Take On Me. Sarah Mayberry

she was away, but she could spend the day catching up before the team pitched her their ideas for the week’s episodes on Tuesday morning.

      She mentally reviewed the show’s story strands from a week and a half ago as she breezed past the receptionist and into the open-plan office. Set in Santa Monica, Ocean Boulevard centered around a group of people living in a Spanish mission-style apartment block on the street of the same name. The show ran an hour a day, five days a week, so there was always plenty of work to keep her busy.

      A couple of heads came up as they spotted her, but she waved and flashed a bright, confident smile. Nothing to see here, her expression said. No tragedy to pick over. Please, move on.

      Her office looked exactly the same as when she’d left it, except for a vase full of fresh tiger lilies on her desk return. Claudia being thoughtful, she guessed.

      Slinging her satchel on top of her filing cabinet, she hit the power button on her computer and waited for it to boot up. She was typing in her password when Claudia appeared in her office doorway.

      “I knew you’d be in early, you workaholic,” Claudia said. Her tiny frame was encased from head to toe in black, her signature color.

      “Holiday’s over,” Sadie said, clicking through to her e-mail program.

      “Hmm. I don’t suppose the gutless wonder has made contact yet?” Claudia asked, referring to Greg.

      “Nope, thank God,” Sadie said. “I have nothing to say to him.”

      Claudia raised a disbelieving eyebrow, but let the subject go.

      “We need to have a quick work powwow,” she said, switching to producer mode. Propping a hip against Sadie’s bookcase, she tucked her hands into her trouser pockets. “Don’t freak, but Joss had a car accident while you were away. Broke his pelvis in three places.”

      Sadie gasped. “Oh, my God. Is he okay? Was anyone else hurt?”

      “No. The idiot was test driving a Porsche on Toyopa Drive in the Palisades. A dog ran across the road and he smacked into a tree.” Claudia shook her head as though she still couldn’t quite believe it. Joss was notoriously accident prone. He could find a way to hurt himself in a rubber room.

      “Wow. But he’s going to be okay?” Sadie asked.

      “Six months before he’ll be out of rehab, but he’s fully covered by insurance, so apart from the joys of physiotherapy et cetera, all is good. Except, of course, we kind of need him.”

      Sadie’s eyes widened. For a moment she’d been so worried about Joss’s health that she’d forgotten about the show.

      “God, yes. We have to find a new story editor,” she said, her brain hitting a brick wall at the very thought. Story editors—good ones—were like hen’s teeth, difficult to find. Usually it took months to woo someone away from another show, or to headhunt a promising up-and-comer. The story editor was the focal point of the story team, the person who said yes or no to plot lines and drove a show forward. As script producer, the story editor and his or her team were Sadie’s direct reports. It would be her responsibility to find someone to stoke Ocean Boulevard’s furnace with new and innovative ideas now that Joss had taken himself out of the game. Automatically, she reached for her address book, but Claudia waved a hand.

      “Relax. I sorted it out while you were gone. We got lucky,” she said.

      “Yeah?” Sadie asked doubtfully.

      “You’re going to love him. Five years experience in London working on various shows, including their top-rated police procedural, and he’s coming off three years with Box-Office Cable on The Boardroom. I still can’t believe we got him, but he was between contracts and he loves the show.”

      Sadie frowned. European experience, credits on The Boardroom—BOC’s gritty depiction of high-stakes corporate life. It was all starting to ring a bell in the back of her mind. A very large, very noisy, alarm bell.

      “I’m not sure if…” she said, but Claudia spoke over her.

      “Look, here he is now. You guys can chat a little before everyone gets here.”

      Sadie felt the blood drain from her face and her stomach drop to the floor as she saw the tall, dark-haired man approaching over Claudia’s shoulder.

      He still had to-die-for good looks. His eyelashes were still too long and dark. And his gray eyes were still cocky and overly confident.

      She stared at him, all her nightmares rolled into six-foot-two-inches of strong, supple male.

      DylanAnderson. Her teen nemesis. And her new direct report.

      2

      AS SOON AS Dylan saw Sadie Post, all his expectations about working on Ocean Boulevard went out the window.

      After initial talks with Claudia, he’d been genuinely intrigued about the idea of working on a soap. The demands of the show—five one-hour episodes per week—meant that an enormous amount of material had to be produced by the writing team. It would be a challenge, and an opportunity to push the envelope. Just talking to Claudia had given him ideas. But he’d be fooling himself if he pretended that was why he’d walked away from his own plans so easily—learning from Claudia that Sadie would not be a part of the hiring process had been the clincher. The thought of her returning from vacation in the Caribbean to find him ensconced as her new story editor had been irresistible.

      Despite all his achievements and how far he’d come, the memory of his humiliation in American Lit at her hands remained a sore spot in his psyche. It wasn’t the most mature or rational or noble motivation for taking a contract with Ocean Boulevard, but he figured a guy was allowed a moment of weakness every now and then.

      Then he walked in her office door and all his expectations hit an unexpected slippery patch and went skidding out of control.

      When he’d pictured this moment in his mind, Sadie had been as forgettable as she’d been throughout their school years—same blah blond hair pulled back into a tidy ponytail, same raillike body in baggy clothes.

      But the woman rising from her office chair to face him was an Amazonian goddess. Nearly six foot—had she always been so tall?—with long, flowing Pamela-Anderson-just-rolled-out-of-bed-hair. And her body was no longer skinny. In fact, it looked as though the curve fairy had paid her a very substantial visit since he’d last seen her. Perky breasts thrust up from a slim torso, their curves outlined by a tight black T-shirt. Dark denim jeans clung to legs that were long and lean and seemed to go on forever. Just the way he liked them.

      For a second he was so thrown he could only stare and blink. Then he got his game face back on. So, she’d turned into an okay-looking adult. Big deal. It didn’t change anything.

      He’d already decided how to play this—supercool, not a single allusion to school beyond the mandatory acknowledgment, nothing that would give her the satisfaction of knowing that he attached any significance or power to her memory whatsoever. This was about burying the past, not resurrecting it. Just because she looked like a bikini model from Swimsuit Illustrated didn’t call for a change of plans.

      “Sadie. Great to see you again,” he lied through his teeth.

      He even managed a smile—nothing too effusive or sucky, just bright enough to be professional. Extending his hand, he waited for her to shake it.

      There was a long, long pause before she extended her own hand. Her skin felt cool and silky as her palm slid against his, and his gaze was caught by her velvety-brown eyes. Warm chocolate spiced with caramel, he decided before he registered what he was thinking and gave himself a mental slap.

      Where the hell had that come from? She could have shriveled currants for eyes, or big Bambi numbers—it didn’t matter one iota to him.

      “You guys have met before?” Claudia asked, her gaze alert as she glanced back and forth between