“No pretending needed this time,” Ryan said, peering into the empty container. “Is that it? Damn! I’m still starving. Don’t you have any real food in this house?”
“No, I was on the I-hate-men diet. Ice cream and wine only.” Jaci tossed her spoon into the container and placed her elbows on her knees. “Who is your investor, Ry? Did you make nice with Banks?”
“Hell no! However, I did meet with him. I felt I owed him that.”
“And?”
“He ripped into me, which I expected. Afterwards he offered me half of the money, told me that he wanted you off the project and that he wanted creative control.”
“And you said no. You’d never give him control.”
Ryan sent another longing look at the empty ice cream container. “That was part of it but not having you as part of the project was the deal breaker. I need real food.”
He was trying to change the subject, Jaci realized. No chance, buddy. “Ok, so who is this new investor that you found so quickly?”
Ryan stretched his legs out and placed them on each side of her hips. He leaned forward and dropped his head to nibble on her exposed collarbone. Jaci frowned, pushed his head away and leaned back so that she could see his face. “Stop trying to distract me, Jackson, and keep talking to me.”
Ryan twisted his lips and tipped his face up so that he was looking at the ceiling. Okay, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that he didn’t want to talk about this, but the sooner he learned that she was the one person he could talk to, the easier the process would get.
“Chad Bradshaw,” he reluctantly admitted.
Jaci gasped. “What? Chad? Your father?”
“You know any other Chad Bradshaw?” Ryan muttered.
Jaci rubbed her forehead with the tips of her fingers. “Wait, hold on a second, let me catch up. Your father, the father you don’t talk to, is financing your movie?”
“Yep.”
Oh, right, so she was going to have to drag this out of him. Well, she would, if she had to. “Ryan, we’re in a relationship, right?”
Ryan smiled and it warmed every strand of DNA in her body. “Damn straight,” he replied.
“Okay, then, well, that means that we get to have spectacular sex—” Jaci glanced at her messy bed and nodded “—check that—and that we talk to each other. So talk. Now.”
“I went to go see him,” Ryan eventually admitted in a low voice. “I needed the money, I knew that he wanted to invest in one of my projects, so I made it happen.”
That didn’t explain a damn thing. “But why? You told me that if Banks bailed, you would mothball Blown Away.”
Ryan squeezed her hips with the insides of his calves. “My and Thom’s careers would withstand the hit, but yours wouldn’t.”
It took a minute for her to make sense of those words, and when she did, she tumbled a little deeper and a little further into love. She hadn’t thought it possible, but this was just another surprise in a night full of them. “But you hate your father.”
“Well, hate is a strong word.” He pulled his long legs up and rested his elbows on his knees. “Look, Jace, the reality is that your career is on a knife’s edge. Your script is stunning but if nobody sees your work, it could be months, years before you get another shot at the big leagues. I don’t want you to have to wait years for another chance, so I made it happen.”
Jaci placed her hands on his strong forearms and rested her forehead on her wrists. “Oh, Ryan, you do love me.”
His fingers tunneled into her hair. “Yep. An amazing amount, actually.”
Jaci’s heart sighed. She lifted her head and pulled back. “Did he make you grovel?”
Ryan shook his head. “He was...pretty damn cool, actually.” Ryan took a deep breath and Jaci listened intently as he explained how Chad had known about Ben’s affair with Kelly and how Chad had clumsily, Jaci thought, tried to protect Ryan. It was so Hollywood, so messed up, but sweet nonetheless.
“Chad tried to explain that they, Ben and Kelly and Chad himself, looked at affairs differently than I did. That to them sex was just sex, an itch to scratch, I think he said. That they didn’t mean to hurt me.”
“It shouldn’t have mattered how they felt about sex. They knew how you felt and they should’ve taken that into account,” Jaci said, her voice hot. She looked at Ryan’s bemused face and reined her temper in. “Sorry, sorry, it just makes me so angry when excuses are made.”