Take On Me

“You guys have met before?” Claudia asked, her gaze alert as she glanced back and forth between them, probably wondering why he hadn’t mentioned it in their interview.

“Sadie and I went to school together,” he supplied innocuously.

He was holding Sadie’s eyes as he said it and was thrown when something soft and vulnerable flashed behind them. Another expectation blown away. He’d imagined defensiveness when she saw him. Even indifference—after all, she probably had dozens of scalps on her belt from all the people she’d stomped on over the years. No doubt it was a real bitch for her to remember what she’d done to whom.

But the hurt, tortured look that had raced briefly across her face threw him. Again.

“That’s right. Dylan and I went to the same senior high,” Sadie clarified.

“Really. Dylan didn’t mention it when we talked,” Claudia said, her near-black eyes fixed on him questioningly.

Dylan shrugged self-deprecatingly. “Didn’t see the point. It was a long time ago,” he said. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure Sadie would even remember me.”

A muscle tensed in Sadie’s jaw, the first and only sign that she felt any discomfort at all. Dylan noted the moment with satisfaction.

“Just goes to show, it’s a small world,” Claudia said, obviously accepting his explanation. “Kind of takes the wind out of my sails, though. I was pretty proud of finding you all on my own.”

Sadie’s face was once again under control as she eyed him.

“I thought you were contracted to The Boardroom,” she said.

Betraying color instantly stole into her cheeks. She’d been keeping an eye on his career. Probably waiting for him to be run out of town or told to sit in the corner with a pointy dunce cap on his head.

“I was packing up my office when Claudia’s offer came through,” he said. Settling his shoulder against the wall, he turned the conversational spotlight on her.

“I hear you were on holiday in the Caribbean. Where’d you go?”

“Um, St. Barts,” she said. Her eyes darted to Claudia, and he got the sense that a secret communication was passing between them. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Claudia shake her head minutely.

What was going on?

“I was there a few years back. Did you try the scuba?” he asked, probing a little more. What was the big secret about St. Barts?

“No. I mainly hung out on the beach and read and caught up on sleep. You know,” she said dismissively.

He narrowed his eyes assessingly. He’d assumed she’d gone on holidays with a friend or boyfriend, but it sounded as though she’d gone alone. Was that what the look between her and Claudia was about? He couldn’t quite believe that a woman as attractive as Sadie had to go on holiday alone. Even with his built-in prejudice against her, he could see that many men—okay, most men—would find her attractive.

Of course, there was that personality of hers to consider, he reminded himself. There was only so much bitchiness a man could tolerate for the sake of a sexy body.

“Sounds great,” he said.

“Yeah, it was,” she replied. She shifted her head a little, her hair rippling over her shoulder as she tilted her chin at him. As though she was daring him to challenge her on her answer.

Definitely something going on there, but he was in no rush to find out. Television production offices were always rife with gossip. All he had to do was tee up the right conversation with the right gossip-monger, and he’d know everything from her shoe size to the last time she flossed.

“Why don’t I leave you guys to it, then? Sadie probably needs to be brought up-to-date with what’s happened while she’s been away,” Claudia said, moving toward the door.

Dylan decided to take her departure as the cue to crank things up a little. Time to let Ms. Post know that she wouldn’t have things all her way this time around. Without asking permission, he sank into the chair opposite her desk and propped the ankle of one leg confidently on the knee of the other.

He’d been thrown off guard for a couple of moments there by the discovery that Sadie the Stick Post had turned into a whole handful of woman. But he was over that now.

Time to start setting the record straight.

Sadie felt a stress twitch break out under her eye as Dylan Anderson leaned back in her visitor’s chair and locked his hands behind his head. As though he owned the place, king of all he surveyed.

SHE FELT AS THOUGH she was in a human-size snowglobe, and someone had just shaken the crap out of it. In fact, if all her furniture started floating around her, she wouldn’t be a bit surprised—she felt utterly, completely at sea. Flummoxed. Thrown. Terrified. Furious. In fact, there was a whole mental ward of violent emotions wrestling for supremacy in her brain. For the moment, she was a helpless bystander, waiting to see which emotion would be the final victor.

Dylan Anderson. The Dylan Anderson. Star of her nightmares for at least five years after that horrible, crushing senior prom. The man voted Most Likely to Be Hit by a Car in a Dark Alleyway in her own private, personal yearbook.

And now he was here. Sitting opposite her—slouching, really, already supremely at ease.

She wanted to scream. She wasn’t up to this. She was already on her knees after Greg’s betrayal. This was too much.

Over the years, she’d imagined running into Dylan again. For a while, it had been her favorite indulgent daydream. In her version, she was wearing a designer gown, looking blindingly beautiful as she sauntered up the aisle after accepting her Best Original Screenplay Oscar. He’d fallen on hard times and was working as a seat warmer, filling in for celebrities when they needed to go to the bathroom. Their eyes met briefly—and she sailed right by, cutting him dead, ignoring him completely. Or, in her alternate fantasy, she stopped and took pity on him, insisting he give her a call—she was sure they could find something for him to do around the production office. Emptying bins, cleaning toilets, licking her shoes. That kind of thing.

Instead she got this—him sitting cockily across from her, making the room feel smaller and putting her whole body on red alert.

Whenever she’d cast him in one of her revenge fantasies, he’d always been balding and paunchy, with a pronounced stoop. Sometimes she even gave him missing teeth. Why the hell not, after all? It was her fantasy, and she was in charge of hair, wardrobe and makeup.

But, unfortunately for her, the years had been kind to Dylan. Not just kind, generous. Really, really generous. Although he’d retained his lean, rangy physique, his shoulders had broadened with age, his chest deepened. His thighs were stronger, his biceps more pronounced. She could even see the smooth curve of pecs beneath his dark green T-shirt. He’d moved on from the rebellious long hair of his youth and wore it cropped short and tousled now, one lock flopping over his forehead. Even the lines around his eyes and mouth only made him more attractive, if that were possible. The bastard.

God, she despised him. For a moment, reconstituted hate threatened to overwhelm her as she stared at him. The things she could say to him. Had wanted to say to him, all those years ago once she’d moved beyond mortification and into rage. In the very early days, she’d written him letters. Long, scathing, insulting letters that told him exactly what she thought of him. She may have even been tempted to deliver one of them to him if he hadn’t disappeared after prom. She’d never seen him again after that night.

She’d thought him blessedly gone forever from her world until she’d had the horrible shock of seeing his name on the end credits of The Boardroom three years ago. It couldn’t be the same man, she’d told herself. But a subtle check through industry sources had quickly proved it was. It had been the career equivalent of finishing her breakfast cereal to find a cockroach in the bottom of her bowl. No, worse—half a cockroach.

Since then, she’d checked up on him every now and then, so she knew where he was, what he was doing. Like keeping an eye on a spider that had found its way into her home.

And now he was here, sitting opposite her, oozing masculine confidence like a miasma, waiting for her to say something.

Thank God Claudia hadn’t told him about her disastrous wedding. She’d almost sobbed with relief when Claudia had given a tiny shake of her head to indicate he didn’t know anything beyond the fact that she’d gone to the Caribbean. If there was any justice in the world, he’d stay in the dark, too. Just the thought of him knowing about her humiliating private life was enough to make her feel nauseous.

The silence stretched a long, long time as she tried to shuffle her disordered, chaotic thoughts into some kind of shape. He waited her out, his eyes steady, his expression unreadable. The bastard.

What got her the most was the benign, butter-wouldn’t-melt way he’d mentioned that they’d gone to school together, and that he didn’t know if Sadie would remember him or not. As though his cruelty hadn’t been one of the pivotal moments of her life.

The thought that his treatment of her had barely registered a blip on his personal radar was the jolt she needed to find her backbone.

Last time she’d seen this asshole, he’d bested and humiliated her in grand style.

He wouldn’t be getting a second shot.

Squaring her shoulders, she cleared her throat.

“I gather that you came on board last week, is that right?” she asked.

To encourage the illusion of professionalism, she grabbed a notepad and pen, and hoped like hell that her hands weren’t shaking with reaction.

“Yep. Pretty much just picked up where Joss had left things. The team was great, really on top of it all,” he said.