off and you won’t need protection.”
“You like being ticked off at me and you know it.”
“Why would I like being pissed off at you?”
“At some point I think you thought it kept me at a distance. But seems to me that plan has backfired. I’m here to stay, sweetheart. Now what are you going to do with me?”
“For starters,” she said, without hesitation, “if you call me ‘sweetheart’ again, you’ll be wishing for that protection.”
“I’m willing to take whatever you dish out and then some. In fact, maybe you need to unload on me and get it out of your system.” He lowered his voice, all jest gone, a realization taking form. “Maybe there’s a lot we need to just get out of our systems. Maybe then we can move past…it.” Her eyes went wide, but she didn’t lean back, didn’t immediately reject the idea, didn’t ask what “it” was, because they both knew. “It” was desire, hot and getting hotter by the second.
Sam didn’t know what this woman did to him, but while she worried about him stealing her control, she had all but shredded his. There was something about her. Actually, everything about her worked for him, from how her forehead crinkled when she was thinking, to how passionate she was about her show. Being this interested in a woman wasn’t a comfortable place to be. It wasn’t uncomfortable, either. Just different for him because he couldn’t seem to flip the “off” switch.
Long, sizzling seconds passed and she hadn’t responded to his proposition. He arched a brow at her silence. “No snappy comeback?”
“Maybe it would just complicate things,” she said, clearly talking about sex. “Maybe it would make things worse.”
“My thoughts exactly up until a few minutes ago. But we damn near combust every time we’re together, and it’s only a matter of time before we do. We both like to maintain control, so I say we deal with this on our terms, where we control how it happens.” And, he added silently, I can finally get you alone and try to tear down the walls you’ve built around yourself.
“You don’t know me.” She didn’t sound as if she quite believed those words. “You don’t know what I like.”
“But I want to know. And I’ve known you a while now. I know things you might think I hadn’t paid attention to. Like how you left a small town for a big city and now you’re daring to work for a monster studio who’d eat their own young for ratings. That takes courage. On top of all of that, you’re sitting here with me, alone, knowing exactly where it could lead. So I’d lay my money on you enjoying danger as long as it’s on your terms.” He softened his voice. “After tonight, the cameras and crew will be everywhere.”
“Sam, I—”
“Meagan!”
She inhaled at the same moment he stiffened. Before he could speak, they were surrounded by a group of the crew, who’d deserted the hotel bar for the nearest restaurant. Chaos followed as tables were shoved next to each other, only a few steps away from their tiny corner. One of the cameramen—a hefty thirtysomething guy from Texas, who they all called “Double Dave” for obvious reasons—pulled a chair to their table to talk to Meagan about his “concerns” for the next day’s shots. He then called yet another cameraman over to their table.
Sam listened as Meagan calmed their concerns, and then did enough listening of her own to manage to get her dinner down, while Sam did the same. He was intrigued by her expressions, her mannerisms, her respect for the people who worked for her, and knew it was a sign of just how badly he had it for this woman. She wouldn’t look at him though, and he had to wonder if she was calculating a way to escape his proposition. She was good at running from him despite her obvious interest, and he wondered why.
His meal completed, Sam pushed away from the table. “I’ll check out that property, and let you know how it looks.”
Meagan quickly shoved her chair back. “I’m going, too,” she said. “None of the rest of this matters if we don’t have a house to shoot in.”
“You’re viewing a property tonight?” Double Dave asked.
Sam’s expression seemed to be questioning her, so she gave the same right back to him?
“We are,” she said in reply to Dave, though, focused on Sam, not the cameraman. “We have to take it or lose it by tomorrow.” She glanced at Dave, and the rest of the group, and then announced the exciting prospect of a new house, and that she’d report on it tomorrow.
The next thing Sam knew, he and Meagan were outside. Their eyes collided the same instant the hot, muggy air slammed into them, and their budding sexual tension expanded around them, while the world shrunk to just the two of them.
“Your vehicle or mine?” he asked, willing his body to calm.
She tilted her head, studying him with such scrutiny that it was his turn to say, “What are you looking at me like that for?”
“I just thought you were the ‘I’m driving’ kind of guy.”
“And I thought you were the ‘I’m driving’ kind of woman.”
“I am.”
He waved her forward. “Well, then. Lead the way.”
She didn’t move. Instead, she stared at him intensely, then said, “You drive. My eyes hurt from editing too much film, and I don’t want you backseat driving.”
“So, you’ll backseat drive.”
“Exactly.”
Sam laughed and barely resisted the unnerving urge to grab her hand and pull her along with him—telling himself that he only needed to touch her once, that this thing was sex and sex only. He motioned her forward. “If we walk around to the side of the hotel, we can go straight to the garage and avoid another crew ambush.”
“Don’t you need to get the property listings from your room?”
“I put the address for this one in my GPS earlier. It’s about a forty-minute drive, so we better hit the road. It’s almost seven now.”
Meagan groaned and they fell into step together. “I have a six o’clock shoot in the morning, and I am going to be hating life when it starts.”
“Then it’s good I’m driving,” he said. “You can nap on the way to the property and back, if you want.”
She stopped.
“What?” he asked again.
“Stop being nice to me. I liked you better when you were intentionally trying to agitate me.”
She meant she felt safer, but he didn’t say it, not when she could back out of their private outing before they ever left. “I simply assumed you required more rest than I do.”
Her hands went to her hips. “Why would I need more rest than you? Because …” She paused, eyes lighting with understanding. “Wow. You just proved that you can bait me at will, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “But you can do the same to
