“I told you to dye your hair,” her stepdad said.
He’d been right about that. Apparently, blondes made better victims than feds, according to the completely dickish casting director who’d offered to let her play a dead body. Naked, of course.
“Excellent. That is exactly what I’m going to do.” Taggart pushed back and stood, straightening up that big muscular body of his. “I’ll leave you and West alone to work out your schedule. As for the investigation, I’ll be the lead on that.”
“I appreciate you taking care of this personally, Mr. Taggart.” Her stepdad stood.
“Jared is a friend of the family,” the big boss replied, shaking his hand. “Why don’t we go to my office and settle up the accounts? You’re not staying in town, right?”
“No. I have to get back to LA. I start my own shoot in a couple of days,” her stepdad said as they started out of the conference room.
The last man standing was the one she was almost certain was West’s brother. Or cousin. Or stunt double. “Can you handle this on your own or should I stay to referee?”
West gave him a steady smile that held only the slightest hint of dismay. “We’ll be fine.”
She was glad one of them was optimistic.
* * * *
She was pretty much every bit as bad as he’d imagined. Ally Pearson was bratty and privileged and didn’t care one bit about anyone but herself. He wasn’t buying the whole “she’s a sensitive soul and needs nature time.” Parents could have rose-colored glasses on when it came to their kids. She was snobby and generally everything he tried to stay away from.
But damn she was pretty. He’d seen pictures of her with all different colors of hair. She seemed to change the color as often as the wind blew, but the warm brown she had now seemed to suit her spectacularly. It caressed her shoulders in waves that framed her face. She’d walked in wearing sunglasses that probably cost more than he made in a week and deceptively plain jeans and a T-shirt. On most other women they would be everyday, ordinary clothes, but somehow her graceful curves transformed them into something deeply sexy. When she’d taken off the sunglasses, he'd been struck by how pretty her eyes were. They almost matched her hair color.
Pretty much everything physical about the woman called to him, but then it was probably that way with every man she met.
The good news was he wasn’t led around by his dick. He’d grown past his “girl pretty, follow her” phase of life. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to find a woman to spend time with. It was just that he was of an age where he wanted to spend long periods of times with a woman. Like the rest of his life. He wasn’t about to dick around with some Hollywood hot chick who couldn’t be bothered to remember how many stalkers she had.
“So was that like your brother or something?” Her eyes were on the door Wade had walked through.
He was going to stop that in its tracks. “Yes, he’s my brother, and he’s also married. Happily married with a kid.”
Her eyes went wide. “Why would… Oh, if I asked about him I must be interested in him sexually. We’re going to go right there, are we? No fucking around.”
He wasn’t going to go into her reputation as a maneater. All it had taken was a quick Internet search to figure out she’d been linked to most of the men in young Hollywood at one point or another. And a couple of her married directors. Well, those had been rumors, but most rumors had a hint of truth. “Just putting the truth out there. Wade is my brother, and he’s married to Ian’s admin.”
“He’s Genny’s husband?” Her nose wrinkled. “He doesn’t have an ex-military look. If I had to guess, I would say he grew up on a ranch. He has small town turned big city vibes. And I would bet they were high school sweethearts but something went wrong and they didn’t reconnect until they were older. I got that because when she references her son, she refers to her husband as Wade, but when she talks about her daughter, he’s Dad.”
That was a fairly dead-on representation of Wade and Genny’s love relationship.
She flushed a little, giving her cheeks a pretty pink color. “Sorry. I’m nosy, but it’s because I study people. Especially the interesting ones. This office is filled with them. When I meet someone interesting, I try to figure them out. It’s kind of my job.”
“I thought your job was letting cameras follow you around while you shop.” At least that was what he’d gotten from the research he’d done.
He watched as any relaxation in her body fled, and she shifted into a brittle stance. “You’ve made it plain how you feel about me. Now could you please go over the schedule? Or do you think that will be too much for my womanly brain?”
That wasn’t fair. “I did not say that.”
“No?” She looked at him, her head cocked slightly in a challenging way. “Okay, so you’re not a misogynist. It’s just me you hate.”
She would try to make this dramatic. He needed to remember that she was the client. Or rather her stepdad was. No matter how distasteful he found her, he had to be professional, and up until now he hadn’t been. “I’m sorry I gave you that impression.”
“Because you would rather keep that impression to yourself?”
“I would rather we have a professional relationship.”
“Well, Mr. Rycroft, I’m not the one insulting the other part of this professional relationship, so if that’s what you want, you’ll have to find a way to make it work. Why don’t you give me the schedule and then I think you’ll find we don’t have to talk. I like my bodyguards like I like my men. Pretty and silent.”
Oh, she wanted to play that way? West started to open his mouth and stopped. Hadn’t he started this nasty little bit of conversation? She’d asked about his brother, and he’d gone to the worst possible place. If he wanted a respectful relationship with her, he should probably try to start over. He’d promised his brother there wouldn’t be trouble, and here he was causing it ten minutes into getting into a room with her. “I’m sorry I wasn’t respectful, ma’am.”
She snorted. “Ma’am? I’m younger than you, and I don’t give a shit about respectful. Respect is something you earn, and you don’t know me. What you weren’t was kind, and that does mean something to me. However, I’m not going to be picky about it. It’s either you or some asshole who thinks he can hit on me and have a story to tell his friends. At least you’re the kind of guy who obviously keeps his hands perfectly to himself around whores.”
He didn’t like the flush of shame that went through him. He hadn’t been nice, but he certainly hadn’t called her names. “And I didn’t say that either.”
“No?” She stood up, settling her designer bag over her shoulder. “You assumed because I asked about your brother that I wanted to hit on him. You want to know something sad? The only guy here I thought was my type was you. And then you fixed the problem by opening your mouth. So we’re all good. Anything else we need to discuss? Otherwise I need to go find my stepdad.”
He should have known this was going to happen. The minute she figured out he wasn’t going to fall all over her, he became useless. He should have played this another way. “So you can get him to fire me?”