Desire for Days

by Maggie Dallen

  She cleared her throat and he glanced over to see that she was watching him with crossed arms and a grim expression. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun that did nothing for her sharp, makeupless features.

  She still looked hot, though, in a sort of uptight librarian way. He wondered briefly if he could talk her into a morning quickie before she left. But then she lifted her wrist and took a meaningful look at her watch before fixing him with another hard stare accompanied by pursed lips.

  He was holding her up, apparently. He didn’t know whether to be annoyed or amused. They’d had an epic night. An amazing night. After that first rushed but intoxicating bout of lovemaking, they’d done it several more times. They’d barely slept at all, but one would never guess it by looking at her.

  Moving quicker now, he tossed on his shirt and gathered up his belongings, shuffling toward the door with his shoes in hand to avoid incurring her wrath.

  Holy shit, this woman was kind of scary in the morning. Was she always like this or was it something he’d done?

  Maybe giving a woman multiple orgasms was considered an insult in her culture.

  The thought made him grin. He turned when he reached the front door with the thought that he’d crack that joke to ease this unwarranted early morning aggression.

  But when he turned he was faced with Attila the Bun.

  Maybe now was not the time for jokes. He reached for the door. “I’ll just, uh… I’ll see you later, I guess.”

  She didn’t smile, but she did usher him out the door, closing it firmly behind him. Which was helpful, really, since his hands were still full with his socks and shoes.

  He found himself staring at her front door for several moments as his brain caught up to speed.

  What the fuck? He’d just been kicked out. By a woman whose name he’d never learned.

  A woman who’d rocked his world and had made him happy beyond belief…until she’d turned him out like some sort of unwanted creeper.

  He sighed as he leaned against the hallway wall so he could put his shoes on for an early morning walk of shame.

  This was so not his week.

  Chapter Four

  Kat’s nose was wrinkled up in disgust as she sipped on her champagne. “She kicked you out?”

  Yvette was laughing too hard to comment.

  Caleb ignored Yvette and focused on Kat. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  Kat was shaking her head in horrified amazement after his recap of the rest of that fateful night. He didn’t want to talk anymore because soon enough Kat would grow curious about who this mystery woman was. She’d want a physical description and more details, including a name.

  He didn’t relish the idea of admitting that he didn’t know her name. And, most likely, once he described her Kat would know who she was and then she’d tell him her name. As of now, he’d left out the part that his mystery woman had exited their party. As far as they knew, she was just some woman he’d met on the street. But if they knew she’d been at the party, they might know who she was and he’d decided he’d rather not know.

  If he knew her name he could probably get her number—Kat had clearly known her or at least would have known which of their friends invited her.

  No. Tracking her down would be too easy and he had no desire to pursue that crazy chick.

  And he would. He knew himself well enough to know his weaknesses and being a romantic was one of them. Even now he was fighting the urge to go back to her place and leave her roses or something. He had a compulsion to do something thoughtful for the woman who’d rocked his world.

  But she clearly didn’t want that, and he had to face the fact that the woman he’d seen that morning was not the woman he’d fallen for in bed. She wasn’t even the same women he’d shared a cab with the night before. The woman in the cab had been a touch snarky, sure, but she’d also been sexy, confident, and enticing as hell.

  The woman that morning had been… well, a little scary, to be honest. Intimidating and cold and clearly not in the market to be wooed. He had a feeling roses would wither and die under her harsh glare.

  “What did she look like?” Kat asked.

  He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, I’m never seeing her again.”

  Yvette snort-laughed into her glass. “Good riddance.”

  He was so happy he could be of amusement to someone, at least.

  “Sorry we missed brunch yesterday,” Kat said. “But what was this news you wanted to fill us in on?”

  Her face was lit with eager anticipation. Yvette’s too.

  Damn, he probably shouldn’t have made it sound like he had good news. After wrapping up filming his last scene on Monday, Caleb had promptly gone home to shower. Then he’d sat on his couch for a little while, pretending to watch television and not think about the fact that starting the next day, he had nowhere to be. No job to go to, no career to think about, no clue where his life was heading.

  Television had not provided the adequate diversion he’d been seeking. He added tequila to the mix, which helped his quest immensely. Soon enough, he was no longer even pretending to watch TV but his whole perspective on the situation had shifted.

  Tequila always had been his go-to happy drink, and on Monday night the lovely alcohol managed to convince him that this could be a good thing. A great thing, even. Losing this cushy acting gig was just the kick in the butt he needed to make some changes in his life.

  Changes were good.

  It was at that point he’d texted his besties and told them to meet him after Kat got off work the next day so they could celebrate his good news. He’d managed to hold on to that chipper attitude for the next twenty-four hours or so, clinging to the optimistic viewpoint with everything he had.

  He’d even gone so far as to order a bottle of champagne for the table, declaring that this was a night for celebratory drinks.

  So now, not so surprisingly, Kat and Yvette were curious as to what exactly they were celebrating.

  Right. About that…

  He held up his glass and forced a smile that Soap Opera Digest had called “utterly charming and too hot to handle.”

  “So?” Yvette prompted when he paused with his glass in the air, his smile firmly fixed on his face.

  “I lost my job!” He thrust his glass forward as if cheersing them and then tossed in back in one long gulp.

  When he faced his friends again, they were staring at him and neither shared his brilliant smile.

  “Wait…what?” Yvette said.

  “What happened?” Kat asked.

  His forced happiness withered and died under the weight of their concern. Then the questions started in earnest and he dropped the happy act entirely as he told them everything, starting from the moment two weeks ago when he’d been called into the writers’ room and was informed that they’d just written him off the show.

  By the end of it, all three of them were sullen and gloomy, the champagne long gone and replaced by three strong cocktails.

  “That sucks,” Yvette said.

  “That’s such a bummer,” Kat added.

  He nodded. It was indeed a bummer, and it truly did suck. Where the hell had his earlier optimism gone? He tried to remember why this was a good thing.

  He turned to his friends for help. “This could be a good thing, right?”

  They rallied to his cause like the troopers they were. “Oh definitely,” Yvette said, sitting up straight as if energized by newfound excitement. “This is the dawn of a new day.” She banged a fist on the table. “A new adventure begins now.”

  He nodded enthusiastically at her drunken dramatics.

  Kat looked far more grim. “Seriously,” she said with a seriousness that could only come from cocktails. “I’m totally serious,” she added. “This could be the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

  He kept nodding. Right. They were right.

  “Are you going to go on auditions?” Yvette asked.

  He sta
red at her as if this was a weighty question and not the most obvious question in the world. But, to be honest, he’d put off thinking about auditions because the thought of going back to the world of auditioning kind of made him want to vomit.

  He’d be the first to admit that he’d hit pay dirt his first time out. At nineteen he’d only been on a handful of auditions when he’d gotten the dream role—or at least, it was his dream role. A steady acting gig that paid well and meant that he’d never have to go on any more auditions.

  What were the odds that lightning would strike twice? While other young attractive actors had been solidly building up a resume, he had precisely one acting role to his name, and while he was proud of his work on the show, he knew that soap actors weren’t afforded the same respect out in the wide world of television and film.

  He’d watched countless co-stars go from being the big fish in their little pond to nobodies in Hollywood. While he’d cheered them on from his cushy spot on daytime TV, he’d always secretly pitied them for having to start from scratch.

  And now here he was. In the same boat, but worse, because he’d gotten so used to his big fish status that he didn’t know if he even had the guts, the talent, or the desire to try his skills anywhere else.

  He’d peaked, he realized with a jolt of sickening sadness. He hadn’t even hit thirty and he’d already peaked in his career.

  He lifted a hand to hail down a waiter for another drink. Maybe some more tequila would help.

  Kat’s hand on his had him looking up into the sympathetic faces of his best friends. “Hey,” she said gently. “Don’t worry, okay? We’ll help you figure this out.”

  He nodded but they didn’t seem convinced.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I don’t think I want to keep acting, but I have no other skills. No qualifications. I don’t even know what I want to do.” He squinted into the distance as if maybe the answer was there.

  Nope. There were just some more tables filled with people eating and drinking.

  “You always said you might want to work behind the scenes one day,” Yvette offered. “You’d talked about producing…” She trailed off with a shrug, clearly wanting to help but just as clueless as to how he ought to begin.

  “I don’t even know what producers do.” His voice sounded pathetically glum. “I don’t know what anyone does off set, to be honest.” He scrubbed a hand over his now clean-shaven face. “I should have learned. I should have been paying attention.”

  “It’s never too late to learn,” Yvette, his new cheerleader, said.

  “It’s also never too late for a career change,” Kat added. She gave him a little grin. “This is what I do, remember? I help people find jobs.” Leaning across the table, she squeezed his hand. “We got this. I promise. I’m totally going to help you.”

  Chapter Five

  Kennedy watched as Kat dug into her salad with gusto. She didn’t want to be rude but she was still new to her job and she didn’t feel comfortable taking a long lunch break. “Is there something in particular you wanted to discuss, Kat?”

  Her friend looked up with an amused grimace. “Am I that obvious?”

  Kennedy shrugged. Yes. But then, most people were obvious, especially when they wanted something. And Kat clearly wanted something from her.

  Not that she minded. She liked Kat, she always had, even when they’d just been colleagues at the cable news station, which they’d both since left.

  “What can I do for you?” Though that too was pretty obvious, really. Since leaving CRBO, Kat had gone on to start up her own headhunting business, and it seemed like it was doing well. Not surprisingly given Kat’s prowess with people.

  But since Kennedy was a hiring manager, formerly for CRBO, and now for a new television station, she had a hunch where this was going.

  “I have a friend who needs a job,” Kat said.

  And there it was.

  Kennedy folded her hands in her lap. “I appreciate your bluntness,” she said, “especially given our time constraints today.”

  Kat smiled. She was one of few people who never seemed to be turned off by Kennedy’s lack of social niceties. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to be charming, she just didn’t see the point. Niceties right now would only take up time. “Who is your friend and what kind of work is he or she qualified for.”

  Kat set down her fork and some of her easygoing demeanor slipped. She looked almost… uncomfortable. “That’s the thing, he’s not terribly qualified for anything, really.”

  Kennedy arched a brow. “Is he young?” An idea was already starting to blossom. She liked Kat and she trusted her judgement, and there was that one internship opening up since the college kid who’d originally taken it had proven to be a bust. In short, he’d pilfered and stolen from half the production department and apparently had made quite a killing on eBay.

  “He’s not young, exactly,” Kat said.

  Kennedy narrowed her eyes as she studied her friend, who was shifting uncomfortably. “So he’s not in college or graduated recently?”

  “No, not exactly.”

  “And he has no experience in television,” she recapped.

  “He has experience… of a sort,” Kat said. Her smile looked strained. “I’m being vague, aren’t I?”

  Kennedy nodded. “But I have to admit, you’re making me curious. What kind of experience does this man have?”

  In lieu of an answer, Kat handed over a piece of paper. A resume.

  Kennedy stared at it for a moment. She’d gone into human resources straight of college so she’d been at it for a while, but never in her life had she seen a resume so barren. There were metaphorical tumbleweeds blowing through this CV. Her experienced eye took it all in quickly. He’d left college without finishing. Average GPA. No internships, not a member of professional groups, no continued learning, and under the section labeled work history there was one bullet point. One.

  She blinked at that one bullet point. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered.

  “I know how it looks,” Kat started.

  “An actor?” Kennedy’s voice held all the disgust she felt. It wasn’t that she hated all artistic types, just the ones she’d met. In theory she admired the tenacity that working in a creative field required, but in reality she’d never met an artist who’d succeeded. Most people who claimed to be an actor or an artist or a singer or whatever were dreamers with an overinflated sense of self-worth.

  Every actor or TV personality she’d met—and she had met a lot—had been a giant ego inside a pretty body. Kennedy had been working on the administrative end of television for many years and in her experience, which was vast, those who made it professionally were too conceited to be useful, and those who hadn’t were too useless to be hireable.

  But then, maybe she was just a little jaded.

  Kat seemed to sense her disgust, probably because she’d made zero attempt to hide it, and the pretty blonde went full blown sales pitch on her ass. By the time she was done, Kennedy felt like she’d been on a ride—she was dizzy, her head was spinning, and she felt a little sick to her stomach. Though, to be fair, the stomachache probably had more to do with the greasy burger she’d just downed than with Kat’s sales pitch.

  She also had the unshakeable feeling that she’d been defeated. That even though she was the hiring manager and known in the industry as a hardass, she was not leaving this table without at least giving her friend’s friend—she glanced at the resume—she wasn’t leaving here without giving Caleb an interview, at the very least.

  “Okay, you’ve made it clear that he is smart, hard working, blah blah blah. I get it. He’s a modern day renaissance man, he can do it all while juggling knives behind his back,” Kennedy said, her voice filled with resignation.

  Kat pressed her lips together in a clear attempt to keep from laughing. The little bitch already knew she’d won.

  Kennedy sighed. “The question is, what does this b
oy wonder want to do?”

  It was an easy question, but it seemed to stump her friend. Uh oh. “You don’t know, do you?” She crossed her arms. “Let me guess. He doesn’t know.”

  She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, instead focusing on his resume, searching out the dates for the years he was in college. She did a little mental math and the results made her ill. “Your friend is having a quarter life crisis, isn’t he?”

  Kat’s lips hitched to the side, a clear admission of guilt.

  “He’s a grown man nearing thirty and he still has no idea what he wants to do with his life. Am I right?” There was no hiding her judgyness, but honestly she didn’t care. She felt free to judge those kind of guys. And she’d met more of them than she cared to admit. The city was filled with overgrown man-children who still thought they were going to grow up to be rock stars. They dressed like boys, dated women too young for them, and had terrible credit scores.

  This Caleb was a dime a dozen. She might not know him, but she absolutely knew his type.

  The only problem was, Kat was still giving her that pleading look. Kat, who was a friend. Kat, who would be a formidable ally as her company took off, which it would. Kennedy had no doubt when it came to Kat. The woman was fearless and typically a great judge of character.

  It was that second trait that gave her pause. Aw hell. If Kat was vouching for this guy, maybe he wasn’t all bad.

  This thought made her think of the guy from the other night.

  Oh, who was she kidding? The fries on her plate made her think of the guy from the other night. Thoughts of him had been plaguing her since she’d shut the door in his face.

  She flinched slightly at the memory. Not her finest hour. But then, it wasn’t every morning she woke to find a naked hottie in her bed. And she could safely say she’d never woken to find a nameless stranger in her bed. She eyed Kat now, all thoughts of the actor temporarily pushed to the side as she thought of the sexy stranger who she’d unceremoniously shoved out her door.

  Kat would know who he was—he’d been at her party and he’d known things about her, like her middle name. Kat must know him so surely if she mentioned the insanely hot guy with a beard, Kat would know who she was talking about.