by Cindy Dees
“Okay. No apology. But I need to know. Are you hurt?”
“I will not break at the slightest little bump.”
“That was more than a little bump, honey.”
“And yet, I’m not broken.” Not only was she not broken physically, apparently she was not nearly as emotionally broken as she’d believed. Apparently she was entirely capable of a healthy sexual relationship with a man as long as it was the right man.
“All right, then.” The worry darkening his eyes retreated, leaving behind...
She frowned. Leaving behind nothing. His expression was closed up tighter than she’d ever seen it. A steady stream of swearing poured out of a heretofore unknown well of despair and frustration in the back of her mind.
What on earth had she been thinking to goad Jackson Prescott into having sex with her? He was so not ready for a relationship with her. Or with any woman, for that matter. She’d played her cards too soon. Pushed him too hard. And on cue, he’d retreated to his mental man cave and completely closed her out. Crap, crap, crap. She knew better than to shove a man into relationship stuff.
This was a disaster.
She had to distract him, and fast. Get him back onto what he considered safe ground. “Any word from Adrian on when production’s going to ramp up?”
Jackson blinked. “Yeah. Right away. I’ll start handing out fight sequences at the staff meeting tomorrow morning. And you can forget me firing you. I’m keeping you close where I can keep an eye on you. We’ll catch the bastard who’s targeting you. And when we do...” He trailed off, the tone of his voice gratifyingly threatening. After a short pause, he asked grimly, “You still gonna be okay doing fight sequences with me?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You know. After this. Just didn’t want things to be weird.”
“They won’t be weird unless you make them weird. I still work with you and for you, and we still have a movie to make.”
He cleared his throat. “Right. Glad to hear you’re not freaking out on me.”
Oh, she was totally freaking out. She just knew not to dump it in his lap unless she wanted him to run screaming for the hills. Men could be such emotional sissies sometimes.
“So we’re good?” he asked.
“Yeah. Great.” Just flipping great. She could very well have thrown away her one chance for a real relationship with him for one stupid roll in the sack that hadn’t even meant anything to him. If only it hadn’t meant so blasted much to her. What in the world was she going to do now?
Chapter 9
She woke up early and moved around her room quietly, vividly aware of Jackson sleeping next door. She’d lain awake most of the night in her bed, tossing and turning while her traitorously excellent memory replayed their sexual encounter over and over—and freaking over—in her mind. Their epic sex was burned into her soul as permanently as a brand. So was the hurt in her heart when she’d left his bed, and he hadn’t said a single thing to get her to stay.
If only he’d shown the slightest hint of emotional response to making love with her. But no. He’d mentally locked down like a terrorist attack was imminent and had gone full defensive.
She crept into her bathroom and examined herself carefully in the mirror. Surely she looked different after last night. Lord knew, she felt totally different. She’d had smoking-hot sex with the legendary Jackson Prescott. And if she didn’t miss her guess, not many women could say that. Of course, no woman since Vanessa van Bitchy could say that he’d actually fallen for her, either.
If only she knew the first thing about how to attract a man and hold his attention once she had it. She’d spent her entire adult life cultivating the opposite skills. Fading into the background, being invisible, just one of the guys. She was the girl who never wore makeup or dresses or flirted with men. Ever. Heck, she’d even picked up rumors among her fellow students that she batted for the other team and didn’t even like men. And she’d done nothing to dispel those rumors.
Truth was, she didn’t like men, plural. She liked one man. Singular. And she’d even had sex with him. It had rocked her world, but it hadn’t even caused a blip on his emotional radar.
She was a complete failure as a woman.
Glumly, she headed downstairs to the kitchen and found Minerva making tea. Ana forced fake cheer into her voice and said, “You’re up early.”
“I like the stillness of the ocean in the early morning. It’s calming. Come outside and have a cup of tea with me, dear. You’ll see what I mean.”
God knew, she could use a little calm right now. “Your home is lovely, Mrs. Prescott.”
“Call me Minerva. Everyone does.”
“You’ve been so kind to let me stay here. Jackson’s going to have the studio cut me my first paycheck. Then I can start looking for a place to stay and get out of your hair.”
“No rush, dear. Jackson is really enjoying having you here.”
Holy crap. If faces could catch on fire, hers just did.
Minerva smiled knowingly. “He says the two of you are going to be working closely together on his movie. Tell me about it.”
“We’re going to be playing a pair of aliens whose races hate each other’s guts. We have to cooperate to defeat a larger enemy. We’re slotted to do several hand-to-hand fight scenes. I’ll try not to hit him in the nose again.”
Minerva chuckled. “Oh, a good wallop is therapeutic for him now and again. Stubborn as a goat, that boy is. Always was.”
A goat, huh? In her experience, if a person pushed at a goat, it would push back for no reason other than it was being pushed on. In other words, if she tried to push their relationship to a deeper level, Jackson would likely push back. Reverse psychology then. That had to be her approach. His grandmother was turning out to be a font of information.
Minerva was speaking again. “These fight scenes of yours sound passionate. Will all that passion lead your characters to kill each other or fall in love?”
An apt question. Applicable to more than a movie script. Ana shrugged. “I’m not sure. The shooting script is supposed to be finalized any minute.”
“I’ll bet it ends up being a love story between your characters. “ Minerva clapped her hands together in delight. “Oh, I like it! A cosmic Romeo and Juliet.”
“Are you a hopeless romantic, then?” Ana asked the older woman in amusement.
“There’s nothing remotely hopeless about my romanticism,” Minerva replied tartly.
Ana couldn’t help but laugh. “I see where Jackson gets his sense of humor from. He’s so much like you.”
The older woman reached across the table to give her hand a squeeze. “Why, thank you, darling. That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.”
“He’s really lucky to have you. He dotes on you, you know,” Ana responded.
Minerva’s eyes twinkled. “I think he dotes on you rather more than his pesky granny these days.”
Ana shook her head. “What we have doesn’t compare to his relationship with you.”
Minerva took a slow sip of her tea and said reflectively, “I’m not so sure about that. I haven’t seen him relate to a woman the way he does to you since—”
“Since Vanessa?”
“He told you about her?” Minerva blurted.
“We’ve talked about her a little. He seemed pretty devastated by her betrayal.”
“Destroyed.” Minerva took another sip of tea. “And it’s not as if most of the women in the film industry do much to inspire confidence in him. No offense, sweetie. It’s just that some actresses will do anything to advance their careers. Thank God you came along. I didn’t think he was ever going to love another woman.”
Her and Jackson? Something hungry and wishful fired off deep in her gut. If only. But she
knew full well she couldn’t force him to love her. It was entirely out of her control. And that was a feeling she didn’t like one bit.
Jackson still hadn’t taken her over to pick up her car, and Minerva insisted that she take Jackson’s bad-weather car to the studio. He drove it when it was raining and he couldn’t ride his Harley, apparently. The bad-weather car turned out to be a Viper.
She let the car’s power and quickness distract her from the awful feeling in her gut that she’d done a bad thing by daring Jackson to have sex with her. The sports car whipped around a sharp S-curve, hugging the road like it was glued to the asphalt and cornering superbly. Her stunt driving class had made her deeply appreciate cars with this kind of responsiveness.
Sheesh. What kind of man wanted a woman who could analyze the handling characteristics of cars but knew nothing whatsoever about being female, let alone having relationships? She might have successfully goaded Jackson into a one-night stand with her, but she wasn’t delusional enough to believe that it meant anything significant.
Hell, the first thing he’d said afterward had nothing to do with being glad he’d discovered her, or that he’d enjoyed himself, or that he liked her in any way. He’d merely checked to make sure she wasn’t hurt. Sex with her hadn’t been any more significant than just another day at the office for him.
* * *
Jackson woke up slowly. Something was different this morning, but it took him a second to regain enough consciousness for it to register.
Ana. Last night. Sex. Correction: great sex. He inhaled the faint vanilla scent of her on his pillow and a smile broke across his face. That would henceforth and forever be the scent of epic sex to him.
Still. Ana? What the hell had he been doing sleeping with her? He knew better. He had no business jeopardizing everything with her by introducing sex into the equation. Hollywood and his mother had taught him that one long ago. What an idiot he was. He liked her, dammit!
And now, everything would be ruined. She would start acting all weird and possessive, and he would feel suffocated, and she’d get needy, and he’d resent her clinging, and they’d start to fight, and before long she would quit her job, storm out of his life and leave him high and dry, wreck the movie, take down the studio and...
...dammit, and him back to being his lonely, isolated self.
Oh, sure, he had friends. But no women. After all, how many women looked past the glam exterior to see the real man beneath?
He’d gotten swept up in the moment and had made a colossal mistake last night. He knew better than to have sex with Ana and all her emotional baggage. She was already shaky enough about doing the movie. The last thing he needed to do was chase her away. She had no idea how talented she really was nor how much the camera loved her.
Although last night she bloody well hadn’t been shaky. She’d been sexy and curvy and passionate, and she’d drawn him into her body and soul with an abandon that left him breathless. She’d been strong and wild and generous—no doubt about it; that was the best sex he’d ever had. By a mile.
It had been surprising that she’d responded so casually afterward. Was she actually okay with using sex for business purposes? He’d been vastly relieved, though, when she didn’t demand instant declarations of true love.
But this morning, it wasn’t sitting quite so well in his gut. Somewhere deep down, he’d been pretty sure she’d had a major crush on him. But now, he wasn’t so sure. It was disconcerting not knowing where he stood with her.
They would go back to the studio that morning to work out a fight scene and run lines like nothing had happened between them. She would joke around with him, and things would settle back to normal. If she wanted to chalk up their roll in the sack as a one-time anomaly, he could live with that. He really didn’t want to lose her from the film. In fact, he kind of liked the idea of being friends with her. She struck him as the kind of person who would make a good one. She would be loyal and funny and supportive. Yeah, that was it. He would become friends with her.
Except when he went downstairs, she’d already left the house. And his Viper was gone. Rosie didn’t know where Minerva was, either. Unaccountably grouchy, he chowed down a bagel and tossed back a cup of coffee before heading out on his Harley.
He stomped into the movie studio, irritated that Ana hadn’t waited to have breakfast with him or to ride in to work with him. He’d been looking forward to having her plastered to his back on a 1500-cc vibrator.
“Jackson! I’m glad you’re here! You must have read my mind,” Adrian Turnow exclaimed when he walked onto the soundstage.
“Why’s that?”
“I’ve just finished building a tentative shooting schedule. I’m starting filming with you and Ana in two weeks, if you think she can be ready by then. We’ll start with the green-screen work. The CGI guys are going to need all the time they can get to work on the alien scenes—starring you two—so we’re shooting those first. I’ll do the stuff with live actors later, while your scenes are in production on the computer-generated imagery.”
“Uh, great. Ana and I will start running lines and rehearsing right away then.”
The director nodded. “The green-screen set is yours as long as you need it.”
“Hey, Adrian. Last night Ana offered to leave the crew for everyone’s safety. It’s possible someone’s out to harm her, and she’s worried that someone else will get hurt. She thought you and I might want her off set until her stalker issue is resolved.”
“Are you okay having her around?” Adrian asked soberly.
“Yes. Even if she’s being targeted, I’d rather have her here where we can look after her.”
Adrian nodded in agreement. “I’ll hire some extra security and we’ll press on. We need her on this movie.”
Great guy, Adrian. Loyal. Decent. And sane. Jackson added, “I’d actually like to set up a trap to catch her stalker and stop the shenanigans around the set.”
“Is she okay with that?” Adrian asked, frowning.
“I’m not going to use her as bait or anything like that. But I want to catch this guy, not just scare him off.”
“Okay,” Adrian said a little doubtfully. “I’ll leave it up to you and the security team. Let me know if you need anything from me.”
“Thank you.”
Adrian waved away the thanks with an impatient hand. “Sheila, have we sent the revised scripts over to Jackson’s house yet?”
“Not yet,” the director’s beautiful brunette assistant said from behind him. “I was just about to call the courier service.”
“Since he’s here, why don’t you just give them their scripts now, so he and Miss Izzolo can get to work.”
“Ana’s here?” Jackson asked, surprised.
Sheila answered, “She got here nearly an hour ago. I think she’s working out on the main stage where we moved the green set to.”
As the assistant turned away, Jackson called after her, “If you’ll get me two copies of the script, I’ll take Ana’s to her.”
Adrian said, “As soon as you two are ready to shoot a scene, let me know. If you want to take test shots or rehearse scenes with me, give me a couple hours’ notice so I can pull in a shooting crew.”
Jackson nodded, startled. He wasn’t used to having an entire movie crew at his beck and call. Usually, he was one of the ones becked and called. “We’ll get right on it. Would you rather have us rehearse one scene at a time, shoot it and move on? Or would you rather have us prepare the whole thing and come in to shoot it all at once?”
“Whatever’s more comfortable for you two.”
He had no flipping idea which way would be more comfortable for Ana. “You won’t let her come off looking like a rank amateur, will you? Or me, for that matter,” he added with a grin.
The director smiled broadly. “I will not
. I promise.”
“Thanks. I’ll talk to Ana and let you know how she wants to do this.”
Sheila brought him the scripts and he headed over to the main soundstage where the temporary green-screen mat was set up. After yesterday’s lighting accident, Adrian was having all the riggings checked before he let anyone back out on that stage.
Ana was out in the middle of a padded spring floor running through a complicated martial arts sequence, kicking and spinning and air-punching an invisible foe. Her movements were graceful, fluid and powerful. Like she’d been last night, wrapped round him in the throes of sex.
She caught sight of him, broke off her practice and walked over to him, panting. She was wearing one of those camisole things again. It clung to all her curves and had skinny little straps that left her shoulders bare. Perspiration glistened on her skin, and an urge to lay her down and lick it off her washed over him. Get a grip, man. Last night was a one-night deal. A colossal, unforgettable, one-night deal.
“Hey, Jackson.”
Dammit. She sounded as detached and professional as the day they’d met. Like last night had never happened. Just like he had hoped she would sound. Why, then, did it piss him off so much? Was his ego so overinflated that he’d expected her to swoon at the sight of him this morning? Jeez, Prescott. Catch a reality check.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Here’s the shooting script. Adrian wants to film our green-screen scenes first, like in two weeks. Do you want to rehearse them and shoot them as each scene is ready, or wait and shoot all the scenes at once?”
She shot him a blank look. “No idea.”
He suggested, “Why don’t we have a look at the script and see if anything suggests itself to us? Once we start shooting, the expenses will mount fast, and we’ll need to stick closely to the final schedule Adrian builds for us.”
She nodded and plopped down on the floor to read her copy of the script. He did the same beside her. Or at least he tried to. She was doing that pretzel thing again, moving from one stretch to another as she read. Each contortion was more distracting than the last, and he couldn’t help thinking of creative ways to incorporate the poses into hot, sweaty sex. Jeez! He was a mess!
