Playing Dirty Read Online Free PDF Page A

ready to dig in and really rock and roll, he’d worked out ninety-nine percent of the kinks, thereby sidestepping a lot of blunders. But he’d made a serious one with Ava that night back in November.
    Yes, he’d owed her an apology for being such a shit in high school. But considering he’d attempted to give her one several times over the past decade, there had been no need to lead off with it the minute they’d come face-to-face. Her coolness that evening had made him rush the sorrys instead of waiting to get a feel for theemotional climate, a skill he’d developed early in his career and found handy in damn near every situation.
    The trouble was, he had everything riding on this project. In order to get it funded he’d had to accept a couple of contract clauses he ordinarily would have avoided like a flaming case of jock rash. So he’d gone in knowing he had to talk Ava into renting him the Wolcott mansion. It was that or scrap the project, because if he had to build sets to duplicate it, his budget would be a bust before he even got started. And considering he’d already signed the damn contracts, that wasn’t an option.
    Not that he’d hamstrung himself entirely. Never one to go into anything blind, he’d investigated before he’d signed anything, then deemed the risk worthwhile when he’d discovered the extent of Ava’s financial difficulties. And if securing the mansion had been his sole objective, things would have been business as usual.
    But while he prided himself on always hiring efficient crews, for this project he’d needed not just efficient but the very best. That was a nonissue when it came to industry personnel. He’d known exactly who to hire: the professionals he’d worked with most successfully in the past. The ones whose visions meshed best with his own.
    He always used a local as well, however, someone familiar with the area, to manage logistics and coordinate daily living for his cast and crew so he could focus his own attention where it belonged—on the production. To his dismay, not only had Ava turned out to be one of the owners, hers had also been the name that had kept cropping up when he’d started putting out feelers for a Seattle go-to, detail-oriented person with the best contacts. How ironic was that?
    Karma sure was a bitch. Still, he had bet on himself. Because while the risks of this project might be greater than all his other ventures combined, so were the rewards.
    The Wolcott documentary was his ticket to even bigger and better things. Velcro it to his past several achievements and maybe, just maybe, he’d finally get to take the script he’d been sitting on for three long years and turn it into the film he’d been dreaming of. The latter wouldn’t have a blockbuster-sized budget. But that only meant it would be all his to do the way he wanted to do it.
    Well, either that or it would be the flush heard around the world if his gamble failed and Ava Spencer decided to use the mansion or her position on his crew for payback. He had to admit it was a concern that had been scratching at the back of his mind ever since they’d signed the contracts. Yet, staring at the blustery weather outside the parlor window, he didn’t see how she could do it, given that she needed money almost as badly as he needed this documentary to succeed.
    Still, it had been naïve of him not to even consider the possibility that she had an agenda of her own before he’d all but handed her carte blanche to the most important project he’d ever worked. Which was surprising, considering naïveté hadn’t been a part of his makeup since the day he’d found out his dad wasn’t really his dad.
    “Boss!”
    Grateful for Beks’s bellow yanking him away from the pit into which that last thought likely would have landed him, he stalked over to the open pocket door and stuck his head out into the hall. “Yo!” That subject was a dead horse he had no desire to beat all over again.
    “Your