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“Hello,” Jack’s deep voice said in her ear, making her belly clench and her nipples stand to attention.

Attraction. Definitely animal attraction.

“I don’t love you,” she told him by way of hello.

“Good to know,” he drawled.

“I don’t appreciate you interfering in my life either.”

“I think you actually have to have a life for me to interfere.”

“That’s exactly the kind of thing that makes me not love you,” she told him. “You have no idea who I am.”

“You know you sound crazier than usual, right?”

He had a point. She hung up.

Davina stared at her reflection in the dark glass of the window. There was a mad glint in her eye that just wasn’t attractive.

She looked at the phone. What was she doing? She dropped it onto the table beside the list and stomped out of the room. She’d had enough of this day. She was going to bed. She scowled all the way up the stairs.

JACK HUNG UP WITH A stupid grin on his face. Davy, Davy, crazy lady. She didn’t love him. She called to tell him she didn’t love him.

Which meant – she did love him and she couldn’t handle it.

Jack grinned wider. Her huff with him was obviously over. Now she’d moved on to something else. What, he wasn’t sure, but at least she was talking to him again. Talking and freaking out. He started to laugh. Davina Davenport loved him. And she was seriously cheesed off about it. He wiped a tear from his eye, he was laughing so hard.

It was only when he calmed down that he realised something else. The fact she loved him didn’t freak him out. In fact, it made him feel kind of proud. She might not like her new-found feelings, but he definitely did. And wasn’t that a revelation?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

1 DAY TO MAKE A MOVIE...

DAVINA HAD SPENT A restless night, tossing and turning. She regretted deeply that she’d called Jack. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Every time she got around that man her IQ dropped to nearer her shoe size. After falling into a light sleep in the early morning, Davina woke around ten with a headache and a serious case of bed head. When she looked at the clock and realised that she didn’t have to go to work, the temptation to crawl back under the duvet and block out the world was strong. Instead she threw back the covers. It was a new day. She needed to move on. Somehow. And the best way to do that was to don her full war paint.

An hour later she’d poured herself into a knee length, purple, figure-hugging dress. She added hot pink heels, two layers of false eyelashes and enough hair spray to make an Essex girl proud. She emptied her wallet onto the table in search of the one credit card that wasn’t maxed to the limit and called a cab. While she waited, she squelched the urge to call her dad and confess every screw-up she’d made in the past month. She’d deal with reality later. Right now, she had to shop. She grabbed her bag and waited by the door. Her poor pink baby sat bashed beside her, a timely reminder of how much she did NOT love Jack Miller. And the sooner she got him out of her head, the easier it would be to plan. Marianne had been right about one thing – she needed to get on with her life. She needed a new dream to pursue.

When the cab drove up she tottered down the stairs and told him to take her to the centre of Brighton. On the way out of her driveway, they passed a car driving in. It looked vaguely familiar. Davina shrugged it off. Whoever it was would have to come back another time. Her focus was on shopping.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” the dealer asked again.

“It’s a bit late now,” Jack pointed out. “Seeing I paid for the rush paint job.”

They both stared at the luminous purple Mini with silver flowers curling across the sides.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the guy said. “And I’ve been selling cars for thirty years. You had a perfectly good SUV. A proper man’s car. And you want this?” He shrugged. “Well, this is Brighton,” he said philosophically.

“It’s not for me,” Jack told him. “It’s for...” He wasn’t sure what to call Davy. “...a woman,” he said at last.

The guy didn’t look convinced. Jack snatched the keys to the tiny purple car, shook his head and climbed behind the wheel. If this didn’t make Davina forgive him, he didn’t know what would. In the meantime, he had to drive all the way out of town with people pointing at him. Surely that was punishment enough for his crimes?

Half an hour later, and with a nervous stomach that he couldn’t explain, Jack knocked at Davina’s kitchen door. A sweat broke out on his brow. Get a grip, he told himself. He’d busted drug houses without feeling this level of anxiety. He heard footsteps. The door opened. He smiled.

Derek Gibbs smiled back.

Panic seized Jack. Where the hell was Davina and why was this clown answering her door? In the fraction of a second it took before he opened his mouth to talk, Derek leaned towards him.

“You’ll do,” he said as his arm shot out towards Jack.