Catch a Falling Star (Second Chances Book 3) (15 page)

“Is that how you intend to solve your own problems? By giving up what you know works and chasing after something new?”

Jo tensed. Was that a cheap shot, or did he actually want to know?

And if he really did want to know, how could she do anything but help him and reassure him and hold on without ever letting go?

“Hey, if I can do it, you can do it,” she answered after too long a silence. The truth was, she didn’t want him to be some jerk who lashed out at people when he felt insecure. She wanted him to be good at heart, to be open to new ideas, open to her.

She was a blind fool running headlong off a steep cliff.

“Sorry,” he muttered at last, letting out a breath and dropping his arms so he could rub his face. “I shouldn’t let everything get to me so much. You’re right.” He glanced across the kitchen to Yvonne, who was watching the two of them with narrowed eyes. “You’re right. I should focus on what I have right now, not on what I may or may not have just lost.”

He glanced to Jo once more, a soft smile forming on his lips that took her breath away.

The pause that filled the kitchen went beyond the silence of no one talking.

“I suppose I should figure out how to get into town so you can head up to bed.” Yvonne broke the silence.

Jo’s throat went dry. She turned to Ben, brow lifted. His expression was more wistful than seductive, though.

“Stop fishing, Yvonne.” Ben’s mask of dry humor was back. He pushed away from the table and from Jo. His face was tinted pink.

“What?” Yvonne shrugged. “I wasn’t fishing. I was asking a simple question.”

“I’ve trespassed on Jo’s hospitality long enough,” Ben said. “It’s about time I stop bothering her and find somewhere else to stay.”

Cold panic shot through Jo’s gut so fast that she had to grip the table to steady herself. “You don’t have to leave and find someplace tonight.” She prayed that she sounded casual. “It’s too late for that, and you don’t have a car.”

Ben’s mouth twitched up at the corners, but whether it was a smile or a wince was hard to tell. At least his eyes held warmth. He shifted his weight, as though he might come back to the table to sweep her into a kiss…or might dash for the kitchen door to flee into the woods. Talk about mixed signals. Did he want her or not?

“In fact, why don’t you stay tonight too, Yvonne,” she rushed on before the undercurrents of the situation could float any closer to the surface. “Heaven knows we have enough rooms in the house.”

“I noticed.” Yvonne leaned back and rested her hands against the counter behind her. “In fact, the house is something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Really?”

Even Ben seemed surprised by the comment.

“All through dinner, ideas kept popping through my head,” Yvonne began, a mischievous grin spreading across her face. “This house is perfect. It’s got character, scope. A lot of the furnishings are original, or at least antique, right?”

“Yvonne,” Ben cautioned. He crossed his arms, the powerful director back in place. “Don’t overstep your bounds.”

“I’m not overstepping anything.” Yvonne crossed to Jo’s side. “This house would make a perfect location shoot for
Second Chances
.”

“Don’t disrupt Jo’s life any more than you already have,” Ben scolded. “She needs to be able to work. She’s a talented writer who needs to get books written.”

“Sweetheart, why don’t you let Jo speak for herself?”

Ben’s glance flickered away, and his jaw tightened.

“It’s all right,” Jo reassured him. “What do you mean a location shoot?” she asked Yvonne.

“Have you watched the show?”

“Yeah, a few times.”

“Then you know that each episode contains a flashback to sometime in the early or mid-twentieth century.”

“Yeah.” Jo drew out the word.

Yvonne held her hands up. “Exactly like this place. It’s big enough to get all of the equipment and crew in here too.”

“Yvonne.”

Yvonne held up her hand to silence Ben. “I’ve got enough pull with the producers to get them to come out and take a look at this place,” she went on. “Hell, Charles was telling me earlier that he thinks the place is outstanding. I can name half a dozen episodes that could start filming here as early as next week.”

“
Second Chances
. Filming here?” Jo had never imagined anything like it.

“Sure.” Yvonne shrugged. “It would be convenient for us, and profitable for you.”

Ben frowned, but Jo said, “Profitable?”

“Of course.” Yvonne smiled. “We have a sizable budget, now what we’re one of the top-rated shows on television. I’m sure we can come up with a figure that would be agreeable to compensate for your time and accommodation.”

Tax forms swam in front of Jo’s eyes. And the bill for the tree company. Not to mention the improvements that needed to be made to the roof and the stonework on the north face. She glanced up at Ben. Uncertainty hung on his shoulders like an overlarge sweater. If
Second Chances
filmed at her house, he would be around. A lot. Which meant she could get to know him much, much better.

Which meant he could become an even bigger distraction than he already was. Would she be able to get any writing done at all?

But Ben would be there. They’d have time together to figure out whatever
this
was. And if stuff with Broadway got worse, she could be there to support him.

“I’ll have to talk to Nick about it,” she said at last, letting out a heavy breath. “It’s his house as much as it is mine.”

“After the way I saw your brother talking to Adelaide Townsend earlier, I’m pretty sure he’d be open to the idea.” Yvonne winked.

Jo let out a breath, halfway between a laugh and a sigh. “He probably would. I still need to talk to him, though.” And she would need to have a long, long talk with herself while she was at it. A talk about taking risks versus being a hormonally-charged idiot. A talk about meeting deadlines and breaking through writer’s block versus taking the easy way out.

Still, if Ben was close for the next few weeks—months?—then maybe she could get to know the real him. Maybe she could get him out of her system.

“Okay, I’ll definitely think about it,” she said, releasing the tension from her shoulders. She caught Ben trying to hide a smile. “But you have to promise me that you’ll stay here, at least for tonight. It’s too late for you to figure out how to do anything else right now.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Yvonne gave Jo’s shoulder a pat and stood.

Jo had the feeling she wasn’t talking about sleeping arrangements for the night.

Chapter Twelve

It took exactly three days for Jo to find out how fast things moved in the world of television. Nick grumbled over the idea of filming in their family home, especially when
Second Chances’
showrunner, Moira, informed them that standard industry practice was for owners to be exiled from their own house during filming. That tiny little detail sent Jo into a tizzy too, especially since it dashed every plan she had to spend more time with Ben.

“Don’t worry about it,” Yvonne reassured her and Nick both as they sat in the dining room going over the contract. “I’ll pull a few strings.”

The next day, Yvonne returned to the house with Moira and Charles and a new contract which allowed Jo and Nick to stay in the house. Moira was irritated by the outrageous concession. Charles was suspicious. Yvonne looked like the cat that ate the canary. Negotiations continued, and Nick asked Moira and Charles a hundred questions that Jo never would have thought of about legalities, payments, and liability, but in the end they agreed to allow one episode to be shot in their living room, library, and one of the upstairs bedrooms…without them being kicked out.

Three days later, Ben was helping Jo move her desk, computer, and anything invented after 1952 out of the library and across the hall to an empty sitting room.

“Where do you want these speakers?” Ben asked, holding up the items in question as he strode into the room.

She would never get tired of watching him walk. Legs weren’t something she usually noticed on a man, but Ben’s were somewhere between “cover model” and “Olympic swimmer.” Or maybe it was just the butt they were attached to and the way his hips moved like they knew what they were doing.

“Attention, Josephine Burkhart. Where would you like the speakers?”

She snapped to focus at his teasing comment, but the knowing grin that reached his eyes was as likely to distract her again as not. “On the desk for now. I’ll figure out where to put them later.”

“Works for me.”

She watched him walk across to the desk. Was Yvonne right about him using that walk and the promise that came with it to make the wrong sorts of friends? Jo didn’t want it to be true, but it gelled far too well with the rumors that were circulating about him now. And if he had, in fact, slept his way to his award, where did that leave her?

Still horny, unfortunately. And still out of her league and fresh out of ideas.

“Stop worrying.” Ben strode over to her, rested his hands on her shoulders. “I promise you that we won’t disturb you—at this read-through or with filming. You’ll have plenty of time and space to work until your fingers bleed.” He kissed her forehead.

She wished he’d kiss her lips.

Which brought with it a level of discomfort that she wasn’t ready to cope with. Not with everything else going on.

“It’s not the time and the space that bother me,” she sighed. “It’s the plot.”

“Or the lack thereof?” he suggested.

“You got it.”

“It will come.” He squeezed her shoulders.

She sent him a doubtful glance. She’d barely written a hundred words in the last three days, and half of those had been deleted. The pressure was mounting. Ben’s smile was warm and comforting, everything that he was supposed to not be. Everything that she wanted him to be. Was she fooling herself by letting him stick around?

He swayed as if he would move away to continue setting up her new workspace, but stopped. One blink, and the understanding in his eyes changed. His hands slipped further up her shoulders, danced across her neck, and caressed the sides of her face. She was absolutely certain he was going to kiss her then, the way he had on the beach.

He slid closer, his gaze dropping to her lips.

He stopped when there was less than a foot between them. Tension rippled from him.

“You will come up with an incredible idea for an army of novels if I have to act out every part in each one myself,” he pledged.

Her eyes nearly rolled back in her head, the promise was so perfect and so tempting. Never had she skated so close to wanting to write erotica before. With Ben acting it all out? Hell. Yes.

An instant later, when she tried to press into him to claim the kiss that naturally went with that promise, he stepped back. “All we need now is to bring in that beat up old rolling chair of yours, and you’ll have a veritable writer’s paradise.” He took a huge step back and fled for the hall.

Jo rocked back to her feet from having lifted to her toes. She balled her hands into fists at her sides, practically panting with frustration. Rumor had it that he slept with everyone on Broadway, but now he wouldn’t even kiss her?

A tiny, far too reasonable voice at the back of her head whispered that that was probably a good thing.

She waved it away as if it were a gnat and marched across to her new computer set-up. Seconds later, Ben wheeled her chair across the hall.

“
Voila
. One desk chair. Now you can settle yourself in and create magic.” His smile was tighter than it should be, and he kept the chair firmly between them.

Jo wondered how he would react if she pushed the chair aside and launched herself at him, pushing him up against the wall and peeling off those tight jeans of his like a banana.

“Easier said than done,” she answered both him and herself. She made a mental note to use the pushing up against a wall and peeling like a banana bits in a book at some point.

“Don’t let the pressure get to you,” he advised, crossing to lift a handful of books out of the box they’d been stored in for the short journey across the hall. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been working under a deadline, sets not finished, lighting barely hung, sound as disorganized as it could possibly get, with investors breathing down my neck. The last thing you want to do in situations like that is let it get under your skin.”

Jo laughed. “Any other man I know would have used a football metaphor. Fourth down with ten yards to go, or something like that.”

He straightened, setting the pile of books on her desk. “Fortunately for you, I’m not your ordinary man.” He punctuated his statement with a grin designed to make panties drop for miles around.

She laughed as Spencer Ellis called, “Ben? Are you back there?”

“I guess Nick let him in.” Jo continued laughing, turning her attention back to her desk. “You’d better go see what he wants.”

“Are you sure you don’t need help? I’ll stay here until this is finished if you want.”

Her heart squeezed at the thought. Just what every woman wanted—a man who would stay with her until everything was finished. Or forever. That would work too.

“There you are.” Spence appeared in the doorway. Jo greeted him with a smile, noticing that Ben was staring at her with particular intensity. It vanished as soon as Spence arrived. “Moira changed her mind about the read-through. She wants us to set up in the living room instead of the dining room. The director of photography for the episode is coming, and she wants him to get a feel for the space as we read.”

“Are you okay with that?” Ben asked her.

“What, reading the script in the living room?” She shrugged. “Yeah.”

“You can come watch, if you’d like,” Spence offered.

Ben broke into a sudden grin. “We’d love to have you, but if you have to work…”

Jo bit her lip and sent her computer a wistful look. “Well, it’s not like I’m going to get any writing done with a script read-through happening in the next room.” She sounded far more casual than she felt about it. The giant, internal clock that ticked away the words she wasn’t writing started moving faster.

“Perfect,” Ben said. “I’ll see if Moira is okay with letting you sit in.”

“Why wouldn’t she be?”

“Because she’s the showrunner, and we’re already way, way outside of how filming is usually run for this episode.”

“What’s a showrunner?” Jo asked, following Ben out to the hall.

“A showrunner is god for a television production. Moira has the last word on everything from front office to props and make-up,” Ben answered. “She controls the universe.”

Jo laughed. “I thought Yvonne controlled the universe.”

Ben’s answering laugh was downright ominous. “Don’t let Moira hear you say that.”

Half an hour later, Jo sat with her legs tucked under her on the long sofa facing the windows, next to Ben, a fire crackling merrily in the fireplace, half a dozen big name celebrities, several guest stars, and crew members stretched out in other furniture and the floor, while they read through a yet-to-be-filmed episode of a top-rated television show. Jim, the director of photography, stared up at the ceiling beams with an eye as sharp as a real estate agent. It wasn’t writing a novel, but it was certainly unreal.

“You can’t walk away like this,” the guest star—a middle-aged woman named Theresa who Jo vaguely recognized from other tv shows—read the scripted line. “Not after everything we’ve been through together.”

Jo jiggled her pen in her fingers, staring at the script. She couldn’t resist crossing out the line and rewriting, “
Don’t leave me, Derek. Don’t be so cruel. Not after what we shared
,” then returned to jiggling her pen.

“I can’t stay, not like this,” the actor playing Derek—a young actor named Devon, who Jo didn’t recognize at all—read. “You wouldn’t want me to.”

“But I love you. I need you.” Theresa put feeling into the line, even though it wasn’t a performance.

Jo crossed through the line and wrote, “
What if I said I love you? What if I said I can’t live without you?
”

“Love isn’t enough, Bobbie. If it was, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place,” Derek read.

Jo jiggled her pen, hesitated, jiggled some more, then crossed out the second half of the line, leaving just the statement. She returned to her pen-jiggling, accidentally tapping the edge of her script.

Ben reached out and closed his large hand over Jo’s fidgeting one as Theresa read, “I’ll get rid of the baby. I’ll find a doctor and get rid of it. Would you stay then?”

Jo peeked up at Ben. He was doing his best to swallow a playful grin. His hand stayed locked around hers, and his eyes sparkled with mischief. It was all Jo could do not to laugh. She relaxed her hand to let him know she would behave. Ben’s grin widened, and he let go.

His eyes drifted over to her script as everyone turned the page. The lines she’d crossed out weren’t the only ones she’d rewritten. Ben’s expression shifted as he inched to the side and read her improvements. As the cast read on, he nodded, tilting his head to her page.

“Keep going,” he murmured.

“What?” Devon asked. He looked as though Ben had bitten his head off.

Ben raised a hand. “Not you. It’s all right.” He gestured for them to read on.

Devon cleared his throat, face flushing beet red, and continued. “It’s not the money, it’s my parents.” Jo had the impression this was his first important acting job, and he didn’t want to screw it up. Heck, she’d felt that way the first few times she’d pitched books to agents.

“Keep making changes,” Ben whispered in her ear. Every nerve down her neck and several that appeared to be wired directly to her core tingled at the warmth of his breath, the deep bass of his hushed tone, no matter how mundane the words were. “I’m going to send your script to the script supervisor when we’re done.”

“The who?” Jo whispered in return.

“The guy who keeps track of changes in lines, positions, props, things like that.”

“Oh.”

He straightened, his attention instantly shifting back to the read-through. Jo’s attention had a harder time bouncing back from the intimacy of something as silly as a whisper. She flipped the pen in her hand, then traced it along the page to figure out where they were. It took her far less time to determine that than it would to figure out where she was with Ben.

Ben hadn’t been sure inviting Jo to the read-through was a good idea. He felt bad enough about the trouble she was having finding the time and inspiration she needed to write. But her instincts had been spot-on with the script.

“Take a look at this,” he handed her copy of the script over to Charles once the read-through was done.

A few people had left, but the rest had stayed. Jo and Nick were treating them all to snacks in the dining room now. Charles had stayed in the living room, discussing logistics with Moira. He frowned as Ben handed him the script, a few pages folded over to the point where Jo had started making her changed.

Charles read, then his brow flew up. “Jo made these?”

Ben nodded. “She is a writer, after all.”

“And you’re showing me this because you want her to write?” Skepticism hardened Charles’s already stoic features.

“I’m showing you this because Jo can write, she made this script better, and—”

And what? She needed the money that a little script doctoring could give her? He thought she should try writing some scripts? And why on earth would he think that? Jo had her world. She was successful in it. Just because it wasn’t his world didn’t mean it wasn’t the world she wanted to be in.