Especially not a man with blue-gray eyes and a body that made her hormones hum.
Shona peeked into their office and jerked her head. “Not the best day to be late, sunshine. A meeting has started in the conference room and I suggest you get there.”
“Meeting?” Jaci yelped. She was a writer. She didn’t do meetings.
“The boss men are back and they want to touch base,” Shona explained, tapping a rolled-up newspaper against her thigh. “Let’s go.”
A few minutes later, Shona pushed through the door at the top of the stairs and turned right down the identical hallway to the floor below. Corporate office buildings were all the same, Jaci thought, though she did like the framed movie posters from the 1940s and 1950s that broke up the relentless white walls.
Shona sighed and covered her mouth as she yawned. “We’re all, including the boss men, a little tired and a lot hungover. Why we have to have a meeting first thing in the morning is beyond me. Jax should know better. Expect a lot of barking.”
Jaci shrugged, not particularly perturbed. She’d lived with volatile people her entire life and had learned how to fly under the radar. Shona stopped in front of an open door, placed her hand between Jaci’s shoulder blades and pushed her into the room. Jaci stumbled forward and knocked the arm of a man walking past. His coffee cup flew out of his hand toward his chest, and his cream dress shirt, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, bloomed with patches of espresso.
He dropped a couple of blue curses. “This is all I freakin’ need.”
Jaci froze to the floor as her eyes traveled up his coffee-soaked chest, past that stubborn, stubble-covered chin to that sensual mouth she’d kissed last night. She stopped at his scowling eyes, heavy brows pulled together. Oh, jeez...no.
Just no.
“Jaci?” Coffee droplets fell from his wrist and hand to the floor. “What the hell?”
“Jax, this is JC Brookes, our new scriptwriter,” Thom said from across the room, his feet on the boardroom table and a cup of coffee resting on his flat stomach. “Jaci, Ryan ‘Jax’ Jackson.”
* * *
He needed a box of aspirin, to clean up—the paper napkins Shona handed him weren’t any match for a full cup of coffee—and to climb out of the rabbit hole he’d climbed into. He’d spent most of last night tossing and turning, thinking about that slim body under his hands, the scent of her light, refreshing perfume still in his nose, the dazzling heat and spice of her mouth.
He’d finally dozed off, irritated and frustrated, hours after he climbed into bed, and his few hours of sleep, starring a naked Jaci, hadn’t been restful at all. As a result, he didn’t feel as if he had the mental stamina to deal with the fact that the woman starring in his pornographic dreams last night was not only his friend’s younger sister but also the screenwriter for his latest project.
Seriously? Why was life jerking his chain?
His mind working at warp speed, he flicked Jaci a narrowed-eyed look. “JC Brookes? You’re him? Her?”
Jaci folded her arms across her chest and tapped one booted foot. How could she look so sexy in the city’s uniform of basic black? Black turtleneck and black wide-leg pants... It would be boring as hell but she’d wrapped an aqua cotton scarf around her neck, and blue-shaded bracelets covered half her arm. He shouldn’t be thinking about her clothes—or what they covered—right now, but he couldn’t help himself. She looked, despite the shadows under those hypnotically brown eyes, as hot as hell. Simply fantastic. Ryan swallowed, remembering how feminine she felt in his arms, her warm, silky mouth, the way she melted into him.
Focus, Jackson.
“What the hell? You’re a scriptwriter?” Ryan demanded, trying to make all the pieces of the puzzle fit. “I didn’t know that you write!”
Jaci frowned. “Why should you? We haven’t seen each other for twelve years.”
“Neil didn’t tell me.” Ryan, still holding his head, kneaded his temples with his thumb and index finger. “He should’ve told me.”
Now he sounded like a whining child. Freakin’ perfect.
“He doesn’t know about the scriptwriting,” Jaci muttered, and Ryan, despite his fuzzy shock, heard the tinge of hurt in her voice. “I just told him and the rest of my family that I was relocating to New York for a bit.”
Ryan pulled his sticky shirt off his chest and looked at Thom again. “And she got the job how?”
Thom sent him a what-the-hell look. “Her agent submitted her script, our freelance reader read it, then Wes, then me, then you read the script. We all liked it but you fell in love with it! Light coming on yet?”
Ryan looked toward the window, unable to refute Thom’s words. He’d loved Jaci’s script, had read it over and over, feeling that tingle of excitement every time. It was an action comedy but one with heart; it felt familiar and fresh, funny and emotional.
And Jaci, his old friend’s little sister, the woman he’d kissed the hell out of last night, was—thanks to fate screwing with him—the creator of his latest, and most expensive, project to date.
And his biggest and only investor, Leroy Banks, had hit on her and now thought that she was his girlfriend.
Oh, and just for kicks and giggles, he really wanted to do her six ways to Sunday.
“Could this situation be any more messed up?” Ryan grabbed the back of the closest chair and dropped his head, ignoring the puddles of coffee on the floor. He groaned aloud. Banks thought that his pseudo girlfriend was the hottest thing on two legs. Ryan understood why. He also thought she was as sexy as hell.
She was also now the girlfriend he couldn’t break up with because she was his damned scriptwriter, one of—how had Banks put it?—his key people!
“I have no idea why you are foaming at the mouth, dude,” Thom complained, dropping his feet to the floor. He shrugged. “You and Jaci knew each other way back when, so what? She was employed by us on her merits, with none of us knowing of her connection to you. End of story. So can we just get on with this damn meeting so that I can go back to my office and get horizontal on my couch?”
“Uh...no, I suggest you wait until after I’ve dropped the next bombshell.” Shona tossed the open newspaper onto the boardroom table and it slid across the polished top. As it passed, Ryan slapped his hand on it to stop its flight. His heart stumbled, stopped, and when it resumed its beat was erratic.
In bold color and filling half the page was a picture taken last night in the reception area outside the ballroom of the Forrester-Graham. One of his hands cradled a bright blond head, the other palmed a very excellent butt. Jaci’s arms were tight around his neck, her mouth was under his, and her long lashes were smudges on her cheek.
The headline screamed Passion for Award-Winning Producer!
Someone had snapped them? When? And why hadn’t he noticed? Ryan moved his hand to read the small amount of text below the picture.
Ryan Jackson, award-winning producer of Stand Alone—the sci-fi box office hit that is enthralling audiences across the country—celebrates in the arms of JC Brookes at the Television and Film Awards after-party last night. JC Brookes is a scriptwriter employed by Starfish Films and is very well-known in England as the younger daughter of Fleet Street editor Archie Brookes-Lyon and his multi-award-winning author wife, Priscilla. She recently broke off her longstanding engagement to Clive Egglestone, projected to be a future prime minister of England, after he was implicated in a series of sexual scandals.
What engagement? What sexual scandals? More news that his ever-neglectful friend had failed to share. Jaci had been engaged to a politician? Ryan just couldn’t see it. But that wasn’t important now.
Ryan