Jason
CONTENTS
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Other Titles by Julia London
About the Author
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7 Brides for 7 Blackthornes
DEVLIN - Barbara Freethy (#1)
JASON - Julia London (#2)
ROSS - Lynn Raye Harris (#3)
PHILLIP - Cristin Harber (#4)
BROCK - Roxanne St. Claire (#5)
LOGAN - Samantha Chase (#6)
TREY - Christie Ridgway (#7)
JASON
7 Brides for 7 Blackthornes, Book 2
Meet the Blackthorne men, each one as hot, fast, and smooth as the whisky that built the family fortune, and the yachts and race cars that bear their name. From proud Scottish stock, Blackthornes never lose. But, one by one, the seven sexy men in this family are about to risk everything when they fall for strong and beautiful women who test their mettle in life…and love.
* * *
JASON – Book Two
* * *
Jason Blackthorne wants to make films. As head of Blackthorne Entertainment, he’s finally getting his break – a gritty cop drama filmed near the family compound. He has a lot riding on the success of the series, both with family and the industry. He doesn’t have time to notice how pretty or talented his assistant is. He just needs her to jump when he says jump.
Mallory Price has tried acting, but what she really wants is to be behind the camera. She is a storyteller at heart and she knows she could direct a killer show. She has great ideas, and though Jason seems to hear her, he never sees her as anything but a Girl Friday.
But when an accident on set puts him flat on his back, and a mercurial director goes missing, Mallory steps in. Long nights at work and equal footing create sparks between Jason and Mallory. But when Jason is on his feet once again, and the director returns, has anything really changed between them? Or was it all just a dream?
* * *
Don't miss these sexy, heartwarming, emotion-filled books by seven bestselling authors: Barbara Freethy, Julia London, Lynn Raye Harris, Cristin Harber, Roxanne St. Claire, Christie Ridgway, and Samantha Chase.
JASON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
© Copyright 2019 by Dinah Dinwiddie
ISBN: 9780999332184
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
* * *
Jason is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
CHAPTER ONE
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, Mallory Price needed a job.
She was an actress, but admittedly, not a very good one (funny how those high school roles didn’t translate into bankable talent as an adult). Her acting gigs were few and far between.
She was also a filmmaker and, if no one minded her saying, a pretty good one. Filmmaking was her passion. But she had only an old used camera, and so far, no one was interested in her short films, in spite of having entered three into various contests around town.
Mallory had run out of money and had to face facts. So she’d combed through job postings for three weeks and the only lead she’d found was “customer service specialist” with the county tax department.
That job had sounded like death on a stick.
Unfortunately, eating was also a personal passion of hers, and she’d been on the verge of taking that really awful sounding tax clerk job. But then, just like in the movies, the heavens had parted and the sun had shone and fortune had smiled its lovely countenance upon her, because she stumbled on an opening for the perfect job.
Mallory was ecstatic. She’d put in her application, and by the time she’d finished folding the laundry, a bot responded to her submission. CALL OFFICE TO ARRANGE INTERVIEW. So Mallory did. A woman who sounded frazzled and out of breath answered on the fifth ring. Mallory told her why she was calling. The woman said, “Great. Can you come in this afternoon?”
So Mallory raided her roommates closet, found a very cute pink dress, and decided she might as well borrow some shoes, too, and two hours later, she was sitting in the frigid air of the reception area at Blackthorne Entertainment. She felt like a million bucks in Inez’s dress and shoes. She felt confident. She was practicing the art of positive thinking, steadying her breathing and chanting her mantra, I will get this job.
A woman, about Mallory’s age of twenty-eight, suddenly appeared. She had dark hair that she wore in a messy bun—unclear if by design or necessity—a shirt that appeared to have some sort of stain on it, and a pair of jeans ripped at the knees. She had dark circles under her eyes, and without a word, she marched to a desk, picked up an enormous tote, and started shoving things into it. When she had filled it, she hoisted it on to her shoulder and started for the door. That’s when she seemed to register Mallory’s presence.
She paused. “Are you here for the interview?”
“Yes,” Mallory said, and stood up. “I’m Mallory Price.” She extended her hand.
The woman made no move to take it. She glanced at the binder Mallory was holding. “What’s that?”
“Background material.”
The woman blinked. And then burst into laughter. “Good luck with that,” she said, and walked out the door.
“But…” Mallory’s voice trailed off.
“Are you Mandy Price?” a male asked behind her.
“Mallory.” She turned around to the voice and stood, speechless, because the man looking back at her was one of the most gorgeous men she’d ever seen with her own eyes.
He looked her up and down. He scraped at his beard. “Well, come on then. Let’s do this.” He turned and started walking down the hall.
Her mind leapt to a very strange and sexual place when he said that, but she quickly shrugged it off. “And you are…?”
He barely spared her a glance over his shoulder. “Jason Blackthorne.”
Jason Blackthorne. He sounded like a character from a spy movie.
Mallory followed him into an office at the end of the hall. The office, with its view of a parking lot, was filled with papers and equipment for viewing digital films. There were stacks of scripts on a shelf, and a couple of shirts and a jacket tossed over a chair. A Chinese food container had been left on a small table. Jason Blackthorne was sexy as sin, but his office was a mess.
He perched on the only free spot at the edge of his desk and gestured her into a chair.
Mallory’s belly felt tight, and she was aware that her palm was damp from holding the binder. But she plastered on a smile, remembered all she’d learned from YouTube tutorial Putting Your Best Foot Forward: Strategies for Job Interviews, and said, “Thank you for seeing me today. I just want to say, I am a perfect match for this opportunity.”
“Oh,” he said.
She sat a little straighter. “May I tell you how?”
“Sure,” he said, and folded his arms across his middle.
Mallory began to talk. She was aware of how hazel green his eyes were, how thick his hair. He was wearing a hoodie over a T-shirt and jeans, and Jordans on his feet. He had an air of ca
sual sophistication, which, for the first time in her life, Mallory got.
He was terribly distracting as she rattled off her qualifications for the job.
He said nothing as she talked. He asked no questions. From time to time, his gaze strayed to her binder. When she reached the part of her talk that drew from past series such as Columbo and Cagney and Lacey one of his dark brows arched with surprise. “You know a lot about detective dramas.”
She knew a lot about television. “It’s a niche interest,” she admitted.
When she had finished, he sighed, as if she had worn him out. Entirely possible. Mallory had a tendency to thoroughness. Which she’d pointed out to him, as well as being a self-starter, goal-oriented, and dedicated to her craft.
“What’s in the binder?” he asked.
“Letters of recommendation and my transcripts, and some story boards from some short films I’ve made, in case you have questions.”
He looked at the binder. He looked out the window. He asked what she would do differently in his office, and she said she didn’t know, that she’d need a few days to study workflow. He smirked and said something about there being no workflow, only chaos, and then asked, “Do you have an iPhone?”
Odd question. “Yes.”
“Do you know how to use the Find my Phone?”
“Ah…sure.”
“Good. I lose my phone a lot. Do you think you could keep that stocked?” He pointed at a small fridge.
Mallory looked long and hard at that fridge. “I, ah…” What was this? The job had said an assistant to the showrunner.
“I have low blood sugar,” he said.
“Oh. Sure, I could do that.” She could do it with her eyes closed. She had done it for her entire family since she was twelve.
“Great.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m a little disorganized, so I need help with that.”
Totally obvious, judging by the mess in his office. “Sure,” she said.
He pushed away from his desk, and he looked at her again, but this time, his gaze held hers a little longer than was entirely necessary, and he said, “Can you start Monday?”
“What?”
“I think you met Holly on her way out,” he said. “I need someone right away.”
“Oh.” Mallory stood up and tried to keep the grin from her face. “Yes! Eight a.m.?”
He chuckled. “Don’t go crazy. Let’s say nine.”
She smiled. She stuck out her hand. “Thank you.”
He took her hand and she gripped it. “Should I check in with Human Resources?”
“Ah…you can check in Monday.”
She let go his hand. Neither of them spoke for a moment, just looked at each other. A smile lit his face, and damn it if that smile didn’t trickle through her like a slow moving stream. Just spreading warmth all the way down to the tips of her toes. “Monday,” he said, and pointed at her.
“Monday,” she said, and pointed back like a dolt. She gathered her things and went out the door, her face beaming.
She was halfway home when she remembered she hadn’t asked him how much the job paid. Oh well. Anything was better than nothing at this point.
Inez was in the kitchen when Mallory came home, clad in a bathrobe and her head wrapped in a towel. “Hey!” Mallory said brightly.
“That’s my dress,” Inez responded. “And my shoes!”
“We’re going to dinner to celebrate my new job!”
Inez eyed her curiously. “You got a job? How are we going to dinner? I thought you were broke. Also, you really don’t have to do my laundry and fold it and put it away, Mallory. And did you really organize my closet by color? Because I am pretty sure that didn’t happen by accident.”
“I got a job! And I am so broke. But I’m confident that’s about to change,” she’d said with a wink and all the optimism of a genie in a bottle. “For the record, I don’t mind doing your laundry. It’s something to do. Also, I felt like your closet was a pressing need that definitely should be addressed, so I addressed it. I can be ready in ten.”
“What about my dress?” Inez shouted after her. Mallory laughed.
They went to a nearby Mexican restaurant they frequented. Mallory ordered margaritas and filled Inez in on the details of her job. “It’s the executive assistant to the CEO of a production company. But he also happens to be the executive producer and the showrunner for a project that was just greenlit by Netflix. It’s perfect! It is exactly in line with my goals. All my goals.”
“What’s the show?” Inez asked curiously. “Film? Series? Documentary?”
“A series. I checked it out—it’s already gotten a lot of buzz in the trades. It’s a gritty detective drama that explores the dark side of humanity,” Mallory intoned with the dramatic flare of a program announcer. “It’s called Bad Intentions.”
That’s when fortune’s smile dimmed. Inez looked up. Her big brown eyes narrowed into near slits. “Did you just say Bad Intentions?”
“Yep. I said those exact words. Bad Intentions.”
Inez wrinkled her nose and stabbed some lettuce onto her fork. “Is the CEO named Jason by any chance?”
“What? Why?”
Inez looked at her.
“Yes. His name is Jason with Blackthorne Entertainment. How did you know that?”
Inez shook her head and stabbed more lettuce. “You don’t want that job, Mallory.”
Well that wasn’t true—Mallory wanted this job like she wanted to breathe. “Yes, I do.”
“You don’t.”
Mallory put her fork down and sat back, staring at her friend. “I really do want this job. I want it so bad I’m about to pop.”
“Please don’t pop in my dress.”
“What exactly is the problem, Inez? This is what I’ve been looking for. It’s an opportunity to learn about every aspect of making a show. I am so lucky to have stumbled into a job with a company that actually has some irons in the fire. It’s kismet. It’s like I’m in class and going to lab and learning how to do everything. So yeah, if you ask me, this job is pretty perfect.” She picked up her margarita to toast Inez’s margarita, but Inez didn’t budge, so Mallory reached across the table and clinked glasses on her own. “Come on, Nezzy! Be happy for me! I have experience. I have film credits, I have directing credits—”
Inez pointed her fork at Mallory’s nose. “First, don’t call me Nezzy. My brothers used to call me Nezzy when they were terrorizing me. Second, you do not have directing credits. Seriously, Mallory, you can’t claim directing credits from YouTube short films that you posted to an audience of like, what, fifteen views?”
It was more like twenty-five views, but Mallory wasn’t going to argue. It really only came down to a matter of the right marketing. “Never mind that. I am very interested in this job. I’ve been working in this industry for ten years and I’m very good at what I do.”
One of Inez’s dark brows rose up with skepticism.
“Okay, not the acting part,” Mallory amended with a dismissive flick of her wrist, although she still didn’t believe she was that bad. She thought back to some of her more iconic roles—Girl No. 2 on the subway. Bar customer. It was different for Inez. She had sleek black hair and soulful brown eyes and a lot of talent. Whereas one casting director had told Mallory that no one wanted an actress with short blonde hair, and to lose ten. “But I am good behind the scenes,” she insisted. “And I want to direct. I am a good director. I know how to tell a story and all I need is a break. So why shouldn’t I go for it? I did some research on this show. Netflix is putting some money behind it. They started filming the first season last month. See how perfect it is?”
Inez put down her fork. She pushed her plate away, folded her arms in front of her, tossed her dark hair over her shoulder in the same manner that had won her the role as the office receptionist in a major motion picture starring Ryan Reynolds and Rebel Wilson. “I’m going to explain to you why it’s not perfect, and don’t argue. The CEO of Blackt
horne Entertainment is Jason Blackthorne. And he’s notorious.”
Mallory gasped. “He’s a predator?”
“No!” Inez scoffed. “Well, I don’t know, maybe he is. I don’t know about that. I mean he’s notorious for going through assistants like you go through chocolate.”
Mallory was slightly offended, but honestly, she could motor through some chocolate. “That’s just Hollywood. Everyone is hard to work for,” she tried, but Inez was already shaking her head.
“He has a bad rep, okay? He’s one of those workaholics you hear about—all day and all night and expects his assistant to do the same. He drives them into the ground and then, of course, he gets all the credit.”
If that’s all it was, Mallory could handle it. She’d survived two “hippie parents” who were really neither hippies nor parents. “Not scared,” she said pertly. “I can pour myself into a job with the best of them. What else you got?”
“I heard this story of him sending an assistant to Canada to get a certain brand of flannel jackets for a scene. Not just any flannel would do.”
Mallory shrugged. She understood that, actually. When one was creating art, one could not use inferior materials.
“In the middle of winter.”
“So sue him for the inconvenience.”