Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Jaime usually loved the first production meeting. The crew, loud and jovial and energetic, who could build and fix anything; the artist types who decorated the set and made the costumes and otherwise ensured everyone look good; and the actors who became fearless when the camera was on.
It was Halloween and the opening day of baseball and a long-anticipated party, but a thousand times better because they were making television . Jaime still couldn’t believe that despite everything, he got to do this. But today, he was in a desperately foul mood, and not even the prospect of filming could make him feel better.
Jaime could put a time and a date on his bad mood: the moment Scarlett told him that she’d decided all by herself to call the police on his dad.
It was almost funny how the two worst moments of his life existed in precise moments of time. Everything had seemed perfect, and then an instant later, everything had been awful.
The person responsible for both moments swanned into the room. Scarlett had traded yesterday’s pink sheath that had hugged her generous curves like a lover for a navy blue suit-dress. This outfit would’ve been conservative but for how low the neckline dropped. A teardrop turquoise pendant dangled between her perfect cleavage, and Jaime had never been so jealous of a piece of stone before.
She was still the prettiest woman he’d ever seen.
Jaime swallowed—or he tried to. His mouth had gone dry.
Across the large conference table, Scarlett made eye contact with him. Her eye shadow was smoky, her eyeliner winged nearly into her hairline, and her lips were painted an almost girlish shade of pink. He knew that every touch had been perfectly planned, and beyond bringing him to his knees, he couldn’t begin to speculate about what she wanted to happen here.
Checkmate , he wanted to tell her, because he’d already lost. Whatever game they’d been playing, the way he felt had to mean she’d conquered him.
But when her coy smile fell and her gaze darted away from him, he wondered if she was taking any pleasure in it. Or if it was the kind of Pyrrhic victory where everyone was a loser.
Next to Jaime, Nate cleared his throat.
“Yeah?”
“Stop staring at her, or everyone will figure it out.”
Nate thought he knew what had played out between Scarlett and Jaime, but since the guy wasn’t a Shakespeare fan, he couldn’t begin to imagine the kind of betrayal that had been involved.
“ You haven’t even figured it out,” he said.
“I know enough, old man.” Nate patted Jaime on the arm.
“I’m six months older than you are.”
“And you wear them so badly. But seriously, no one likes it when Mommy and Daddy are fighting.”
“She’s not the production’s mommy.”
“Isn’t she?”
Clara Hess had come in and thrown herself into Scarlett’s arms. Then she’d proceeded to drag Scarlett around and introduce her to everyone—and really, Jaime ought to be doing that, but he was too tongue tied and hurt to manage it.
“Maybe,” he finally said to Nate after watching the fifth person in a row light up like the Empire State Building when Scarlett greeted them. She was going to be the center of gravity on this production, that was for sure.
“Okay, everyone,” he called out, more gruffly than he’d intended to. “Let’s settle down.”
Scarlett looked at him over her shoulder, and he almost staggered backward. There were so many different emotions there, he couldn’t have untangled them if he’d spent all day on it.
Someday, maybe, he’d be able to have a rational conversation with her, and she’d tell him all about those feelings, where they’d come from and what they meant and how he could learn to live with them.
“You’ve got to cut that out,” Nate muttered.
“Shut up.”
“I’m just saying—”
Jaime took his seat before Nate could go on making sense. He had a job to do.
When the room quieted, he said, “I hope everyone is adjusting to Canada. Sheryl is the best source of restaurant recs on the crew, FYI.” An appreciative chuckle went up. “But beyond telling you where to get the best bannock in town, our main goal today is for everyone to meet, ask any questions, and then review the rehearsal and production schedule.”
Jaime pointedly did not look at Scarlett as he opened this meeting. He was going to have to ignore her as much as possible. She was only a coproducer. How hard could it be?
He felt her raised hand before he saw it. Her request for his attention radiated heat like an open oven door. The side of his face burned.
Everyone’s eyes darted to her and then to Jaime, willing him to see her wordless demand for his attention. Someone eventually pointed.
At last, Jaime turned toward her. “Yes, Ms. Arbuthnot?”
He was acutely aware that those were the first words he’d uttered to her face in nine months. The familiar mixture of longing and pain walloped him.
“Can I say something?” she asked, sweetly submissive.
She’d said plenty, hadn’t she? But it had been eighteen years too late.
“Sure,” he gritted out. Denying her would seem rude to the group—and Jaime really didn’t want to seem rude.
His entire plan had been to act like the consummate professional until he didn’t have to act anymore. Until he managed to bottle up everything she made him feel and cast it into the sea and never, ever think about it again.
But he was struggling to keep it together and endangering everything.
Scarlett let her gaze sweep over the crowd. Everyone ringing the table was gazing at her as if she were a solar eclipse, something rare and cosmic and powerful.
His gut throbbed at how accurate that was.
“I wanted to say how grateful I am for all of you. This book is really personal, and it means everything to me that you want to help tell this story.” Then Scarlett looked right at Jaime as she said, “I trust you with this, with me, and I know you’re going to do a wonderful job.”
Did she mean it, or was she yanking his chain? In the two months they wrote together, she hadn’t said anything remotely like this to him—and there were days when he would’ve really liked to hear it.
What the fuck was she up to?
She held his eyes with hers, and with a deliberate slowness, she raised her brows to prompt him. Then she waited—waited to see how he would respond to what she’d said. In front of everyone.
Dammit.
Scarlett was putting him on the spot, with the entire cast and crew as an audience. Nate was entirely right: Jaime had to be careful here, or everyone on the set of Queen’s Kiss was going to guess that he and Scarlett had a complicated past. A past featuring the kind of explosive sexual duplicity soap operas only aspired to.
It was a bummer that in real life, unlike in tournament chess, you couldn’t take twenty minutes to ponder your next move. Jaime needed to game all this out, but he didn’t have the time. And unlike Scarlett, he wasn’t any good at masterminding every situation.
“Thanks,” he said carefully. Thank you was solid in every situation, right? “It’s quite a story. That’s why I wanted to adapt it. You tell it exactly like it is, and that kind of extreme honesty is ... powerful.”
Jaime hadn’t torn his gaze from Scarlett’s, but he didn’t need to look at Nate to know that the guy was slack-jawed and blinking SOS at him in Morse code.
Then Scarlett said, “Not everyone wants the truth.”
In the most sincere way, up until the moment she’d told him what had actually happened with his dad’s arrest, Jaime thought he had. Whatever else he felt about her confession, the shame he felt about his own inadequacy was part of it.
Jaime knew he ought to be a better person. One who could hear what she’d said and not feel angry and betrayed that she’d made the decision to go public all by herself. But he wasn’t a better person.
No, just like his father, it turned out that Jaime was a piece of crap.
But none of that had any place in this moment and in this room. “Especially not PAWN,” he joked, trying to keep this about her book.
“Among others,” she replied, forcing the issue back to them.
Jaime had spent so many months just trying to put one foot in front of the other, to think only about the details because then he didn’t have to think about the big picture. When he’d wondered how he and Scarlett might interact on set, he’d immediately shoved the thought away.
I’ll be the perfect showrunner : that had been his plan. Of course Scarlett was going to make it hard for him to do that.
Jaime sighed and glanced around the room. Everyone was aghast, because he wasn’t showing proper deference to their inspiration, to their queen.
“You inspire us all,” he made himself say—and it wasn’t even a lie.
In his case, she inspired him to want to crack his forehead open on the table.
“The story we’re going to make based on your experiences ... it’s going to be amazing. And I appreciate that you’re letting me—letting all of us—tell it.” Someday, when he stopped feeling like a stubbed toe, that was going to be true. At least, he had to act as if it was.
“It’s my pleasure,” Scarlett cooed, and he suspected that, at the very least, she was enjoying the hell out of this moment.
When Jaime sat, Nate muttered under his breath, “Nice recovery, boss.”
But it hadn’t been.
After stumbling through the rest of the meeting, Jaime flagged Scarlett down. “Do you have a minute?” They had to figure this thing out. He couldn’t function like this; he’d never get through the shoot.
“I’m meeting with Clara,” Scarlett said, “but for you, I have all the time in the world.” Then she fluttered her eyelashes at him.
If Jaime hadn’t known it was an act, he would’ve fallen to his knees. As it was, he flinched.
Scarlett saw him do it, and he would’ve sworn she bit the inside of her cheek so as not to laugh. “Should we go to your office, or—”
“No, here is fine.” If he put a door between them and everyone else, there was no way he’d be able to keep his head on straight. Any conversation they were going to have needed to be in public. That was going to be the key to him holding it together for the next few months.
Jaime waited until Nate shooed a few stragglers out, and then he slid a hand into his pocket. Too bad his attempt at acting relaxed felt artificial as fuck.
Staring at the carpet near her shoes, he asked, “How do you want to play this?”
“Shouldn’t it be ‘How do you want to play this, Ms. Arbuthnot?’”
Jaime scrubbed a hand over his face. “ Scarlett. ” Her name was sweet and bitter in his mouth, like high-percentage-cacao chocolate. It was much too much to eat, but so concentrated it made everything else taste fake.
“I think we’re playing it all right,” she said.
“You’re playing it all right—better than all right.” She always did. “But I’m drowning here.”
“Then you should learn how to swim.” Of course she would make it sound that easy.
“We have to work together for months , and we both want the show to be good.” Whatever she might think, he was committed to this production. For the sake of his career and his reputation, he needed Queen’s Kiss to be amazing. There simply was no other choice. “And we have to clear the air because ... I’m still feeling a little blindsided.”
The word was so mild compared to his feelings, he almost laughed. But Jaime wasn’t sure if he’d so much as giggled in the months since she’d left him standing in his doorway, feeling as if a bomb had detonated in his lower intestines.
For once, Scarlett didn’t appear to be amused. Her response was utterly serious. “I get that, and I apologize for the shock of it.”
“But not for the rest.” He matched her tone, making it a statement and not a question.
“If I did, I’d be lying.”
Jaime never should’ve talked to her about honesty and truth and all the rest of that bullshit—because it very much felt like bullshit to him now.
If it would help matters for him to admit that he was being a hypocrite, he would’ve done it, but he didn’t think either he or Scarlett would feel better if he did. He knew it was stupid, but he felt the way he felt. It was his feelings that were the problem, and he couldn’t talk himself out of them, because he was being irrational.
“I don’t want to rehash the past,” he said.
“What a reversal.”
“Jesus, Scarlett, cut me some slack.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry, that was—too harsh. All I need to know is how I can be in the same room as you and not want to ...” He trailed off.
Jaime honestly didn’t know what exactly he was asking for. He’d considered quitting the production, but it would torch his career. And besides, despite everything, he still loved the project. He just needed—
“Not want to what?” Scarlett prompted.
Kiss you. Loathe myself. “Everything. Anything. How can you be in a room with me and not ... not feel ?”
Because at the end of the day, that was the problem: Scarlett destroyed Jaime’s ability to be calm and poised. One saucy look or smart-mouthed comment from her, and his insides began to riot and storm—except he had a television show to make. He didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to manage the mess she set off inside him and do that too. He could be a first-rate showrunner and director, or he could long for this woman. That was the choice.
“Oh, Jaime.” Scarlett strolled over to the door. When she was almost in the hallway, she stopped. One of her hands rested lightly on the frame, and he could see her nails were painted the same pale shade of blue as forget-me-nots.
The anger was still there in his chest, fresh as the day she’d told him the story. The frustration that her independent tendencies meant they were badly suited.
But in the middle of those swirling winds, in the eye of the hurricane, was something softer. Hungrier. He still loved her, still wanted her. Even now, after she’d mowed him down twice. That part would never go away.
Scarlett watched him over her shoulder. She took in and released a long, long breath before giving her head a sad shake. “Who said I wasn’t feeling anything?”