Ryan, knowing what was coming, swore.
“Yep. There were about sixteen unread emails from a woman and every one had at least four photos attached.” Jaci closed her eyes as the images danced across her brain. “They were explicit. She was known as the Mistress of Pain.”
He winced.
Jaci stared across the river to the lights of Staten Island. When she spoke again, her words were rushed, as if she just wanted to tell her story and get it done. “I knew that this could blow up in our faces so I confronted Clive. We agreed that we would quietly, with as little fuss as possible, call it quits. Before we could, the story broke that he was seeing a dominatrix and the bomb blew up in our faces.” Ryan lifted his eyebrows as Jaci flicked her fingers open, mimicking the action of a bomb detonating.
“Ouch.”
“Luckily, a month later a crazy producer made me an offer to work in New York as a scriptwriter and I jumped at the chance to get the hell out of, well, hell.”
“And you didn’t tell your family that you had a job?”
“It’s not like they would’ve heard me, and if they did, they wouldn’t have taken it seriously. They’d think my writing is something I play at while I’m looking to find what I’m really going to do with the rest of my life.”
Ryan heard the strains of a ballad coming from the band on the front deck and stood up. Pulling Jaci to her feet, he placed his hand on her hip and gripped her other hand and started to sway. She was in his arms, thank God. He rubbed his chin through her hair and bent his head so that his mouth was just above her ear. He thought about telling her how sorry he was that she’d been hurt, that she deserved none of it, how much he wanted to kiss her...everywhere. Instead, he gathered her closer by placing both his hands on her back and pulled her into him.
“For a bunch of highly intellectual people, your family is as dumb as a bag of ostrich feathers when it comes to you.”
Jaci tipped her head and he saw appreciation shining in those deep, hypnotic eyes. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
He was definitely going to have to try harder, Ryan thought as he held her close and slowly danced her across the deck.
* * *
Leroy didn’t bother to engage with them, Jaci thought, when they were back in the taxi and making their way from the luxury marina in Jersey City back to Manhattan. She wasn’t sure whether that was a good or a bad thing.
She sighed, frustrated. “God, the business side of moviemaking gives me a headache.”
“It gives me a freakin’ migraine,” Ryan muttered. “I’ve got about a two-week window and then I need to decide whether to pull the plug on the project or not.”
Two weeks? That was all? Jaci, hearing the stress in Ryan’s voice, twisted her ring around her finger. Who could magic that much money out of thin air in less than two weeks? This was all her fault; if she hadn’t kissed him in that lobby, if she hadn’t gone to that stupid party, if she hadn’t moved to New York... It was one thing messing up her own life, but she’d caused so much trouble for Ryan, this hard-eyed and hard-bodied man who didn’t deserve any of this.
“I’m so, so sorry.” Jaci rested her head on the window and watched the buildings fly past. “This is all my fault.”
Ryan didn’t respond and Jaci felt the knife of guilt dig a little deeper, twist a little more. She thought about apologizing again and realized that repeating the sentiment didn’t change the facts. She couldn’t rewrite the past. All she could do was try to manage the present. But there was little—actually nothing—that she could do to unravel this convoluted mess, and she knew that Ryan would tie her to a bedpost if he thought that there was a minuscule chance of her complicating the situation any further.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw him dig his slim cell phone out of the inner pocket of his gray jacket. He squinted at the display. His long fingers flew across the keypad and she saw the corners of his mouth twitch, the hint of a smile passing across his face.
Ryan lifted his eyes to look at her. “Your brother just reamed me a new one for sleeping with you.”
Jaci ignored the swoop of her stomach, pushed away the memory of the way Ryan’s arms bulged as he held himself above her, the warmth of his eyes as he slid on home. “He thinks that we’re sleeping together?”
“Yep,” Ryan responded. “And if you check your cell, you’ll probably find a couple messages from the rest of your family.” Ryan placed a hand on her thigh, and her breath hitched as his fingers drew patterns on her bare skin. “Priscilla has a very big mouth.”