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“Definitely oversharing,” Erin said in a prim and proper way. He found himself grinning down at Archer’s kid sister. In truth, he’d always thought of her as someone a bit younger to tease. Although now, looking at her standing in the middle of his empty bedroom with a slight blush on her cheeks, he felt a flicker of something else, something he’d denied to himself over the years, shutting down the thought as soon as it appeared.
But with her petite frame silhouetted against the window, he realized Erin Davenport was beautiful. Really beautiful. How had he not seen this so clearly before? He frowned at himself. Surely he was not attracted to Archer’s kid sister. He liked Erin, he respected her intelligence and the way she saw things that other people didn’t notice, but no way could he ever have feelings for the sister of one of his top clients. Archer would actually kill him and bury his body in the Big Sur wilderness, and he wouldn’t blame his client and friend. They’d been through a lot together. Archer probably knew more about his personal life than he was comfortable with. Jay knew that his string of women was longer than most, and even though he always tried to keep things casual, to be absolutely clear that he was married to hiswork and his clients would always come first, he’d left the odd broken heart in his wake.
He stood by the window for a moment, still a little stunned that this was really going to be his view every day, then turned to Erin and suggested they continue the tour. He walked out of the bedroom and she followed more slowly. He couldn’t stop himself from asking if Mila had told her there were six bedrooms. Erin nodded.
He knew he sounded as though he were bragging, but every time he was reminded of the house’s size, he flashed back to his childhood home—a roach-infested apartment with no dad around and a drug-addicted mother who was barely hanging on. They had mostly lived on the meals he’d learned to cook when he was about seven. Probably about the time he learned to hustle. He could usually get an extra-large portion of the school lunch by making nice to the lunch ladies. He soon learned which grocery stores threw out produce that was going bad or packaged goods that were stale. And, while he wasn’t proud that he’d had to steal money from his mom when she was passed out, he’d managed to keep them both alive.
Until he couldn’t.
He pushed the unhappy memories away, wondering why his mind would even go there when his life now was everything that frightened and unhappy boy had dreamed of. For a fleeting second, he wished his mom were still alive. He had so much money now he could have put her in rehab, got her the help she needed. Though, deep down, he knew it wouldn’t have succeeded.
He walked Erin down the hall and pointed out the bedrooms and the bathrooms, each of which had been painted in a different color. He was hoping she might share her ideas about the place. Erin had great taste. In fact, she was one of the classiest women he knew.
Instead, she just nodded again, then glanced at her watch. “I should really get going. I have an editorial meeting.”
His spirits drooped a little. “Come on, theSea Shellcan do without you for ten more minutes.” He didn’t know why, but he didn’t want to be alone in this big, echoing house that had no furniture in it yet. He liked having Erin here; the Davenports were as close to family as he’d ever had. It made him happy that the first two people who’d seen it with him were the two Davenport sisters.
When they got to the fifth ensuite bedroom she asked, “What do you want all these bedrooms for?”
He gave a stock answer. “Friends and family. Really special clients.” He didn’t share that secretly, he dreamed of filling these bedrooms with children. He didn’t know where or when he was going to find the kind of woman he actually wanted to settle down with, but he had this feeling that it was the next step for him. Jay had always liked to have the next step planned out.
She gazed around. “It’s architecturally brilliant, but strangely, at the same time it feels more like a family home.”
Jay smiled a small smile. Once again, Erin had seen through him. He shrugged. “Maybe. But the minute Mila showed me this house I knew it was The One.”
She looked slightly puzzled. “Really? I wouldn’t have chosen this house for you.”
He felt a little taken aback, almost offended. “Why not?”
She seemed to choose her words carefully. “It’s not flashy enough.”
His eyebrows shot up. “I’m not always flashy. That’s so not fair.”
Humor lit up her hazel eyes, which were fringed with thick, fluttery lashes. “Yes, you are.” She began to tap the fingers of her left hand with the index finger of her right. “You drive the most expensive car I’ve ever seen—all your clothes are custom made—you never buy a T-shirt off the rack—you fly to Milan once a year for suits and shoes.”
He laughed. “Come on, short stuff. You know that’s just for my image. As I told Arch when he first asked me to be his agent—when I had zero experience and he didn’t have much more as an actor—in Hollywood, and frankly in life, image is everything.”
They walked down the stairs and Jay lingered by the library archway. “Apart from the master bedroom, this is my favorite room in the whole place.”
Erin’s face said it all.
“What? You think I don’t read?” Again, Jay found himself offended just by her expression.
Erin looked a little flushed. “Come on, you’re a movie guy.”
She wasn’t to know, but Erin had hit a real sore spot. Jay was self-educated, and in fact had taught himself to read using cereal boxes and his mom’s gossip magazines.
“Do you know how many scripts I read in a week?” Jay shot back. Then he softened. It wasn’t the first time someone had believed him to be all talk and a fat wallet. “But that’s not all. I have enough books to fill this room twice over. In fact, I’ll have to have more bookshelves built in the living room.”
Erin still looked a little incredulous, so he explained how he’d started reading scripts at an early age, then progressed to devouring every screenwriting book before discovering the literary greats of the twentieth century. “It wasn’t long before I was going even further back and enjoying Plato and Socrates. Now I read a lot of modern philosophers.”
He could see Erin absorbing this information and he stiffened, waiting for another jibe. Instead, she said, “I can’t wait to see your library. I guess some of the philosophers were also great negotiators, and so are you.”
He stared at her for a moment, searching her expression for a sign that she was teasing him. But her eyes were wide andearnest. It was the nicest thing she’d ever said to him, aligning his work and his outlook with those of the great philosophers. Heck, it was probably the nicest thinganyonehad ever said to him.
He smiled at her and tried to push down that flash of attraction that was growing now. He studied Erin again, the strawberry blonde hair tied up in a messy ponytail, no makeup, casual clothes. She was nothing like the models he was used to dating, who shapeshifted according to the latest fashion, surprising him by turning up to dinner with a blunt bob and bleached eyebrows or transforming from a curly redhead to a siren with straight jet-black hair. For the longest time, he’d found it seductive to be kept on his toes this way, but looking now at Erin—the familiarity of her, how comfortable she was in her own skin—he realized it was sexy as hell. He had always respected her smarts and the way she could read people. It had made him extra careful about keeping up his tough front when she was around. He didn’t want her sussing out his more than humble beginnings.
He took a deep breath and told himself to snap out of it. This was Arch’s little sister. About as close to a NOGOarea as it got. Besides, if Erin was starting to see that he was more than her big brother’s Hollywood agent, he didn’t want to say anything clumsy that might change her mind. The way she was looking at him now felt too good to jeopardize.