enunciated as though for a child. “It’s for late-night cable. Have you seen what they run these days? Trust me, this footage will be tame by comparison. It’ll just be more interesting because it’s the real thing.” She pulled a list of topics from the folder and handed it to Stef. “The first shoot is an ex-stripper who has house parties teaching women to lap dance and take it all off for their husbands.”
“No way.”
“Royce Schuyler was drooling over the idea,” she said with relish.
“He couldn’t have been drooling too much or you’d have come away with a contract.”
“Come on,” she snapped. “No one gets a contract for a doc series sight unseen. He liked the concept, though. Bring the wild side to Middle America. It’ll be sexy. It’ll be fun.”
“No. Not just no, but hell no.” Stef walked up to brace his hands on the desk and lean in toward her. “You are out of your mind if you think I’m going to have anything to do with this kind of project. I’ve got backers who would never return my phone calls if they knew about it.”
Sabrina leaned back in her chair and reminded herself to keep her cool. “No problem. Walk out. I’ll just tell Gus that you’re not interested,” she said airily. He had to be pretty desperate, she figured, or he wouldn’t be in the same room with her. “Of course, he might be a little disappointed to find out you’re not going through with your side of the deal.”
“It’s not a deal, it’s a favor.”
Sabrina’s smile widened. “In Hollywood, it’s the same thing, Stef. Of course, I realize that you’ve always been above…commercial ventures. Cheer up, sugar. It won’t sting so much after a while.” She rose and leaned toward him to give him a careless, dismissive kiss on the forehead.
It was a mistake.
IT WAS MORE INSTINCT than intention. Without thinking, Stef angled his head to find Sabrina’s mouth. To teach her a lesson…to test them both…to show himself that the past was done. He could have given himself any of those reasons. Any of them would have been easier to accept than the possibility that he just wanted to find out if she felt the same.
Then the heat flared through him and he didn’t have to wonder any more why he’d done it.
The taste of her flooded him with delight, like the flavor of some decadent, long-denied dessert. It sucked him back through the years to their first kiss, their last kiss and everything in between. Cool and smooth, her lips were slightly parted at first in shock. He heard her soft, smothered sound of surprise and faint protest; then her mouth was avid and hot against his. Sensations blurred, the sultry scent of her rising around him, the silky strands of her hair spilling over his fingers as he framed her face with his hands.
He wanted more, wanted to have her body naked and quaking under his, to see if she still moved the same way, made the same noises. To see if the same things still turned her on. Then he heard her sigh and felt her surrender herself to the moment.
Small sounds were deafening in the tiny room: the stroke of skin, soft exhale of breath. On the radio, a silky guitar line twined over the voice of a man singing about conquering a lover. Sun spilled across them where it came in the window.
And two people stood, caught in a moment that telescoped the years into nothingness.
SABRINA LIFTED A HAND to Stef’s hair, running her fingers through it. She struggled to keep a sense of self, but the sensation overwhelmed her. It was as though she’d spent the past eight years trying chair after chair, finding each uncomfortable, and suddenly the words in her mind were oh, this fits, as she sank back into it.
Into him.
It had been so long since the touch of a man had felt so right. And such small touches, only the tantalizing brush of lips, the erotic intimacy of a tongue, and featherlight slip of fingertips over her cheek. Smooth, liquid and slow, the pleasure flowed through her. Time and thought receded. There was only the now, with its endless resonances of before.
Then the door slammed back and someone hurtled into the office with a joyous cry.
“It’s a boy!” Laeticia stood in the doorway holding out a bottle of champagne, her triumphant expression morphing into shock as she saw Sabrina and Stef jerk apart. “Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“No, come in. We were just…” Sabrina willed her pulse to steady. It hadn’t meant anything, she told herself, just a kiss like any other. The important thing was not to react. She moved swiftly around the desk to pull Laeticia into a hug. “Congratulations, Auntie.”
“Yeah, well, I should get out of here.”
“Not at all,” Sabrina said with a hint of panic, drawing Laeticia into a chair. It gave her time to think, time to remember how absolutely done with Stef she was, had been for years. “I want to hear all about it.” And she did, too. “Mr. Costas was just leaving.”
“Not quite yet,” Stef countered, looking irritatingly unruffled. “We still need to finish that preproduction meeting.”
“I thought it was finished. You clearly don’t want to make the pilot that I’ve already pitched to the cable chief. I’ve got to deliver what he verbally committed to. Guess that means I have to get a different director.”
“I’m your director,” he said flatly.
“Not if you don’t want to make the documentary I’m selling.”
“Don’t forget the contract.” He nodded toward the fax machine where Laeticia was unobtrusively changing the paper.
“The contract just says we work together on a pilot. Period.”
Stef looked at her, amused. “Excuse us,” he said to Laeticia, and pulled Sabrina into her office, closing the door.
“Don’t manhandle me,” she spat.
“I’m not. I’m just trying to get some privacy. We have a contract to work on this project together,” he said calmly.
“Fine.” An edge entered Sabrina’s voice. “Then we do it my way.”
“No,” Stef shook his head, “we do it our way.”
“And what way is that? You were never much good at compromises, Stef.”
“Neither were you,” he said, looking at her stubborn jaw. “Looks like this will be a learning experience for both of us.”
Sabrina took a step closer to him, eyes defiant. “The first thing you should learn is not to assume that anything you once knew still applies. I’m not a teenager anymore.”
“No,” he agreed, running his gaze over her, “you’re all grown-up.”
“And I’ve grown out of a lot of things. I’ve found my focus.”
“And that is?”
“Making provocative entertainment.”
“It didn’t take growing up to teach you how to be provocative,” he said, lifting
