Passion on Park Avenue (The Central Park Pact)

by Lauren Layne

“You can’t say it like that,” Audrey protested. “He’ll feel like he’ll have to turn in his man card if he says no.”

  “Perfect. Peer pressure for the win. What’s it to be, Cunningham, man card or Yankees?” Clarke asked.

  Naomi already knew what Oliver was going to do. Even without the man card threat, as a kid, he’d been obsessed with all things Yankees. Apparently the man was, too, because he raised his hand in a vote for the game, though he gave Audrey an apologetic wink as he did so that did something unpleasant to Naomi’s stomach.

  He was here as Claire’s date, was flirting with Audrey . . . it was like freaking fertilizer on the seed of jealousy that had been planted last weekend when she’d seen him with Lilah.

  Naomi frowned. Where was Lilah?

  “That’s three for the game,” Clarke said, turning his baguette to Naomi and Claire. “Ladies?”

  Audrey gasped in outrage as Claire reluctantly raised her hand in favor of the Yankees. “Claire Hayes!”

  “Sorry,” Claire said, not sounding sorry at all. “I’m kind of a baseball nut.”

  Audrey shot Naomi a pleading look. “You’re on my side, right?”

  “I don’t think it matters, babe,” Naomi said with a smile. “It’s already four to two.” Plus, Clarke had already gone straight for the drawer that held the TV remote and turned it on.

  “Fiiiiine,” Audrey said with an exasperated sigh as she glared at Clarke. “But I want that baguette sliced on the bias.”

  “Yeah, I’m not doing that,” Clarke said, one eye on the game as he unceremoniously plopped the baguette on the cutting board and began making rough cuts at the bread.

  Audrey accepted her defeat graciously as she pulled an apron over her head and began slicing tomatoes alongside her friend. Even losing the TV battle, she looked suspiciously happy, and Naomi’s eyes narrowed slightly on her friend’s back. The little sneak. She’d set up a couples’ dinner party but had ensured that she had the plastic safety of her BFF, while she and Claire had put themselves out there and brought an actual date.

  Except that wasn’t exactly going to plan, either. Dylan had joined Claire in front of the TV, and though Claire still looked a little skeptical of the guy, she really was a baseball nut, from the way they were talking RBIs and Golden Gloves and a bunch of other crap Naomi didn’t really care about.

  Which left her with . . . Oliver.

  Naomi glanced over, found him watching her. She picked up her champagne flute, moving closer to stand beside him.

  “Out of curiosity, what would your vote have been?” he asked, nodding toward the TV.

  She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t have a strong preference either way, but I will say it serves Audrey right.”

  “For?”

  Naomi pointed the base of her flute toward Clarke and Audrey. “She made me and Claire bring a date. Part of our whole move-on-from-Brayden thing, and she goes and brings her oldest friend. Chicken.”

  “So, you and Dylan with a Y. Still a thing?” He kept his voice low to match hers.

  Naomi shrugged, not about to tell him that her agreement to going out with Dylan in the first place had only been a knee-jerk reaction to seeing him with Lilah. And she definitely wasn’t about to tell him that she’d specifically used tonight to fulfill that date obligation because a dinner party felt preferable to spending one-on-one time with Dylan.

  “TBD,” she answered noncommittally. “What about you and Claire?”

  His eyes dragged to the blonde. “She got my number through a friend. Said she needed a no-strings companion to get a match-making friend off her back. I didn’t realize she meant Audrey until we got here.”

  “How’d Lilah feel about that?” Naomi asked casually, reaching forward and picking up a carrot off Audrey’s elaborate crudités platter.

  He said nothing until she forced herself to meet his gaze.

  “Lilah and I didn’t work out.”

  Naomi’s heart did something stupid, and she mentally shut down the idiotic organ. Remember who he is. Remember that he made your life miserable. Remember that he lied to save his dad and ruined your mom’s life.

  But it was getting harder to reconcile this man who seemed to reel her in with every encounter with the little boy who’d been a jerk. Plus, hadn’t Naomi known for years that her mother had made it her life’s mission to blame other people for her situation? If it hadn’t been the Cunninghams, it would have been someone else.

  “Did Audrey know you were bringing Dylan?”

  “Yeah, of course. Why?”

  He nodded back at the dining table behind them. She saw immediately what he meant. “Oh, Audrey.”

  He laughed. “Yeah.”

  Audrey had placed herself and Clarke at either end of the table—Naomi would bet that it wasn’t the first time Clarke had played her platonic plus-one in a game of setup. The name cards facing Naomi and Oliver read Claire and Dylan, which meant that Naomi and Oliver were seated on the opposite side of the table.

  Side by side.

  Naomi was going to kill Audrey.

  “We could switch them,” he said, looking at Naomi out of the corner of his eye. “Really mess with her plan.”

  “Tempting, but I’d never hear the end of it.”

  “True, and my mother would roll over in her grave. The woman used to spend hours planning her dinner table.”

  Naomi flinched at the mention of Margaret Cunningham, but Oliver was sipping his champagne and missed it.

  “Did Claire mention me in the invite?” Naomi asked curiously.

  He glanced down at her, his blue eyes landing on her mouth for a second too long before meeting her eyes. “She did.”

  “And you still came?”

  “Sure,” he said with a shrug. “What dude doesn’t want to spend Saturday night sitting next to a woman who hates his guts?”

  Oliver glanced down with a wry smile when she didn’t reply. “No denial, I see.”

  “Sorry.” She looked away from where she’d been staring absently at the table. “Was just wondering how we’re going to manage the wine with dinner. No mugs.”

  “Ah, now see?” Oliver said lightly. “We do have a thing.”

  “Quit making it weird.”

  “It’s hard for you, huh?” he said with faux sympathy.

  “What?”

  “Dealing with your attraction to me.”

  “Yes. Yes, very much. Which is why when Audrey asked me to bring a date tonight, I called Dylan instead of you.”

  “Yes, you seem very into him,” Oliver said with a deliberate look toward Dylan on the other side of the room.

  “And you into Claire.”

  “I never said I was into Claire.”

  Naomi’s heart tumbled in her chest, but just when she hoped he’d say more, Audrey came toward them. “Okay, here we are!” she announced proudly, bringing a platter of bruschetta to the counter. “I present my gorgeous tomatoes, as well as Clarke’s hack-job bread.”

  “It’s bread. It’s supposed to taste good, not look pretty,” Clarke protested.

  “It can do both.”

  Clarke shook his head and picked up a piece of the bread, taking an enormous bite and facing the group. “This is my bad, guys. I got her a cooking class for Christmas, and she’s been insufferable ever since.”

  Conversation turned briefly back to the Yankees, then some exhibit at the Met that Naomi could not have cared less about, and then, as the group began to loosen up with the wine flowing a bit more freely, onto more interesting topics. Most embarrassing TSA story (Claire had won, with an anecdote of her fourteen-year-old self enduring a male TSA agent rifling through her backpack stuffed mostly with maxi pads), and then back to the topic of museums, at which point everyone confessed they didn’t give a rat’s ass about the new exhibit.

  By the time Audrey pulled a butternut squash lasagna out of the oven and put Claire and Dylan to work taking food to the table, Naomi was just the tiniest bit tipsy, a little bit relaxed, a
nd having the best time she could remember in ages.

  She jumped at the brush of fingers against the nape of her neck, snapping her head up to give Oliver a startled look.

  “Easy,” he murmured. “I was just going to fix your dress. The tag’s sticking out.”

  “Great. Very classy, Naomi,” she muttered to herself. Honestly, this was the second time in a week this man had had to fix her clothes.

  She started to lift her hand, but his hand was already there, slipping beneath her hair once again, his fingers lightly brushing the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck as he gently adjusted the tag. And lingered.

  Naomi’s breath caught at the contact, just as it had the other night. When Dylan’s touch had done zilch, and when Oliver’s touch had kept her up half the night.

  She’d convinced herself it’d been a fluke.

  It wasn’t.

  She looked around to see if anyone had noticed, but Dylan and Claire had paused to watch a full-count pitch on the TV, and Clarke and Audrey were bantering about whether or not squash counted as a vegetable.

  The only person paying any attention to Naomi was . . . Oliver. And she saw that he knew. He knew exactly what his touch did to her. And yet there was no gloating in his gaze, no triumph, just awareness. Of her. Of them.

  He slowly pulled his hand out from under her hair. “There,” he said quietly. “All better.”

  No. No, it was not all better. Her pulse was all jumpy, her breath was a little staccato, and she didn’t even recognize herself.

  Naomi was always the seductress, never the seduced, and yet here she was, feeling distinctly fluttery about the one man she was determined to despise.

  “Okay,” Audrey said, “Dinnertime. TV off. My house, my rules.”

  “Yes, Mom,” Claire said, dutifully turning off the television.

  The group took their places at the table, and Naomi realized maybe she’d been wrong about Audrey’s placement of the name tags. Maybe she hadn’t been placed next to Oliver, so much as across from Dylan, making it easier to talk to her date.

  She knew this, not because she was actually talking to her date, but because Oliver was talking to his. Regardless of why Claire had asked Oliver tonight, or why he’d agreed, it was hard not to see that they got along marvelously. Apparently, they’d both gone to the same leadership camp back in the day, and Claire, a couple of years older, had been his group leader. Apparently, they had a mutual friend who’d recently been arrested for growing pot at her Hamptons home. Apparently, they both loved spy movies.

  The rest of the group laughed at the trip down memory lane. And just as Naomi was pep-talking herself that she wasn’t jealous, that she didn’t care that he didn’t even seem to be aware of her, Oliver glanced over and caught her eye. And winked.

  And she knew, with that one should-have-been-cheesy-but-was-unbearably-sexy wink, that he was right.

  She was attracted. They did have a thing.

  And she didn’t have a clue what to do about it.

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12

  You didn’t have to walk me home,” Naomi said, pulling the collar of her jacket up around her ears and shoving her hands into her pockets.

  “Probably not,” Oliver said, tilting his head up slightly to look at the night sky.

  She let out a startled laugh. “I guess we’re past the point of nice platitudes?”

  “Naomi, you haven’t given me anything close to a nice platitude in the time I’ve known you.”

  “Well, that’s true.” Her shoulders hunched slightly. “So why did you?”

  “Why did I what?”

  “Offer to walk with me.”

  “Did I offer?” he mused. “Or did your friends point out eight hundred times that we were headed the same direction?”

  Naomi laughed. “Yeah, sorry about that. I thought it was just Audrey, but Claire seems to have joined her in the matchmaking efforts.”

  “They care about you.”

  “Yeah. Well, that and we sort of made a pact.”

  “A pact?” He glanced down at her.

  “So, you know that we were all . . . involved with Brayden?”

  He nodded.

  “We didn’t know it. Obviously. Not until the day of the funeral.”

  Jesus. Oliver winced. “You met at his funeral?”

  “Sort of. We all meant to go to the funeral, but instead we found ourselves in Central Park. We had the same shoes, and, well, whatever, that doesn’t matter. We were all a little adrift after realizing how thoroughly Brayden had used us, and we agreed to help each other avoid falling into the same trap.”

  “That seems like an anti-matchmaking scheme. Claire and Audrey all but linked our hands before shoving us out the door.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself—I suspect that’s more steering me away from Dylan than it is steering me toward you.”

  That bugged him more than he cared to admit, but her friends were right. Dylan was no good for her. Oliver nearly told her as much, but she spoke first.

  “Who’s with your father tonight?” Naomi asked.

  Oliver inhaled as reality settled back down around him. As he realized he was in no position to enter a relationship. Not with Lilah. Not with Claire. Definitely not with Naomi.

  He’d tried, once, to balance a woman and his father. It had worked for a while. His ex had been sweet, mild mannered . . . and completely uninterested in being with a man who had a sick father.

  “Janice,” he replied, answering her question. “She usually takes weekends off, but every now and then I’ll pay her extra for a weekend night.”

  “How often does that happen?”

  He looked down at her as they walked, surprised at the question. “Why do you ask?”

  Her shoulders lifted. “Just seems like it must be hard. Giving up all your nights and weekends.”

  They were close to their building, and though not quite ready for the night to end, he was equally confident that she’d dart away from him the second she got close to the safety of her apartment, so Oliver slowed to a stop on the quiet sidewalk.

  She stopped as well, giving him a questioning look.

  Oliver shoved his hands into his pockets, matching her posture in a protective stance against the brisk fall wind.

  “It’s not always easy,” he admitted. “I never pictured that my weekend nights at thirty would be spent picking up hard-boiled eggs from the floor and answering my father’s repeated questions as to whether or not his son—me—is home from soccer practice yet. But . . .”

  He looked over her shoulder for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “What can you do, you know? He’s my dad.”

  “Do you miss him? I mean, how he was before?”

  Oliver blew out a breath at the question, and she quickly brushed aside the question. “I’m sorry. We don’t have to—”

  “He was an asshole,” Oliver blurted out.

  He’d gotten plenty of platitudes since Walter’s diagnosis, but even the Cunninghams’ closest friends hadn’t dared speak of the real truth.

  That maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world that the old Walter Cunningham was mostly lost to the world.

  “He was difficult,” Oliver amended slightly. “Cold. Demanding. Selfish.”

  Naomi blinked. “Wow. That’s—”

  “Honest?” he said with a quick laugh.

  “Unusual,” she said softly. “Most people I know idolize their parents, at least a little.”

  “I used to. When I was a kid, I wanted to be him.”

  “What happened?”

  Oliver’s shoulders lifted and fell. “I grew up. Started to develop as my own person and realized who I wanted to be.”

  And it sure as hell hadn’t been a womanizing workaholic who’d carried on more affairs than Oliver could even remember, often right under his wife’s nose.

  “And yet, you’re still taking care of him,” Naomi said, a note of question in her voice.

  “Yeah, well. The person I decid
ed to be wasn’t one who’d walk away from a family member who needed him.”

  “Noble.”

  He smiled and stepped toward her. “That almost sounded like a compliment.”

  “Did it?” she asked, pursing her lips. “You must have heard it wrong.”

  He stepped even closer, wanting to pump his fist in victory when she didn’t step back. “Why?” he asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you so determined to remind yourself that you don’t like me?” He searched her face, struck again by the fact that it seemed familiar, though he knew he didn’t know her. Men didn’t forget women with faces like this one.

  Naomi met his gaze steadily. “I have reasons. I’m working on them.”

  He let out a surprised laugh at her honesty. “May I know the reasons?”

  She lifted her chin and answered his question with a question. “Why did you push me through to the next round? Of the co-op board. I was rude to you, and you pushed for me to live in the building anyway. Why?”

  Oliver smiled and stepped even closer, just inches separating them now. “I have reasons.” His gaze dropped to her full mouth. “I’m working on them.”

  Naomi’s face tilted to his, and for a moment Oliver’s breath caught with an unfamiliar sensation. Want, yes. Desire, sure. But this moment was different. Fuller somehow, as though this woman belonged to him not just for right now, not just for a night, but for always.

  She felt it, too. He knew she did, because for a moment her eyes widened in surprise and then narrowed slightly in wariness.

  Don’t, he thought in frustration. Don’t turn away from this.

  “He’s no good for you,” Oliver blurted out, because it was either speak his mind or kiss her, and though the latter was a hell of a lot more appealing, instinct told him this wasn’t the moment.

  “Who?”

  He gave her a look. She pulled to a stop and glared at him. “You don’t even know Dylan.”

  “Neither do you.”

  “I—”

  “He spent half the evening pumping your friends for information about you. And then when he didn’t get what he wanted, he left for the airport instead of seeing you home,” Oliver pointed out.

  “He has a shoot in Dallas tomorrow afternoon.”