“Thanks, Zach,” Cole replied, and the twentysomething kid disappeared.
“So are we finished?” Eve looked around the table. “Yes? Good job, everyone. See y’all tomorrow.”
As the noise level rose with people pushing in chairs and collecting their stacks, Eve’s assistant pushed through the rush for the door. “Eve—”
“Hey, Dylan.”
Dylan Moore was six feet tall and thin as a licorice whip. With the ink still fresh on his communications degree and dirt from the family farm in south Georgia scrubbed off his toes, he was determined to have a career in television and didn’t care how humbly he started. Eve was sure to lose him to Cole one of these days. She’d resigned herself to that. But in the meantime, he was the one who kept her functioning from minute to minute. He’d probably learned project management by default from all those years of being the eldest of all the sibs in the picture on his desk.
“He’s here,” Dylan said in a low voice, tugging on her elbow to draw her away from the door and, presumably, the foyer where guests at the station waited.
“Who?”
But she already knew. Had been dreading his arrival from the moment Cole had told her about him the previous week.
“Him. The exec from CWB.” Dylan glanced at the door, but the room had emptied. At the confirmation of her fears, Eve felt a trickle of dread settle in her stomach. “Mitchell Hayes. The guy who wants to eat you up and have the rest of us on a plate for dessert.”
UNDER THE CUSTOM-TAILORED suit, Mitchell Hayes tried to roll the tension out of his shoulders. Every muscle seemed locked in place, which made it tough to look relaxed and confident.
In this business, appearances were everything—it was bad enough in New York, but that rule had probably been invented right here in Atlanta. This afternoon, it was vital that he look confident without being arrogant. Not to mention friendly and trustworthy and sincere without looking like a suck-up.
“If we can get Just Between Us, we’ll have the female demographic locked up,” Nelson Berg, his boss at CWB, had said two days ago. “You get this Eve Best to sign with the network and you’ll be golden.”
“And if it doesn’t work out?”
Nelson had given him a long look and tented his fingers over his stomach in a way that meant bad news was coming. “We asked you to sign Jah-Redd Jones and NBC got him. We needed—not just wanted, mind, needed—Alastair McCall’s Animal Mind-Hunter. And what happened there?”
“OLN had a mole in the station,” Mitch had protested. “McCall was signed up before I even got on the plane.”
“Well, they don’t have a mole at CATL-TV,” Nelson had snapped, “but it’s only a matter of time. Eve Best is ripe for the picking, and this money she and her friends have won in the lottery is a ratings gold mine. You get down there, romance the socks off her and her staff and get them signed up.”
“Or?” Mitch had said before his brain had a chance to catch up with his mouth.
“Or I’m going to have to replace you.” Nelson’s face had been kind, but the words were brutal. “Not much point in keeping a scout who can’t bring home the bacon, is there?”
No, there wasn’t.
On trips such as these Mitch often wondered why he did this. Why he put up with Nelson’s crap. Nobody on the guy’s staff had a life—they were so busy bringing home the bacon they didn’t have homes to go to. Apartments, yes. Places to keep their stuff, sure. But homes? Nope.
Something moved behind the soundproof glass wall that backed the receptionist’s desk, and the card-secured door clicked open. An African-American guy who could have made a career in college basketball stepped out.
“Mr. Hayes, I’m Dylan Moore, Eve Best’s personal assistant.” Mitch shook his hand. “Right this way.”
Mitch followed him into the rabbit warren of corridors, taping booths and offices that made up TV stations all over the country. This one boasted three studios—one for news, one for network linkups and a huge one for the exclusive use of Just Between Us.
As he passed behind the backdrop that somehow managed to convey a sense of home along with big-city glitz (who was their set designer?) he had to smile. Because of course the studio was all about appearances, too. Behind the set, where the camera never went, the walls were naked board and batten, with schedules and notes stapled all over them. Tie wraps secured wrist-sized bundles of electrical wiring and cables to the studs, along with Ethernet and T1 lines.
It looked so like the studios at CWB that he felt right at home. Or at least, as much as a guy could feel at home when he was living in a pressure cooker.
At the top of a set of stairs, he passed a conference room, where, from the debris, it looked as if a production meeting had just ended. Moore paused at the door of an office next to it, and Mitch resisted the urge to stretch his neck muscles one more time and straighten his tie.
He nodded at Moore and walked into Eve Best’s office with a smile and an outstretched hand.
One of their affiliates in Atlanta had sent him a box full of DVDs of the last three months of the show. But even watching forty hours of Eve Best hadn’t prepared him for the reality.
She pushed her chair back and came around the desk to meet him—and his entire body went on alert. It was as if his pheromones met hers in the space between them, and exploded in a chemical reaction. The small screen simply didn’t do justice to the curves and the healthy glow of her skin. Her baby-doll top was cut just low enough to show a tempting swell of cleavage but not enough to be in bad taste. He’d expected that triangular, girl-next-door smile that knocked viewers off their chairs, but it didn’t happen. Instead, he got the full effect of those wide, long-lashed green eyes.
And they weren’t particularly glad to see him.
“Eve, this is Mitchell Hayes from CWB,” Moore said from the door. “Mr. Hayes, Eve Best.”
“Thank you, Dylan.” Her voice, which was husky and playful when she spoke to her guests, was merely husky now. Subdued or not, it stroked some pleasure point deep inside Mitch’s chest. In fact, the whole package seemed to be custom-made to stroke every pleasure point he had—and when had been the last time he’d experienced that?
What had Nelson said? He was here to romance the socks off this woman and get her to say yes.
To the contract.
He needed to focus on his goal, and soon, or he’d be in the deepest trouble of his career.
“Please sit down, Mr. Hayes.”
Belatedly, he realized he needed to say something to take control of this interview and stop drinking her in like a teenage boy staring at the head cheerleader.
“Thanks for seeing me, Ms. Best,” he said. “I know your schedule is probably packed.”
“You’re right there. The only place I could fit you in was at the end of the day, and even at that I need to keep it short. I appreciate you’ve come a long way to have this conversation, but I’m going to a benefit this evening. I’m afraid I’ll need to leave in about half an hour.”
What an amazing voice. What charisma. No wonder the viewers were flocking to Just Between Us. He could watch this woman all day. “That will be plenty of time.” Once again, he tried to convince his body to relax. But his body was far more interested in hers than it was in getting her commitment to the network.
And then she smiled. It wasn’t an I’m-glad-to-see-you smile, or a come-on-over smile. It was an I’m-going-to-break-this-to-you-in-the-nicest-possible-way