Claimed by the Hunk

Chapter 11

His back came up. Admittedly, he’d come here primed to be annoyed because she’d been so dismissive earlier, but there was a definite tone to her words. As though somehow he and Strudel were responsible for her dog’s behavior.

“I guess times have changed. We should probably do a temporary fix and then get some quotes to have it repaired.”

The phone rang inside her house and she glanced over her shoulder. The move drew his attention to her breasts— small but perky. He gave himself a mental shake. As if he cared what her breasts looked like. They were attached to the rest of her, which was toned within an inch of its life and way too scrawny for his tastes. But why was he even thinking about that?

“I need to get that,” she said as she refocused on him.

“Fine. But we need to deal with this fence or Mr. Smith is going to come visiting again.”

“I’m sorry, but I really need to take this call. I’ll get back to you.” There was a distracted urgency beneath her words as she reached for the knob.

He opened his mouth to protest—as the door swung shut in his face for the second time that day.

“You cannot be serious,” he told the shiny black wood.

But she was. She was also the rudest person he’d ever had the misfortune to meet. He was tempted to knock again and force her to deal with him, but he had an image of himself knocking till the cows came home and her ignoring him as she dealt with her vitally important, utterly life-transforming phone call.

He’d been de-balled quite enough by his wife’s staggering infidelity, thank you very much. He had no intention of hanging around to play the part of supplicant.

He remembered an old saying as he returned to his aunt’s house: no good turn goes unpunished. He still could not understand that where from he had seen this woman and why did she look so familiar to him. He might have to ask something more of her but he did not even get the chance to ask her something in the proper manner.

It was like she was deliberate in keeping him away from her although there was nothing which her expression gave away..

Indeed.

Cassandra reached the phone just as it stopped ringing.

She checked caller ID and swore when she saw Gordon’s number. She’d talked to Linda earlier and managed to convince her to prompt Gordon into calling. Linda had come through—and Cassandra had been too busy dealing with Samael Lowell..She did not even want to think about the feelings that he was bringing back up in her from one night.

She did not even know what she was going to tell her daughter when she called her this weekend.

That sweetie I found your father who was lost?

Unbelievable.

She hit the button to return the call and prayed that Gordon hadn’t already moved on to something else. She willed him to pick up as the phone rang at the other end. She was about to give in to despair when Gordon’s voice came over the line.

“Cassandra.”

“Gordon. How are you?”

“Good enough. More importantly, how are you?”

“Getting there. Better every day.”

He grunted. She pictured him sitting at his desk in Melbourne, feet up on the corner, big belly straining at the buttons on his shirt.

“How are the headaches?” he asked.

“Better. Much better.” She didn’t mention the fact that she still struggled to spend more than a couple of hours at a time on her feet before her back started acting up and that she struggled to stay awake after eight at night.

“That’s good to hear.” He sounded distracted and she knew she wouldn’t hold his attention for long.

 “Listen, Gordon, I’ve been wanting to talk to you because I know Philip’s contract is coming up for renewal.”

Philip had been brought in to fill her role while she recovered.

An experienced producer, they’d been lucky to catch him between gigs.

“It is. Still got that steel-trap memory, I see.”

What she had was a heavily used calendar function on her iPhone, but he didn’t need to know that.

“So, have you spoken to him about renewing for a shorter term?” She wrapped her free arm around her torso, tension thrumming through her body as she waited for Gordon’s response.

“We haven’t had that conversation yet.”

“Right. Well, I wanted to suggest you go for three months. I’ll be more than ready to get back to it by then.”

Gordon sighed. “Cassandra…our hands are tied here. You have to understand that.”

A chill ran down her spine. Was he saying what she thought he was saying? “What does that mean?”

“It means we can’t afford to lose him. The show needs continuity. If he won’t consider a short term, we’ll have to look at something longer. It’s a shitty situation, I know, but he’s done a great job for us.”

Cassandra bit back the urge to remind Gordon that she’d done a great job, too, in the three years prior to the accident.

She’d increased the ratings by nearly thirty percent, streamlined the story department and used her influence with her ex-husband, Patrick Langtry, to persuade him to join the cast—a move that had led to another ratings bump.

Gordon knew all that, though. It simply didn’t mean anything to him while she was sidelined.

There was a reason Hunter S. Thompson had described television as “a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs.” The industry was ruthless, ratings driven and peopled with huge egos.

God only knew why she’d spent the bulk of her adult life loving the hell out of it, but she had and it was where she wanted to be.

Once she was on her feet again.

“I’ll be back soon, Gordon. I’ve had some great ideas for the show, too. Something to really kick us into the new ratings period.”

“You don’t need to pitch yourself to me. I’m going to offer him a month-by-month contract. I’m not expecting him to be happy about it, and I know for a fact there are other production companies sniffing around. I’ll do my best, but you need to understand that, at the end of the day, we have to do what’s best for the show.”

Even if that meant giving away her position while she was on sick leave for injuries acquired while on the job. If she hadn’t been driving to that location shoot, she wouldn’t have had the accident. It was that simple.

She opened her mouth to remind Gordon that he was legally obliged to keep her job open for her, then closed it again without saying a word. Nobody ever got ahead at Eureka Productions by resorting to lawyers at ten paces. No one who worked behind the camera, anyway.

“Don’t worry, Cassandra. You’ll be looked after. You’re still our little pocket rocket.”

Cassandra bared her teeth. How she hated that offensive, patronizing nickname.

“Will you keep me in the loop?” It was a testament to her strong will that she managed to keep her voice even and her tone pleasant. No way would she give Gordon the leverage of an emotional outburst. If he recognized a weakness, he wouldn’t hesitate to use it against her. “Let me know how things go with Philip?”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

 “Network negotiations must be coming up soon, too. Any indication they might go for the Christmas special again this year?”

“They like to play their cards close. Listen, Cassandra, I’d love to chat but I’ve got a meeting in ten.”

“Sure. Thanks for the call, Gordon.”

“Look after yourself, sweetheart.”

Cassandra dropped the phone onto the coffee table and sank onto the arm of the sofa.

Shit.

If Philip played hardball and pushed to have her job permanently, there was a very real chance that she would be out in the cold.

The thought was accompanied by a flurry of panic and a stab of pain behind her right eyeball. She pressed her fingers to her temple, squeezing her eyes shut briefly before searching for painkillers. Normally she tried to get by without medication. At the worst of her recovery she’d been on so many tablets she’d had a special dispenser to keep them all straight. She’d been fuzzy headed and a step removed from the world most of the time, and she’d fought with her doctors to reduce her daily intake to the bare minimum.

These days, she avoided anything that came in a foil sleeve, even a humble aspirin. But she could feel the headache building behind her eyes and knew from experience that it would snowball into something ferocious if she didn’t nip it in the bud now.

Mr. Smith pattered after her as she made her way to the bathroom. Seeing him reminded her of her new neighbor and his concerns about the hole-riddled fence. She supposed she should be more worried, but Mr. Smith was ridiculously attached to her and he’d never run away before. She figured he was simply excited about having a little buddy next door.

Once the novelty had worn off he’d settle down.

Still, she should probably look into having the fence repaired, as Samael Golden-Stubble had suggested. Not that she wanted to pour her precious, limited energy into anything unrelated to her recovery, but if it had to be done, it had to be done.

She swallowed two painkillers. A noise started up outside as she chased them with a glass of water. Someone hammering—in what sounded like her backyard. She made her way to the picture window in the living room. The noise wasn’t coming from her backyard, but the neighbor’s. Samael was out there, working away with hammer and handsaw.

Repairing their shared fence, apparently. Obviously he hadn’t been prepared to wait until they could hire a professional. But what was he doing here?

The last time that they had an encounter they both were naïve and innocent and definitely something which he did not want to recall which is why he could not recognize her. He was a pilot for the Air Force and that too in the United States. What was he doing here in Australia all of a sudden?

Whatever it was she wished that she had never seen him again and certainly not now. She needed to talk to her handler because if he was here then something was definitely off and she could not definitely afford any mistake at this point of time when she needed a really strong outcome. She had worked quite hard to make her image perfect along with the accident and coming back from it. AND NOW SHE REALLY NEEDED A BIG WIN.

Gordon might not know anything about Phillip and the reason that she had wanted him on the show as the producer but she knew that she had to get back soon enough she wanted to do something about his private life.

The agency had been giving her support all the time that she was out of sight but they knew that without her magical touch they would not be able to nab that bastard. And now that Samael was here, she had landed herself in a deep soup.