Temptation

The sponsors were already getting restless. He doubted if he could hold them off with promises for much longer. Another week or two of ratings like the ones he had before him and they’d be yanking their ads in droves or demanding price cuts that wouldn’t sustain the show’s costs.

Maybe he hadn’t fully expressed the bind he was in, the favor she would be doing him and her friend Terry, who stood to lose a job along with a lot of other people if Jason had to cancel the long-running series.

A smile slowly worked its way across his face as he considered this last. He’d seen for himself how tight Callie and Walker were. She was definitely the kind of compassionate, loyal woman who would do anything for a friend, maybe even take a job she claimed not to want.

“A few more days,” he told Freddie, exuding more confidence than he had felt only moments earlier. “Tell those writers by the time they deliver that outline, I’ll deliver Callie Smith.”

“Can you be a little more specific?” Freddie pleaded. “I think a firm date would reassure them.”

It was Thursday now. He glanced at his calendar and saw that he was tied up for the rest of the day, that evening and most of Friday. He didn’t bother checking Saturday or Sunday. Anything he had scheduled for the weekend could be canceled.

“Monday morning,” he said, his expression every bit as grim as if he were setting a deadline for a major military maneuver, which, in a manner of speaking, he was. He was about to launch a full-scale assault on Callie, the likes of which she’d never seen before.

He hadn’t looked forward to anything with more enthusiasm since he’d single-mindedly gone after the presidency of TGN. There were a lot of doubters at the network who’d said he couldn’t get that, either. Some of the most vocal were now working for very small independent stations in cities it was very difficult to find on a map.

* * *

When no flowers arrived on her doorstep on Thursday, Callie considered it a reprieve. When none turned up on Friday, she had to acknowledge the tiniest hint of disappointment. Apparently Jason Kane’s attention span was even shorter than she’d hoped. She indulged in half a bag of Hershey’s Nuggets to console herself. To her deep regret, the chocolate didn’t vastly improve her mood. All that sugar and caffeine just made her jittery.

What she really needed to boost her self-esteem was a job. Not a job as an actress but one in her chosen profession. It was time to aggressively go about getting one. She prayed that this wouldn’t be one more futile attempt like all the others she had made with compulsive urgency in the first forty-eight hours after being fired. She had driven herself into an exhausted frenzy trying to find something new, only to be left feeling like even more of a failure. A month later she had tried, and failed, again. Maybe the third time would be the charm.

Filled with renewed determination, she flipped open her address book to the listings for brokerage firms and began making calls to various friends she’d made in the business.

As it turned out, two more had been fired. One had taken a transfer to Cleveland. And the others were all too nervous about their own shaky futures to be of much help to anyone who might ultimately be competing with them for the last remaining broker’s job in the universe.

Callie finished the bag of candy, which did nothing for her mood and made her feel physically crummy to boot. At least her inability to find so much as a lead on a job took a backseat to her now-queasy stomach.

Then images of acre upon acre of corn flashed before her eyes as she envisioned the rest of her life. She really was a dismal failure, just as her parents had always predicted she would be. She had failed at marriage and failed at her career. Eunice had already seen it. Soon everyone in Iowa would know it, as well.

“Too many grandiose ideas,” her mother had said with her lips pursed tightly as Callie had waited at the train station nearly ten years earlier. “They’ll be your downfall, you mark my words.”

“You’ll be back with your tail tucked between your legs,” her father had added.

They’d been no more supportive of her marriage. Maybe they had seen what she hadn’t, that she could never fulfill the expectations of a man like Chad Smith, who’d grown up with wealth and power and class. Discovering that her replacement’s credentials had more to do with her swimsuit size and her pedigree than her wit or intelligence had left her bitter and disillusioned, a reaction that admittedly was out of proportion to his actual worth, net or otherwise.

Maybe she was doomed to live out her days all alone on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Her skin would burn in the unrelenting summer sun, wrinkling up until she looked like a raisin. She’d be reduced to chopping off her own hair with a pair of kitchen shears or letting it grow until she could wind it into a tight little bun like the one her mother had worn as far back as she could remember. She was doomed to wind up her life right where she’d started it, in the middle of a cornfield.

It didn’t take long for misery and defeat to spread through her like an eager virus. Tears trickled down her cheeks. The last remaining bit of spunk that had gotten her out of Iowa in the first place drained away in another soggy bout of uncharacteristic self-pity.

Naturally, that was when Jason Kane chose to make yet another of his unannounced entrances into her life. Callie stared at the door as he continued to pound on it and call out her name.

“Go away,” she shouted back in a voice that was husky from crying.

To her shock and outrage, she heard a key turn in the lock. Blast Terry to hell! she thought. The lousy traitor had given the man his key.

“If you open that door, I am dialing 9-1-1,” she threatened.

The door swung open. She picked up the phone. Jason smiled. It was a terrific smile, crooked, endearing. She forced herself to look away, focusing on the phone’s keypad as she determinedly punched the nine.

“You don’t want to do that,” he said softly, plucking the phone from her hand.

“Yes, I do,” she said stubbornly, trying to snatch it back. He lifted it beyond her reach.

“You won’t when you see what I’ve brought for dinner,” he promised.

“I’m not hungry,” she said with absolute sincerity. The very thought of food on top of all that chocolate was enough to make her stomach flip over.

Or perhaps that was its indignant response to the sight of Jason strolling straight past her into the kitchen, two plastic bags of groceries in his hands. She noticed he’d tucked her portable phone into his back pocket as a safety precaution.

Thoroughly disgruntled, she followed him. “You really are an arrogant son of a gun, aren’t you?” She didn’t wait for a reply before adding, “Has it ever occurred to you that I might have plans on a Friday night? Didn’t it cross your mind that you should call before dropping by with dinner?”

“No,” he said. “Where are your pots and pans?”

“No what?”

“No, I don’t think I’m arrogant. Just confident. No, it didn’t occur to me you had plans. You haven’t been out on a date since your divorce.”

“Let me guess, Terry filled you in on the sorry state of my social life,” she said irritably. She was going to strangle the blabbermouth. She really was.

“He’s a very accommodating man,” Jason said approvingly.

“Especially to the man who controls his paycheck.”

“It didn’t require blackmail, sweetie. He’s worried about you. He thinks I’m the answer to your prayers.”

“So he’s said.”

“In more ways than one,” Jason added.

“Terry is a hopeless romantic,” she acknowledged, then scowled. “I’m not.”

“That’s understandable,” he soothed, “especially given your recent difficulties in the marriage department.”

He made it sound as if she had an irritating malady that could be fixed right up with a couple of exposures to the right medicine—namely, him. Although she wouldn’t have admitted it for anything, he might just possibly be right. She was feeling marginally better even though the aroma of the garlic he was sautéing was enough to cause her to seriously regret following him into the kitchen.

“What you need is a distraction,” he added, as if he’d read her mind. “A little taste of success. Take me, for example. With a little effort, you could probably win my heart. I’ll play hard to get, of course. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m easy. The challenge and the ultimate victory will do wonders for your self-esteem.”

Callie shook her head at the glib nonsense. “Maybe you’d better let me worry about my self-esteem. Your methods seem a little self-serving.”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing for the past few months? Sitting around here worrying about your self-esteem? Where has it gotten you?”

She had no ready response for that. Nor was she willing to tell him it had actually been six months, ever since she’d found out about the bimbo in spandex, as Terry had rather inaccurately dubbed her. Women like that wore cotton or very expensive silk. And dumb as they might be, they would almost never be described by anyone as bimbos, no matter how outrageously they behaved. Avoiding such a label was one of the privileges of class, she supposed.

“See, even you can’t deny that I’m right about this,” he said triumphantly when she remained silent. “I think you need an expert.”

“And you’re willing to sacrifice yourself on that particular altar?”

He deftly chopped up an onion and tossed it into the skillet. Only then did he glance her way. The heated, wicked gleam in his eyes could have melted steel, turned it right into a little puddle of molten metal.