Page 103 of Mr. Fixer Upper
Really, really good,Paige decided. Not that she really cooked, but with a kitchen like this, she might learn to make a few dishes here and there. Gannon would probably just use it to store beer and pizza boxes.Lucky bastard.
He nodded. “Okay, thanks.”
“That’s it?”
His massive shoulders lifted. “Yep. That’s all I needed. You can go on back to whatever directorial crap you were doing.”
“Gee, thanks.”
She headed out but Gannon stopped her. “Paige?”
She turned. “Yeah?”
She saw the twinkle in his eyes, the dimple next to his mouth. “You’re doing a great job.”
Flustered, she gave him a brisk nod and escaped.
“A pleasure working with you,” he called after her, an odd emphasis on the word pleasure.
Paige shook her head and headed for the stairs but was flagged down by her associate producer poking her head in the front door.
“Hey, Tina. Welcome toKing’s Castle.” Paige offered her hand.
Tina, a compact woman in a red hoodie and sneakers, gripped and shook. “After running through last week’s footage with the editors, I had to come in and poke around myself. Hope you don’t mind.” She cracked her gum as her eyes took in the half-finished framing, the new HVAC ducts that a crew was wrestling into place.
“Not at all,” Paige said. “It’s a mess right now but an organized one.”
“The footage of the guys in the tub,” Tina began, taking a look at the view out the front windows. “It was freakin’ hilarious. We get more of that? Gannon King acting like a human being? We’re looking at a solid hit… provided this shithole miraculously transforms into a castle.”
“Leave it to Gannon,” Paige told her.
“I’ve got a couple pages of notes—some one-on-ones we need for episode one, some B-roll ideas,” she said. “If I can run through those with you and Gannon at the same time, it would save me some repetition.”
“No problem. I’ll go wrangle him. Fifteen minutes enough?” she asked, consulting the call sheet. They needed to start setting up for the window installation, and delivery was scheduled in half an hour. She needed to talk to Gannon about where he wanted to start and then dole out shooting assignments.
“Should be plenty,” Tina cracked.
“I need to make a quick call, and then I’ll drag him away from whatever mess he’s in the middle of. Poke around if you want,” Paige offered. “The upstairs looks just as bad as down here.”
She left Tina to it and went out on the stoop where the construction noise and the chatter of crews were at least muffled by the thick wood of the front doors. Gannon had chosen a quiet street so traffic was minimal. Things were moving along inside as if the work was a dusty, noising purging of the demons of the past, leaving behind a fresh, new start.Today especially was a day for considering fresh starts or recommitting to old choices, Paige thought. It was her birthday, not that she’d be sharing that information with anyone else.
Birthdays in the St. James family weren’t for celebration. They were mile markers of successes, moments of pause to appreciate the journey, and hers hadn’t started yet.
But instead of her journey, her future success, she found herself thinking about Gannon and fresh starts.
He’d warned her flat out that he’d be seducing her. And with each morning cup of coffee that he presented her with on set, each time he’d asked her opinion or listened to her direction, he was doing just that. He brought her chopped salads for lunch and bought Paige her own pair of work gloves as she was always borrowing someone else’s for lending a hand.
And anytime Gannon wasn’t hanging around, he had his crew and her own singing his praises.
Chantay had taken one look at the playback of the bathtub scene and fanned herself. “That is one fine-looking man. I would not be kicking that out of my bed,” she’d said pointedly to Paige.
If she wasn’t very careful, she’d end up exactly where she’d been… on her back under the powerful thrusts of Gannon King.
The image hit her so hard that Paige thought she might be hallucinating. Impulsively, her fingers clenched and released. Her phone tumbled onto the concrete step. “Crap.”
She shook herself out, stretching to rid her body and mind of the demons of Gannon. Satisfied she wasn’t about to enjoy a spontaneous orgasm, she dialed Eddie for their daily check in.
“Hey, kid,” he said cheerily. Someone in the background yelled.
