by Lauren Layne
True to his word, Oliver was back in five minutes, and Naomi did a double take around a mouthful of chow mein. “Are you wearing . . . sweats?”
He grabbed a plate and began loading food onto it. “You sound surprised. What did you think I wore in my downtime?”
“Elbow patches?”
He gave her a look.
“Okay, no,” she said, taking a sip of water. “But I did imagine you had some sort of monogrammed robe.”
Again with that crooked smile that was almost painfully appealing. Combined with the tight black T-shirt, the low-slung gray sweatpants that did wonders for his, um . . .
He grinned wider now, taking a bite of egg roll. “Ms. Powell. Are you checking me out?”
“Your fault,” she said, pointing her chopsticks at him. “You kissed me the other night.”
“I did,” he said casually, dropping into the chair next to her.
“Why?”
He chewed his egg roll and swallowed, then helped himself to her water glass. “You figure it out yet?”
“No!” she said, pushing her plate aside. “You kiss me right before I’m supposed to go on a date. I ask you what happened. You tell me to figure it out, and I spend the entire date with another guy thinking about it, and—Why are you smiling?”
He just grinned wider and took another bite of egg roll. “You did figure it out. You just didn’t realize you did.”
“No,” she said, stabbing her chopsticks in his direction. “No more cryptic talk. Explain.”
“You said you spent your entire date with another guy thinking about me,” he said, digging into a carton of sweet-and-sour shrimp.
“Yes, and—Wait. That was your plan? That is so . . . so . . . you sabotaged me. And Dylan!”
Oliver winced. “So it was him.”
“You already knew I was dating him.”
“Was past tense, or was past participle?”
She paused chewing. “Huh?”
“Are you still dating him?” His voice was somehow both patient and demanding. And far too compelling.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
“Are you going out with him again?”
“I don’t know!”
He continued to watch her, then tossed his chopsticks aside. “I want a beer. You want a beer?”
She stared after him aghast as he went to the fridge and popped the caps off two bottles before bringing both back to the table. Naomi sat back in her chair and studied him as she took a sip of her beer. This version of Oliver was . . . unnerving. The suit Oliver, she could handle. Sort of. Or at least she was working on it. Because suit Oliver was easy to remember as a Cunningham.
But this Oliver, with his bottle of beer, his tired-looking T-shirt that fit entirely too well . . . He unceremoniously wiped his mouth with one of the flimsy paper napkins that came with the takeout, and Naomi bit back a groan.
“You’re doing it on purpose.”
“What?”
She looked away. “Nothing.”
His beer bottle froze halfway to his mouth as he studied her, then he let out a disbelieving laugh. “I don’t believe it. Son of a bitch was right.”
“Who was right?”
“Never mind,” he said, setting his beer aside and turning to face her. “Why Dylan?”
“Why Dylan what?”
He gave her a look that said you know what.
She hesitated, wary of the intensity in his expression. “Because he’s . . .”
She almost said easy, then remembered that’s exactly what Oliver had accused her of the night of the dinner party. Dating Dylan didn’t present a risk. Damn it. Had he been right the entire time?
“Allow me to be clearer,” Oliver said in a low voice, reaching out and grabbing the leg of her chair and dragging it, and her, closer.
“Why”—his hand slipped behind her neck as it had the night of their kiss—“if you were ready to date again after Brayden, why was it him?”
“As opposed to?” Naomi meant it to be a sassy little quip to keep the upper hand, but she was losing the battle.
Especially when his thumb stroked slowly along the sensitive skin on her neck. How could he possibly know how much she liked that? How a hand slipping beneath her hair to the sensitive skin of her neck always made her a little weak in the knees? He’d done it first at the dinner party, and again with the kiss, and now crowded around his father’s kitchen table, the same kitchen table where . . .
Naomi reared back. That kitchen table. The very one where she’d watched through a crack in the guest bedroom door as the three Cunninghams had sat with their perfect posture in their “dinner outfits” eating things like duck confit and asparagus with beurre blanc, while she’d wolfed down a cold burrito from Taco Bell her mom had bought her hours earlier.
“Talk to me,” Oliver said, his grip staying firm even as she tried to wiggle away. “Talk to me about what just happened right there, Naomi. Why do you keep fighting this?”
His voice was soft yet commanding, his touch on the back of her neck gentle but determined.
“This will never work,” she said. “We’re so different.”
“Only according to the skeletons in your closet.”
What?
“Hey, you don’t know—”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know, because you don’t tell me what’s going on in your head, but here’s what I do know, Naomi. We’ve got something here. You want to bring your baggage on in, fine, we’ll deal with it. Because it’s time for you to start admitting that we could be damn good together if you just give it a chance.”
She sat perfectly still, wanting to believe him, to trust him . . .
Oliver studied her expression for a long moment before slowly releasing her.
He picked up his chopsticks. “How’s work?”
She blinked at the abrupt change in subject and mood, telling herself that she wasn’t disappointed, and yet feeling the absence of his touch acutely. “What?”
He opened up a carton of fried rice and dumped some onto his plate. “Work. Maxcessory. How’s it going? How’s working from home?”
“Ah—”
He looked up and smiled. “What, you thought I just wanted you for sex? I definitely want that. But I also like to know the women I’m sleeping with. So tell me.”
She took a deep breath and moved her chair closer back to its original position as she, too, picked up her chopsticks again. “Well. Let’s just say I’m not exactly the paragon of productivity when it comes to working from home.”
“Because of Dad?” he asked, glancing over. “You know I can get a full-time caretaker anytime.”
“No, not that. I mean yeah, he demands quite a bit of my time, but a lot of my non-Walter time has been focused on something else.”
“Your handsome neighbor?”
“Maybe,” she muttered irritably.
He grinned, then picked up his plate. “I’m going to reheat this. You want me to heat yours first?”
She shook her head. “I’m done, actually.”
They both stood and moved toward the counter, him to put his plate in the microwave, her to rinse hers. Well. This was sexy.
Was she the only one still thinking about Saturday’s kiss?
The microwave beeped, and Oliver punched open the door, but instead of taking out the plate, turned back to her.
“Screw it,” he muttered, taking a step toward her.
She instinctively stepped back, even as her heart pounded.
“Wait. Wait. You don’t even like me,” Naomi said quickly.
He smiled. “Wrong. You don’t like me. I’ve never said a damn thing about not liking you.”
Her breath quickened at the intense look on his face. “You shouldn’t like me.”
“Call me crazy,” he murmured as he eased toward her, moving slowly as though not wanting to startle her. “But I’ve always been a sucker for beautiful women who play hard to get.”
&
nbsp; She gave a nervous laugh as she stepped backward. “Trust me, that’s not what’s going on here.”
“No?” His hands slowly lifted, resting on either side of the counter as he leaned toward her, almost touching but not quite.
“I can’t breathe when you do that,” she whispered.
“When I do what?” His lips drifted over her jaw, a feather-light almost-kiss.
“When you look at me like that,” she said, her voice husky as his lips moved down her neck. “When you touch me.”
“I’ll back off if you want,” he said against her skin, his mouth coming back up to hover just over her lips. “Say the word and we can go back to antagonistic neighbors who set off fireworks every time we’re in the same room.”
She wanted to. She wanted to tell him that this would never work, that they were all wrong in ways he didn’t even know. That he would hate her if he knew who she really was, that she was the housekeeper’s daughter he’d so despised . . .
And there lay the crux of her issue. She’d started this driven by her loathing of the Cunninghams, but she was increasingly coming face-to-face with a more alarming reality:
That her anger was really fear. That she’d been clinging to her hatred of everything Oliver represented not because of old grudges, not even because of her promise to her mother, but because she was terrified that she would never be good enough. That at any minute, the life she’d so carefully built could come crashing down, taking it all away. And if she let Oliver in and then lost him . . .
He seemed to register her indecision, and though his gaze flickered with frustration, he started to pull away.
It was that. The fact that this man could not only read her but seemed to care about what she wanted.
Naomi’s hand reached out, fisted in the front of his T-shirt, and Oliver froze. Their gazes locked and held for a second. She pulled him forward at the same time he leaned in, their mouths colliding in a kiss that was somehow both sweet and frantic, a battle of wills that neither could lose.
Oliver’s palm spread wide against her back, her fingers slowly releasing his shirt so her arms could wind their way around his neck.
If the kiss on Saturday had been the promise, this was the delivery. The sort of kiss that ruined a girl for all other kisses in the future.
His other hand found her hip, his fingers digging into the soft flesh there, tilting her toward him so they both gasped.
His mouth moved once more down her neck, and Naomi’s head fell back. Something clattered to the ground as he lifted her onto the counter, but neither paused in their restless exploration of the other’s taste and touch.
Naomi’s legs wrapped around his waist, his hand finding her butt, pulling her close . . .
“Who’s there?”
They both froze.
Slowly Oliver pulled back, his gaze locking on hers for a moment before closing his eyes in resignation. He cleared his throat. “Hey, Dad. It’s me.”
“Ollie? What the hell you doing out there, boy?”
Naomi smiled a little at the childhood nickname, and Oliver’s forehead came down to rest on her shoulder with the slightest laugh. “Nothing. You need something?”
“Where’s your mom?”
Oliver stiffened under her arms, and Naomi’s heart went out to him. She wondered if it would ever get better. If it would ever not hurt to have his father lost in time, forcing his son to relive the fact that both of his parents were essentially lost to him, over and over . . .
Knowing the moment had passed, Naomi’s legs slowly dropped from around his waist, though she surprised herself by giving in to the urge to brush her hand against his hair in comfort.
He caught her hand just before it slipped away, holding her gaze as he pressed a quick kiss to her palm.
Then he helped her down as Walter shuffled into the kitchen, and she sent up a silent thank-you for all their sakes that he hadn’t been in one of his pants-off moods.
“Who are you?” he asked, blue eyes sleepy, hair wild.
“Hi, Walter,” she said, adjusting the hem of her shirt and refusing to feel embarrassed.
“Dad, this is Naomi. You know her.”
The confusion in Walter’s gaze faded slightly, replaced by something a little . . . meaner. “Sleeping with the help, eh, son?”
Naomi flinched, and Oliver tensed beside her. Walter either didn’t notice or didn’t care about their reaction. He let out a chuckle as he went to the fridge. “Don’t worry about it. I won’t tell your mother. Our little secret.”
Naomi swallowed against the sudden bitterness in her mouth at the memory of another little secret these two men had kept, also involving “the help.” The roles had been reversed, but the damage was the same.
No, not the same, she silently amended. She was not her mother.
And she would not let either of these men treat her the way Danica had always let men treat her.
Oliver grabbed her wrist as she turned away. “Naomi.”
She shook her head. “Take care of your dad.”
She pulled her wrist gently from his grip but turned back once more before leaving. “I’ll be here tomorrow morning to watch him, but after that . . . you need to find another caretaker until Janice gets back.”
He searched her face and frowned, before giving a single nod in confirmation.
He let her go.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1
Three days following her ill-fated make-out session with Oliver, Naomi finally had something to smile about.
She and Deena had just finished the first tour of the new office, and it was absolute perfection.
Truth be told, she’d been prepared to make the new office earn a place in her heart, but she’d been smitten within seconds. Naomi thought she’d given the design team an impossible task—make the space feel open while still ensuring everyone had privacy to focus.
She knew “open floor plans” were all the rage, and she was all for collaboration, but she also respected that not everybody worked well staring at the person across from them or listening to their neighbor chirping in their ear. The design team she’d brought in had been worth every penny. Each floor was centered around a communal area with conference tables, couches, and multi-person desks, while the perimeter of each floor housed “micro-offices”—individual spaces for employees to close the door and work in silence or take a phone call, but with glass walls ensuring that even the center workspace was lit by natural light.
Naomi’s own office was a bit smaller than her old one, per her request, but it didn’t feel it. The glass desk and white cabinets felt fresh and fun, as did the pop of coral accents to match Maxcessory’s distinctive logo.
Over the past few weeks, Naomi had deliberately pulled back from her usual 110 percent. Partially to see how her team handled it, partially to address the stress of Brayden’s death, and then Walter coming into her life.
But now she was more ready than ever to get back to it. Move-in day for the new office was Monday, which couldn’t come soon enough. She needed something to distract her, needed distance—literal distance—from Oliver Cunningham.
Naomi was humming a Spice Girls song that had been going through her head ever since it came on her Throwback Thursday running playlist that morning, but she stopped dead in her tracks as she got to her floor in the apartment building.
There were flowers sitting at her door. Not a lavish bouquet, but small and elegant with white roses and little sprigs of green.
“Hello there, my pretties,” she said, crouching down. She poked gingerly amid the buds, looking for a card. Not finding one, she picked up the cardboard box covering the base.
“Birthday?”
Naomi’s head whipped around to see Oliver coming up the steps. She hadn’t seen him since Tuesday afternoon when he’d gotten home from work and told her coolly that Janice would be back on Wednesday, and she was off the hook from Walter duty.
Then, as now, he was back to wearing his usual suits. All
signs of casual, teasing Oliver were long gone, and she told herself it was better this way, even as a little sliver of her heart wondered what she was missing out on. What they were missing out on.
“No,” she said by way of response, standing with the flowers in hand. “I don’t actually know what they’re for.”
She didn’t mention that for one idiotic moment she’d thought—hoped—they might be from him. But his expression said otherwise.
“Perhaps they’re from last weekend’s date,” he said casually, coming to lean on the wall beside her door. “Or this upcoming weekend’s date?”
There was a clear question in his voice, which she ignored. “I don’t know who they’re from,” she said honestly. “I can’t find a card anywhere.”
He frowned slightly and reached out to search within the blooms. “You’re right. Maybe in the box?”
“Probably.” She started to juggle the flowers in one arm to get at her keys in her purse, but nearly dropped the bouquet. She shoved it at Oliver. “Here, hold these?”
“Every man’s dream, to hold flowers for a woman.”
“They’re probably from Claire or Audrey.”
“Girlfriends send each other flowers?”
“Sometimes. If they need cheering up,” she said, finding the keys at the bottom of the bag. “Say, like if her love life was feeling really complicated?”
“Hey,” he said, his voice sharp enough to have her looking up. “You’re the one who walked out, Naomi.”
“Because your dad caught us and called me the help,” she snapped.
“He’s sick! He doesn’t know what he’s saying!”
“Yeah, well, I got the impression he was pretty lucid at that moment.”
Oliver’s eyes turned angry. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I think the Walter we saw that night was the real Walter.”
He looked away, telling her that she was right. Not that she needed the confirmation. She already knew the real Walter, and it wasn’t the petulant man-child who adorably liked hard-boiled eggs and the History Channel.
“You know what?” she said tiredly, shoving her key into the lock. “I don’t even mind what your dad said. Whether it was because of the illness or just because he’s a jackass. But I do mind that you didn’t say a word in my defense. The help?”
