He was kissing her. He was kissing her, and Angelica couldn’t have pulled away if she’d wanted to. And god help her, she did not want to.

As his lips drifted to hers, she felt the pull between them like a physical force. His long fingers slid around her jawline, angling her head to meet his exploring lips. Her hands crept up to his shoulders without conscious thought, and her mouth opened under his to let their tongues slide against each other, tangling in a building frenzy.

Oh, god. This was Noah. Prickly, grumpy Noah, who admittedly had the finest body she’d ever seen and a chin you could light matches off of. They’d spent six weeks sniping at each other over every little thing. She’d thought he hated her. Apparently, his feelings were… something else.

She let her body move fully against his, feeling the edge of the countertop press into her back as an equally hard ridge in his jeans pressed against her front.

He made a sound, low in his throat, and the hand that wasn’t at her neck slid down her body agonizingly slow until it reached her ass. His big hands fit all the way around her curves. What else did he have that was big? she wondered, moaning against his lips while his fingers flicked the edge of her t-shirt up. As they crept toward the waistline of her jeans, her body hummed with electricity.

Wait. They shouldn’t be doing this.

Angelica pulled her hands from around his neck, put them on his shoulders, and pushed. “Wait. Noah.” The effort to unseal her lips from his and speak was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. She felt the coolness of the air between them like someone had slapped her in the mouth with a heavy bag of ice cubes.

“Um. What?” He leaned away, looking as dazed as she felt.

They had a contract. She didn’t sleep with people she did business with. And she still had to tell him about the crew. She and Jai had hammered out the details with the network over the last month; filming and construction were going to start in earnest tomorrow.

The camera crew had been over to survey the layout of the house all day. A few beers with the guys she’d be spending the next few months in close quarters with had seemed like a great icebreaker until Noah had showed up. And started kissing her.

She rested her forehead against his broad chest, inhaling his clean, sharp scent and trying to ignore his fingers creeping back up under her shirt. “I need to talk to you,” she said, and his fingers paused, then slid reluctantly back down, dragging sparks along her sensitive skin. She shivered, and he pressed against her, sliding his erection along her thigh before putting his hands at her waist and stepping back a fraction of an inch.

“About what?” He kissed her forehead when she raised her head. “If it’s condoms, I’m packing, I promise.”

She snorted. “How thoughtful of you.”

He had the grace to look embarrassed. “I didn’t plan—”

“I know you didn’t.” And she did, because Noah wasn’t like that. And come to think of it, neither was she. Everything about what they were doing was so out of character for her it wasn’t even funny.

But that’s not what she needed to discuss with him. Any talk of sex could wait. Right now, she needed to be straight with him and hope the tentative friendship they’d managed to carve out wouldn’t be too negatively impacted by her professional endeavors. The truth was. Noah wasn’t going to like what she had to tell him, and she didn’t relish the idea of going back to the Grumpy Noah version of him now that she’d had a taste of Sexy Noah.

“It’s not that,” she said, setting her palm to her forehead and breathing out a sigh. “I’ve been meaning to tell you about this.” She just hadn’t been able to bring herself to do it, not when he’d been practically pleasant once or twice.

And now—well, now it was too late, and she had to put the genie back into the bottle. The hard, chiseled, extremely attractive genie who still had his hands on her, sending energy short-circuiting through her body and making her short of breath.

“About what?” His eyes were starting to clear, the haze of attraction retreating into his customary frown.

“The filming.”

“What filming?”

She stepped out from between his arms, and he folded them as he watched her turn and fiddle with the coffee mugs in the drying rack next to the sink. She could feel his eyes boring into her shoulder blades. “I’ve signed on with Renovation Network Television to let them film my project.” There was silence from the looming presence behind her, so she soldiered on. “The crew will be on site for at least the next eight weeks, filming me and my construction crews as we do the renovation of this place.”

“You’re doing a reality series?”

“It’s not like I’m a Kardashian, Noah! It’s a home renovation show.”

“Let me get this straight. You’re going to be bringing construction crews and film crews around here at all hours of the day and night?”

“I mean, it’s not going to be at all hours—”

“Because you have such a great history of communicating with contractors.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.

That was too much. She whipped around and glared at him. “Are you seriously bringing that up again?”

“It happened, didn’t it?”

“And I made amends, Noah! You signed a damned contract!” She shoved her finger in his chest, glad of the reminder why she didn’t mix business with pleasure. “You were just telling me five minutes ago that you’re excited to start planting that hillside.”

“I am. I would just prefer not to be on camera while doing it,” he bit out.

“Nobody asked you to be on camera!”

Not that he wouldn’t look good, of course. She lost herself for a brief second in a fantasy of watching him on a giant movie screen, twenty feet tall.

“How the hell am I supposed to get any work done if you’ve got those jerks crawling all over the place?” The fantasy version of Noah on her mental movie screen scowled at her, and she jerked back to reality.

“They’re filming me, not you. They’ll be all over the house and primary grounds. I’ll make sure they know to stay out of your way.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m sure.”

“If it’s such a big deal, I’ll have them sign contracts,” she returned. “I hear you’re pretty into that.”

“Please. Like you Hollywood types have any interest in doing what you’re told.” There was dead silence for a moment as they both registered what he’d said. He raised his eyes to hers, and she couldn’t interpret the expression in them. “I—”

“—I think you should go,” she said as evenly as she could manage.

So much for Sexy Noah.

He pivoted without a word, and the screen door slammed behind him when he walked out.

Well. That had gone just about as well as she’d expected.

* * *

The next day, Angelica woke up both aroused and infuriated. Damn Noah Bradstone, anyway. She flung the covers away and shrugged into a tank top and stretchy, soft yoga pants. The camera crew wouldn’t be here for at least another two hours, so she had plenty of time before she had to strap herself into a real bra. Coffee was a much more urgent requirement.

She padded into the kitchen and bit the inside of her cheek as she passed the counter where he’d pressed into her last night. Her lips still felt soft, and she swore she could still taste him. She shook her head.

Best get the coffee and stop your fantasizing.

Angelica slammed beans into her grinder, then grinds into her press, gritting her teeth as she remembered each and every second of last night—both the good ones and the bad. It was probably just as well that he’d revealed what he really thought about “Hollywood types” since she’d been in danger of breaking her personal rules for a minute there.

Coffee made, she sat down at the island with her laptop. Forget Noah, she had work to do. She tabbed to the window that contained the renovation checklist she kept stored in the cloud and began editing her timeline. An hour and a half later, she heard the rumble of wheels on the drive.

“Shit!” she shrieked, racing up the stairs to her bedroom.

No sports bra had ever been taken off as quickly as Angelica’s was just now. It wasn’t often these days that she changed undergarments twice in the span of a couple of hours, but there was no way she wanted the people she’d be working with to see the flattened uni-blob her comfy old racerback turned her breasts into. It was practical, and good for sitting around the house, but it definitely wasn’t sexy, and it certainly didn’t make her look camera-ready. Next, she switched the tank top she’d been wearing for a tee with a picture of Scooby Doo and Shaggy on it, and the yoga pants for baggy boyfriend jeans with a strategically placed hole in the knee. Her hair could stay in a ponytail; Roger had said they’d have a beauty crew in tow when they arrived. Finally, she tucked her socks into her back pocket and scurried for the front door.

“Ready?” Roger asked. He was a muscular man in his thirties with windswept, dark brown hair and dimples hidden under the scruff of a painstakingly maintained ten o’clock shadow.

Not that he was a vain man, but sometimes Angelica wondered if Roger Mewes didn’t have a little extra help in that regard. The whiskers lining his jaw were just too damn perfect to be natural. She also thought he might visit a tanning salon once a week. It was sunny in California, but no one could maintain the sort of tan he sported with the hours he worked indoors. Suddenly, she couldn’t help but compare it to Noah’s California casual style, flannel shirt and real scruff included. Unfortunately for him, poor Roger just didn’t stack up.

“Yep. Come on in,” she said, stepping aside to welcome them all into her home, shambles though it may be.

As the crew tromped by her to set up their stationary equipment on the folding tables she’d stuck in the formal living room, she sat on the staircase to put her socks on.

“Ang?” The soft voice was familiar, and Angelica looked up in surprise.

“Leah! Nobody told me they’d talked you into this project!” She jumped up to hug the petite woman standing between two huge plastic cases marked MAKEUP in permanent black marker.

Leah Strange hugged her back. “I needed a change of pace, so it wasn’t too hard to convince me.” Her signature red hair had been chopped decisively into a pixie cut, just as flattering as the angled cut she’d sported the last time Angelica had seen her. Everything looked good on Leah. Perfect eyebrows over big brown eyes in skin that didn’t need the products she carried? Angelica had once heard another actress demand, “Just make me look like you!” in the makeup chair.

She tightened her arms around the smaller woman, then released her. “Please tell me you haven’t had another breakup.”

“Would if I could,” the other woman said cheerfully, a hint of her Southern accent still remaining. “But my Daddy says I’m descended from George Washington, so I don’t lie.”

Angelica laughed. Leah had been an assistant on the hair and makeup team for her first movie, and they’d formed an easy bond. They didn’t see each all that often, but Angelica had always been delighted on the rare occasions she’d slipped into a makeup chair and found Leah standing behind it.

“I’m surprised to find you doing TV work,” she said, picking up one of the makeup cases and heading to the kitchen. “Best light in here, probably.”

“Rumors are flyin’, honey, and I wanted to be in on the ground floor.” Leah’s tinkling laugh had always reminded Angelica of some kind of fairy. “Pun intended.”

“Rumors?”

“Anytime a celebrity does one of these renovation shows, there are questions, Ang.”

Angelica winced. “I wouldn’t call myself a celebrity.”

“Vanilla Ice did it.”

“And I’m definitely not Vanilla Ice.”

“Mmm. Thank goodness. I don’t think his highlights would look good on you.” Leah unsnapped the locks and flipped each case’s lid open with the practiced ease of a professional. “I called Jai.”

“Of course you did.”

“He told me you were making major changes.”

“Of course he did.”

“And, needing a break as I was, I made a few calls, and called in a few favors.”

Angelica snorted. Leah was at the top of her game, so she must really have wanted a break from L.A. Otherwise, there was no explanation why the talented woman had been willing to take what must have been a substantial pay cut. The RenoTV folks had probably been panting to hire her. It was a coup for them, but for her friend? Well, something must be up.

“Leah… is everything okay?”

“Sit.” Leah pushed Angelica down onto the stool next to the island. “Everything’s fine. Stop frowning, I need to look at your face,” she said, quickly flicking through the cases, tubes, and tins in her supplies, pulling a few things out as she went.

“But—”

“You’re not the only one who wants a change, honey.” Leah smoothed the skin around Angelica’s eyebrows with steady fingers, then frowned. “What’s this?” She traced around the edges of Angelica’s lips, and her eyebrows flew up. “Angelica!”

“What?” Angelica tugged her head away from her friend’s too-knowing gaze.

“Nobody told me I’d be covering up stubble tracks.” Leah smirked. “Who haven’t I met?”

“Nobody.”

“Somebody’s been awfully close to your face, for a nobody. Fresh, too.” Leah reached into her case for a concealer. “Can’t lie to your makeup girl. Last night? Rog said something…”

“I’m not surprised.” Angelica rolled her eyes. “He was ready to have a pissing contest right then and there.”

“Who?”

“Both of them.”

“Rog and…” Leah let the words trail off on a note of inquiry.

Angelica gave in with a sigh. “You’ll meet him soon enough. I’m sure he’ll come storming in here to yell at us before too long.”

“Sounds like a peach. What’s this paragon’s name?”

“Noah Bradstone. He lives next door.” Angelica waved a hand in the direction of Noah’s property.

“And he is….” Leah was a master interrogator, apparently.

“Infuriating, grumpy. Ridiculously attractive. Off limits.”

“To you, or to me?”

Angelica bit back the flow of unexpected jealousy. “Me. But I wouldn’t recommend him for you, either. He doesn’t have a high opinion of people from Hollywood. Or people in general, as far as I can tell.”

Leah grinned. “I look forward to meeting him.” She leaned forward, brush in hand. “Close your eyes.”

Angelica closed her eyes obediently and felt the expert application of liner and shadow happening. “What about Roger?”

“What about him?”

“Don’t act innocent with me. I remember when you dated.”

“That was years ago, Angelica.”

“Not that long.”

“At least four boyfriends ago, which is basically an eternity.”

“Normal people don’t measure time by relationships, Leah.”

Leah sniffed. “Normal is overrated. Hair next.”

Angelica opened her eyes. “Up or down?”

“Your hair, or my relationships?”

“My hair, you weirdo.”

Leah glanced down at a clipboard glued into the lid of her makeup case. “Says we’re doing preliminary walkthrough shots today, so let’s go for fabulous instead of feisty.”

“The glamorous celebrity leads you through a tour of her home?”

Leah laughed. “You got it.” She handed Angelica a sparkling hair pin. “Hold that, I’ll do a quick blowout.”

One quick spray and a noisy blowout later, Angelica looked in the mirror Leah held in front of her face. “You do good work, kid.”

“Call me kid and I’ll knock your kneecaps out,” Leah said sweetly.

“Only because that’s all you can reach.”

“Keep it up, Boobs McGrath. I’m the one making you look good today.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry.” Angelica grinned at her friend. “Are we ready?”

Leah nodded. “I’ll be on hand for touch-ups.”

“Sounds good. Time to go find Roger and remind him of your everlasting love.”

“You’re going to look like a raccoon tomorrow.”

“I’ll fit right in then.” She grinned impishly. “Have you been out to the shed yet?”

Leah followed her out of the kitchen, running a finger down the chair rail in the foyer and making a face when it came away covered in dust. “You know this place is a dump, right?”

“I do, but it’s my dump,” Angelica said with a firm nod. “And it’s going to be gorgeous. What you just did to my face?” She circled her head with her finger and waited for Leah’s nod. “I’m going to do that to this house.”

“You’re going to need a lot of concealer.”

“We call it drywall,” Angelica said with a grin. “And there’s a truckload being delivered tomorrow.”