Carly Phillips - Hot Property

It was all Roper could do not to laugh, watching his normally composed mother fidget and fuss under a man’s attention.

Half an hour later, they’d finished coffee and dessert. When Roper asked for a check, he discovered that while taking his phone call, Harrison had apparently also made arrangements to pay the entire bill. Roper thanked the man. He wasn’t all that bothered, since he had the definite feeling there would be plenty of opportunities for Roper to return the favor.

Harrison didn’t strike him as a man who gave up easily.

They made their way to the street. Roper held on to Amy’s hand, not wanting her to hail a cab and disappear before he had a chance to talk to her alone.

But he managed to catch up to his brother when they reached the sidewalk. “Hang out for a few minutes, I want to discuss something important with you, okay?” he asked.

Ben didn’t reply.

“It’s good news for you, so chill,” Roper muttered.

“Thank you for a lovely dinner,” Amy said to the director, probably to distract everyone’s attention from Roper and Ben.

“My pleasure. I’ve been wanting to meet the people who are close to Cassie. Perhaps next time Sabrina and Kevin can join us, as well,” he said.

“Sabrina will definitely want to check things out for herself,” Ben said.

Cassandra flipped her pashmina scarf around her shoulders. “I think Harrison will be back in L.A. long before we can arrange everyone’s schedules,” she said.

“You think wrong,” Harrison said. “I’ve freed myself up for the foreseeable future. Nothing is more important to me than you.” His voice grew deep, making Roper shift uncomfortably on the sidewalk.

Beside him, Amy squeezed his hand, seeming to understand.

“You mean, convincing me to take the role of someone’s mother and grandmother. On TV.” Cassandra straightened her shoulders in a haughty display, but beneath the pride, Roper saw the fear.

He suddenly understood. His beautiful mother was afraid that if she took the role, she’d be acknowledging her own mortality.

Harrison stepped forward and clasped her hand in his. “I meant what I said, Cassie. Nothing is more important to me than you.”

The two stared at each other, the silence only broken by the honking of a car horn and the screeching of tires.

“Should we leave them alone?” Amy whispered.

Ben shrugged. “Seems like it.”

Roper was about to agree when his mother’s voice rose higher. “Like I’m going to believe you aren’t sweet-talking me in order to get me to take this godforsaken part. I’m nobody’s fool,” she said, before stepping into the street to hail a cab.

Before anybody could react, a yellow car pulled up and Cassandra Lee placed herself inside. And then she was gone.

Harrison turned to Roper, Amy and Ben, completely unflustered. “So happy to meet you,” he said. “We’ll have to do it again sometime.”

Ben inserted himself between Roper and the director. “I’d be happy to. There’s a script idea I’ve been toying with. A ballplayer who couldn’t make it in the minors due to a tragic past.”

Harrison nodded, listening politely. “Call me and we’ll talk,” he said to Ben.

“Will do.” Ben then took off down the street, his wave telling Roper exactly what he could do with his request.

Harrison turned back to Roper. “It was good to meet you, too,” he said, extending his hand.

Roper inclined his head and shook the other man’s hand. “She’s a complicated woman,” he said of his mother.

“Always was.” Harrison’s smile spoke of deep understanding for Cassandra’s ways.

“Are you really here indefinitely?” Roper asked.

Harrison nodded. “As long as it takes,” he said, then turned to Amy. “A pleasure.” He lifted her hand for a kiss.

“Same here,” she said, her cheeks pink.

He turned and strode down the street, hands in his leather jacket pockets, whistling as he walked.

“Hmm.” Roper stared after the man, at a loss for words. “Nothing about tonight was what I expected.”

“I bet not. Your brother is a character,” she said.

“He was too pushy with Harrison, too crude with Mom and too eager to get away from me.” He glanced at the dark sky thickened with clouds. “Frustrating,” he muttered. “So what did you think of Harrison Smith?”

“A very interesting man,” Amy said, her eyes sparkling with intrigue. “I know I’ve only recently met your mother, but I can’t imagine anybody flustering her the way Harrison does.” Amy rubbed her hands together briskly.

She obviously still wasn’t used to the cold. “I’ve known her forever and I’ve never seen anything like it, either.” He flagged an empty taxi.

The cab slowed to a stop in front of them. Roper held the door open so Amy could slide inside before joining her. She gave her address to the driver and Roper, exhausted from his day, decided not to argue.

“Does it bother you? That he’s so obviously interested?” Amy asked.

Roper didn’t have to think about his answer. He shook his head. “Not as long as the man’s feelings are real and he isn’t using her reaction to him as a means to get her to take the role.”

The role, as well as the man, really had to be right for Cassandra Lee. Roper would have to do some digging into the director’s past and make sure he was good enough for Roper’s mother.

“Well, he seems genuine,” Amy said.

“Says the woman who was ready to fall at his feet,” Roper said, laughing.

She playfully smacked his shoulder. “I was not. I could see your mother’s dilemma clearly, that’s all. Harrison is a charming man.”

“A mix of Sean Connery and Jack Nicholson and a pit bull. Is that what you like in a guy? A bulldozer?” Roper asked.

“That’s an interesting question.” Amy leaned her head back and glanced at him. “I haven’t thought about it, really. I think it’s all about chemistry and whether, like you said, the man is the real thing. The rest should come naturally.” Her voice dropped lower, thicker, making him think she was referring to them.

Or maybe that’s just what he wanted to believe.

Inside his pocket, his cell phone rang, interrupting the dark intimacy of the back of the cab, and Roper groaned. He pulled it out of his pocket. “What is it?” he asked.

“Now do you understand why I can’t take the role or be alone with him?” His mother didn’t bother to say hello first. “He wants to have lunch tomorrow to discuss the part. I need you there.”

Her voice was loud enough for Amy to hear, and she groaned, too.

Roper rolled his eyes. By the time his mother let him interrupt her long enough to say he’d discuss lunch with her later tonight, the taxi had pulled up to Amy’s building. While he was hanging up the phone, she’d thanked him and promised to call him from the office tomorrow to discuss mail forwarding among other things.

He’d planned to walk her in and kiss her good-night. He’d have settled for just kissing her right there in the cab.

Instead, the opportunity to segue into any kind of a kiss was lost. He slammed his hand onto the torn leather backseat in frustration, then gave the cabbie his address.

The life of an orphan suddenly seemed appealing, he thought wryly.

AFTER LAST NIGHT, AMY realized she needed a new plan of action for Roper, and by the late afternoon, she had one in place.

Still, as she sat at her desk, she couldn’t help but take one last look at the daily papers. The Post lay on top of the pile. Metro Jock Receives Major Shock. The article went on to discuss the frustrating news Roper had received from his doctor and how unconfirmed rumors had him pushing back his start date to weeks after the start of spring training.

She called her secretary on the intercom. “Kelly?”

“Yes?”

“Do me a favor? Please pull all the most recent sightings and blurbs about Roper on the Internet, TV and radio and make sure I have copies before I leave?” She wanted to take a look at where Roper had been when he was sighted and ask him to think about whom he’d spoken to each time. She needed to see if there was a connection or common denominator. Clearly someone was out to punish Roper. But whether it was Buckley or the crazy fan or someone in his personal circle, she had no idea.

“How the hell do they find out about these things?” Amy asked in frustration.

“Good question. I don’t got an answer, either,” Yank Morgan said as he entered her office without knocking, cane in hand, fluffy dog at his side.

“Hi, Yank.”

“Hi, girlie. How are you doin’?”

“Fine if not for these.” She ran her hand over the stack of newspapers. “Did you see that Frank Buckley’s been picked up by satellite radio with a corresponding TV deal? He won’t just be seen and heard in New York. The whole country will get to experience the foul man.”

Yank nodded. “Lola read it to me this morning. Don’t fret about what you can’t change and change what you can. That’s what I always say. In other words, forget about Buckley the Bastard.”

“I would if the media would let me.” She flipped over the paper that had Buckley’s deal on the back and picked up the Daily News. It, too, had a blurb about Roper’s life. “Which metro jock was spotted with his lady of the moment and his famous actress mother at an intimate family dinner at Kelly’s restaurant? Could wedding bells be in the picture for either couple?”

“Argh!” She threw this edition into the trash.

“You must’ve just read the one about dinner. How was it anyway? I’ve been meaning to tell Lola I want to eat there one day soon.”

Amy appreciated the subject change. “Delicious. You’ll enjoy it,” she promised him. “So are we all set?”

“You’re ready to go. Our boy thinks you’re picking him up for a business lunch with me. The limo knows to head straight up to the lodge. Dealing with the fallout is up to you.” Yank let out a loud laugh that startled Noodle from where she’d plopped onto the floor.

“I can handle it,” she said, repeating her new mantra, the one she’d adopted for maneuvering in the Hot Zone world. After all, she could think of many times she’d taken a hard stand with her mother, going so far as to lock her in her own home, just to keep her out of trouble.

“Of course you can. I just came by to wish you luck,” Yank said. He turned, whistled and walked out, dog toddling after him.

Amy gave a silent prayer for success.

Between the stress of Roper’s injury and therapy, the constant fan backlash, his mother’s daily drama and the tracking of his every movement in the paper, Amy knew she was doing the right thing.

She just knew Roper would never see it the same way.

CASSANDRA DEFINITELY NEEDED a new plan of action to avoid Harrison. Running from L.A. hadn’t helped. He’d followed her. She didn’t know how much longer she could continue to convince John to act as a buffer and she knew better than to include Ben again. Harrison had told her Ben wanted to discuss a script with him. Her son was shameless and would use whoever crossed his path. She understood she wasn’t blameless in how Ben had turned out. She’d babied him for too long. But she understood him, too, and she couldn’t just cut him off, which was why she kept turning to her oldest son to help.

But who was going to help her with her director? The man was persistent in the extreme. He wanted her to return to L.A. with him as a couple and he wanted her to take that role. Television. Could she hold her head up in Hollywood after such a huge step down?

Cassandra didn’t know what she feared more, the role he wanted her to play on screen or the part he wanted to play in her life.

ROPER GLANCED OUT THE tinted window of the car Amy had hired to pick him up and take them for lunch. He still didn’t understand why he couldn’t have just met her and Yank at the restaurant for this sudden meeting, but she’d insisted. Now, as he sat beside her, she remained eerily quiet.

“What restaurant are we going to, anyway?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I’m new in the city and I’m bad with names. I can’t remember,” she murmured. Her gaze strayed out the window and she drummed her fingertips on the hard leather armrest beneath the window.

Taking her cue, he sat in silence, watching as the scenery changed from the luxury shops on Madison Avenue to more eclectic scenery as they made their way farther north.

It wasn’t until the driver turned right onto 102nd Street and merged onto FDR Drive that he spoke up. “We’re leaving the city?”

“Looks that way.” She didn’t meet his gaze.

His gut churned with anxiety. He braced his hand on the seat in front of him and leaned forward so the driver would know he was talking to him. “Excuse me, but where are we headed?”