Jason Read online

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” She turned around with a smile of gratitude, but he was standing so close that she almost bumped into him when she did. They were standing so close that he could actually feel the pull between them. It felt strangely magnetic, and it was the same he always felt around her.

  It didn’t help that Mallory’s lips were slightly parted, and her blue eyes were shining through her glasses. Jason was totally there for the sexy vibe, but it felt as if an elephant was trying to squeeze in between them. “Mallory, I feel like I—”

  “Hell-oooh!”

  Mallory jumped back so fast that her centrifugal force nearly knocked Jason off his feet. In the next moment, Pam O’Reilly, the estate’s housekeeper, appeared carrying a dish in a quilted insulation bag. “Oh! I wasn’t sure you were in,” she said. “I have a delivery for you. Lobster risotto!”

  Jason looked at the covered dish. It didn’t look like any delivery service he knew. “Where’d that come from?”

  “From my kitchen,” Pam said proudly. She turned her smile to Mallory.

  “Oh, sorry,” Jason said with a shake of his head. “Pam, this is Mallory Price, my assistant.” To Mallory he said, “Pam O’Reilly. She and her husband Joe are the caretakers here.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Mallory said like a woman who had been sent to finishing school, and then she marched forward to extend her hand like a woman who’d been raised in a sales force.

  Pam smiled with delight. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, too, Mallory.” She put down the dish and shook Mallory’s hand enthusiastically.

  “Thanks for this, Pam,” Jason said. “But you shouldn’t have gone to any trouble. I meant order out.”

  “This is nothing,” she said with a flick of her wrist. “And it’s a lot easier than getting something from a restaurant. They make you wait so long these days. Now, this is warm, but you can heat it up a little if necessary. It should be all right in this insulated cover for a bit. Very nice to meet you, Mallory,” she said again. She turned her attention to Jason. “I’m going to check in on Fiona. Would you like me to come back and clean the kitchen?”

  “God, no,” Jason said quickly. They may have grown up with a host of staff to do whatever the family needed, but as an adult, he didn’t care for it. He was a single man and he didn’t need anyone to clean his kitchen. “You can correct whatever I did wrong tomorrow.” He winked at Pam and said to Mallory, “Pam likes the kitchen to be a certain way.”

  Pam laughed. “That’s not true at all. But there are too many men who come through here and throw things into drawers without even trying to put them back where they should obviously go. Oh, look at the time! I better go. It’s going to storm soon. Have a good evening!” she said cheerfully, and hurried out the way she’d come.

  “She’s an excellent cook,” Jason said.

  “I have no doubt,” Mallory said. “I can smell it from here and I am about to pass out from hunger. Should we make a salad? I’m very good at that sort of thing,” she said, glancing at her watch.

  “I can make a salad.”

  “I can whip one out in no time—”

  “We’re not in a race, Mal,” Jason said. “I can make a salad. Will you relax?”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “You don’t seem like a kitchen guy to me. I figured you’d have people to do that.”

  She didn’t think he was the type to give massages, she didn’t think he could make a salad. What did she think of him, then? “I know my way around the kitchen,” he said, a little defensively. She was right—there always had been “people to do that,” but when his parents had died, and they’d moved in with their cousins, he’d had to learn. There were just so many boys and so many needs. At times, it had felt like he was living in a boarding house—every man for himself. How many times had he come in from baseball practice only to find the meal over and nothing left for him, because no one had noticed him missing? Or had noticed too late. He’d had to learn to fend for himself.

  He didn’t like to think about that time in his life. It brought back painful memories of loss.

  “Well…okay, if you insist. But I’m happy to help,” Mallory said, and glanced at her watch again.

  Mallory liked her schedule. It was usually one of the things Jason appreciated about her most, and God knew he dreaded telling her what he’d done to the production schedule. But tonight she was annoying him with it. He glanced out the windows as he walked around the kitchen bar. The wind had picked up and the sea was beginning to cap. “We have time,” Jason said. “And we’ve got a lot of work to do, too. But right now, I am hungry. Want a drink? If you like whisky, Blackthorne is the best.”

  “No thank you,” Mallory said primly. “I have a rule about working and drinking. The two don’t mix.”

  “Interesting new rule,” he drawled, because they both knew she hadn’t had a problem drinking that night in his office.

  Mallory’s cheeks colored slightly. “I didn’t say I’m very good about following my rules, but, you know, it’s getting late.”

  “Is it?” He picked up the drink he’d poured for himself and sipped.

  Mallory looked at his drink, then at the window. “I think I should find some place soon if it’s really going to storm. I’m just going to have a look if that’s okay.” She leaned over her backpack and pulled out an iPad as Jason started to gather the ingredients for a salad. She slipped onto a seat at the bar and typed something into her iPad. “Here is the King Harbor Arms,” she said.

  “Flop house,” Jason said.

  “Oh.” She leaned a little closer to her device. “A Holiday Inn—”

  “On the highway,” Jason said. “Closed for renovations. They’ll reopen in a couple of weeks.”

  “Huh.” She kept scrolling. “What about the Pirate’s Cove Inn?”

  “Sure, if you don’t mind the smell of fish. It’s next to the pier.” He glanced up and smiled a little lopsidedly. “And that’s where Cass is staying.”

  “Ugh,” Mallory said with a cute wrinkle of her nose. “So does this mean all of the hotels in King Harbor are undesirable?”

  He stuck a head of lettuce under the faucet. “It means the best place for you to stay is right here.”

  “Still not a good idea,” she said, and with her brow furrowed, she turned back to her list.

  “By the way,” Jason said. “I had to rearrange a few things on the production schedule.”

  Mallory’s head came up slowly. “You what?”

  “Don’t freak out.”

  “Don’t freak—what have you done, Jason?” She phrased the question as if she had just discovered him standing over a dead body, holding a gun. “You know how you are with schedules. You don’t know how they work—”

  “I know how schedules work.” He began to tear the lettuce and toss it in a bowl.

  “Not production schedules. Remember when you changed the shooting sequence for episode ten of season one and the gaffer almost quit?”

  “A, that was a misunderstanding, and B, in hindsight, we should have fired him anyway.”

  “Yeah, well, some say misunderstanding, some say—”

  “Okay, all right,” he interjected before she could repeat what half the crew thought of him for that gaffe. “We went over it at the time. No need to repeat all the opinions.” He believed her exact word had been moron.

  “My point is, you shouldn’t be messing with schedules.”

  He looked at her with incredulity and tried not to be distracted by how cute she looked right now. “You do realize that I have single-handedly created a production company, right? Anyway, I am sure you can work with what I’ve done because you are a genius with schedules.”

  She grinned. “I am good,” she agreed. “And perceptive, too. I always know when I am being buttered up like an ear of corn.” She arched a brow at him.

  Jason laughed and began to toss the salad.

  Mallory consulted her watch.

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nbsp; “Will you relax? We’ll be done here in half an hour.” He put the salad aside, took the casserole dish from the insulated bag, and removed the lid. Mallory’s gaze fell to the contents. She looked like she might crawl across the bar for it.

  “Looks good, right?” he asked mildly, and turned to a cabinet for plates.

  “It looks like something I would be perfectly happy to face-plant in,” Mallory said. “Not that I would. But I could.”

  Jason found a serving spoon and dished some of the risotto onto a plate. He added salad, then handed the plate to her. “We could eat on the terrace.”

  “Great idea.” She took the plate and walked outside.

  He joined her a moment later with his plate, a couple of forks and napkins, and his whisky.

  “So tell me about Darien,” she said as they settled in. “What do we need to do?”

  “Eat,” he said firmly, pointing at her plate.

  “It is possible to accomplish two things at once.”

  “It’s also possible to take a break. I’ve been on the phone all day about Darien and even if you won’t take a moment to breathe, I’d like one. Plus, I feel like I haven’t eaten in a month.”

  “Same,” she said, and forked risotto into her mouth. She immediately closed her eyes and moaned. “Oh my God. This is so good. Isn’t this good?” She forked another, healthier bite.

  “Pam makes the best risotto,” Jason agreed.

  “Where does she live?”

  “Here, in a cottage on the property. Next door to Nana, actually.”

  “Why doesn’t your grandmother live in this house?” Mallory asked curiously.

  “I don’t know,” Jason said. “I think she likes having a place to herself. And she doesn’t like stairs. This place has a lot of stairs. In her cottage, she’s closer to Pam and her husband Joe when no one else is around.”

  The sound of thunder in the distance brought their attention to the ocean. The clouds were building over the ocean, but they hadn’t turned menacing yet, which meant the storm was developing behind them. Mallory turned back to her food. “So everyone comes here for the summer?” she asked before another big bite.

  “Yep. Some weeks the house is full. Like last week—my cousin, Devlin, raced in the Southern Maine Sailing Invitational.”

  “How fun! I’ve never been on a sailboat. Did he win?”

  Jason chuckled. Devlin didn’t win the race, but he’d definitely won the girl. “In a manner of speaking. He and my uncle Graham came in second. He’s really good. So fill me in—what’s going on in the office this week?”

  “Oh, the office.” She shook her head. “Ye old Peyton Place as always. So you know Jericho has been—” She was startled by a louder clap of thunder and jerked her gaze to the ocean again. “But the sky is—”

  A gust of wind hit them so hard that a cloth napkin and little pot of marigolds went flying off the table. On the backside of the house, it was often hard to tell anything was happening with the weather until it was right on top of you.

  “Oh no!” Mallory cried. “I have to get to town, Jason!”

  As if on cue, the skies opened and the rain began to pour down from what seemed like giant buckets. Jason grabbed their plates. Mallory was right behind him with his drink and the silver.

  Another, bone-rattling clap of thunder made her shriek. She put the things she had on the kitchen table, then hurried to her backpack.

  “What are you doing?” Jason asked, confused.

  “I have some weather apps!”

  “Apps? As in plural?” A streak of lightning flashed in through the windows. A heartbeat later it was followed by another clap of thunder that rattled the windowpanes. Rain began to fall sideways, lashing at the house.

  Mallory looked wide-eyed at Jason. She turned the screen of her phone to him and showed him what he assumed was a weather app. The entire screen was red.

  “That settles it,” he said. “You’re staying here tonight.” He picked up a bottle of whisky from the kitchen counter with a glossy black label and gold lettering that read Blackthorne Reserve. “Now will you have that drink?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  SHE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN he’d get his way, even if he had to usher in a storm to do it. Mallory stared at the bottle of whisky he was holding. And at her half-eaten meal, which he’d set down beside a laptop and a mess of papers and ledgers and printed pages from digital storyboards on the kitchen table. Outside, the day had gone almost black, it was raining so hard.

  Yep, it definitely looked like she was stuck here for the night. Which, all things considered, was a fabulous place to be stuck. Just not if you had a crush on the only man in the house. She sighed. “I told you I needed to get a room sooner rather than later. Now look what’s happened.”

  “It’s not that bad,” he said, clearly offended.

  “No! Your house is beautiful. It’s just…I don’t want to impose.”

  “Jesus, Mallory, you’re not imposing. How can you be imposing on an empty house?”

  He had a point. How did she explain she couldn’t stay here because she was ridiculously attracted to him and all she could think about were his abs right now?

  Jason lowered the bottle. He braced both hands against the kitchen bar and pinned her with a look. “Listen, Mallory, I think we need to address the elephant here.”

  “What? No, Jason. Don’t address any elephants! All the elephants are perfectly happy roaming around and do not need to be addressed.”

  He arched a brow. “Clearly they do.”

  Mallory groaned.

  “This…elephant anxiety you’re having has to do with that night in the office, doesn’t it?”

  She said nothing.

  “Because if that’s what is bothering you, I swear to God, I will be a perfect gentleman. I cannot apologize enough for having…for having made you uncomfortable.” Wait. That sounded like he thought she was worried about him being a gentleman. She was worried about her being a gentleman. What was she going to say? She should come clean. Except that was a horrible idea. Talk about elephants—that would invite an entire heard into the room.

  Her inability to speak seemed only to agitate Jason more. “I’ll put you in a room with your own bath. You can lock the door. Pull a dresser in front of it if that makes you feel better.”

  Wow. She didn’t know he felt that way, and by “that way,” she meant guilty. What did he have to be guilty about? She was the one who’d climbed on his lap.

  “I could ask Nana to come up and—”

  “No!” This was escalating quickly. “I would never ask you to fetch your grandmother in this storm,” she said, biding for time so she could think. “And besides, you have it all wrong, Jason. I’m not afraid of you. That’s, like, the exact opposite of what I am.”

  His brow furrowed, as if he didn’t know what she meant.

  Okay, there was clearly no way to get out of this, exactly. So she would have to be very vague. “Think about it. I climbed on your lap, remember?”

  Jason’s gaze flicked over her body. He swallowed. “Actually, I remember very clearly,” he said in a low voice.

  A strange little sizzle shot through her. She remembered, too. “We both had too much to drink, and while you were a full participant, it was me. All me.”

  “I don’t think—”

  Mallory threw up a hand. “Can we just let it drop? I feel bad enough about it, obviously, and I’ve tried to be very respectful since.”

  “No, we can’t let it drop. Because I need to know if you really thought it was all you, why are you so reluctant to stay here tonight? I thought it was because you didn’t trust me.”

  She didn’t want to confess that it was herself she didn’t trust. She didn’t want to come off as a sex-crazed lunatic. She was not a lunatic.

  “And if you don’t trust me, then this arrangement is not going to work. We’ve danced around it long enough, Mallory. You’ve been different with me since that night. You act like it never happene
d but we both know it did.”

  “Okay,” she said, holding up a hand. “Okay, that is true. I know I did that, and I…I wish I could explain it, but it’s hard to explain.”

  He waited for her to say more, but she couldn’t think of what to say. “Try,” he insisted. “Because all this time, I’ve believed you were too afraid to confront me and tell me I acted inappropriately, because maybe you thought that I would somehow threaten your job if you did—”

  “I never thought that!”

  “It’s the only explanation that has made any sense.” He was talking more to himself than her. “I mean, unless you had a real thing for me.” He chuckled as if that was a ridiculous assumption. “You joked about having a crush on me, but that was the wine talking.”

  Mallory stood frozen with alarm.

  Jason’s grin began to fade. He studied her a moment. “Jesus. Mallory?” He shifted toward her, his hazel-eyed gaze locked firmly on hers. She could feel it surging through her. “Mallory,” he said in a whisper. “Are you…Do you have a real thing for me?”

  “No.” She laughed. Jason didn’t laugh. He kept looking right through her. And she could feel the heat rising in her like a hot summer day. She laughed again, but too hard, and there was no mistaking that laugh. That was a-guilty-as-charged laugh.

  Jason’s expression changed, morphing from realization, to curiosity, and then to confusion. “But—”

  “Yeah, okay,” she said, waving her hand at him. “Don’t get it twisted. I don’t have a thing for you, Jason,” she lied. “But I’m a healthy woman, and you’re a very good-looking man, and I didn’t expect you to look like that when you opened the door. That’s all.”

  “Like what?”

  She jumped at another loud clap of thunder. “Shirtless. And…” She gave him a bit of a shrug. “Half-naked.” The heat was in her neck and her face now.

  A grin slowly began to curve his lips.

  “You think I’m good-looking?” he asked, terribly pleased with himself.

  “I swear to God, Jason, if you make a big deal out of this, I’m going to go all Game of Thrones on you and stick my fingers in your eyes.”