Playing With Her Heart (Caught Up In Love #4)(15)
Author: Lauren Blakely

I peer into the car next to me, then head down to the other end, weaving in between passengers holding onto straps and poles. I look in the window to another car. No Patrick there, either. As I exit on Fiftieth Street, it only vaguely occurs to me that it would be really unusual to be on the same car of the same train at the exact same time every day.

I’ll have to snag some one-on-one time during rehearsal.

I walk up the steps and into the building with the studio, heading to the elevator panel to press the button.

“Hold the elevator.”

I turn, and it’s Davis.

“Please,” he adds when he sees me. He shifts to a playful tone and flashes a smile that feels as if it’s just for me. His inky blue eyes twinkle and for the briefest of moments, I have this strange sense of him appraising me from stem to stern, surveying my body from the short gray boots that Kat brought me from Paris, to the black tights on my legs, to my blond hair peeking out from the hat. It should bother me, his eyes on me, drinking me in, but it doesn’t. Maybe because it’s so fleeting, so brief, that I might have imagined it.

Besides, I’m guilty too of being less than professional in my random thoughts. Even though I have no intentions for him, given that it was all a mistake.

I try to delete from my head the conversation Kat and I had about him last night as I speculated on his predilections. But I keep thinking about that scarf and I can picture Davis twining it around feminine wrists, pinning them, having his way.

Fuck.

I can’t go there. I shouldn’t go there. What happened in his office was wrong.

“Elevator’s not even here yet,” I say in an effort to focus on the innocuous.

“I’m sure there will be another one,” he says, and I notice he’s not wearing a winter coat even though he’s just come in from the cold. He wears jeans, shoes, and a white button-down shirt that must have been tailored for his chest. He’s holding a coffee cup in one hand, and a sesame seed bagel in the other. It’s only us in the lobby. Waiting. I glance at Davis again, and he’s not even shivering. It’s like he’s made of iron, impervious to the elements.

“Don’t you ever get cold?”

“No.”

“You’re kind of badass.”

His lips quirk up in a grin. “Thank you.”

Then I press my hand against my mouth. “Shit,” I mutter.

The grin is erased and he now has this caring look in his eyes as he reaches a hand toward me, as if he’s about to rest it gently on my arm. But he doesn’t, and I find myself missing the possibility of his touch. He stops halfway, then pulls back before he asks, “What’s wrong, Jill?”

He seems so genuinely concerned. It’s such a different side of him than I see in rehearsals with the whole cast.

“Sometimes I forget to turn on the filter that’s supposed to prevent me from saying things like that to my boss,” I say, because that’s the only way I should think of him, and you shouldn’t be too personal and chit-chatty with your boss. But I can’t get a read on him in any capacity.

It’s as if my finely-tuned internal calibrations on people-reading don’t work with him. On the outside, I can size him up in seconds. He’s the type of good-looking that could grace the pages of a GQ ad, relaxing in a leather chair, a suit jacket tossed casually over the arm, wearing a crisp white shirt, a few buttons undone, holding a sturdy glass of scotch, his midnight blue eyes impossible to look away from.

When it comes to work, he’s a drill sergeant times fifty. He’s a colonel keeping us all in line. But he’s also an artist and a gentleman, and he has this soft side every now and then. A side he seems to show to me. Davis Milo is the strangest mix of sophisticated class and unbridled intensity I’ve ever seen. It’s as if a Merchant Ivory movie f**ked a Quentin Tarantino flick and made him.

“I really wish you wouldn’t call me your boss,” he says. Maybe he’s in the same boat, too, and can’t get a read on how to be with me.

“But you are, aren’t you?” I say, and then realize that the question—aren’t you—has taken on a life of its own and sounds flirtatious. I didn’t mean it to come across that way. I don’t know why I said it like that. I don’t know why I’m leaning closer to him and volleying back, but maybe it’s because the air around us feels warmer, sharper, and I want more of it.

More of the mistake.

He tilts his head to the side. He keeps his eyes on me, not letting go. Something about the way he looks at me makes me want to tell him things, to open up, to share all sorts of secrets I’ve never told anyone else. His dark blue eyes are so pure and unflinching that they seem to demand nothing less than total honesty.

Of course, that’s his style, that’s his MO, that’s how he directs and elicits the most compelling performances from actors, by demanding unwavering truth on stage.

He doesn’t respond to my question. The silence expands, an electric kind of quiet, and soon I can’t take the tension.

“My boss,” I add, as if I have to explain, but my voice seems feathery, like it belongs to someone else.

“Technically, I’m not your boss. The producers are. I’m only your director.”

That’s all he says, and I can’t tell if he’s returning the serve, or if he’s just a master at handling actors. At handling me.

I look up at the sign above the elevator that indicates what floor it’s on. Third floor. The elevator chugs, and it’ll be here any minute, and then I’ll be alone in it with him. My mind gallops off to all the sexy scenes I’ve ever read that take place in an elevator. Part of me wants to put an end to the imaginings, but the other part of me wants to unleash them.

I can’t take that chance.

“I’m going to take the stairs,” I say, and turn on my heels.

“Good idea.”

Chapter 8

Davis

I take a bite of my bagel as we round the first landing, chewing as I watch her walk up the stairs. I should look away, but her legs are an unfair advantage: strong, shapely, and impossibly long. Too bad they’re covered in tights. But then, I reason, as we round another flight, perhaps that barrier is a good thing.

“How’s your coaching going?”

She turns around briefly, casting me a curious look as she keeps walking. The sound of her boots hitting each of the concrete steps echoes. “How did you know I was a running coach?”

“Because I looked you up before I called you in,” I say, with a–matter–of–fact tone. “The Internet is a wonderful thing. I research all actors I’m seriously considering casting.”