by Megan Hart
But it wasn’t Caite’s job to keep them together. Or break them up, for that matter. Her job was to spin the exploits of these three into something the public would eagerly consume, no matter how stupid they acted. Or how boring. Using her social media management skills, her task would be to keep them in the public eye without oversaturating the market, as well as make sure that everything they did met the corporate sponsors’ approval.
She loved it already.
“So. Guys,” she said, pinpointing her gaze on Nellie and Pax, who were ignoring her totally for a whispered conversation full of sibilance. Tommy, however, looked at her with the same deadpan stare he’d become famous for. “Let’s talk about this week’s schedule. You’re off from the house this weekend, right?”
The team got weekends free to leave the treasure house and live in the real world while the crew reset the booby traps and clues they’d have to fight and find in the next week’s filming. Pax bore a distinct set of fading bruises on his dark cheek that Caite had already seen covered in a blast of comments on the show’s Connex fan page, though Pax himself had been smart enough not to breach his contract by mentioning what had caused them in anything he’d said. That had only fueled the fire of commentary as fans tried to figure out what had happened, how close to dying he’d come, the extent of injuries they couldn’t see. It had been ratings genius, though Caite suspected it was mostly unplanned on his part. She was having a hard time believing Pax was smart enough to have planned that strategy.
“Yeah.” The answer finally came from Tommy, who gave his teammates a small roll of his eyes. “We got the weekend off. Gotta go back in Sunday night.”
“So tonight it’s parrrrty!” Nellie bounced in her seat and clapped her hands like a toddler promised a pony ride. Her long black hair, dyed beneath with blue and green stripes, flipped over her shoulders. “I’m’a get shit hammered!”
“There’s a shocker,” Tommy muttered.
From his seat, the formerly silent Jamison said, “Contractually, the three of you have to stay together at all times, right? During filming and not.”
“Yeah.” Pax nodded and sidled a tiny bit closer to Nellie, though it was obvious he was trying to make it look accidental. “All three of us. All the time. The Three Musketeers.”
“More like a PayDay,” Tommy said.
Caite grinned at his clever twist on the names of two candy bars. “I guess it’s a good thing you like each other, then.”
Another one of those sly glances from Pax to Nellie. Caite didn’t miss it. Jamison didn’t, either. He and Caite shared a look of their own across the table.
“So,” Jamison said suddenly. “Where are we going tonight?”
* * *
“Your face is gonna stay that way.” Caite had sidled up next to Jamison, who stood along the railing overlooking the dance floor where Nellie, Paxton and Tommy were currently taking pictures and signing autographs for their admirers. She’d arranged for the club to advertise their appearance. She didn’t look at Jamison but kept her gaze carefully on their three clients. She nudged him gently with an elbow.
He half turned to look at her. “Don’t they ever quit?”
“If you had to stay locked in a house full of booby traps, your every move being filmed, for five days out of seven…wouldn’t you want to go a little wild when you had a chance for some time off?”
He shook his head. “Hell, no. I’d want to get a good night’s sleep.”
“You,” Caite said, turning to him finally, “could stand to loosen up a little.”
Jamison stared her down, but she didn’t look away. “You think so, huh.”
“I do.”
For an instant, just the barest, briefest second, a hint of a smile ghosted along his mouth. It was gone before she could return it. But she’d seen it. There was that.
“You don’t have to be here, you know. It’s not required. I can handle it.” Caite bounced a little on her toes to the beat of the music as she gave a discreet gesture toward their clients. She pulled out her phone to tap in an updated Connex status for the three, sending out another media blip. “We’re not babysitters.”
Jamison made no move to leave. “When you get them trending in the local radius, then I’ll leave.”
Caite’s brows rose, but she held up her phone to show him the screen of her tracking app. It logged the trending topics in several of the social media apps Wolfe and Baron preferred to utilize and was updated every fifteen minutes. “We’re in the top ten on most of them, except for the video ones. We had a brief surge on Buffvid, but that was it.”
“Guess you’d better get them posting some video, then, huh?” He gave her a sharklike grin.
It didn’t intimidate her.
“You got it,” Caite said, then paused to give him a slowly quirking smile designed to get under his skin just a little. “Boss.”
She ducked through the crowd to get close to Tommy, who looked happy to see her. At least, he put his arm around her and drew her close as though they were longtime besties instead of just-met acquaintances. Caite didn’t mind. Tommy was delicious, long and lean and tattooed. He smelled good, too. He leaned close to talk into her ear.
“Hey, you.”
“Can you Buzzvid a couple clips?” She looked past him to where Nellie and Paxton were holding court, happily taking pictures with fans who were hopefully using the right hashtags.
Tommy frowned for a second. “Yeah. Sure. Get in here with me.”
He took a shot of the crowd, then of the two of them, with Caite woo-wooing appropriately. She waited for him to send the clip out into the world, then rebuzzed it once it had uploaded.
“You need anything? A drink or something?” Caite asked.
“Nah. I’m good. Getting tired, though. Think you can convince my compatriots over there that it’s time to head home?”
She laughed ruefully, watching Nellie and Pax posing for picture after picture. Neither of them seemed tired. “Not sure about that. But you’re done with this promo stuff in…five minutes. You can all do whatever you want.”
He hadn’t let go of her shoulders and now half turned toward her. “Yeah? Whatever I want?”
“Are you flirting with me?” she teased, getting ready to step out of the way so that a girl with white-blond ponytails could get him to sign her half-bared breasts.
“Only if you’re interested,” he said, holding up his pen with a flourish that made the blonde girl squeal.
Caite had to think on that for a second or so as she looked out over the jostling crowd. There were at least a hundred girls in here tonight who’d give their right arm for a wink and smile from Tommy Sanders, much less something a little more personal. Before she could answer, he backed up a step to put an arm around her again, this time to nuzzle against her ear.
“Only if the wolf over there wouldn’t bite my head off,” Tommy said.
Caite followed his gaze. “Jamison? He’s my boss.”
“He’s looking at you like he wants to gobble you up. Hey there, what’s your name?” And that was it—Tommy was back to being famous, signing boobs and posing for pictures in the last five minutes before their gig ended.
And Caite had managed to get them trending in the top five social media sites, at least for half an hour.
“Not bad,” Jamison said. “Are they ready to leave yet?”
“Tommy is. Nellie and Paxton aren’t. Let me guess. You are.” Caite waved for a glass of ice water. The press of the crowd had left her sweating. Or maybe it had been the hint from Tommy that her boss might be interested in her. That was good for a spike in her heart rate.
“You think they’re going to keep their shit together?”
Caite looked out to the dance floor, where Nellie was grinding with Pax, both of them bathed in the glare of a dozen flashes going off. Tommy joined them in a moment, bumping her ass while she shimmied. “Um…do we care?”
“We’re being paid to care.”
She gave
their clients another long look, then looked back at Jamison. “They’re off the clock as of ten minutes ago. Whatever they do now is on their own time. Nellie can’t go more than five minutes without posting selfies of herself. Pax, too. Tommy has a handle on what’s good promo. They’ve been doing this for two seasons. Unless you think something’s going to burn down tonight, I’d say we can leave them to their drinking and debauchery and head home.”
Jamison gave her a long look. “You don’t want to stay? Dance? Drink? Maybe get a little snuggly with Tommy over there?”
So. He had noticed them talking. Interesting.
Caite grinned. “He’s too busy with his legions of screaming fans for the likes of li’l ole me. Anyway, I just want to get home and take off these shoes and get into bed.”
For a moment, she thought he might say something more, but Jamison only nodded. “Share a cab?”
“Sure thing, Boss.”
“You don’t have to call me that,” he said when they slid into the backseat of the taxi and he’d given the driver her address.
“No?” Caite stifled a yawn with the back of her hand, glad to be out of the club’s pounding beat and flashing lights. She’d done her share of clubbing in her time and still enjoyed a night out dancing. But that place had been over-the-top crowded and too trendy for her tastes. “I thought maybe you’d like it.”
“Well. I don’t.”
“Huh.” She eyed him. “You know, in all the time I’ve worked for you, I don’t think we’ve done more than share a couple words here and there.”
He’d been looking out the window at the passing streets but turned toward her now. “And?”
“Well. That’s a little strange, don’t you think? At the very least, bordering on unfriendly.” She was teasing him a little, though there was an undercurrent of truth in her words.
“You think I’m unfriendly?” He frowned. “Since when does working with someone require you to be best friends?”
“You’re best friends with Elise,” she pointed out, more curious about his reaction than because she harbored any sort of long-term resentments. Up until just now, the fact that one of her two bosses pretty much left her alone had been a bonus, not a complaint.
“I’ve known her since high school.” He looked out the window again. “You actually live in this neighborhood?”
The cab slowed to a stop in front of her building. Caite leaned forward to offer the driver her credit card, but Jamison’s hand closed over her wrist and tugged it away. She glanced at him. “Yes. I do. Hey, I’ve got this.”
“You don’t.” His big hand nearly engulfed hers, and his expression brooked no argument.
“I’d have billed it to the company,” she said with a small grin.
Jamison didn’t smile as he paid the driver. He looked again outside. “I’m walking you to your door.”
Two feelings battled inside her at his words. First the taken-aback and slightly insulted feeling of him judging her neighborhood, which, admittedly, wasn’t the greatest. Especially at almost two in the morning. The second, though, was ooey gooey and spreading warm electric tingles that started somewhere in the vicinity of her belly and quickly moved definitely lower.
“You don’t have to do that, Jamison. I’ll be fine,” Caite said, but Jamison waved her to silence.
“I’m making sure you get inside. No arguing.” He slid along the bench seat behind her, both of them getting out onto the cracked cobblestone pavement just down from her building. She thought she heard him mutter something about how being unfriendly didn’t mean he wasn’t also a gentleman.
“I never said you weren’t a gentleman,” Caite told him as she struggled to open her front door. The lock stuck. There was a trick to getting the key to slide in just right….
Which Jamison, apparently, had mastered, because he took the key from her hand and pushed it into the lock, then twisted, getting the door to open. It creaked, skidding along the tile floor of the entryway as it always did because it hung unevenly on the hinges. He cringed.
“It’s an old building,” Caite said, hating that she felt as though she had to apologize for the wear and tear. “I like it. It’s got charm.”
Without asking, he followed her up the creaking, slanted stairs and into her living room. She hadn’t left a light burning when she left this morning, but the pale glow coming in through the windows was enough for her to get to the switch on the wall. With the room bathed in golden light from the dark-shaded lamps, it didn’t look too bad, and she gave herself a mental kick for even daring for a second to feel as though her home were something to be ashamed of. She liked her old building with its charms and quirks.
“It looks like you,” he said.
Caite thought about that for a moment, looking around to see it the way he did. “Thanks. But you really don’t know me. Do you?”
“You’ve established that.” He looked…embarrassed?
“You want something to drink?” Caite gave him a curious glance as she slung her purse onto the hooks she’d attached to the wall next to the front door and moved toward the narrow hallway leading back to the kitchen. “How about some food? I’m starving.”
“I should get going,” he said from behind her, but followed.
He looked too big for her tiny kitchen. Whoever had designed this apartment had been generous in carving out the living room and bedrooms from what had formerly been a single home, but the kitchen and bathroom had been given short shrift. Jamison loomed over the wee oven, the three-quarters-size fridge, the small porcelain sink. There wasn’t room in there for a table, just a couple stools pushed against the bar built into the half wall separating the kitchen from the dining room. He didn’t have to hunch his shoulders to keep his head from hitting the ceiling or anything, but with those broad shoulders and long legs, he definitely filled up a lot of the space.
“I can make scrambled eggs and toast,” Caite said, the words skidding around her suddenly dry throat. “Nothing’s better than breakfast when you come home from the club.”
He shook his head but made no move to leave. Caite poked one of the stools toward him. He sat.
She didn’t understand him. Not one bit. But instead of finding that annoying or intimidating, all it did was make her want to know him better.
The food was ready in minutes, simple eggs and sourdough toast with real butter and jam on two pretty, delicate china plates she’d picked up at some holiday sale last year. She had orange juice, too. Coffee would’ve been good, but she did intend to sleep, and soon.
“Oh,” she said as she slid the plates onto the bar. “And this!”
A plate of homemade scones from the authentic British bakery down the street, complete with thick, rich clotted cream. She put the plate between them and took a seat on the stool, handing Jamison a fork as she did. He took it but absently, his attention on the phone in his hand.
“Hey. Enough. You can check the stats and stuff in the morning. Eat, now.” That it already was the morning didn’t escape her, but she wasn’t going to point that out.
“Nellie’s drunk-tweeting.” Jamison’s mouth twisted in distaste.
“Um, that’s what she does.” Caite snagged his phone from his hand. “Ah, ah, ah. Be a good boy and eat your food before it’s cold.”
For a moment, heat blazed in his eyes, and she thought he was going to lose his temper. She held his phone just out of reach, gauging if he’d grab for it. Wondering what she would do if he did.
Something grew between them.
Something thick with anticipation. Her heart thudded faster. In her fist the phone had become heavy as a brick. Her nipples had gone tight and hard as she stared him down. Her breath caught, watching him give in to her.
Without another word, Jamison turned to his food and picked up the fork. He stabbed a bite of eggs and chewed them slowly. Silent. Caite set the phone between them on the bar, where he could easily reach it if he wanted to, and again Caite wondered if he’d take it. She wo
uld’ve, if it had been hers. But Jamison only ate, using the thickly buttered toast to push the eggs onto his fork.
“It’s good,” he said in a low voice. “Thanks. I was really hungry.”
“I know you were. You didn’t eat much at dinner, and if you don’t eat every few hours, you get really cranky.”
He paused with the fork halfway to his mouth, then set it down. “How…?”
“Look, just because you’ve barely given me a glance for months doesn’t mean I don’t pay attention to what goes on in the office.” Caite nibbled her toast for a second, then washed it down with sweet orange juice. “The yelling starts right around eleven-thirty and tapers off after lunch until about three. Here. You need to have some of this—it’s excellent.”
She held up a scone and dripped the clotted cream all over it. But when she tried to hand it to him, Jamison shook his head. Caite waved it closer, tempting, but he wouldn’t be tempted.
“I don’t eat that sort of thing.”
“You should,” she told him, not putting it down. “Every once in a while, you need a little something sweet. Everyone does.”
There it was again. That rising heat. That anticipation, the tension between them. Caite looked into Jamison’s eyes and didn’t let her gaze waver, didn’t put down the scone. She waited.
“No, thanks.”
She put the scone on the plate and licked a few drops of cream from her fingertips, watching the way his eyes followed the motion of her tongue. Her stomach tumbled. He was her boss. This was dangerous territory. But there was no denying that something was going on here. She glanced at the phone he hadn’t reached for. More heat filled her, this time centering between her thighs.
