not wanting to give Melora any indication that something had happened between the girl’s father and herself.
Melora laid a hand on her shoulder and walked with her through the doorway and into the hall. She closed the door slightly. “What time can we meet in the morning? The gym is open twenty-four-seven. I, like, checked, before I came back up here.”
Relief poured through her at the question.
“We start production at nine, and I need to be on set about an hour and a half before that. Could you make it by six? That will give us enough time to do a complete morning workout.”
“No probs. See you then.”
Stacy nodded and made a quick getaway.
As soon as she locked the hotel-room door behind her, she let out the breath she’d been carefully holding since Melora had come back to the suite.
With her back flat against the door, Stacy closed her eyes and lifted a hand to her lips. Swiping her tongue across them, she could still taste Nikko. Her heart beat a fluttery tattoo at the memory of how he’d held her as if his life depended on it, kissed her with more passion than she’d ever felt from any other man.
Twice, now.
And both times she’d been stripped of any will to resist him.
Okay, let’s be honest here. There was no way she’d wanted to resist him.
The moment he’d moved in closer, passion and intent in his eyes, all she could think was Kiss me. Please, oh please God, kiss me.
The buzz of her cell phone pried her eyes back open. A quick glance down and she saw a new text with Nikko’s name assigned to it run across the screen.
She swiped right and read Are you ok?
A good question. Was she?
Fine, she typed back.
Well, that wasn’t quite true. The knowledge she was in way over her head where Nikko Stamp was concerned shattered through her. She tossed her tablet on the bed and moved to unpack her suitcase.
Her cell buzzed again.
Okay. Good, he replied.
While she put the few clothing items she’d brought with her into the dresser and closet and placed her toiletries in the small adjoining bathroom, she tried to sort out what was going on between her and Nikko.
It was obvious they were physically attracted to one another. There were enough heat and hormones flying between them whenever they were in the same room. And anytime they touched, no matter how innocuous, something pinged inside her head.
He’d asked why she couldn’t smile at him openly and freely like she did with everyone else connected to the show. What would he have done if she’d told him the truth? If she’d admitted that the only reason she was here at all was because she was being rewarded if she stuck it out until the end, helped the show and him succeed?
If he didn’t like her now, he’d surely hate her after finding that out.
But…he did like her. He’d admitted it. Maybe not in those exact words, but he’d told her he didn’t want to like her, the implication being he did.
What was almost as mind-boggling was she liked him too. More than liked, if truth be told.
Yes, he was arrogant, difficult, and could be the rudest person in any room.
But.
He was a brilliant director, smart, and so gosh-darn good-looking and sexy—like a fallen angel. Plus, he loved his daughter to no end.
So what if he was demanding and overbearing in his job? With the person he loved the most, he was a total mush. Nothing was more attractive to Stacy than a man who made no excuses for how much he loved his family.
When Melora had finally confided the reason she was with her father on the shoot instead of at home for the summer school vacation, Stacy’s heart had softened for the man more than she could have ever thought it would. The not so-secret secret about the girl having an eating disorder and the hoops her father was jumping through to ensure she got well only solidified in Stacy’s mind what a wonderful man he was.
Dealing with a teenaged daughter with emotional and physical issues was a topic Stacy knew more about than most people could ever dream of. Her intimate knowledge of just how devastating an illness like that could be to an entire family was something she could have written a book about.
Nikko loved and cherished his daughter. Of that there was no doubt.
And she was starting to realize what she felt about him was much more than a little workplace crush.
A lot more.
Chapter Sixteen
“Where are you going?”
Melora screeched, clamped a hand over her mouth and dropped her sneakers, all while spinning around from the hotel-room door.
“Holy Christmas! Don’t go terrifying a person like that.”
Nikko’s gaze raked down her body, an eyebrow inching upward at the oversized T-shirt and skintight leggings covering her thin form. Her spiky black hair was pulled off her makeup-free face by a thick white headband. She looked all of ten years old, standing and snarling at him, shoeless and clad in white ankle socks, her hands fisted on her tiny hips.
He wanted to laugh out loud at the absolute scowl of indignation blasting across her mouth. Wanting to and doing so were two different things, though, so he shot his own fists to his hips, lowered his chin, and glared right back at her.
“I asked, where are you going, Melora? It’s not even six a.m.”
“Well, back at’cha, Dad. You’re not exactly dressed for, you know, sleeping. Where are you going?”
Nikko dug deep for calm. Starting off the day with an argument wasn’t what he wanted to do. Melora might look like a child standing right in front of him, and she certainly was behaving like one, but he’d made a promise to himself to start treating her more like a burgeoning adult and not always as if she was two years old.
Even if she acted like it.
He took a quick breath and said, “I was heading down to the gym to see if I could snag a treadmill for an hour or so before the day gets crazy.”
His daughter’s large eyes widened, the effect making her resemble an anime drawing.
“No lie?”
He frowned. “Why would I make something like that up, Melly? Stacy suggested it might help with the cramping in my leg if I moved more during the day. I figured,” he shrugged, “since the hotel has a gym, I’d take advantage of it.”
Tears lightened the corners of her eyes.
“Daddy.”
She ran to him, threw her arms around his chest, stretched up on her toes, and squeezed tight.
At a total loss as how to interpret this sudden mood shift, he simply wrapped his arms around her thin frame and hugged her back.
Melora’s loud sniff tore right through his heart.
“Why are you crying?”
“I’m not,” she declared, indignation in the muffled words. A second sniff proved her a liar.
When she pulled back, she did a quick, nonchalant swipe at her cheeks and said, “I think this room is, like, toxic or something. Fille
d with mold. Maybe I’m asthmatic.”
He might not have been the smartest man in a room, but he was savvy enough not to challenge her.
“Anyway.” She stood tall and shook her head a few times, her gaze coming to rest on him. “I was heading down to the gym too, before you, like, gave me a heart attack.”
A warning bell dinged in his head. A memory of the therapist telling him to watch for any signs Melora would try to overexercise in order to keep her weight down filled his head.
“Oh?” he said as nonchalantly as she had. “What were you planning on doing at this hour?”
The question mustn’t have sounded as casual as he’d intended, because Melora narrowed her eyes and re-fisted her hands on her waist.
“That tone is so accusatory it practically reeks with condescension.”
With a shake of his head, Nikko told her, “It’s good to see those astronomical fees I pay for your schooling have paid off in your SAT-worthy vocabulary. Answer the question, Melora.”
Her petulant pout and eye roll were old acquaintances, so he ignored them.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, dropping her shoulders and shaking her head. “I remember what the therapist said too, but it’s not like that.”
“What’s not like what?”
She huffed a huge, theatrical breath and dropped her chin. “I’m meeting Stacy in the gym for a yoga lesson.”
Whatever he’d expected her to say, it hadn’t been this.
“Since when do you do yoga?”
While she rolled her eyes again, she said, “Since I met Stacy. She’s like this uber-yogi and she’s been teaching me in the mornings before you all start filming.”
“You’ve been meeting her every morning at the ranch and you never told me?”
“Like, why would I?” She lifted her hands, open-palmed, at him. “You’ve made it crystal since day one, moment one, you loathe her. I figured if you knew I was, like, hanging out with her you’d pop an artery.”
“I don’t loathe Stacy, Melora.” As far from loathe as he could get, actually, but he wasn’t sharing that fact with her.
“You certainly don’t like her.”
“That’s not true.”
She stared at him, suspicion and skepticism dancing on her raised brows and pursed lips. “You didn’t. When did that, like, change?”
Nikko swiped at his temples and sat on the couch. While he slipped into his sneakers, he said, “I never didn’t like her. It was more the fact of her I didn’t want around. Executive producers can be pains in the a—um, butt. She’s not, though. She’s actually very good at her job.”
Melora, looking like a stork as she stood on one skinny leg to slip her feet into her own sneakers, cocked her head at him and said, “Then why is she still, like, in terror of you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Every time she’s with you,” she slipped her foot in her other shoe, “she looks like she’s gonna do a Usain Bolt and make like the wind. You ask me, I think she’s scared of you. And I don’t blame her. You can be, like, so gruesomely intimidating at times.”
He stared across the room at her, dumbfounded. Fear was the one emotion he’d remembered seeing in vivid detail after the airport incident.
A fat swell of self-disgust grew inside him at the memory that he’d been so harsh and critical when she’d been nothing but professional and just plain nice.
“If you don’t, like, loathe her,” Melora said as they walked to the elevator bank, “you should try being nicer. She really is fab. And super-smart about stuff.”
As they got into the elevator, she added, “And everyone else likes her, so...” She shrugged as he hit the button for the gym level.
Nikko nodded, deciding it was the best way to answer her. He couldn’t quite admit to his daughter, much less himself, that he was coming to more than just like Stacy Peters.
Way more.
The minute they walked into the gym, he found her. She stood off to one side, talking with Riley MacNeill and Clay Burbank. He noticed a few of the other chefs clad in workout gear, including the two female contestants, standing around waiting.
Melora said “See ya,” and made her way over to the group. A broad, easy smile lit Stacy’s face when she spotted his daughter. Melora tossed a hand over her shoulder and pointed to him while the two spoke. The moment Stacy’s gaze connected with his, Nikko felt an unseen weight lift inside him.
His daughter’s accusations blew back. Stacy didn’t look terrified. In fact, judging from the easy smile she gave him and the tiny head nod of connection, she looked…pleased.
He acknowledged her smile with a quick head bob and then climbed onto an empty treadmill. From his position he had a clear and unobstructed view of Stacy and what appeared to be a yoga class. MacNeill, Burbank, and the others formed a few lines on mats, with Melora included, all facing Stacy, who appeared to be their leader.
While he started off at a slow pace just to loosen and warm up his stiff leg muscles, he kept close watch on his executive producer. Once again, while everyone around her was clad in muscle shirts or armless T-shirts, Stacy wore a full-sleeved bright-blue Henley and black yoga pants that skirted her bare ankles. He’d never seen her in anything but long-sleeved tops, even with the hot temperatures at the ranch. Either she was one of those people who were chronically cold, or she didn’t like to bare her arms. Since he’d seen her flushed and sweating a few times on set, he assumed it was the latter.
Why?
Her frame was thin, her shoulders and hips slight, even though she was about five-seven or -eight. The way her well-fitting clothing currently caressed her skin, showing off the long, clean line of her body had his lower back twitching again. When she bent from her waist, knees locked and straight, and placed her palms flat on the mat in front of her, the twitch turned to a tingle.
As she raised her arms together high over her head, a small slip of perfect, fresh, cream-colored skin peeked out at him from where her shirt lifted at her waist, and the tingle turned to a quiver of prickly lust so fast and so unexpected, he almost missed a step on the foot pad rolling beneath him.
He reached out and grabbed the supporting bars on either side of the treadmill and took a deep, full breath.
Who in their right mind got turned on by an inch of skin?
For the next forty minutes, while he put his legs through a slight uphill climb, Nikko came to learn a few things about his executive producer.
And himself.
He already knew she was kind, having witnessed it firsthand with her treatment of his daughter and during the night she’d helped ease his leg pain.
That she was someone who remained calm and in control he’d realized early on, evidenced in all her dealings with him when he’d been at his worst, mood-wise.
He’d guessed she was a good leader from the way the crew all took their problems to her.
But what he hadn’t known was how playful she could be or how irked he could become when other men, namely Clay Burbank, blatantly flirted with her.
It was obvious Burbank wasn’t a yoga practitioner. Every movement, every pose he tried to adopt, he needed help achieving and every time it had been from Stacy he’d sought assistance.
The sight of her long, thin, deft fingers pressing against the chef’s hips as she helped him adopt a pose sent a shiver of unexpected jealousy down his spine. He knew, intimately, what those fingers felt like against his own body.
When she’d gone on her knees behind Burbank and pressed into his back to help him stretch, that shiver turned to a full-body shake filled with possessiveness.
Burbank must have said something to annoy her, because before she stood back up, she swatted the chef on the shoulder and wagged a finger at him, setting the rest of the class to break out in laughter.
As his heart began to
beat faster from the uphill climb, it warred with the deep breaths he took to try and calm his emotions. He had no right to feel possessive of Stacy, or jealous.
But he was, on both counts, and it not only irritated him, it made him nervous as hell. He hadn’t felt so emotionally torn over a woman in…well, a long, long time. Not since he’d discovered Flannery’s infidelity.
The program slowed, the treadmill automatically lowering down from the hill-climb pace.
It appeared Stacy was almost finished with the class as well. The group lay supine on their mats, eyes closed, as she walked among them, speaking.
From the little he knew about yoga—and it was little—she was guiding them through a breathing cycle to end the session.
Her face was peaceful and calm, a tiny smile pulling at the corners of her lips when she spied Riley winking one eye open at her. Nikko could read her lips when she told the boy to close his eyes, breath, and relax.
If life were only so simple.
The walking pace slowed, then stopped. Nikko swiped at his sweating face and neck with the gym-provided towel and took a large chug of the individual bottled water provided on each treadmill. The group rose and bowed to Stacy.
Her giggle floated on the air and sucker punched him straight in the abdomen. She laughed at something Riley said to her and Melora and crinkled her nose in the most enchanting way. When she found his gaze centered on her from across the room, Stacy dropped her chin and bit a corner of her bottom lip as she regarded him from under her lashes. It was a damned good thing the walking program had ended, because he’d have missed a lot more than one step if he’d still been moving.
Melora turned, called his name and asked if he was done.
When he nodded, she said something to Stacy and Riley and then jogged over to him.
“How’s your leg?” she asked, grabbing the bottle from his hand and taking a long, deep swig.
“It’s fine. Walking definitely helps. I didn’t realize you were actually taking a class with Stacy. I thought it was just the two of you.”
“It was,” she told him, handing him back the bottle. “The others came down planning to just, like, work out, but when they saw Stacy and asked her what she was doing here, they, like, decided to join in.”
