Under Control

by Shannon Stacey

  Since she’d come straight from a meeting and therefore had it with her, she reached into her bag and pulled out her planner, clearing the space in front of her to set it down.

  “Hey, I thought there was a no planner rule for tonight.”

  She paused in the act of opening it and gave him a guilty smile. “I know, but I had it with me for the meeting. And since I have it, I may as well use it. Plus, you used your phone. Same thing.”

  “I’m teasing you. I don’t care if you have it open all the time as long as it gets my name in there.” He leaned over and tapped the very small empty space at the bottom of the Saturday box. “Just write it in. Have great sex with Derek.”

  “I’m not writing that in my planner.”

  “Why not? If you don’t write it down, it’s a thought, not a plan. Isn’t that what you said?” He gave her a grin that had her smiling back. “And put great in block letters.”

  “Managing expectations isn’t one of your better skills.”

  “Sure it is.”

  Why did he have to look at her like that? Like he really had an expectation that sex between them would be great?

  Because it probably would, she told herself. “You’re setting the bar pretty high for yourself.”

  “I work well under pressure. Very, very well.”

  She did it. She pulled out the pen—with the heavy black ink that couldn’t be erased if she changed her mind—and wrote him in. Have GREAT sex with Derek.

  He made a low growling sound of pleasure that made her want to accelerate that particular appointment. “You might want to write sleep late in the Sunday block, too.”

  She laughed. “Now you’re pushing it.”

  “There,” he said when she closed the book. “That was easy.”

  Easy? She was already making a mental to-do list. Shaving her legs, for one thing. And she couldn’t remember the last time she’d bought sex-worthy underwear. There was also the what to wear question. Was he going to take her out to dinner first, or was she just supposed to show up at his door, naked under a trench coat?

  “Waiting until Saturday won’t be easy, though,” he added, and she had to agree. “And you keep coming all the way over here, so I think it’s time I come to you.”

  Other than Wes for the occasional on-site staff meeting, there hadn’t been any men in Olivia’s apartment. She didn’t date often and certainly hadn’t gotten to know a guy well enough to bring him into her space. But when she thought about Derek in her apartment—in her bed—it felt right, so she nodded.

  “I’ll tell them you’ll be parking in my guest spot and text you the info. And I’ll leave your name downstairs.” When he arched an eyebrow, she just shrugged. “I wouldn’t exactly call it security, but I like knowing somebody’s keeping an eye on who comes and goes in the building. And I’ll cook for you.”

  “Really?”

  She laughed. “Let me rephrase that. I’ll have to think about the cooking, but I promise to provide a meal for you. How’s that?”

  “Sounds perfect.” He reached over with his free hand and covered hers, sandwiching it between his arm and his hand. “Did you drive yourself or take a Lyft?”

  “Lyft.” She’d considered driving herself, but she talked herself out of it because it would have made things more awkward if she decided to go home with him. It had been a very strong possibility until work rained on the parade.

  “Then go ahead and order a ride and then I’ll kiss you on the sidewalk until it shows up. Maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll get a flat tire.”

  * * *

  Olivia, it’s your mother. Call me.

  Olivia stared at the phone sitting on the counter next to her as though it were a snake about to strike. The text had come through while she was in the shower, and she hadn’t responded to it yet. It hadn’t been very long since her last call to her mom, so the message had been a surprise and when it came to Adam and Deborah McGovern, there were very few pleasant surprises.

  It seemed to her that if it was an emergency, her mother would have said so. If it wasn’t, she could have simply referenced the topic in her text message. Call me so I can complain about your father and make you feel guilty for moving to Massachusetts. Deb didn’t text very often, so she tended toward being abrupt and to the point, but Olivia wouldn’t have minded a hint to what she was in for.

  She didn’t have time to call her right now. She had to leave for her first meeting in twenty minutes and if her mother was in the mood to talk, she was impossible to shake. Drinking her customary calling-mom cocktail so soon after eating breakfast wasn’t an option, either.

  Lunch, she thought. She wouldn’t have a cocktail, but maybe she’d splurge on something fattening and eat while they talked. It was one of her mother’s pet peeves, so ending the conversation early might give added value to the calories.

  “I omitted one of your appointments.”

  Olivia looked over as Kelsey walked out of the office with her leather notebook in hand and scowled. “Everything goes on the master calendar.”

  “I used my discretion.” She set the open notebook in front of Olivia and rested the tip of her index finger on the page.

  Have GREAT sex with Derek.

  “I admire your optimism,” Kelsey said, clearly struggling to keep a straight face.

  Olivia closed the book with a snap. She hadn’t even thought about it when Kelsey arrived and, as always, took the planner into the office to update any new information from the day before. “In that case, I appreciate your discretion. And yes, I’m feeling optimistic, although the wording was Derek’s idea.”

  “Wait. You scheduled this together?” She laughed. “That is so you. I guess the date went well last night?”

  “Obviously.”

  “And you’re not seeing him again until Saturday?”

  “It’s an almost forty-minute drive on a good day and in Boston, there are very few good traffic days. And he works today. Tomorrow and Thursday he’ll have his kids. He works Friday.” She put her hands up in a questioning gesture. “And you know as well as I do, I don’t have room to take three hours out of my schedule on a weekday.”

  Kelsey cocked her head. “Three hours with an hour and a half for travel time? That’s just plain sex. If you’re having great-in-block-letters sex, it’s going to take longer than that.”

  “Remind me to schedule something that requires me to leave before you get here on Monday morning.”

  “You’ll have to come back eventually. You live here.”

  “Remember that whole ‘I appreciate your discretion’ thing?”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t tell a single soul all the details you’re going to tell me. Speaking of, his place or yours?”

  “He’s coming here.”

  “That’s a big deal for you. You must really like this guy.”

  “I do.”

  “I bet we could come up with a reason for me to be just leaving as he arrives and I could meet—”

  “No.”

  Kelsey laughed and went back to the office, while Olivia started getting ready to leave. And when she picked up the phone, she made a conscious effort to put her mother’s text out of her mind. She couldn’t afford to be distracted this morning. The hopefully new client she was meeting today had the potential to bring her a lot of business and she was bringing her A-game.

  Several hours later, exhausted but thrilled to have been able to text the generate a contract text to Kelsey, Olivia bought a slice of pizza and a water before walking the short distance to a small park. Pizza was a particular weakness of hers—something that could be eaten mindlessly with one hand while watching TV or reading—so she only bought it by the slice for special occasions. This slice was part reward and part fortification.

  She’d considered putting the call off until evening so she didn’t ruin her
current mood, but she didn’t want to be on the phone with her mom if Derek called. He was working, but if he had down time, he’d probably call. So she took a few slow breaths to center herself and then tapped her mom’s number.

  “Hello, Olivia.”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “I was beginning to wonder if my text got through to you and it doesn’t tell me if it did or not.”

  She knew it didn’t. She had the read receipt function turned off because people tended to be put off if they knew she’d read their text message but hadn’t responded right away. People like clients. And her mother.

  “I was in meetings. I called as soon as I could. What’s going on?” Then she took a big bite off the end of the pizza slice, knowing from experience that she’d have plenty of time to chew before her mother took a breath.

  “Your father’s trying to kill me.” And that was all she said, which left Olivia in the awkward position of trying to chew and swallow fast without choking. “Olivia? Did you hear me?”

  “I’m here,” she managed to say. Then she had to take a quick swig of water before she could say more. “Dad’s not trying to kill you, Mom.”

  “He is.”

  “He’s not. If he was capable of killing you, he would have done it years ago.” As soon as the words left her mouth, Olivia wanted them back. Deb didn’t like sarcasm any more than she liked her ex-husband. “I’m sorry. Why don’t you back up a little bit and tell me what’s going on, but an abridged version because I have a meeting soon.”

  “His stepdaughter wants to teach at the beauty school and you know Camilla, who opened it, is a dear friend of mine, and he had the audacity to ask me to put a good word in for her.”

  “And that’s trying to kill you how?”

  “You know how my blood pressure is, Olivia. Don’t be sarcastic.”

  “Mom, he’s just trying to use connections to help his stepdaughter out. You know as well as I do that’s how the world works.”

  “I am not one of his connections. I want nothing to do with him or that woman he married. You remember what she called me.”

  “You said some pretty ugly things about her when they started dating, even though your divorce was already final.” Olivia sighed, and then winced because her mother probably heard it over the line. “And her daughter has nothing to do with anything.”

  She already knew that diplomacy wouldn’t work. As far as her mother was concerned, there was Team Adam and Team Deb, and then there was Olivia, who was the tug-of-war rope between them. And Deb’s dismissive snort proved her right.

  “Okay, Mom,” she said in a firm voice, because this was ridiculous and she wanted to eat her pizza. “Imagine if I could land an important client, but I didn’t get the contract because he was a friend of Marge and she doesn’t like you any more than you like her.”

  “That’s different.”

  “It’s not. It’s punishing a child for the decisions the parent made.” Not that they did anything wrong. But she wasn’t saying that out loud. It didn’t matter that the divorce was in their rearview mirror. Her father’s ex-wife and his current wife would go to their graves hating each other.

  Olivia wanted nothing more than to hang up on her mother at that moment. She’d been dealing with the emotional fallout from the divorce and ensuing passive-aggressive warfare for years, but it was different now.

  She was dating a man with an ex-wife and children. The thought of being the Marge to Amber’s Deborah made her mouth go dry, and her stomach soured.

  He hadn’t said a bad word about his ex-wife yet, she reminded herself. And they’d found a way to work with Village Hearts amicably enough. But the thought that the animosity might be there, under the surface and waiting for a trigger—like Derek bringing another woman into the mix—before blowing up in their faces was a real fear.

  “If you don’t want to put in a good word for her, then don’t,” she told Deb, wanting desperately to get off the phone now. “But don’t try to block her. If Camilla mentions her, simply say you don’t know her at all, which is the truth. You’re better than this, Mom.”

  “Fine. But I don’t like it. And I don’t like the fact your father seems to think he can ask me for a favor.”

  “That is a little surprising. But it’s for his stepdaughter and he obviously cares about her. Now, I really have to run. I’m going to be late for a meeting.”

  Since punctuality was something Deb prized above all else, it worked. “Thank you for listening, honey. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  When she’d tucked her phone away, Olivia leaned back against the bench and took another bite of her pizza. She’d earned this slice and she was going to enjoy it.

  She also wasn’t going to worry about Derek’s ex-wife...too much. Yet. She was still getting to know him. He hadn’t even hinted around about her meeting his kids, so he wasn’t there yet, either. Borrowing trouble was a waste of mental and emotional energy.

  And she wasn’t going to let any of it ruin their date on Saturday. The pizza was an excellent treat, but she had no doubt great-in-block-letters sex with Derek was going to be so much better. She wasn’t letting doubts or anything else spoil it.

  Chapter Eight

  Derek’s small and very used car looked out of place in the line of luxury sedans and SUVs in the guest parking lot of the very tall and very shiny building Olivia lived in. He didn’t bother looking for a silver Audi, since she’d told him residents parked in a private underground garage. But the woman at the front desk was friendly enough and gave him directions to the elevator after checking his name in her computer.

  He stood outside her door without knocking for a moment, though. This was all very much out of his league, as Scott had said, and it was making him jumpy no matter how much he told himself it didn’t matter. The address, the concierge, the view from the floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the hall when he stepped out of the elevator. All of that was just stuff, but it was very expensive stuff.

  And it was the kind of expensive stuff Olivia was used to. She didn’t seem to care that he wasn’t, but maybe she hadn’t realized yet just how much he wasn’t used to it. She liked him and he liked her, and that’s what he needed to remember, but seeing this world she lived in made it hard.

  He was lifting his hand to knock when the door opened, and he belatedly realized the woman downstairs had probably told Olivia he was on his way up.

  “Hi,” was all he said, because she looked so damn pretty, and then he looked down and realized she was wearing jeans with high heels and his brain stopped functioning.

  “I was worried you got lost,” she said, stepping back to let him in.

  “I was looking out that window,” he lied, not wanting her to know he’d been working up the courage to knock. “Nice view.”

  “The view’s why I pay too much to live here,” she said. “I have the same view in the living room and from my bedroom. Come on in.”

  The click of those black high heels across her floor made his dick so hard, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to follow, but he managed. And she was right. The view of the water from her living room was worth the suffering.

  “This is quite a place.” He’d pictured something warmer, with a lot of decorations and throw pillows and color. But he supposed a woman whose job was efficiency would probably keep clutter in her life to a minimum. And it still suited her. Simple and elegant, and you could host a formal dinner party—albeit a small one—or curl up in sweatpants and watch a movie.

  “Thank you. It’s in a good location for me, and Kelsey and I use the second bedroom as an office, so I don’t need to lease space that I’d rarely be in.”

  He nodded, but he didn’t care about office space or Kelsey or any other damn thing right now. All he cared about right now was Olivia.

  “You know,” he said, closing the space between them, “this is th
e first time you and I have been alone together behind closed doors.”

  “I was beginning to wonder if you have a thing for sidewalks.”

  “I have a thing for you, no matter where we are.” He hooked his finger into the front pocket of her jeans and pulled her to him.

  She cupped her hand behind his neck and when she pressed her body against his, she smiled. “Seems like you have a thing for jeans with high heels.”

  “I do now.” He slid his hands down the curve of her ass. “But you’ve put me in a tough position because—”

  “I haven’t even started yet.”

  He chuckled. “I want to get you out of these jeans, but I’m also enjoying the sight of you in them.”

  Her fingernails scraped lightly over his neck before sliding into his hair. “I felt a little silly when I put them on. Jeans with high heels aren’t something I usually wear around the house, just so you know.”

  “You will be when I think of you.”

  “Oh? Do you think of me often?”

  He groaned and cupped her face in one hand. “I can barely think about anything but you since the day we met.”

  Then he kissed her and for the first time, he held nothing back. He claimed her mouth, his kiss growing deeper and more demanding until she whimpered and dug her fingernails into his back.

  He wanted to bury himself in her—right here, on her floor—but he forced himself to ease back. She resisted for a few seconds, moving with him, but then she released him and opened her eyes.

  She was gorgeous, with her lips moist from his kiss and her cheeks flushed. The deep breath she took was a little ragged, and he fought the urge to kiss her some more. There would be plenty of time for that.

  “What?” she asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I’m not sure how you feel about me walking through your door and pouncing on you. We can hang out for a while. Maybe watch a movie or something if you want.” Then he frowned because that’s what was missing. “Wait a minute. You don’t have a TV?”