Page 13 of Mr. Fixer Upper
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Gannon stayed where he was leaning against the paint chipped railing of his balcony. He hadn’t realized Paige was right next door until he heard her husky voice getting pissed about something on the phone with the show’s executive producer. He could have felt guilty about eavesdropping, but since Paige interested him and he’d heard his name, he felt justified in listening.
She hung up with Eddie, and he heard the squeal of her door as she slammed it behind her.
It was further confirmation that Princess Paige wasn’t the “yes man” he had assumed she was. He never expected her to fight on his behalf, and listening to her dish it out to Eddie told him it wasn’t the first time she’d stood up for him and Cat.
Shit.
He hated being wrong.
He’d written her off from the very first day of shooting last season when she’d coolly told him he needed to be respectful of the network’s timetable.
A network shill, he’d labeled her then, he remembered. But that didn’t stop him from noticing her mile-long legs when she wore shorts to the sets in the dead heat of the summer. Or her full, usually unpainted lips that parted just before she laughed at something her crew or he said.
He’d gotten an eyeful of the body that was typically hidden by her usual jeans and t-shirt uniform last season when she’d had to borrow someone’s gym clothes mid-shoot. She wore her rich chocolate hair in a sexy short cut that allowed her to plow her hands through the layers when she was frustrated or tie it back in a stub when she was doing the heavy lifting.
Yeah, she was attractive enough that he’d frozen her out from the get-go. He’d fallen for a pretty package before and paid a steep price for it. He’d met Paige shortly after his self-imposed celibacy to get his damn head back on straight. And maybe, just maybe, he’d been unfair to put Paige St. James in the same category as his past mistake.
Anyone could see that she was strong, smart, and completely unflappable. It was the cool attitude that had thrown him though he hadn’t been exactly friendly to her either. Yet when she thought she was alone, she showed her human side with an unexpected empathy for the people they were generally exploiting on camera.
Snippets of conversations, insults he’d thrown in bad moods, accusations he’d made in jest came back to him now. She’d never bothered correcting him or defending herself, never commiserating with him that she too thought the network was a bunch of greedy assholes.
He didn’t like being wrong.
Gannon grabbed two beers out of his minifridge. He wouldn’t apologize. After all, she had never defended herself or trusted him with her opinion. It made him wonder if she ever confided in Cat. Those two were thick as thieves.
Before he could change his mind, he grabbed his key card and went next door to be neighborly.
She opened the door with hardly a trace of the anger Gannon knew she was feeling. But the telltale signs were there in the clench of her jaw, the flash in her eyes.
“Here,” he said, holding out a beer.
She looked down at it and then up again at him.
He wiggled the bottle, and when she took it, he brushed past her into her room.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He ignored her question. “How do you do it?”
She followed him but left the door open. “Do what?” she asked, frowning.
“Keep all that anger locked up like that?” he asked, sinking down on the yellow paisley couch next to the cloudy balcony doors.
“Come on in. Have a seat,” she muttered and took a swig of beer.
“I like seeing you pissed off. Makes me think you care.”
She gave him a long cool look. “Want to get to the point? I’ve got a lot of work to do tonight.”
“First tell me how you keep it all inside. Don’t you ever feel like you’re gonna blow?”
“I’ve had years of practice dealing with frustrating people,” she said with ice in her tone.
“I wouldn’t know any of them, would I?”
Paige arched a sexy eyebrow at him. “You may have met one or two of them.” The show of amusement evaporated quickly, and she retreated behind her walls, taking another long pull on the beer.
