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“I’m sure you have more important things to worry about than how I spend my days,” she said.
“Not lately, as a matter of fact. Recently you’ve become my number-one priority.”
“Why doesn’t that reassure me?” she muttered under her breath. She glanced up to find amusement dancing in his gray eyes. He was clearly enjoying this cat-and-mouse game they were playing. She found that extremely irritating.
“Don’t you have a home to get to?” she inquired testily, though she’d already gathered from Terry that Jason did not. Of course, that didn’t mean that he hadn’t once had a marriage that had fallen victim to the obsessive work habits she was beginning to suspect he had.
“Maybe some little kids who miss their daddy and are waiting to be tucked in?” she added hopefully.
He shook his head. “Nope. I’m free as a bird. I thought maybe we could take a little stroll over by Central Park. You look as if you could use a little fresh air, maybe some exercise.”
“Do you moonlight as a personal trainer?”
“Only when I anticipate great rewards for my efforts.”
“I don’t do aerobics.”
“You should. It relieves stress.” He shrugged. “Of course, so does sex.” He eyed her hopefully. “Would you prefer that?”
Callie met his gaze evenly. “I doubt you could keep up with me.”
He chuckled. “Now, that, Miss Calliope Jane Smith, is a very dangerous dare.”
He wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t guessed the minute the words were out of her mouth. She couldn’t imagine what had come over her. She did not engage in provocative repartee with men who were virtual strangers. She didn’t engage in such banter with anyone, except perhaps for Terry, but he hardly counted. He was her buddy. They’d been taunting each other from the day he’d moved in downstairs. It had driven her homophobic husband batty. She couldn’t classify Jason Kane in the same category as either Terry or the departed Chadwick Smith III. He clearly might take her up on her challenge. It was too late, though, to back down.
“I suppose that depends on which of us has the most at risk,” she countered.
“An interesting way of looking at it,” he said. “So, what about that walk? Maybe dinner. A little pleasant conversation.”
“About?”
“You are a suspicious little thing, aren’t you? Do you think I have an ulterior motive for showing up here?”
“Of course. You probably have those contracts you want me to sign tucked in your back pocket. You’ll wait till I’ve had a few glasses of wine, then pluck them out, hand me a pen and, bam, I’ll be yours.”
He held his arms up in the air. “Care to frisk me?”
She chuckled to spite herself. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”
“You bet.” He grinned. “So would you.”
Callie shook her head, feigning awe. “I didn’t know it was possible for an ego to get so huge without exploding from all the hot air.”
“Perhaps you should make it your mission to cut me down to size,” he said, reaching down to grab her hand and help her up from the sofa. “Come on, it’ll be more fun than sitting here wallowing in self-pity all night.”
“I do not wallow in self-pity,” she grumbled, but she didn’t resist nearly as hard as she should have. She was still muttering about his arrogance as they passed by Terry’s open door two flights down.
“Behave outrageously, darlings,” he called out. “I’ll be waiting up to hear all about it when you come in.”
Jason tucked her arm through his. “I guess we’ll have to work really hard to make his wait worthwhile.”
“You wish,” Callie muttered.
She waited all evening for Jason to bring up the job on Within Our Reach, but he never once mentioned the show. Instead, he deliberately baited her about everything. There wasn’t an opinion she held about which he didn’t claim to believe the opposite. She was so riled up by the time they’d finished dinner, it was a wonder she didn’t have serious heartburn.
“Do you really believe all that hogwash?” she demanded when they finally got back to her building.
“Which hogwash is that?”
“All of it, every word that has come out of your mouth since we walked out of here four hours ago.”
Cool gray eyes attempted to feign innocence. “I can’t imagine why you would think I’d lie.”
“To make me mad,” she guessed.
“Never.” He grinned. “Perhaps to make you start living again.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Worked, too, didn’t it?”
Before she could argue that point as well, he turned on his heel and walked away, whistling lightly. She stared after him in confusion.
“What was that all about?” she murmured, touching her forehead where the skin still burned from the all-too-brief brush of his lips. What kind of sneaky, low-down tactics was Jason Kane using on her now? If he thought he could seduce her into agreeing to join the soap opera cast, he was very much mistaken. If he thought he could seduce her at all, for that matter, he was out of his mind.
Brave words, she thought as she sank onto the top step and wrapped her arms around her knees. She was trembling from head to toe, which pretty much told the story. Jason Kane could have her any time he put his mind to it.
Her only hope was that he had a short attention span. Perhaps if she failed to give in on any front, he’d tire of the chase.
Then she recalled that dangerous gleam in his eyes earlier, when she’d dared him about his sexual prowess. The memory made her groan. There wasn’t a male on the face of the earth who would ever walk away from a comment like that. She’d given him something to prove, something far more intriguing than the simple challenge of getting her to accept a job offer. No wonder he hadn’t mentioned the show all evening. She’d changed not only the rules of their game but the prize.
And judging from his smug expression as he’d walked away, he was ninety-eight percent certain that victory was within his grasp.
It was amazing how quickly life could take a totally unexpected twist and wind up with more complications than any soap opera script ever devised. Add in that earlier call from Eunice and her life was just about out of control.
5 (#uc47a5e72-ba83-553d-82f3-722658220266)
Jason stared at the latest dismal ratings for Within Our Reach and muttered a string of expletives that had his junior executives turning pale. He scowled at Freddie.
“Is that new story line sketched out yet? The one for Ms. Smith?”
“Actually...”
He sensed he was about to hear a litany of excuses. “Is it or isn’t it?” he demanded.
Freddie drew in a deep breath. “The writers are a little concerned that they might be wasting time since Ms. Smith hasn’t even agreed to take the part yet.” His brow knit worriedly. “She hasn’t, has she?”
“Not yet,” Jason conceded irritably. “But she will. It’s only a matter of time.”
He thought of the evening he had spent with her just the night before. She was definitely weakening. Her startled expression when he’d kissed her, then the fleeting glimpse of wistfulness he’d caught in her eyes, had told him quite a bit about her current state of mind.
Of course, her resistance to him wasn’t exactly the issue. If he were being entirely truthful, he would have to admit that she was still pretty adamant about not taking the job. It occurred to him that she might be viewing it as some sort of windfall, perhaps even charity. Maybe he hadn’t explained the stakes for the network clearly enough.
The sponsors were already getting restless. He doubted if he could hold them off with promises for much longer. Another week or two of ratings like the ones he had before him and they’d be yanking their ads in droves or demanding price cuts that wouldn’t sustain the show’s costs.
Maybe he hadn’t fully expressed the bind he was in, the favor she would be doing him and her friend Terry, who stood to lose a job along with a lot of other people if Jason had to cancel the long-running series.
A smile slowly worked its way across his face as he considered this last. He’d seen for himself how tight Callie and Walker were. She was definitely the kind of compassionate, loyal woman who would do anything for a friend, maybe even take a job she claimed not to want.
“A few more days,” he told Freddie, exuding more confidence than he had felt only moments earlier. “Tell those writers by the time they deliver that outline, I’ll deliver Callie Smith.”
“Can you be a little more specific?” Freddie pleaded. “I think a firm date would reassure them.”
It was Thursday now. He glanced at his calendar and saw that he was tied up for the rest of the day, that evening and most of Friday. He didn’t bother checking Saturday or Sunday. Anything he had scheduled for the weekend could be canceled.
“Monday morning,” he said, his expression every bit as grim as if he were setting a deadline for a major military maneuver, which, in a manner of speaking, he was. He was about to launch a full-scale assault on Callie, the likes of which she’d never seen before.
He hadn’t looked forward to anything with more enthusiasm since he’d single-mindedly gone after the presidency of TGN. There were a lot of doubters at the network who’d said he couldn’t get that, either. Some of the most vocal were now working for very small independent stations in cities it was very difficult to find on a map.
* * *
When no flowers arrived on her doorstep on Thursday, Callie considered it a reprieve. When none turned up on Friday, she had to acknowledge the tiniest hint of disappointment. Apparently Jason Kane’s attention span was even shorter than she’d hoped. She indulged in half a bag of Hershey’s Nuggets to console herself. To her deep regret, the chocolate didn’t vastly improve her mood. All that sugar and caffeine just made her jittery.
What she really needed to boost her self-esteem was a job. Not a job as an actress but one in her chosen profession. It was time to aggressively go about getting one. She prayed that this wouldn’t be one more futile attempt like all the others she had made with compulsive urgency in the first forty-eight hours after being fired. She had driven herself into an exhausted frenzy trying to find something new, only to be left feeling like even more of a failure. A month later she had tried, and failed, again. Maybe the third time would be the charm.
Filled with renewed determination, she flipped open her address book to the listings for brokerage firms and began making calls to various friends she’d made in the business.
As it turned out, two more had been fired. One had taken a transfer to Cleveland. And the others were all too nervous about their own shaky futures to be of much help to anyone who might ultimately be competing with them for the last remaining broker’s job in the universe.
Callie finished the bag of candy, which did nothing for her mood and made her feel physically crummy to boot. At least her inability to find so much as a lead on a job took a backseat to her now-queasy stomach.
Then images of acre upon acre of corn flashed before her eyes as she envisioned the rest of her life. She really was a dismal failure, just as her parents had always predicted she would be. She had failed at marriage and failed at her career. Eunice had already seen it. Soon everyone in Iowa would know it, as well.
“Too many grandiose ideas,” her mother had said with her lips pursed tightly as Callie had waited at the train station nearly ten years earlier. “They’ll be your downfall, you mark my words.”
“You’ll be back with your tail tucked between your legs,” her father had added.
They’d been no more supportive of her marriage. Maybe they had seen what she hadn’t, that she could never fulfill the expectations of a man like Chad Smith, who’d grown up with wealth and power and class. Discovering that her replacement’s credentials had more to do with her swimsuit size and her pedigree than her wit or intelligence had left her bitter and disillusioned, a reaction that admittedly was out of proportion to his actual worth, net or otherwise.
Maybe she was doomed to live out her days all alone on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Her skin would burn in the unrelenting summer sun, wrinkling up until she looked like a raisin. She’d be reduced to chopping off her own hair with a pair of kitchen shears or letting it grow until she could wind it into a tight little bun like the one her mother had worn as far back as she could remember. She was doomed to wind up her life right where she’d started it, in the middle of a cornfield.
It didn’t take long for misery and defeat to spread through her like an eager virus. Tears trickled down her cheeks. The last remaining bit of spunk that had gotten her out of Iowa in the first place drained away in another soggy bout of uncharacteristic self-pity.
Naturally, that was when Jason Kane chose to make yet another of his unannounced entrances into her life. Callie stared at the door as he continued to pound on it and call out her name.
“Go away,” she shouted back in a voice that was husky from crying.
To her shock and outrage, she heard a key turn in the lock. Blast Terry to hell! she thought. The lousy traitor had given the man his key.
“If you open that door, I am dialing 9-1-1,” she threatened.
The door swung open. She picked up the phone. Jason smiled. It was a terrific smile, crooked, endearing. She forced herself to look away, focusing on the phone’s keypad as she determinedly punched the nine.
“You don’t want to do that,” he said softly, plucking the phone from her hand.
“Yes, I do,” she said stubbornly, trying to snatch it back. He lifted it beyond her reach.
“You won’t when you see what I’ve brought for dinner,” he promised.
“I’m not hungry,” she said with absolute sincerity. The very thought of food on top of all that chocolate was enough to make her stomach flip over.
Or perhaps that was its indignant response to the sight of Jason strolling straight past her into the kitchen, two plastic bags of groceries in his hands. She noticed he’d tucked her portable phone into his back pocket as a safety precaution.
Thoroughly disgruntled, she followed him. “You really are an arrogant son of a gun, aren’t you?” She didn’t wait for a reply before adding, “Has it ever occurred to you that I might have plans on a Friday night? Didn’t it cross your mind that you should call before dropping by with dinner?”
“No,” he said. “Where are your pots and pans?”
“No what?”
“No, I don’t think I’m arrogant. Just confident. No, it didn’t occur to me you had plans. You haven’t been out on a date since your divorce.”
“Let me guess, Terry filled you in on the sorry state of my social life,” she said irritably. She was going to strangle the blabbermouth. She really was.
“He’s a very accommodating man,” Jason said approvingly.
“Especially to the man who controls his paycheck.”
“It didn’t require blackmail, sweetie. He’s worried about you. He thinks I’m the answer to your prayers.”
“So he’s said.”
“In more ways than one,” Jason added.
“Terry is a hopeless romantic,” she acknowledged, then scowled. “I’m not.”
“That’s understandable,” he soothed, “especially given your recent difficulties in the marriage department.”
He made it sound as if she had an irritating malady that could be fixed right up with a couple of exposures to the right medicine—namely, him. Although she wouldn’t have admitted it for anything, he might just possibly be right. She was feeling marginally better even though the aroma of the garlic he was sautéing was enough to cause her to seriously regret following him into the kitchen.
“What you need is a distraction,” he added, as if he’d read her mind. “A little taste of success. Take me, for example. With a little effort, you could probably win my heart. I’ll play hard to get, of course. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m easy. The challenge and the ultimate victory will do wonders for your self-esteem.”
Callie shook her head at the glib nonsense. “Maybe you’d better let me worry about my self-esteem. Your methods seem a little self-serving.”
“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing for the past few months? Sitting around here worrying about your self-esteem? Where has it gotten you?”
She had no ready response for that. Nor was she willing to tell him it had actually been six months, ever since she’d found out about the bimbo in spandex, as Terry had rather inaccurately dubbed her. Women like that wore cotton or very expensive silk. And dumb as they might be, they would almost never be described by anyone as bimbos, no matter how outrageously they behaved. Avoiding such a label was one of the privileges of class, she supposed.
“See, even you can’t deny that I’m right about this,” he said triumphantly when she remained silent. “I think you need an expert.”
“And you’re willing to sacrifice yourself on that particular altar?”
He deftly chopped up an onion and tossed it into the skillet. Only then did he glance her way. The heated, wicked gleam in his eyes could have melted steel, turned it right into a little puddle of molten metal.
