desperately trying to appease Cressy here. ‘I just don’t think I can work with Gale.’
When Bryony held her ground firmly enough, Cressy knew to back off. It was an unspoken agreement. One more moment of silence, and Bryony knew Cressy would retreat, gracefully, like she always did in their stand-offs. Except this time Cressy wasn’t retreating.
‘Okay, I’ll lay it on the line. It’s important or I wouldn’t be pushing you.’ Cressy, not backing down. What the heck? ‘We need Jackson, Bry. He’ll raise the profile, and pump up the ratings. Without him Sporting Chances is going to struggle, so the whole team is counting on you here.’
No pressure there, then?
‘What’s in it for Gale?’
‘Cash, and the exposure will be good for him too. The company will pay for a name like his and I think his manager liked what he saw of the two of you on the rushes.’
‘What? He saw the film of the interview?’ And she’d thought it couldn’t be any worse.
‘One of his conditions – he vets every scrap of film we take. But I guess he saw how great you were together, and realised it wouldn’t harm Jackson’s profile to grab some of that. There was something about the two of you on screen, Bry. Talk about sparks. Believe me, you two sizzled, the public will lap it up. It’s a no-brainer. Gale’s man is astute, and he’s onto it.’
‘Give me a day to think about it?’
As if twenty-four hours would make any difference.
‘Pleeeeeeeease, Bry. Do it for me. It’s my first big programme – I’d hate to lose it. You can’t leave me hanging, say “yes” now.’
Emotional blackmail wasn’t Cressy’s style. Nor was begging. This had to be important.
‘You might like Jackson better when you see more of him…’ Cressy hesitated. No idea how deeply she was putting her foot in things. As she began again her voice deepened with concern. ‘He didn’t push you to do anything you didn’t want to, did he?’
Oh, no. Everything she’d done was with complete, unencumbered abandon, a hundred percent willingly. Her choice all the way. Hey, she might even have been the one doing the asking, and, what’s more, she’d wanted everything he had to give. No doubts there. Shivers zipping up her spine at that thought. Strange that afterwards she hadn’t been able to work out who pushed who, who instigated what. Details lost in the sex-fuelled heat haze, all definitely on the understanding that it was a once-in-a-lifetime blowout. So, right now she had to man up, put it behind her, and stop being such a drama-queen about it. But how the hell could she face the guy again after that?
‘Bry? What happened with Gale that you can’t work with him?’
Cressy’s insistent tone dragged her back to reality. Her London flat, polished and pimped to within an inch of its life. An excess of styled perfection and interest. Vintage pieces, perfectly amassed to look like they had happened by accident, because that’s all she had to do outside of work. Maybe that was why she was making such an issue out of what was technically one night of lust, which was definitely over and done.
‘Bry, I won’t give in ’til you tell me.’ Cressy with her terrier-with-a-bone voice? There was only one sure way to shut Cressy up.
‘Okay. You win. I’ll work with Jackson.’
Knowing, as she said it, she was letting herself in for the nightmare of her life. Just not knowing how to avert it.
Lord knows how she was going to pull this off.
‘So, Jackson…’
Jackson braced himself. Two weeks since he’d seen Bryony. That final image of her, eyes closed, face upturned to the shower jets, rivulets of water flooding down her curves, as he’d pulled out of her to run off to his early meeting, had been burned onto his retinas ever since. And now she was here, in the flesh, those long, delectable thighs he’d dreamed about incessantly pushing taut against the denim of her jeans. Playing havoc with his peripheral vision as she crossed one high-heeled foot across the other in the front seat of his camper van. And given the determined jut of her chin, poised to give him a hard time. Of entirely the wrong sort.
‘Bryony…?’ Catching the five hundred-watt publicity smile she flashed at him, he made sure he returned it twofold. No idea how the hell a guy was expected to drive from London to Brighton next to distraction like that, and cursing Dan a) for having the idea in the first place, and b) for forcing him to go through with it. So well-meaning Dan, with all his good ideas and flair for grabbing opportunities by the balls, had somehow decided that he should come along on this trip rather than heading back to the team, arguing that it would be great to capitalise on any opening in TV. Jackson suspected it was as much about keeping him occupied, whilst his injuries healed further, but Dan wasn’t coming clean on that one. And Dan also knew that as much as Jackson was protesting about having Ms Dominatrix come along for the ride, he wouldn’t have entertained taking anyone else. This was both the up side and the down side of having his best mate working on your management team – Dan knew Jackson almost as well as he knew himself, or sometimes even more scarily, he seemed to know him better than he knew himself. It wasn’t that Jackson minded the idea of being close to Bryony’s scorching body, which, if he was honest, had been playing on his mind a lot the last couple of weeks. Pretty much non-stop since that night of white hot meltdown, in fact. But the down side was, that from what he’d seen in Scarborough, Bryony might be physically and sexually delectable, but she was also hell bent on doing things her way. He’d had enough of doing as he was told, and bending to his dad’s will when he was a kid. He forced himself to work within the team discipline simply because it was a means to an end. But no way was he, as an adult, being ordered around by some jumped up TV woman. Call her strong-willed, call her spoiled, call her driven and talented – however you looked at it, she would be a pain in the arse to spend two weeks working with. Make that two weeks of non-stop contact in a camper van, and he’d be vapourising on all fronts.
‘A few things we need to get straight before we set off.’ Her tone couldn’t have been any more snippy or bossy.
Which underlined his point entirely.
That tone backed up every howling protest he’d made to Dan about this trip, but it was too late now, dammit. Although, given they were already well on their way, this put him at an immediate advantage. Anyone who took the best part of an hour stuck in traffic to get around to making their point was not half as sure of themselves as they were pretending.
‘Namely?’ He smoothed her a compliant smile.
‘You need to know I don’t mix work and pleasure.’
Taking every illicit fantasy he’d had in the last two weeks and stamping on it. Firmly. Trying to ignore that his stomach had hit the road with immediate disappointment. How had he expected anything different?
‘Fine by me.’ He reined in an escaping grin. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to do both at the same time.’
Beyond her fingers rearranging all that shiny hair on top of her head, he caught an OMG eye-roll.
‘The point I’m making is I’m not here to provide sex on tap.’ Her nostrils flared. ‘That’s definitely not what this trip’s about.’
‘Did I say it was?’ No harm in playing innocent here, but he wasn’t going to let on that he was only here because Dan had held a metaphorical gun to his head.
‘So why did you insist on bringing me then? Surely there was someone else? Anyone.’
And Jackson definitely wasn’t about to tell her how annoyed he was that he was having to come at all.
‘Maybe because we share the same taste in cartoons.’