Читать книгу Take On Me - Sarah Mayberry - Страница 8

3

THE SUN WAS WARMING the edge of the world when Dylan steered his motorcycle into his parking space at Ocean Boulevard a week later. He told himself he was starting early because he liked to be prepared. It was true, to a certain extent—his dyslexia had made him a stickler for research and preparation; it was one of the ways he harnessed his unique way of thinking.

If he hadn’t spent half the night staring at the ceiling, he’d have been willing to buy his own excuse, too. The truth was, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. Every time he’d closed his eyes, a dozen different images of Sadie flashed across the movie screen in his mind. Those legs. Those velvet eyes. That bedroom hair. The tight black jeans she’d worn last Thursday. The flash of cleavage he’d caught at yesterday’s lunch break. The long, sensuous curve of her neck…

It had taken a whole week for him to admit it to himself, but he finally had—Sadie Post, poster child for snarky academic bullies, was a bona fide hottie.

He’d never been the kind of man to have too many illusions about sex and his own desires. He was scrupulously honest with the women he dated, and had never told any of them that he loved them, despite knowing that was what some of them wanted to hear. He wasn’t even sure he believed in love— except in a fictional sense, for the characters he wrote about. And it certainly wasn’t something he was looking for in his own life, not for a long time yet, anyway. But he’d also never found himself in a situation where he was attracted to someone he didn’t even like.

And he definitely didn’t like Sadie. The past week had been one long extended wrestling match with his new boss. He said black, she said white. Simple decisions became drawn-out discussions, meetings went overtime—work was a war zone, pure and simple.

Despite all that, the image of Sadie’s long, lithe body refused to leave his mind. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since that first day when he’d walked into her office and she’d stood from behind her desk. He told himself that it was irrelevant that parts of his anatomy found Sadie Post appealing. The last thing he was going to do was to lay a finger on her. He might have had sex with women for a lot of reasons over the years but he wasn’t about to stick it to a grade-A bitch like her just because she had great legs and breasts he itched to get his hands on.

Being so certain on that one point didn’t make sleep come any easier, however, and early this morning he’d finally given up on staring at the ceiling and saddled up his Ducati motorbike for the commute into work. Now he pulled his helmet off and ran a hand through his hair. His eyes naturally gravitated to the lone car in the parking lot, a silver Audi TT convertible. It was a great little car, and he’d toyed with the idea of buying one for a while, but he hated traffic, and the Ducati made short work of L.A.’s world-famous congestion.

Since TV writers weren’t exactly known for being early risers, he guessed the car had been left overnight. Probably someone had tied one on after work and caught a cab home. Grabbing his satchel, he headed into the building, looking forward to several hours of quiet before the rest of the team descended.

Swiping his way through security, he moved toward his office. And froze in midstride as he registered that he wasn’t alone. She was standing in the kitchen area, arms crossed in front of her face as she pulled her sweater over her head. It was an innocuous act—except for the fact that the shirt she was wearing underneath clung stubbornly to the sweater fabric. As she lifted her arms, the shirt rode up her body, revealing an expanse of trim, tanned torso and a flash of lacy white bra.

He couldn’t help himself—he took a step forward, toward her. Then the sweater was over her head, and Sadie was tugging her shirt down and shaking her long blond hair back into place.

As quickly as that, he was hard for her, his erection straining against the fly of his jeans. He grunted his self-disgust. Clearly, his penis was under the illusion that hell had frozen over, that being the only time he’d consider having sex with his new boss and old enemy.

She must have heard him, because her head swung up and her eyes widened as she registered his presence. A hand strayed to the hem of her stretchy white shirt, and Dylan guessed exactly what she was thinking. How long had he been standing there?

His self-disgust at his own lack of control morphed into satisfaction as he saw her uncertainty. He liked her uncertain, wanted to see more of it. Wanted to rock her boat as much as he could, give her a little taste of what she’d no doubt been dishing out to others her whole life. A slow smile curled his lips as he sauntered toward her.

“Morning, Sadie,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed, then her shoulders straightened as she squared up to him.

“Good morning, Dylan. You’re here bright and early,” she said primly.

“Yep,” he said. Then he let his eyes dip below her face, sliding over those high breasts of hers, discovering the denim miniskirt hugging her hips, lingering on the length of tanned leg on display in between the hem of her skirt and the black cowboy boots she wore.

His intention was to keep her off balance, encourage her to

worry a little more about whether he’d seen her impromptu striptease or not. He hadn’t considered what effect his leisurely inspection might have on his nether regions—desire simply wasn’t on the agenda between him and Sadie Post. His body was going to have to suck it up.

Unfortunately, his body had other ideas. Without any permission from him, his erection grew harder still, throbbing with the need to get closer to the tall goddess standing in front of him.

Feeling like a hormonal teenager, Dylan moved his satchel ever so casually in front of his groin. The last thing he needed was for Sadie to realize he wanted her. Not that he actually did, of course—but she might get other ideas if she caught sight of the giant boner in his jeans right now.

His momentary preoccupation had given her time to regroup, and there was no doubt or embarrassment in her eyes now.

“I’ve got notes for you on last week’s block,” she said, crossing to the coffee machine to collect a mug. “Nothing major, just a few continuity issues we need to clear up.”

Dylan waited for her to say anything more, like maybe comment on the high tension in the stories they’d crafted last week, or the powerful emotion of Friday’s cliff-hanger moment—a tear-jerker if ever he’d plotted one. But she didn’t. In fact, she appeared to have said all she was going to as she poured milk into her coffee, apparently supremely unaware of him standing there staring at her, willing her to say more.

“No problems with the Friday cliff-hanger moment?” he asked, immediately kicking himself for fishing. He didn’t need her approval.

She eyed him blandly, not giving him an inch. “It was fine. I expect you’ll be picking it up for Monday’s episode?” she asked.

Fine? His cliff-hanger was going to have fans screaming at the TV set, and she thought it was fine? Dylan clenched his hand on his satchel but deliberately matched her innocuous tone.

“We can discuss it in the pitch meeting at ten,” he said.

She obviously didn’t like the fact that he hadn’t answered her directly. He saw anger flash behind her velvet eyes, but she quickly put her mask back in place.

“It will certainly be interesting to see what you’ve come up with,” she said.

He didn’t miss the challenge in her words. Interesting, his ass. She planned to make this as hard for him as possible. Last week’s pitch meeting had been a polite standoff, but they’d only been warming up. Now, with a full week of push-and-shove behind them, he knew the gloves would be off. He found himself grinning. There was nothing he liked more than rising to a challenge.

“I’m all for interesting,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes at him again, then picked her coffee up decisively.

“I don’t want to keep you from your work,” she said, moving off.

His eyes instinctively dropped to her butt as she walked away, mapping her sweet curves and the lean muscles of her thighs. The surge of renewed desire in his groin annoyed him so much that he called out after her. She was not going to get the better of him, even if her miniskirt was doing most of her dirty work at present.

“Actually, I wanted to have a word,” he said.

She hesitated for a second, then turned back to him.

“Sure. In my office,” she said smoothly.

He followed her with his eyes for a moment more before starting after her. Grudgingly he admitted to himself that she had one of the sexiest damn walks he’d ever seen.

She was sliding into her seat behind her desk when he entered. It was obvious she expected him to take the subordinate’s chair opposite. Instead, he tossed his satchel onto it and took up a position leaning on her filing cabinet, more than aware that she was at a disadvantage with him looming over her.

He could see the exact moment she understood her little ploy to undermine him with office geography had failed. He didn’t even try to repress the cocky grin that curved his lips. As long as he could keep his unruly gonads under control, he was going to enjoy poking a stick at Sadie as often as possible over the next six months.

“How can I help you?” she asked, tilting her head back to look up at him.

His grin widened at her phrasing. As if he was going to let her help him.

“I wanted to discuss the idea of doing a feature-length episode during our peak viewing time over winter to capitalize on the audience. It’s a concept a few of the European and Australian soaps have had a lot of success with,” he said.

She frowned. “You’ve been doing your homework.”

He shrugged. “Ocean Boulevard has a reputation for taking risks. I’m surprised you haven’t gone down this route already.”

She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it with a click. Clearly frustrated, she swiveled her chair to face him more squarely and crossed her legs.

“The idea has been floated a number of times, but the previous producer wasn’t keen. Claudia is more openminded, however.”

He could see it was killing her to give him even that much information. If he wasn’t mistaken, the only thing she wanted to tell him was how far to shove his head up his own butt.

“Great. Let’s pitch the idea to her,” he said.

“Not yet. This is only your third week, Dylan.”

“So?”

“You’ll have enough on your plate just getting up to speed. Taking on a feature-length episode on top of that would be foolhardy.”

He straightened with annoyance.

“I’ll cope. I think we should do this. Or don’t you want the ratings?” he challenged.

She uncrossed her legs and his eyes fell to skim their tanned length.

“Our ratings are the best they’ve been in ten years,” she said coolly.

“So you’re happy to rest on your laurels, is that it? Don’t want to push to the next level?” He made it sound like an idle question, but they both knew he was goading her.

“We start plotting the winter blocks in five weeks’ time. That’s not long enough for you to get a grip on the show, the characters and the team, let alone be ready to tackle a feature- length episode on top of the normal workload. You’ve never had to produce this volume of story week-in, week-out in your career before. I think you should be careful not to bite off more than you can chew.”

Dylan swallowed a four-letter word. She looked so prissy, sitting there with her back straight and her knees pressed together. Even the plumpness of her full bottom lip had disappeared as she fed him her uptight little diatribe. This was the girl he remembered from American Lit—the girl who always had to be right and always had to have the teacher’s attention.

“You sure your problem with this isn’t that it’s not your idea?” he asked.

“Very,” she said succinctly. “I’m also sure that I don’t need to justify my decisions to you, hard as that may be for your ego to comprehend.”

Dylan smirked. “I don’t have ego problems, sweetheart. I know exactly what I’m worth.”

“Do you? I didn’t know you were such a pragmatist.”

His smirk turned into a grin. He was enjoying himself.

“I’m going to pitch my idea to Claudia, see what she thinks,” he said.

That got her goat. She surged to her feet in one lithe move, body tense as she leaned toward him for emphasis.

“Don’t even think about it. You’ve had my answer. Learn to live with it. Once you’ve found your feet, we can talk again.”

“I don’t need to find my feet,” he said through clenched teeth.

She snatched a copy of last week’s block from her desk. Dozens of Post-it flags bristled from the side of the document, a testament to how many changes she wanted made.

“Are you really so arrogant that you think you can walk onto a show that’s been running for over fifteen years with multiple, complex story lines and back-stories and think you’ve got it whipped in a couple of weeks?”

She slapped the document down onto the desk to punctuate her challenge. He eyed the many flags assessingly.

“There were bound to be continuity issues. They’ll shake out in a couple more weeks.” He shrugged confidently.

“You really do have a colossal ego, don’t you?” she said, one hip jutting out as she gave him a dismissive head-to-toe.

“Takes one to know one, baby,” he said.

She jabbed a finger at him and her breasts jiggled in reaction. “First, don’t ever call me baby again. I am your script producer, and you’d better not forget it. Second, I worked twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week when I did your job three years ago. I’m not ashamed to say it took a good six months before I knew what I was doing. I’m not afraid of admitting I have things to learn. How about you?”