Unlikely
Unlikely
There are only two things Sophie Reid doesn’t do: lawyers and sex.
When sexy lawyer Ryan Becker stumbles into her life, her first two thoughts are “no,” and “definitely no.” After Sophie and Ryan rescue a dog from certain death on the Hollywood Freeway, they share one smoldering kiss. Sophie knows a potential train wreck when she sees it and leaves the dog and Ryan at the pound knowing she’ll never see either of them again.
Poor kid turned corporate attorney, Ryan vowed he’d get an education, succeed, and be welcomed in the front door of the most stately homes in Beverly Hills. Now that his career is on an upward trajectory, he is ready to settle down. Unfortunately, the women he has been meeting haven’t set his heart racing.
Enter: Sophie.
A master of persuasion by profession, Ryan convinces Sophie to pursue their undeniable mutual attraction. But Ryan’s quest to be a success at the very occupation she reviles rankles her.
When a Hollywood union strikes, Ryan and Sophie find themselves on opposite sides of the bargaining table. Can their sparks in the bedroom overcome their standoff in the boardroom?
f
or Amie
One
Sophie Reid’s car inched onto the Laurel Canyon entrance ramp, slowing to the usual crawl to enter the Hollywood freeway heading east. The hot, dry Santa Ana winds blew across the San Fernando Valley, causing waves of heat to shimmer on the asphalt. She flipped down her visor and looked at herself in the mirror while waiting for the cars to creep through the traffic light at the top of the ramp. She snapped her fashionably oversized shades over her gray eyes and smiled, knowing she looked good enough to catch everyone’s attention. She pushed the appropriate button with her French manicured finger, and the convertible top glided down with a whisper.
On a whim, she had dyed her chin length bob sunflower yellow to match the color of her new Volkswagen Beetle convertible, and she felt like showing off a little. She’d gone braless as usual, and wore a raspberry-colored Henley top adorned with rhinestone buttons. She even gave a pageant style wave to the person behind her who had laughed and pointed at her vanity license plate. EW A BUG. It got her, and the car, a lot of attention, and she liked it that way.
When more than a few minutes had passed and Sophie hadn’t moved but a few centimeters, she was sorely tempted to bang ineffectively on her horn to try to get the cars to move faster. At this snail’s pace, her good mood was fading fast. She had left her house with little time to spare, forgetting about the ominous back
-to-school traffic that jammed the already clogged freeways every September. Now she started to worry that her late arrival would delay the filming of the television show she worked on. The idea of an entire production team of at least hundred people waiting for her arrival made her hands sweat. Sophie shunned a lot of traditional values, but punctuality was not among them.
After what seemed an interminable wait, she finally moved from the entrance ramp onto the actual 101 freeway only to find the traffic at almost a complete standstill. She looked at the car’s cute little dashboard clock and knew she was going to be very, very late to the studio for her call time unless she did the improbable
—got across six lanes of stopped traffic and onto the Ventura freeway to speed her way to Burbank. Looking at the clock again, then her watch, as if the large-faced man’s timepiece on her wrist would give her a different time, she groaned in frustration.
Berating herself for leaving too late and taking the freeway rather than the street, she fished in the large orange tote bag on the passenger seat for her mobile phone, ready to make her excuses. She noticed that almost everyone was out of his or her car, and the freeway had come to a grinding halt.
“Hey, what’s going on?” she called to an older woman who had exited her Bentley and nimbly sprinted past several cars wearing a designer business suit and four-inch Jimmy Choo heels.
“There’s a dog on the road,” she said breathlessly, only pausing for the briefest of moments to answer. “We’re trying to catch him before he gets run over.”
It was then that she saw it. A little red fur ball of a dog ran in between the stopped cars, and dodged every single one of the people who tried to catch him—or her. She stopped worrying whether she would be able to complete the actors’ make-up in time for the filming. The long-dormant animal lover in Sophie awoke, and propelled her out of the car to join in the canine pursuit. The thought of seeing an innocent dog killed on the road scared the hell out of her. With no regard for her personal safety, she ran after the dog. After five minutes darting around the freeway, she and a tall, impossibly broad-shouldered, sandy-haired man were able to corral the dog between themselves and their cars. When he moved to grab the dog, it ran toward her, and she triumphantly scooped the warm body into her arms. The dog’s heart beat a million miles a minute against hers. She cradled the scared reddish-brown puppy and tried to calm it.
The handsome stranger waved at the frantic Angelenos, “She’s got him.” He paused, looking at her hair, then her car, and smil
ed. “Hey, Sunflower,” he said, nicknaming Sophie for her bright yellow hair. “You want me to take him?”
Sophie buried her nose in the dog’s fluffy head, breathing in the warm dog smell. “No I’ve got him. Can you just hold him while I put my top up?” After handing over the wiggly bundle of fur, she sat back down in her car and raised the convertible’s roof to keep the dog secure when she got back on the road. She didn’t think her heart, or the dog’s, could take a repeat performance. When she turned around to take the dog, a cheer went up from the crowd who were now getting back into their cars, and getting back to the business of driving to work and school.
Their hands touched only briefly when the man handed over the dog, but she felt a jolt that zinged her to the tips of her wild berry toenails. The energy, decidedly sexual, was nothing like she’d ever experienced. It traveled up her arm and zapped her somewhere down low. She grasped the dog-cum-security blanket more securely and looked into the stranger’s midnight blue eyes for the first time.
He was looking at her intently, curiously, sizing her up. It was probably the hair, she figured, not her. Men like him did not look twice at women like her. Her multiple piercings and tattoos shocked a lot of conservative types. For just a moment she forgot the furry bundle wiggling in her arms. She felt an unexpected attraction to the man dressed in a starched button down shirt and pressed slacks. His whole demeanor screamed uptight lawyer or bean counting CPA
—just the kind of guy she worked to studiously avoid.
The traffic started moving. To be safe, they both retreated to their cars, but Sophie could not shake the strong and instant connection she felt to the stranger.
He seemed just as bewildered. “Hey, Sunflower, I didn’t get your name.”
She smiled, trying to hide the shivers he caused. Her usual sarcastic rejoinder froze on her lips. “I’ll be fine. Thanks, really, thanks for your help,” Sophie said, her gravelly voice more husky than usual, deliberately leaving the question unanswered. She cut the exchange short, knowing that any further conversation with this guy, no matter how handsome his strong features were, no matter how well he filled out the conservatively cut clothes, was a bad, bad idea. She placed the dog on the passenger seat with only an inkling of regret that she hadn’t found out his name.
The dog scooted over the gearshift and into the cramped backseat, making itself into as small a ball as possible. In the rearview mirror, she could see the puppy was shaking uncontrollably. She needed to do something quickly. The young stars of her TV show could wait. The dog couldn’t.
Unsure of where to go or what to do, Sophie pulled off the next exit at Tujunga Avenue and parked in the shade of a leafy ficus to gather her thoughts. Quickly, she flipped through her mental file, realizing she’d often passed an emergency veterinary clinic on Ventura when driving down the boulevard. Mentally crossing her fingers, she drove south along Tujunga taking a right on Ventura
—the clinic was exactly where she remembered, and she parked across the street. Carefully, she pried the quivering puppy from the backseat and held the collarless dog as tightly as she dared crossing the busy street.
Now he’d gone stalker. Ryan Becker had never followed a woman before without her knowledge. Today did not seem like a good day to start his career as a creepy guy who couldn’t take no for an answer, but here he was. He tried to convince himself that this was different. He felt bad for that dog, and didn’t think it was right to leave the responsibility to that yellow-haired woman just because she’d been the one to catch the dog.
Sophie was standing at the door of the clinic trying to figure out how she was going to lever open the heavy door and hold on to the dog at the same time when a strong arm pulled the handle for her. She looked back just in time to see the man from the freeway holding the door for her.
“Hello again, Sunflower
, I couldn’t let you go through this alone,” the attractive stranger said, his near perfect smile a little awkward.
Part of her was secretly pleased to see him
—if that tingly feeling in her belly was anything to go by. But she was also annoyed because the stranger being here made it much harder to ignore or forget the feelings he’d so quickly aroused in her. The two feelings warred within her for a moment, but she couldn’t decide which won the battle, so instead of deciding, she stepped into the clinic’s waiting room. He followed her in and, avoiding the crush of people near the reception counter, sat down on the solid wooden benches along the wall.
Sophie turned and looked directly into his dark blue eyes, sizing him up.
“Mmmm…a big, strong guy like you can surely handle him while I check in,” she said, handing him the dog before he could protest.
As soon as he gathered the distressed dog on his lap and made a space for himself on the bench, it promptly urinated on his very neatly pressed dress pants. One of the clinic staff people rushed over with paper towels and a spray bottle of disinfectant, and Sophie unsuccessfully hid her laugh behind her hand at the way the man was holding the dog under its front legs like it was a smelly baby, his arms outstretched as far as they would go.
Though she wanted nothing more than to snatch up the wiggling dog and send the nerve-jarring hunk on his way, Sophie held her ground. It was far more interesting to see what he would do next. She predicted he would make up a bogus excuse and be out of the clinic in a heartbeat—Sophie was one hundred percent sure this man did not get urinated on too often.
To her surprise, he handled the incident with aplomb. He blotted his pants with one of the proffered terry cloth towels, then wrapped the small dog gently in another towel and placed it back on his lap. She pulled her gaze from the commotion surrounding the man when the receptionist’s voice caught her attention. At the scrub-garbed woman’s request, she took the clipboard and filled in her contact information. When she came to the place where she had to put in a name for the dog, she hesitated a moment and then wrote in “Sasha.” It wasn’t that she didn’t plan to return the dog to its rightful owner, who would, of course, know the dog’s real name, it was just that calling a dog “It” was too impersonal.
She sat down next to the man and scratched the dog between the ears, loving the feel of the thick, soft fur under her fingers. It had been years since she’d stroked a dog like this. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it.
The man pulled his right hand from under the dog and reached out to shake hers. “I don’t think we’re exactly strangers anymore. I’m Ryan Becker, by the way.” Sophie shook his hand, his grip firm and sure, all the while giving him a cool appraising look.
“I’m… ” As she was about to respond, the rap song ringtone of her cell phone interrupted. She reluctantly extracted her hand from his. “Hey, Sam,” she answered, speaking into the phone. “I’m so sorry…did you get my message? No…can you take care of the kids today? I’m having a bit of an emergency…I’ll explain later… Okay, bye,” she said flipping the phone closed.
Ryan was crestfallen by the sudden turn of events. This woman, to whom he was strangely attracted, wasn’t even available. It sounded like she was married and had kids, for Christ
’s sake. He looked pointedly at her ring finger. It was devoid of any ornamentation, although many of her other fingers were covered with thick silver bands. Maybe she was the kind of woman who shunned the idea of a wedding band. She certainly didn’t appear conventional by any other measure.
Had he severely misjudged what had happened back there on the freeway? What had he been thinking
, following her? Her husband would surely take a serious dislike to Ryan’s stalker behavior. The lawyer in him knew that he should diffuse the situation before it got out of hand, especially now that she knew his name and could give the police a good description. He strictly adhered to the cliché that the best defense was a good offense.
He absently stroked the puppy while looking at her. “Um, so your husband Sam is home taking care of your kids today?” he asked tentatively.
Sophie laughed aloud then. She couldn’t keep it in, even though his handsomely chiseled face looked so disappointed. She hadn’t enjoyed this kind of hearty, belly-deep laugh in a long time. Imagining herself with a husband and kids tickled her pink. When she stopped snorting and giggling, she looked at Ryan. “Sam is my very, very gay assistant. I’m the key makeup artist on a kids’ cable television show. The ‘kids’ I was referring to are the older-than-their-years young adult actors who play teenage kids on the show.”
Ryan smiled
—with relief?—and had just opened his mouth to say something when a man came in with a tiny Jack Russell terrier puppy.
In response to the receptionist, he said, “I don’t know how old she is. Some teenagers were selling the dog for drug money at a gas station in the desert
—we gave them a hundred bucks just to save the dog.”
She scribbled something on a pad of paper. “Name?” she asked, her voice an impatient monotone.
“We’re calling her Jane Russell,” the man said, smirking.
Sophie couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. She was relieved that the dog was okay, but the up and down emotions of waiting in the emergency ward were quickly getting to her. She could only hope that no dog came rushing in on a gurney, ER style. She sat quietly next to Ryan while the large flat screen TV quietly played a twenty-four hour news channel.