Jackson just had to breathe to make her quiver...
“You used to be Ryan Bradshaw. Why Jackson?” Jaci blurted. It was all she could think of to say apart from “Kiss me like you did last night.” Since she was already in trouble, she decided to utter the only other thought she had to break the tense, sexually saturated silence.
Ryan blinked, frowned and then shook his shirt out, pulling the fabric over one arm. “You heard that Chad was my father, that Ben was my brother, and you assumed that I used the same surname. I don’t,” Ryan said in a cool voice.
She stepped inside and shut the door. “Why not?”
“I met Chad for the first time when I was fourteen, when the court appointed me to live with him after my mother’s death. He dumped my mother two seconds after she told him she was pregnant and her name appeared on my birth certificate. I’d just lost her, and I wasn’t about to lose her name, as well.” Ryan machine-gunned his words and Jaci tried to keep up.
Ryan rubbed his hand over his face. “God, what does that have to do with anything? Moving rapidly on...”
Pity, Jaci thought. She would’ve liked to hear more about his childhood, about his relationship with his famous brother and father, which was, judging by his pain-filled and frustrated eyes, not a happy story.
“Getting back to the here and now, how the hell am I going to fix this?” Ryan demanded, and Jaci wasn’t sure whether he was asking the question of her or himself.
“Look, I’m really sorry that I caused trouble for you by kissing you. It was an impulsive action to get away from Frog Man.”
Ryan shoved his other arm into his sleeve and pulled the edges of his shirt together, found the buttons and their corresponding holes without dropping his eyes from her face.
“He was persistent. And slimy. And he wouldn’t take the hint!” Jaci continued. “I’m sorry that the kiss was captured on camera. I know what an invasion of your privacy that can be.”
Ryan glanced at the paper that he’d dropped onto his desk. “You seem to know what you’re talking about.” Ryan tipped his head. “Sexual scandals? Engaged?”
“All that and more.” Jaci tossed her head in defiance and held his eyes. “You can find it all online if you want some spicy bedtime reading.”
“I don’t read trash.”
“Well, I’m not going to tell you what happened,” Jaci stated, her tone not encouraging any argument.
“Did I ask you to?”
Hell, he hadn’t, Jaci realized, as a red tide crept up her neck. Jeez, catch a clue. The guy kissed you. That doesn’t mean he’s interested in your history.
Time to retreat. What had they been talking about? Ah, their kiss. “Look, if you need me to apologize to your girlfriend or wife, then I will.” She thought about adding “I won’t even tell her that you initiated the second kiss” but decided not to fan the flames.
“I’m not involved with anyone, which is about the only silver lining there is.”
Jaci pushed her long bangs to one side. “Then I really don’t understand what the drama is all about. We’re both single, we kissed. Yeah, it landed up in the papers, but who cares?”
“Banks does and I told him that you’re my girlfriend.”
Jaci lifted her hands in confusion. This still wasn’t any clearer. “So?”
Ryan started to roll up his sleeves, his expression devoid of all emotion. But his eyes were now a blistering blue, radiating frustration and a healthy dose of anxiety. “In order to produce Blown Away, to get the story you conceived and wrote onto the big screen, to do it justice, I need a budget of a hundred and seventy million dollars. I don’t like taking on investors, I prefer to work solo, but the one hundred million I have is tied up at the moment. Besides, with such a big budget, I’d also prefer to risk someone else’s money and not my own. Right now, Banks is the only thing that decides whether Blown Away sees the light of day or gets skipped over for a smaller-budget film.
“I thought that we were on the point of signing the damn contract but now he just wants to jerk my chain,” Ryan continued.
“But why?”
“Because he knows that I caught him hitting on my girlfriend and he’s embarrassed. He wants to remind me who’s in control.”
Okay, now she got it, but she wished she hadn’t. She’d put a hundred-million deal in jeopardy? With a kiss? When she messed up, she did a spectacular job of it.
Jaci groaned. “And I’m your screenwriter.” She shoved her fingers into her hair. “One of the project’s key people.”
“Yep.” Ryan sat down on the edge of his desk and picked up a glass paperweight and tossed it from hand to hand. “We can’t tell him that you only threw yourself into my arms because you found him repulsive... If you do that, we’ll definitely wave goodbye to the money.”
“Why can’t I just stay in the background?” Jaci asked. She didn’t want to—it wasn’t what she’d come to the city to do—but she would if it meant getting the film produced. “He doesn’t know that I wrote the script.”
Ryan carefully replaced the paperweight, folded his arms and gave her a hard stare. After a long, charged minute he shook his head. “That’s problematic for me. Firstly, you did write that script and you should take the credit for it. Secondly, I don’t like any forms of lying. It always comes back to bite me on the ass.”
Wow, an honest guy. She thought that the species was long extinct.
Jaci dropped into the nearest chair, sat on top of a pile of scripts, placed her elbows on her knees and rested her chin in the palm of her hand. “So what do we do?”
“I need you as a scriptwriter and I need him to fund the movie, so we do the only thing we can.”
“Which is?”
“We become what Leroy and the world thinks we are, a couple. Until I have the money in the bank, and then we can quietly split, citing irreconcilable differences.”
Jaci shook her head. She didn’t think she could do it. She’d just come out of a relationship, and she didn’t think she could be in another one, fake or not. She was determined to fly solo. “Uh...no, that’s not going to work for me.”
“You got me into this situation by throwing yourself into my arms, and you’re going to damn well help me get out of it,” Ryan growled.
“Seriously, Ryan—”
Ryan narrowed his eyes. “If I recall, your contract hasn’t be signed...”
It took twenty seconds for his words to sink in. “Are you saying that you won’t formalize my contract if I don’t do this?”
“I’ve already bought the rights for the script. It’s mine to do what I want with it. I did want some changes and I would prefer it if you write those, but I could ask Wes, or Shona, to do it.”
“You’re
