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two-year-old.
    “All I need to do is make two phone calls, and everything I said to Jamaal will be the absolute truth,” he told her.
    That stopped her. “You’re telling me Susie McCoy is ready to sign?”
    “Provided Jericho is cast as Virgil Laramie.”
    There was a sudden sharp pain directly behind her right eye. “We need to talk about this, Victor. I’m not sure you understand exactly—”
    He pulled her close. “Great,” he murmured, kissing her neck. “Let’s talk about Beaumont.” He kissed her again, this time expertly catching her mouth with his. His lips were soft and warm, and he tasted faintly of cigarettes and the single glass of wine he must have had at lunch.
    And for one one hundredth of a second, Kate let herself enjoy the sennation. God, how long had it been since she’d last had a lover? Three years? Or was it four?
    Four. It had been nearly four years since she’d ended her relationship with John Bittler. And what she’d had with John had been so polite and reserved. It had been nothing like the madly passionate wildness she’d shared with Victor seven long years ago.
    But Kate knew that her ex-husband, as exciting as hewas, couldn’t give her anything more than great sex. And if there was one thing she’d learned by being married to him, it was that she wanted more than that. She wanted a whole lot more.
    And she wanted to keep Victor as a friend. She liked having him as a friend.
    She shook herself free from his arms. “No,” she said. “No, no, no. I’m not going to sleep with you. Consider that a given. An unchangeable, indisputable fact. Two plus two equals four, E equals MC squared, you and I are not going to get it on. Don’t you dare try to confuse things.”
    “Actually, I thought it would bring clarity to the situation.” He was grinning at her. “I figured if I could get you to start saying ‘oh, baby, yes, baby,’ some of that general agreement might carry over into our discussion about Jericho.”
    Kate couldn’t keep from laughing. “Spoken like the absolute, low-down toad you truly are.”
    “Hey, relax. I was only kidding.”
    “And I wasn’t.”
    He sat down on the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table. “So. Jericho Beaumont. I want him. You don’t. How are we going to deal with this?”
    She sat down across from him. “Pistols at dawn?”
    “Name your second, babe.”
    Kate stared at him. He was going with her joke, but there was a certain unnerving seriousness in his eyes. Was it really possible that he wanted Jericho badly enough to walk away from this project?
    Victor shifted in his seat. “Not to intentionally change the subject, but as long as I’m airing my grievances, I’m still waiting for you to set up a time for me to meet with the writer—what’s-his-name. Nick Chadler.”
    Kate studied her nails. “He’s still out of the country.”
    He propped his hands up behind his head. “It’s beenmonths, and I still haven’t met this guy. I need to discuss some revisions. The ending’s not right.”
    She looked up at him in shock. “Ex
cuse
me? You’re planning to change the ending?”
    The irony was incredible. The studio that had hired Victor to direct his last project,
Teardrop Twenty
, hadn’t liked the way that film had ended. They’d ordered Victor to change it, and when he’d refused, they’d hired someone else to do it for them. And the movie he’d worked on, bled for, slaved over for nearly two years had been completely changed, and he’d had no legal right even to protest.
    Teardrop Twenty
was the reason Victor had been so eager to move into the realm of independent productions. It was the reason he’d jumped at the chance of directing
The Promise.
Because when an independent film was made, funding came from outside of the Hollywood studio system. The studios were only involved at the very end, after the movie was in the can. At that point, if a studio liked a particular film, they could offer to buy it and