“Sam, I—”
“Meagan!”
She inhaled at the same moment he stiffened. Before he could speak, they were surrounded by a group of the crew, who’d deserted the hotel bar for the nearest restaurant. Chaos followed as tables were shoved next to each other, only a few steps away from their tiny corner. One of the cameramen—a hefty thirtysomething guy from Texas, who they all called “Double Dave” for obvious reasons—pulled a chair to their table to talk to Meagan about his “concerns” for the next day’s shots. He then called yet another cameraman over to their table.
Sam listened as Meagan calmed their concerns, and then did enough listening of her own to manage to get her dinner down, while Sam did the same. He was intrigued by her expressions, her mannerisms, her respect for the people who worked for her, and knew it was a sign of just how badly he had it for this woman. She wouldn’t look at him though, and he had to wonder if she was calculating a way to escape his proposition. She was good at running from him despite her obvious interest, and he wondered why.
His meal completed, Sam pushed away from the table. “I’ll check out that property, and let you know how it looks.”
Meagan quickly shoved her chair back. “I’m going, too,” she said. “None of the rest of this matters if we don’t have a house to shoot in.”
“You’re viewing a property tonight?” Double Dave asked.
Sam’s expression seemed to be questioning her, so she gave the same right back to him?
“We are,” she said in reply to Dave, though, focused on Sam, not the cameraman. “We have to take it or lose it by tomorrow.” She glanced at Dave, and the rest of the group, and then announced the exciting prospect of a new house, and that she’d report on it tomorrow.
The next thing Sam knew, he and Meagan were outside. Their eyes collided the same instant the hot, muggy air slammed into them, and their budding sexual tension expanded around them, while the world shrunk to just the two of them.
“Your vehicle or mine?” he asked, willing his body to calm.
She tilted her head, studying him with such scrutiny that it was his turn to say, “What are you looking at me like that for?”
“I just thought you were the ‘I’m driving’ kind of guy.”
“And I thought you were the ‘I’m driving’ kind of woman.”
“I am.”
He waved her forward. “Well, then. Lead the way.”
She didn’t move. Instead, she stared at him intensely, then said, “You drive. My eyes hurt from editing too much film, and I don’t want you backseat driving.”
“So, you’ll backseat drive.”
“Exactly.”
Sam laughed and barely resisted the unnerving urge to grab her hand and pull her along with him—telling himself that he only needed to touch her once, that this thing was sex and sex only. He motioned her forward. “If we walk around to the side of the hotel, we can go straight to the garage and avoid another crew ambush.”
“Don’t you need to get the property listings from your room?”
“I put the address for this one in my GPS earlier. It’s about a forty-minute drive, so we better hit the road. It’s almost seven now.”
Meagan groaned and they fell into step together. “I have a six o’clock shoot in the morning, and I am going to be hating life when it starts.”
“Then it’s good I’m driving,” he said. “You can nap on the way to the property and back, if you want.”
She stopped.
“What?” he asked again.
“Stop being nice to me. I liked you better when you were intentionally trying to agitate me.”
She meant she felt safer, but he didn’t say it, not when she could back out of their private outing before they ever left. “I simply assumed you required more rest than I do.”
Her hands went to her hips. “Why would I need more rest than you? Because...” She paused, eyes lighting with understanding. “Wow. You just proved that you can bait me at will, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “But you can do the same to me. Don’t even think about saying you don’t know it because we both know you do. We both know how to punch each other’s buttons.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “I guess we do.”
Damn, he wanted this woman. She didn’t even try and play coy with him. He liked that. He liked it a hell of a lot. “Let’s get out of here before we’re cornered. Or worse, before Tabitha returns.”
“True,” she said, her face lit with a warm smile.
At his vehicle, he held the passenger door of his Ford F150 open for her, and she gave him an awkward look. “You don’t have to do that for me. I can get it.”
He pressed his hand to the side of the truck, the distinctly feminine scent of her reaching him. “I’m a soldier at heart. Opening a door for a lady is as natural to me as busting my chops is apparently for you.”
A rich, laugh left her lips. “I don’t imagine many people ‘bust your chops’ easily, so I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“They don’t and I’ll take your acknowledgement of that fact as a compliment.”
A subtle but obvious tension lit between them. “Actually, it is a compliment.” She paused. “Sam. I, well, I’ve given you such a hard time that I think I should tell you how much I really appreciate how you handled the problems on set tonight. Rather than doing what I would have expected—charging in and taking over—you respected my role.”
“And unless there’s an imminent threat to someone’s safety, I always will. My hope would be that if an unfortunate situation like that arises, you’ll respect my role, as well.”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“That means no running into buildings that could go up in flames any second. You wait for me.”
She pursed her lips. “Unless someone is in imminent danger and I can help.”
He lowered his voice. “Meagan—”
She held up her hands. “Yes. Okay. I’ll wait. Probably. I’ll try. And I admit running into the house wasn’t one of my more brilliant moves, but I was afraid the show would go up in flames with the house. Like everyone’s dreams. Everyone who’d hoped this show would change their life would have lost their dream, too. I just couldn’t let that happen.”