His office was a mess. His desk, as well as the walls, were scattered with papers, which had scribbled drawings on them, his own personal storyboard. I was certain that in his head, it all made sense, but to the layman, it looked like the lair of a crazy serial killer.
“Dammit,” he said. “Where are they?” He walked over to clear away some papers from the chair to give me a seat.
“Maybe buried underneath all of this?” I gestured at the pile on the floor. “Should you have your assistant pick up?”
“Ally!” he yelled.
The girl came running. “I’m here. I thought that since this place is such a mess, you’d want to go into the round-table room?”
“Good idea,” Ben agreed. “And can you please pick this up.” He pointed at the desk and the floor.
“Pick it up?” She gave him a narrowed stare. “But you said not to pick it up before you went to see Mr. Storm. That it would destroy what you had organized in your mind.” The girl looked beyond frustrated, and I used my acting skills to hide my smile.
Ben sighed. “That was then, and this is now. I’m ready. All of it is right up here.” He tapped his head, and then after pegging her with a hard look, he turned and walked out, leading the way as I kept up.
The round-table room was clean and neat. It had been used to go over the script the day before, but the expert Ben had hired was nowhere to be found. I took a chair and eased back, giving my arms a stretch. I just had to meet this woman and ask her what to expect. Going deep into the Amazon had me second-guessing my life decisions.
I sat there and began tapping my fingers on the tabletop. “I hope she doesn’t take all day. Could you get one of your girls to find her?”
“Dammit, yes.” He wasn’t frustrated with me, but the situation. Ben shouted toward the door. “Ally!”
The plain Jane assistant came to the door with a garbage bag in one hand and a wad of papers from his office clenched in the other. “Yes, sir?”
“Will you find our expert please? We don’t have all day.” He shooed her away, and I felt bad for her. I’d had to pay my dues, but working as Ben’s assistant? Well, that sounded like hell.
The girl slapped on a smile that looked so forced, I wondered if her face was going to crack. “Yes, sir.” She disappeared just as quickly as she had appeared, leaving us to ourselves.
“I’m sorry for this,” Ben said. “I guess I should get another assistant. I hired Ally as a favor to my sister. The kid grew up on a farm. Poor thing, she wanted to come here and hoped to make it big.”
“Didn’t we all?” Ally wasn’t the only one to do such a thing. We all had dreams, and if I knocked the young assistant’s, then I’d have to knock my own.
My brain wandered back to my Wisconsin home, and then suddenly, a little piece of my past walked through the door.
For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating. That was some coffee, I thought. But then, I realized the woman standing before me, the one who was just as beautiful as the last time I’d seen her, was real.
“Kate?” She couldn’t be real. She had grown up and filled out. Her natural beauty outshined any I’d known since. Her body was incredible, lean and strong, yet still curvy in the right places. And those intelligent green eyes of hers were no longer hidden behind glasses. Instead, they stared at me, wide with surprise.
The only thing that hadn’t changed was her hair. She had it pulled back in her signature ponytail that suited her lavender cardigan and plum-colored pencil skirt.
I caught a glimpse of her legs and felt my body respond.
Not one Hollywood sweetheart had ever compared. And not one of them had broken my heart as badly as Kate had either. I nearly lost my breath when she smiled and said my name.
“Hello Jake.”
Chapter Two
Kate
One minute, I was lost on the backlot of a Hollywood movie studio, and the next, I was standing in front of Jake with my mouth gaping like a fish out of water.
I had prepared myself to meet a lot of interesting characters on this latest journey, but I had not intended for the boy who’d left me behind nearly ten years ago to be one of them.
And there he was, sitting across the room from me, looking just as surprised to see me. His blonde hair was pushed back from his face, perfectly in place instead of the boyish mess I’d been used to seeing on him. His smile was so white, it seemed to glow. Even the little chip in his front tooth was gone. He was Jake but polished, but that wasn’t what took my breath away.