LITMIR.BIZ

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think of anything except those papers Jason had just destroyed.

      No, she corrected. That wasn’t entirely true. She was reasonably aware of the arm he’d stretched across the back of her seat. And she was shivery from the skimming touch of his fingers on her bare shoulder. All in all, Jason was doing a bang-up job of getting under her skin tonight.

      In the lobby at intermission she demanded to see the papers, piecing the two sections together to study the front page. It was a contract, all right. A very lucrative contract. Her mouth gaped when she saw the outrageous sum he was willing to pay her to star in the daytime show. It was less than he was paying Terry, but Terry was a seasoned actor with proven credentials in attracting viewers. She was an unknown who belonged on Wall Street, not some West Side soundstage. It reinforced her belief that television was too far from reality to be taken seriously.

      She gazed up into eyes that were watching her perfectly blandly. “You don’t even know if I can act.”

      “You can,” he said.

      “How can you be so sure?”

      “Because for the past week you’ve been pretending to dislike me. The act was amazingly believable,” he assured her, then grinned. “At least to anyone who wasn’t close enough to look into those blue eyes of yours.”

      “I wasn’t acting,” she swore.

      “Want to bet?” he murmured, already leaning down to claim her lips before she could even form a protest.

      Right there in the lobby of the theater, with tourists from Michigan and Texas and Ohio looking on with fascination, with dressed-up New Yorkers totally oblivious, he kissed her, slowly and methodically and convincingly. Weak-kneed, Callie clung to his shoulders. Her resistance turned to ashes, burned to bits by the incendiary nature of that kiss.

      Okay, she decided when she could form a coherent thought again, maybe she did like him just a little. But she really hated herself for the weakness.

      * * *

      Sunday morning, after a night during which her torrid dreams had starred the infuriating Jason, Callie had just about decided she ought to be sentenced back to Iowa. Clearly she was too easily manipulated by a sexy smile and a little persistence. At some point, she had actually considered taping that contract back together just to earn another one of Jason’s devastating kisses.

      The memory warmed her and made her want things she had no business wanting, especially with so many strings attached. Just as she yawned and stretched languorously, someone knocked. Since she wasn’t quite sure which of the males in her life was in possession of her key at the moment, she hopped out of bed and dragged on her rattiest old robe. She refused to give Jason the idea that she cared what he thought of her attire.

      “Who is it?” she called out as she crossed the living room.

      “Me,” Jason responded.

      “And me,” Terry added.

      “And me,” Neil chimed in.

      Good grief, didn’t anyone sleep in on Sunday mornings anymore? She threw open the door and planted herself squarely in their path, as if that would bar them if they were intent on coming in.

      “To what do I owe all this?” she asked.

      “We were on our way out to brunch, when Jason came along and suggested we all go together,” Terry explained, not quite meeting her eyes. “Get moving, dollface. We’re starved.”

      Somehow Callie didn’t believe for an instant that this could be explained away as innocently as Terry was suggesting. “You just happened to meet in the hall?” she asked skeptically.

      “Cross my heart,” Jason swore.

      “Ditto,” Terry said.

      “Neil, you’re awfully quiet,” Callie observed. “Do you have a different version you’d like to share?”

      Neil exchanged a highly suspect look with Terry’s boss, then shook his head. “Nope.”

      “Satisfied?” Jason asked.

      Callie supposed she was going to have to be. Based on prior experience, she knew a woman didn’t have a chance of getting at the truth if men conspired to keep it from her. Her ex-husband had kept quite a lot of truths from her. It had tarnished her views on the male of the species for all time.

      “Give me ten minutes,” she said, turning away and leaving them to decide for themselves whether to wait inside or out.

      When she emerged from her bedroom fifteen minutes later, she found them sprawled all over her living room furniture. Jason was settled in an easy chair, glancing through a magazine. Terry was stretched out on the sofa, eyes closed. Neil was perched awkwardly on a dainty chair meant for someone far smaller than his six feet two.

      Callie gathered from the lack of clutter that Neil had spent most of the time tidying up as he did every time he walked into her apartment. Neil was compulsively neat, which probably explained why Terry retreated to her place so often. His own always looked as if it was about to be photographed for some interior-design magazine.

      “Ready?” Jason inquired, glancing up. “Ah, I see we’re back to casual wear.”

      Callie’s cheeks burned at the implied criticism. It was true, she had deliberately tugged on a decrepit pair of jeans that had been ripped or worn through in several places. She’d topped the jeans with a badly wrinkled T-shirt in a fetching shade of faded blue.

      “The peekaboo effect is really quite enticing,” Terry observed. “Don’t you think so, Jason?”

      “That’s certainly one word for it,” he agreed.

      Callie frowned. “I don’t have to come along.”

      “Yes,” Jason said. “You do.”

      “Says who?” she shot back.

      “Play nice, children,” Terry instructed. “We’re all going.”

      He ushered them out the door with the skill of a parent dealing with a couple of squabbling toddlers. Callie was pretty sure she saw him glance at Neil and roll his eyes. She couldn’t say she blamed him. There was some evidence that he was dealing with a couple of stubborn, spoiled brats. Callie resolved to behave for the rest of the morning. It wasn’t Terry’s or Neil’s fault that she and Jason couldn’t spend more than twenty minutes together before tempers flared.

      She was about to fall into step with Terry, when Jason linked his arm through hers and pulled her alongside him.

      “You know why you’re so cranky, don’t you?” he inquired with a lazy drawl, pitched for her ears only.

      She had noticed before that he lapsed into something bordering on a Southern accent whenever it suited him. “Where are you from?” she asked, hoping to divert his attention. She’d guessed from his comment that whatever was on his mind was likely to set her teeth on edge.

      “Virginia,” he said. “Trying to change the subject?”

      “You bet.”

      “I don’t blame you. Acknowledging that you’re sexually frustrated must be embarrassing.”

      Callie stopped in her tracks, causing Terry and Neil to come up short or run right over her. Hands on hips, she scowled up at Jason.

      “How dare you!”

      “Actually, I dare quite a lot,” he said. “Come on. You’re blocking traffic.”

      She dug in her heels. “I wouldn’t go anywhere with you if you had the key to a buried treasure worth millions,” she declared flatly.

      Terry groaned. Neil sighed heavily.

      “Well, I wouldn’t,” she insisted. “I’m going home.”

      Jason shook his head. “See what I mean? She’s frustrated.”

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