no musical gigs whatsoever.
Not that she’d spent hours searching for him on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and every other platform known to man. No, sir. Not Kendall Quinn. She might be a hot mess who got fired because she was dumb enough to sleep with her boss, but she wasn’t pathetic.
Not much, anyway.
Kendall cleared her throat. “Well, it won’t be easy. Every composer in the world is going to want that gig. God help you if the Star Wars guy wants the job. He can write his own ticket. And the studio will most likely want to go with whoever is hottest at the moment. No offense, but you haven’t been the hottest in a long time.”
She reconsidered her statement almost immediately, because the slow grin he shot her was the hottest thing she’d ever seen in her life.
“I’m aware,” he said easily, not a trace of offense in his tone. “I’m willing to put in the work to find an agent, and if I need a PR manager to do that, so be it. I can take orders. If you take me on, I’ll be the best you’ve ever had.”
A bolt of heat shot right up Kendall’s thighs at his words. She had no idea if he’d meant that statement to sound so dirty, but it totally did. He probably meant he’d be the best client she’d ever had, but, yeah, the double entendre was out there and there was no reeling her mind in out of the gutter now.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m not sleeping with you. Not ever.”
He blinked at her. “I don’t recall extending an invite.”
Admitting that she’d been telling herself she couldn’t sleep with a client and had accidentally addressed those thoughts to him out loud (again) perhaps didn’t paint her in the best light. So she opted for, “I just like to get that out in the open with all my male clients early on, just in case they get the wrong idea.”
“Why would they get the wrong idea?”
“Because in order for this to work, I’m going to have to get very close to you. I’m going to have to really get to know you—everything from what you like to eat for breakfast in the morning, to what you like to binge-watch on Netflix before bed. In fact, I’d like to stay here for the month, if at all possible. We’re about to become super close, Jackson Hale. Are you OK with that?”
He met her gaze steadily and she thought she caught a trace of something there for an instant. Something that made her stomach tighten in response. Something like…heat, maybe? Desire?
But then he licked his lips—which was totally distracting and made her eyes follow the motion like a hungry wolf tracking a baby bunny through the woods—and nodded once before saying, “I’m OK with that.”
Great, Kendall thought uneasily. Now, am I OK with that?
Chapter 6
Jackson wasn’t OK. Not by a long shot.
He wanted to score this film more than he’d wanted anything in a long, long time. But…
Kendall Quinn.
Jackson hadn’t had sex in, well, he really couldn’t even remember how long. Six years, maybe? The fact that he couldn’t even remember who he’d last had sex with was pretty pathetic.
Had it been that waitress up in Butte? The bendy one with the pierced tongue who he was pretty sure stole forty bucks from his wallet before she snuck out of his hotel room in the dead of night? Probably, and that had only been a blow job because she’d passed out mid-blow. What a fiasco.
He’d kind of gotten used to celibacy, if he was being honest. After the first year, he became numb to it. Started to forget how good it felt to have a soft, warm, sweet-smelling woman pressed into the mattress beneath him. Or against the wall, or bent over a table, or riding him like a mechanical bull, or…
Jackson cleared his throat and gave his head a hard shake. The point was that he hadn’t even realized how long it had been since he’d last had sex or how much he missed it until he met Kendall.
The real problem was that she was just so damned pretty. All that blonde hair, those big green eyes behind her black-framed glasses, her petite, lithe body, the way she smelled like Ivory soap and sunshine…it was all too much for his out-of-practice libido to handle.
And even if he could ignore how pretty she was—which apparently, he couldn’t, judging by his current semi—there