Calling All the Shots Read Free Page B

have something with her. Then she’d
walk away.
    “Come on, how many people do you meet in this business from
Frisco, Texas?” he said with that half smile of his that reminded her a little
too much of the boy who’d first stolen her heart.
    She put down her fork and took a sip of her wine. Revenge, she
thought. She had to stay focused on what she really wanted or she was going to
lose her way.
    He reached over and touched her hand. A little zing shot up her
arm. His touch unnerved her as much now as it had when he’d hugged her earlier.
He ran his finger over her knuckles and then turned her hand over in his and
traced the lines on her palm.
    “I’m only asking for a chance here,” he said.
    A chance. To do what? He’d said he wanted a regular
relationship but had never had a chance to have that because of his
celebrity.
    And she wanted what Nichole had suggested. A chance to find
some happiness for herself down the line. So she had to do something with Jack.
Had to find a way to make peace with her past so she could trust again. And she
knew now that unless he was hiding cloven hooves and the devil’s tail she wasn’t
going to be able to be as coldly calculating as she’d thought she could be.
She’d thought that focusing on getting back at him would be enough to protect
her but maybe it wasn’t.
    “A chance, eh? Just dating?” she asked. She didn’t want to
admit it—even to herself—but the thought of walking away from him was beginning
to fade.
    “Yes, dating. It’s not going to be easy since I have to fly
back and forth between the coasts all the time but I do want a chance to get to
know you better. A chance to prove that there is more to me than Prince
Charming.”
    “I’ve never called you Prince Charming,” she said.
    “Everyone knows I am,” he said with that stupid arrogant grin
of his. “Let’s face it, you even said I was charming.”
    Suddenly she thought it might not be too hard to hurt him if he
was going to act like this. Was this the real Jack Crown? She had no idea, and
she never would unless she took a chance on him.
    “Fine, we can date,” she said. But as she looked into those
very blue eyes of his, she couldn’t help a niggling sensation that this was a
bad idea. She was susceptible to Jack. She always had been. And she knew how
easy it was to fall for him.
    Wanting revenge was one thing, but messing up her life at
work—the one place where she was truly at home and happy—didn’t seem smart. If
she was going to fool around with Jack and walk away, she had to be careful how
she timed it and that she never let it interfere with work.
    “Golly gee, Willow, don’t sound so excited about it,” he
said.
    She nodded over at him. “I’m sorry. I’d be happy to go on dates
with you when the time allows.”
    “That’s all I ask,” he said, tracing a random pattern on her
palm before closing his fingers over it.
    She knew he wanted something more from her and only if she kept
her wits about her would she be able to protect herself from being hurt once
again by Jack Crown.
    * * *
    Jack felt like he was playing a part for Willow. If he
had a hope in hell of making this real, he had to stop. The problem was he no
longer knew who he was. It had been his problem for a while now and while it was
easy to admit to himself that he was coasting through life, it was hard to
figure out how to change.
    Willow was the key, he thought. Watching her on the set of Sexy & Single had been the catalyst. He did
want something more from her. He wanted to feel like he was alive again. He was
tired from working all the time and taking silly risks on Extreme Careers to make himself remember he was alive.
    They had finished dinner and he’d cleared the table with
Willow’s help. He liked having her in the kitchen because it strongly reminded
him of happy days from his youth. Not one of the women he’d dated in the past
year had come into his kitchen when he’d had them over for