Causing a Commotion (8 page)

Colin stood up, his chair precariously rocking back and forth. Anger emanated off his tense frame. “We are not promoting pornography on the Colin Crandall Show.”

Jessie dramatically rolled her eyes. “There is no Colin Crandall Show, and it’s erotic poetry and very romantic, you lug-head.”

“Romantic my ass.” Colin’s fist clenched and he paced across the room, probably weighing his options if he walked out on his Wolf contract. Colin had no options. Everyone in the room knew it. If he had a single one, he’d have walked on the day J.P. approved Jessie’s Sex Tip of the Day segment. And again when her Juicy Hollywood Gossip Tidbit got approval.

Jessie’s brow arched in defiance and her hands settled on her hips while she waited on Colin’s response.

“Fine.” He looked resigned and shook his head. “We might as well toss in a bit of porn with all the other garbage we’re going to cover. We could probably get some 1-900 number sponsors for that episode.”

“Oh, good idea,” Jessie feigned praise.

Colin didn’t look at her, didn’t acknowledge that she spoke.

J.P. pulled a cigar from his shirt pocket and poked it in his mouth. Think Bruce and Cybil. Otherwise, these two would drive him crazy with their bickering.

Colin sat back in his seat. Without any more ado or outburst no matter how extreme Jessie’s suggestion, they finished up the points that needed to be covered prior to taping the rest of tomorrow’s kick-off show. Most of the show’s segments and interviews had already been done earlier in the week. As had most of the next few weeks segments.

The moment the meeting adjourned Colin stormed out of the room without saying a word to anyone.

Jessie took her dear sweet time, chatting with most everyone who remained before heading to the dressing room slash office Maxwell had given her.

Moment’s later, only Beverly remained. “What were you thinking when you decided to put those two together?”

J.P. shrugged. “They make a great team.”

“Are you insane?” she sounded incredulous. “They want to kill each other. I swear, as much as I like Jessie, she purposely tries to annoy Colin. It’s as if she wants to see how far she can push before he’ll snap.”

He didn’t have to explain himself to this woman. “Love, hate, it’s all the same.”

“Now I know you’re insane. Or perhaps you’ve just never been in love,” she said, placing the last of her notes into a worn brown satchel she always carried. Beverly also always wore a fanny pack at her waist and could be counted on in a pinch to have any given needed item. Quite useful despite her dour features.

J.P. shrugged. He’d been called much worse than insane. She was right about his having never been in love. Lust, yes. Love? Hell, he’d had six wives, you’d think he’d have loved, but none of his divorces devastated him. Not like they should have. Love. Like Rob loved Jill. Until watching them, he’d never realized what his marriages lacked. That’s why none lasted. Why it had been so easy to move on to the next woman who turned his head.

Sad that in his sixty-plus years he’d never found what Rob and Jill had. Thank God the boy wasn’t going to grow old alone and miserable. Not that J.P. would ever admit to being either. Not out loud.

Stiff from having sat too long, he eased from the chair.

“I have Ibuprofen if you need it.”

J.P. glared and made a great show of moving effortlessly. He’d express his pain later, when Beverly didn’t eagle-eye him and dig in her fanny pack for painkillers.

“I don’t need no damn pill. For nothing.” He shot her a suggestive look and was pleased that pink flooded her cheeks. “All my body parts work just fine. Better than fine.”

She snorted, gathered her things, and eyed him with those too serious brown eyes of hers. “After six wives less than half your age, I’d guess all your body parts are worn out and beyond anything a pill could correct, but whatever.”

Openmouthed, J.P. watched her petite, pear-shaped frame shuffle soundlessly out of the room. He really didn’t think he liked dour-faced Beverly Gilley, but the woman had a streak of spunk. And nice round hips and buttocks that screamed to be cupped in a man’s palms.

Besides his first two wives had not been less than half his age. The last four, sure, but not the first two. Hell, he’d only been in his thirties back in those randy buck days.

No, he didn’t like Beverly and her smart-assed comment about him being worn out. Why, if she was the kind of woman who attracted him, he’d be tempted to prove exactly how un-worn out he was.

Without one of her fanny-pack produced medicine packets.

Chapter Five

Actually, Colin didn’t say much of anything to her or about her. Not unless she provoked it out of him. Otherwise he seemed intent upon ignoring her completely.

Which she couldn’t stand.

Quite simply, Colin drove her mad. Drove her to want to taunt him and tease him. After all, how could he have looked at her with such heat while they danced, held her so snug against his hard frame, and then just freeze her out completely because she was his co-host?

Why? Because the jerk had faked being nice to her.

Oh, she knew Colin wanted her physically. He hadn’t faked that. The heat burned in the way he watched her when he thought she wasn’t looking, the way he avoided touching her at all costs, the way he bristled at her slightest suggestion for the show. He wanted her, but hated himself for it and was determined to give her the popsicle treatment.

Which was probably just as well.

After Jill’s wedding this weekend, she’d be living alone for the first time and the thought loomed over her like an ax waiting to chop off her head.

Yet, she refused to get involved with a man just to keep from having to deal with her inner phobias. She’d done that too often in the past. Found a man to deal with whatever problem she currently faced. Times changed and Jessie changed. She didn’t need a man to deal with her issues.

Instead, she’d slyly suggested having a hypnotist come on the show and address people’s fears. She was going to volunteer in hopes he could rid the clawing panic being alone threw her into. Unfortunately, that show was a couple of weeks away.

She smiled at the security guard she’d met on her first visit, the day Colin commented on her boobs and butt and Maxwell gave her a tour of Wolf. She headed toward the elevator bank and hoped she wouldn’t have to travel up alone.

Everyone at Wolf seemed to genuinely like her. Everyone except Colin. The one person she would work the closest with. Made perfect sense since she never traveled the easy road.

“You look pleased with yourself.” Colin stepped out of no where to enter the elevator with her.

Although seeing Colin always lifted her spirits and eased her current panic monsters of being alone in the elevator, she shot him a purposely fake smile. He created other, more threatening monsters to claw at her psyche.

“Why did you want to be alone with me?” she asked. After all, he’d gone to great pains to avoid her as much as possible for the past month. He looked so exasperated she couldn’t help but tease him. Teasing Colin, watching him get hot beneath the collar, gave her great pleasure. Since she couldn’t act on making him hot elsewhere, beneath the collar was all she had.

Colin tugged on his collar.

She bit back a smile and added words she knew would throw him. “Because we are not going down in an elevator despite my predilection for Steven Tyler and Aerosmith.”

He took a step back. “What?”

Gothcha.

“Aerosmith. The greatest band ever.” Jessie didn’t bother covering her amusement. She liked throwing this man off guard. He needed a little shaking up. A whole lot of shaking up.

Never had she wanted to shake up a man’s world more than Colin’s.

J.P. and Maxwell wanted her to shake him up. They’d given her carte blanche to do so. Actually encouraged her to push Colin’s buttons. Like she needed encouragement.

“Aerosmith?”

“You heard me.”

“I did not follow you into the elevator to go down on you.” He sounded huffy about it. Too huffy. As if he considered the idea horrific, but not necessarily a foreign concept.

“No?” She raked her gaze over his immaculate clothes. Dark dress slacks and jacket, a cream colored shirt, and a blue tie matching his eyes that was clipped to his shirt by a plain gold tie tack. Did a wrinkle ever dare to muss his clothes? What would he do if she reached out and tousled his always perfect hair?
Some day
.

“You expect me to go down on you?” She shook her head in mock pity. “I’m sorry, but paying my cab fare and your pathetic attempts to go to third base at Wolf’s anniversary party have not rated you the star treatment.”

“The star treatment?”

“My going down on you.”

“I’ll pass.” But the working of his throat while he swallowed gave away that her words had his mind racing ahead, envisioning exactly what she suggested. Red blotches crept up his neck. Oh yeah, beneath Colin’s collar burned.

“I don’t like second-hand goods that are as apt to be pretending to have a good time as not.”

Ouch
. She scowled. “How dare you?”

She lifted her hand to slap him, but he caught her wrist with ease.

“Don’t hit me,” he warned.

She didn’t back down, actually took a step forward, closing the distance between them and locking her gaze with his. Mere inches separated their faces.

“Don’t you insult me or call me second-hand goods.” She struggled to free her hand, rared back to slap him with her left when she couldn’t pull free. She didn’t hit him, didn’t do anything but still her wiggling body. Which left her pressed enticingly against Colin’s hard chest, his hard
everything
.

Her eyes widened. He’d insulted her again. The jerk. Sexy jerk, but jerk all the same. “You wouldn’t know the truth if it slapped you upside your thick skull.”

“You know nothing about me so you shouldn’t make rash judgments.” Lame answer, but she couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but replay the vibration in his chest when he’d laughed, feel the strength in his body, the heat in his eyes.

“You’re denying that you have a thick skull?” He mocked, daring her to tell him all her secrets with his expression.

“I’m denying that you know anything about me.” Her words left her feeling like a petulant child. But that had to be better than saying she’d changed her mind and would like to go down on him in the elevator. Or vice versa.

“I was an investigative reporter for ten years. You think I know nothing about you?”

The elevator dinged announcing they’d arrived at the eleventh floor. Their floor.
So much for going down
.

He put his finger over the button to hold the door closed. To keep them locked in their private alcove.

Her lids lowered. “Tell me.”

“I know everything about you. The fact that you have sealed juvenile records, the fact you were arrested for mooning a police officer on your eighteenth birthday, the fact that a few months ago you were engaged to multi-millionaire
Larry Pritchard and dumped him, breaking his heart in the process.”

Jessie bowed back in an instinctively protective move, but her gaze remained locked with Colin’s. “Larry got engaged again last month. I didn’t. Who broke whose heart?” she challenged.

He stared funnily at her, as if her comment surprised him, but he continued with his tirade.

“I know you crashed the set of
Jane Millionaire
and spent the weeks following romancing one of your sister’s bachelors.”

“Not my sister’s,” she denied. “Mine. Steve never wanted Jill. Not really and definitely not after he met me.”

“Didn’t he?” Colin’s tone ridiculed, got under her skin and provoked as she enjoyed doing to him. Having him reciprocate was no fun. “Looked that way to me from the footage I watched. I think he wanted her bad. Maybe he just used you to stay close to her?”