Page 23 of Jason
Jason laughed.He was still grinning when he turned away from her to get a highball glass.He returned to the table and set the glass before her, still grinning, still far too pleased with himself, his hazel eyes twinkling with delight at this turn of events.
She ignored him.She was very good in her ability to ignore him and trusted she would not falter this time.“Thank you,” she said, and sipped the whisky.It burned along with her pride as it went down her throat.
“Sip it.It’s not water,” he advised, and tapped his glass to hers.“Isn’t it funny how you think you know someone and discover you don’t know them at all?”
“You’re making a big deal out of it!I don’t know anything about you,” she said hoarsely.
“Except that I’m good-looking.And apparently unsettling in a half-naked state.”
“And full of yourself, too,” she said with a bit of a smile.
He grinned.“You actually know a lot about me, Mallory.More than I know about you, apparently.”He winked at her.
“I really don’t.I mean, I know you’re a workaholic.Everyone in Hollywood knows that.And you tend to date for about a month before you move on.”
“Beforetheymove on,” he corrected her, and with a twirl of his fingers, he added, “Because of the workaholic thing.What else do you know?”
“That you have a big summerhouse in Maine.And that you are ridiculously unorganized.But that’s about it.”
“Okay, what would you like to know about me?I’m an open book.”He gestured with his fork.“Go ahead.Ask.”
“I didn’t know you’d lost your parents at a young age.”Mallory sipped again.“You sort of dropped that on me this morning.I can’t imagine how devastating.”
“Don’t try—it’s not fun,” he said, and glanced up at another peal of thunder and a bolt of lightning.
“I’m sorry,” she said.“I was surprised by it, that’s all.You said a plane crash?”
“Yeah,” Jason said.He glanced away from her.“My dad was flying.They were headed north to pick up my older brother Phillip, and there was bad weather.”He shook his head.“It was so long ago.”He looked into his glass, then picked up the bottle and poured a little more whisky into it.
“What happened afterward?Where did you go?”
“My uncle Graham and aunt Claire took us in.We lived with our cousins.Four of them, three of us.”
“Wow,” Mallory said softly.“That’s a lot of kids.”She knew a little about a lot of kids.There had been five in her family.
“All boys.”
“Seven?That’s a KPOP boy band.”
Jason laughed.“I’ll let you in on a secret.The accident, and the combining of families, is why I’m so in to film.”
“Really?”This was interesting—she’d assumed he’d gotten into the film industry in the usual way—through family or business connections.
“Yep.Movies and television provided an escape for me after the shock of losing my parents.And there were suddenly seven of us.It was a lot to handle at my age.I had so many questions that went unanswered.”He paused a moment and shook his head.“So I escaped.I’d come home from school and go to my room and lock myself in with movies.Every movie I could get my hands on.Classics likeCasablancaandGone with the Wind.Fringe movies likeDazed and Confusedor blockbusters likeJaws—you get the picture.And when you watch movies back to back, over and over again, you start to get a sense of story arc, and how to construct the arc and how to pace it through several scenes.Because when those things don’t work, you notice.”
“That is definitely self-taught,” Mallory said.She was impressed—how astute he must have been as a teen.
“Yep.I escaped into that world, and when the movies I watched finally numbed the pain, I decided I wanted to be a part of it.I worked my ass off to get a scholarship to the USC film school.”
Mallory tried not to look as astounded as she felt.She and Inez had guessed he’d come from some privileged background where he was lauded for every achievement and his path greased into the finest schools.She could not have guessed that his interest in art had come from a place of such pain.
She definitely could not have guessed he’d attended USC on ascholarship.
“What about you?”Jason asked as he cleaned his plate and pushed it aside.“I don’t know much about you either, other than you are very by the book.”
“That’s not true.”She laughed.
“It’s true and you know it.Where are your parents?”
