Wait. “What?” she asked.
“I’m sorry. The magazine said I thought your movie was shit. I don’t. I didn’t.”
“You didn’t hate every bit of it while thinking I’m a—How did they word it?” She ticked her head toward the window and stared him down. “An actress who would best serve the world by selling fancy toasters on television at two a.m.?”
He filled his lungs with air and released it. Shook his head. Scratched at the bridge of his nose with the pad of his index finger. “No. I didn’t say that.”
“Their quote from you was oddly specific.” She stood, pressing the palms of her hands onto the glass-topped conference table.
He kicked off from the door and strutted toward her. His cowboy boots weren’t the polished kind. They were the worn in kind. The real kind. The sexy kind.
Ack.
She didn’t need to be noticing the little things about him. This was a short-term deal they’d struck, there was no reason to care about his boots.
He rubbed at the side of his neck. “They twisted what I said.”
The blood pressure she’d worked so hard to control over the past few days pulsed fast in her veins. “What exactly did you say about toasters? I’d like to know, given that I was included in the mix.”
“Look, kissing movies aren’t exactly my thing.”
“Yeah? You’re more of an exploding things kind of guy?” Sarcasm wasn’t her forte, but she could make it happen on occasion.
He was close enough that she could see his pupils dilate. “I’m more of an I-don’t-like-watching-the-girl-I’ve-got-a-thing-for-kiss-another-dickhead-on-a-magnified-screen kind of guy. That’s why I told them the movie wasn’t something I enjoyed. Where they got the toaster thing, I don’t fucking know. Where do they get half their material?”
She paused. He felt a little of what she felt for him? “You have a thing for me?”
The look he gave her made her squirm.
“Because you like me?” she pushed.
“Mackenzie.”
She wasn’t letting this slide. Somewhere, deep down, she needed to know the way she’d felt wasn’t so one-sided. “You like me?”
“Yeah.”
They stared at each other a solid six seconds. Neither of them moved.
This couldn’t go anywhere. The energy between them was intense, but she couldn’t give him the power to hurt her again. Life was better without the reality of feelings. Keeping things on the surface meant it didn’t matter when people said hurtful things.
“I do, Mackenzie.”
She didn’t break the invisible thread tying them together.
She had two choices in this scenario, and she leaned strongly toward the one in which she didn’t open herself up again to betrayal. This business was all about taking care of number one. That was the game.
“That’s too bad, but I accept your apology.” She stood and sauntered her best saunter toward the freedom of outside-of-this-room, then cast a quick glance over her shoulder. “Oh. Call me Kenzie. It’s more believable that way.”
Always Watch Out for Number One. That was her motto.
That and Never Get Too Close to the Guy Who Has the Power to Break Your Heart.
3
Chapter Three
Seven Days Before Christmas
