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Jackson leaned back in his chair and grinned at the boy. “I think it’s almost a requirement. Right, Nic?”
“Absolutely,” she said solemnly. “In fact, we’re a little short on canines around here these days.”
Something he should have asked before he’d started this—why did being around her screw up his logic so badly?—hit him. “So are you saying it would be all right, having a dog around? No ‘No Pets’ policy on the rental agreement?”
“Well, since the rental agreement was you and Dad shaking hands, I’d say he’s the one to ask. But I know what the answer will be.”
Jeremy let out a whoop of excitement and turned his attention to gobbling down the last few bites of his dessert and gulping down his milk.
“Homework?” Jackson asked when he was done.
“Yeah. Going now,” Jeremy said without protest, and headed up the ladder to the loft.
Nic watched him go, then turned back. She caught Jackson watching her, but she only smiled, to his relief.
“Mom says he’s doing great,” she said.
“He said she’s different from any other teacher he’s had. In his whole three years of going to school, anyway. He said she makes it interesting.”
“It’s easier when it’s a really smart kid.”
She took another sip of coffee, not complaining that it was plain, ordinary. He tried to think of a woman he’d dealt with back in L.A. who wouldn’t wrinkle her nose at plain, black coffee. Even Leah had preferred at least a fancy sort of creamer in hers. The silence between them began to seem awkward, and he searched for something, anything, to say. Started to speak, but lost the thought when she smiled at him over the rim of the coffee mug.
So here he was, the big star—or at least former big star, he’d blown that to smithereens now—in his new home, with a beautiful woman, a woman who fascinated him, and he couldn’tthink of a single thing to say. Or do. Except, looking at her mouth as she smiled, wondering what it would be like to kiss her.
He thought he managed to conceal the jolt of heat that went through him at just the thought. Quashing the urge wasn’t quite as easy. In the end, only one thing enabled him to do it—the realization that as easily as he could hear Jeremy up in the loft from here, Jeremy could hear down.
And he grimaced inwardly at the idea that the only thing keeping his suddenly reawakened libido in check was his seven-year-old son.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ididn’t triggerthat, did I?
Nic stared down into the remaining dark, strong coffee in her mug, but all she saw was a replay in her head of that moment when something bright and hot had flashed across Jackson Thorpe’s face.
True, it was gone a moment later, but she was certain she’d seen it. Certain because it matched her own unexpected gut reaction to that moment when she’d realized he was watching her. Watching her with a kind of longing, almost hunger, in those famous, striking dark-blue eyes.
So, what, as soon as she admitted he wasn’t what she’d thought he was, she threw open the gates? Given some sign, some unconscious signal that she would now welcome what she would have recoiled at before?
The realization that she wouldn’t recoil at it now made her set down her coffee mug before the ripples in the dark liquid made it obvious how unsettled she was.
Scrambling for something, anything, to distract her suddenly rowdy mind, she said rather abruptly, “Mom said you’ve never played a bad guy.”
“No. Confused, conflicted, could go bad if pushed, yes. But an actual bad guy, no.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I’d like to say I don’t have it in me, but I think everybody has the potential. That’s just not the portrayal I want to be linked to. Not the emotions I want to channel.”
She tilted her head slightly, studying him. “Is that what it is to you? You channel emotions through the parts you play?”
“Sounds all touchy-feely, I know, but sort of, yeah. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I tell myself there are people out there feeling the same way this guy, this character does, and if I do it right, they’ll know they’re not alone.”
Nic stared at him now. She had never thought of it that way, but it made sense that seeing a character who had become real to you suffer could actually make you relate to them even more.
“Mom said something like that, after she watched a scene where someone in the TV family died. She said she knew the minute she saw it that you’d been there.”
She was almost sorry she’d said it when he winced a little.
