Catch a Falling Star (Second Chances Book 3) (20 page)

He didn’t think his heart could either.

It wouldn’t work. He was too tainted by the things he’d done, the things people wanted him to do now. It was textbook cliché to stay away from a woman he loved because he could only hurt her. Jo would probably rail at him for being unoriginal and—

He loved her. His mind backed up through the slush of thoughts that had hit him. Love. Him. Her.

He opened his eyes and sucked in a breath, not realizing that he’d drifted off. Jo lay curled against his side, her breathing regular, but not enough to be asleep.

“I think I should probably find another place to stay,” he muttered.

It was a delayed reaction, but she went stiff. “What?”

She pushed herself up on one arm, staring down at him, brow dropping to a frown.

“I’ve taken advantage of you long enough.”

He winced. He’d meant to say he’d taken advantage of her hospitality too long.

“
What
?” She repeated, sharper.

“With everything falling apart the way it is with me, I think it would be better if we had a little distance between us, you know?”

She gaped at him, then closed her mouth and huffed. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she mumbled, not meant for him. She pushed herself away, then rolled off the bed and stood, stooping to swipe her clothes off the floor. “Men,” she continued to huff.

She gathered her things, then marched for the door, still naked, slamming it behind her.

Ben flopped back against the sheets, which now smelled of musk and heat as well as lavender. He let his arms and legs rest heavily against them in a helpless posture. With a twist of his head, he glanced to the drawer that held the Pollard’s contract. His offer to leave was feeble. It did nothing to negate the existence of that contract or to protect her.

He sighed, rubbing his hands over his face. He couldn’t even manage to break up with Jo for her own protection without it falling apart. God only knew what she thought of him now.

Chapter Sixteen

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Jenny Mercer advised Jo as she stomped through her kitchen the next day. “Yvonne, is this the right way to do this?” She slid her laptop across the table to Yvonne, who was tapping away on her own computer. As Yvonne studied Jenny’s screen, she went on. “You should have seen the way Simon was when we first got together.”

“Oh?” Jo didn’t particularly want to be having this conversation with a woman she’d only known for a couple of weeks, but Jenny was just so damn likable that the whole mess had come out in one pop as soon as her new friend had asked, “What’s bothering you?” five minutes after showing up.

“Well, Simon gave me the best night of my life, got me pregnant in the process, then bailed the next day, so….” Saucy as she was, Jenny gave Jo as sympathetic a look as she was going to get.

Jo slammed the coffee filter into place and turned on the machine.

“You’re heading in the right direction.” Yvonne slid Jenny’s computer back in front of her. “Watch out for the changes Kylie wants to make to the standard language on page three.”

In spite of herself, a tickle of interest peaked in Jo at the brief exchange. Yvonne had taken Jenny on in her talent agency about a year ago, and since Jenny was still learning the intricate business, the writer in Jo wanted to tag along in case there was a story there.

Not that the story she had splattered all over the walls of her own house wasn’t an interesting one. Or the one she should be concentrating on.

“Leaving because he had things he needed to work on is one thing,” Jo sighed, referring to what Jenny had told her about Simon earlier. “Up and telling me he thinks he should live somewhere else while we’re still in bed together?” She lowered her voice to a whisper at the last words. “That’s weak.”

Jenny shook her head. “Classic male fear response.” Her businesslike stare at her computer shifted to a bright grin when she turned to Jo. “Sounds like you’re on the right track with Ben.”

Jo snorted. She regretted how loud of a noise she’d made when one of the assistants poked her head into the room and held a finger to her lips. Sure enough, the action of filming in the living room had softened to a hush, which meant cameras were rolling.

“If I’m on the right track, then why is he acting like I’m yesterday’s news?” Jo asked in a whisper.

“Because he’s falling in love and doesn’t have a clue what to do about it?” Jenny suggested in an equally cautious whisper.

“Oh, he’s scared all right,” Yvonne added, more as if talking to herself than anything else. Her gaze was intent on her computer screen, the glow giving her face a pale hue.

Jo leaned against the kitchen counter, crossed her arms, and chewed one of her nails. She wasn’t sure what to make of the advice of either women. Yes, Ben wasn’t quite right. And in spite of his post-love making declaration the day before, he’d stayed exactly where he was. Nearly literally. She’d stomped into her room, taken a shower, threw on clean clothes, then gone downstairs to see if she could make heads or tails of the pile of work on the coffee table. Ben didn’t so much as thump in his room until the sun came down and she was making crab cakes and roasted vegetables for dinner. Then he’d had the gall to sit there and talk to her as if nothing was wrong. Without ever looking directly at her.

She shook her head and pushed away from the counter. “I can’t think about this right now. I need to get to work figuring out how to break a book down into a play.”

After hours of debate, she’d picked one of her Regency novels—
Captive Sunrise
—to try to mash into the form of a musical. She’d told Ben as much last night, but all the support he had to offer was cautioning her not to rush into anything and to wait until Diane called back. This over something that was his damn idea.

“Don’t do any work for the Pollards without a signed contract that has been thoroughly inspected by a lawyer in your hands in triplicate,” Yvonne said, still not looking up from her computer.

Jo stopped her flight from the room. “Why not?”

“Because those two have games within games, and if you’re not used to dealing with them, they’ll win.”

Something about her words was too close to the hesitance Ben had had last night. Jo sighed and threw out her hands.

“First Diane tells me that the books I’ve been writing aren’t resonating with readers and I should try something else. So what do I get? Writer’s block. Can’t write a word. She tells me I should experiment with something new. So what happens? Ben comes along and suggests I adapt a book into a play. But no, now he’s pulling his support from that, and everyone else is hemming and hawing too. Then Charles tells me that he thinks I should talk to the
Second Chances
writers about scripts and try to get a union card, but when I call them up, what do I get? Join the union, show us an example of your writing, and we’ll consider taking a meeting.”

Yvonne’s eyes snapped up from her computer screen at the mention of
Second Chances
, and she straightened. She didn’t get a chance to say anything.

“Quiet in here.” The same assistant who had shushed them a minute before gave her a nasty look.

“Charles wants you to talk to join the writers’ union?” Yvonne ignored the furious assistant.

“Yes, for all the good it will do.”

“I can take care of that,” Yvonne said.

“Quiet, please,” Ben hollered from the living room. He’d been in a temper since people started arriving early in the morning for filming. It wasn’t an improvement over his sullen silence the night before.

Jo stared at the doorway to the living room. The assistant shrunk as if she’d been scolded. Jo was halfway through rolling her eyes when her phone rang.

“Now what?”

She pulled her phone out of her back pocket. Diane. Hope whipped through her. She tapped to answer the call, marching for the pantry.

“Diane. I’ve been waiting forever for you to call me back.”

Jenny and Yvonne kept an eye on her as she ducked around the corner and into the pantry.

“Oh my gosh, Jo, I’m so excited.” That much was clear from the breathlessness in Diane’s voice.

“Thank God someone is.” Finally, something was going to go in the right direction.

“I just got off the phone with Frost Square.” Jo blinked. It wasn’t the direction she expected the call to go. “Best news ever. They’ve decided to pass on your optioned book after all.”

Jo’s heart skipped a beat. “What?” A wave of dizziness forced her to lean against the shelves.

“It’s perfect. I played hardball with them over the advance, you see. I said ten thousand wasn’t nearly enough. They were willing to go up to a hundred thousand, but I held firm at a million.”

“Wait, what?” A hundred thousand would have been more than enough. It would have been a dream come true. She could have kept writing the books she wanted to write and been able to save the house. “Why didn’t you take it?” The question came out at far too high a volume.

“Why?” Diane was incredulous. “Because the Pollards are offering you twenty percent of the box office for a musical of one of your books. No one, and I mean no one, gets that kind of a percentage.”

“If no one gets that kind of a percentage, then why are they giving it to me?” Maybe Ben was right for her to hold off on this.

“I believe in you, Jo. I know you can do this. I’ve been dying to see exposure like this for our industry. Can you imagine how this will affect the rest of your career? The industry in general? It will be incredible.”

“But you said the deal they’re offering is impossible.”

“We’ll make it possible. You should talk to Jett and Ashton sometime, Jo. They’re amazing. They’re visionaries. They explained that I will get a cut of the money, of course, but you’ll end up with the lion’s share of the credit and the reward.”

“You turned down a reasonable offer from Frost Square for a book I actually want to write over a conversation with the Pollards?”

“They need you to focus all of your time and efforts into this, so they agreed that being tied down to a publishing contract would only hurt you right now. You’re free, free to do whatever you want.”

Jo thought she might be sick. “So you’re telling me I have no contract, no advance, and nothing to go on but promises?”

“Didn’t you get the Pollards’ contract?” At last, Diane sounded uncertain. “Jett made it pretty clear that they gave it to Benjamin Paul when they were up there a few days ago.”

The sick feeling in Jo’s stomach exploded into daggers of fire. “Ben doesn’t have any contract.” But he could. He could have something that he hadn’t shown her, something that he was keeping from her. Why?

“O-oh,” Diane stammered. “They were sure that he gave it to you.”

Jo shook her head. One problem at a time. “You severed my relationship with Frost Square without consulting me first?”

There was a long pause before Diane said, “Yes.”

Jo clenched her jaw. She rubbed her forehead. Her lungs didn’t seem to want to take in air. “I can’t talk to you about this right now. I have other problems to sort.”

She ended the call, and it was all she could do not to smash her phone against the wall.

“Everything okay in there, honey?” Yvonne’s hushed voice floated in from the kitchen.

Jo’s heart pounded. For years, she’d known she wasn’t Diane’s top priority, but she’d never mustered the courage to look for an agent who would better serve her interests. Now she was so close to hyperventilating that it scared her. Her hands shook. She couldn’t bear to stand still, so she marched back into the kitchen.

“The Pollards spoke to my agent,” she said, ignoring how loud her voice was. “On their say so, she severed my relationship with my publisher.”

“Can she do that?” Jenny asked, still quiet.

“You need to fire her ass right now,” Yvonne said, the flash of someone who knew in her eyes.

Jo nodded, but said, “Except this means that now my problem isn’t that I have a pitiful advance for an optioned book, I have no advance because there won’t be an optioned book.”

“If you can’t keep the fucking volume down in the kitchen, then you can all fucking leave,” Ben bellowed from the other room.

In her current state of mind, he might as well have marched into the kitchen, slapped her, and told her that romance novels were cheap escapism not worth the paper they were written on. Jo’s eyes flared wide. She turned on her heel and stormed into the living room, blowing past the harried assistant.

“Honey, don’t,” Yvonne called after her.

Jo ignored her, ignored the scrapes of the kitchen chairs as Yvonne and Jenny jumped up.

“Who the hell do you think you are to go yelling at me in my own home?” she shouted at Ben as she marched into the room, venting every last bit of frustration from him, Diane, her writing, everything.

Spence, Simon, and Theresa were in their places, lights bright, boom mics suspended above them, camera rolling. All three broke character and flinched at her shout.

“Cut,” Ben roared. He spun on his heel to face her. “This is a live set, not your home. You’ll be quiet if I say you’ll be quiet.”

The room sizzled with pent up frustration. At the far side, near the edge of the hall leading back to the library, Moira looked like she was about ready to chew her way out through the walls. Devon sat in a chair to the side, hunched over, shaking his head. As soon as they saw the shot wasn’t going to go on, Spence, Simon, and Theresa gave up and stalked off to their own corners. Jo had never seen a set when everyone was having a terrible day, but she was pretty sure that’s what the scene in front of her was.

So the hell what?

“You want to stand there and talk to me like that?” She stomped around the edge of a wingback chair and marched up to Ben, kicking wires and equipment aside.

“I’m calling security.” Moira stood and started toward the front hall.

“No you’re not,” Ben barked, freezing her in her tracks. A second later, Moira marched on in a temper, but Yvonne scurried out of the kitchen to stop her and have a word. Ben rounded on Jo. “If you interfere with me doing my job, yes, I will talk to you like that.” He met her fury for fury, jaw set, misery radiating from him.

“Oh, me interfere with
your
job?” Her temper just got hotter and hotter. “You’re the one who snookered his way into my life, robbing me of the ability to get a single word written when I need a bestseller to keep this house.”

“So it’s
my
fault that you aren’t writing?” he shouted. “When you have this entire gigantic house to go work in?” He took a step closer to her.

“And who’s the one who came up with the idea of adapting my book to a play? You know, the idea that caused my agent to sever my ties with my publisher?”

He flinched like she’d hit him. “It wasn’t my idea.”

“Like it wasn’t your idea to bring all these people into my house, turning my world upside down?”

He still hadn’t recovered from her last blow, but he mustered enough indignation to snap, “What’s paying your bills right now?”