WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10
Okay, you can’t expect me to listen to all that and not beg you to sign a contract.”
Naomi gave a noncommittal smile and took a sip of her cabernet. It was mediocre, but the producer had insisted on picking the wine, and she wasn’t enough of a connoisseur to care.
“Seriously, Naomi.” Dylan Day leaned forward and gave her a smile a good deal more earnest than her own. “You’ve got a hell of a life story.”
That was one way to put it.
“Now, which part was most enthralling,” Naomi said, putting her elbows on the table and resting her chin on locked fingers as she looked at him. “The part where there was no father figure? The fact that my mom was a hot mess whose primary talents were getting fired and getting evicted? Or that my idea of high living was being able to buy name-brand peanut butter to go along with my rice cake dinners?”
“Gold. All of it,” Dylan said without hesitation. “You’re a fighter. An underdog. People love that shit. Your story’s got almost everything.”
“Almost?” Naomi couldn’t keep from asking.
Dylan lifted the wine bottle and topped off her wineglass, then his own. “Romance, babe. Your story’s decidedly lacking men.”
“Maybe because I’ve been focused on building an empire,” she said with just a bit of edge. Honestly, were there still people who thought a woman’s life wasn’t complete without a man?
“Sure, sure,” Dylan agreed readily. “And Maxcessory will be the heart of the story. I’m just saying there’s a gap there. Nobody’s going to believe that someone who looks like you hasn’t left behind a string of broken hearts.”
There was a compliment in there, but there was also a question. Where was the Prince Charming of this story? The Mr. Big? Why was there no Ross to her Rachel, no Jim to her Pam?
It wasn’t a question she particularly wanted to answer. It had been weird enough sharing the inner workings of her professional life. The only reason she was even considering signing over her story to the network was the hope that maybe her story could inspire someone.
If even one girl, somewhere, would know that it was possible to overcome a seriously crappy childhood, then the invasion of privacy would be worth it. If Naomi empowered another woman to know that she didn’t need the picket fence or cookie-baking mother or Ivy League education to make something of herself, then Naomi could stomach the idea of “selling out.”
Her personal life, though . . . that was different. For starters, there was no inspiration to be found there. Any little girl dreaming of having it all—the doting husband and the thriving career—would have to find another role model than Naomi Powell.
The problem wasn’t that she didn’t have men in her past. It was that she had more than she cared to count. Men who came into her life and left, without either party scathed, or even affected, by the encounter. The exception, perhaps, being Brayden Hayes, whose departure was of the more tragic variety.
This sort of revolving romantic door had been exactly as Naomi wanted it, and yet there was something distinctly uncomfortable about having to say, out loud, that she’d never been in love. That she wasn’t sure she was even capable of it. It felt vaguely tawdry to confess that she treated romance more as a diversion, especially to someone she was fairly certain wouldn’t mind being one of those diversions.
“Come on,” Dylan said with a cajoling smile. “Just give me a hint. Something to work with. A childhood sweetheart. A mysterious stranger you keep crossing paths with. An illicit affair?”
Naomi’s hand froze just slightly at the last in his list. How would he—
She looked closely at him, looking for any signs that he knew about Brayden, that his list of possible dalliances had been more than his imagination at work.
He waggled his eyebrows. “Or if you told me you’d been holding out for a very handsome, charming TV producer to come your way and sweep you off your feet, I wouldn’t be upset.”
She relaxed slightly. Naomi wasn’t ashamed of her relationship with Brayden—it’s not as though she’d known he was married. But she cared enough about Claire to want to keep her affair as far from Dylan Day as possible.
“Are you asking on behalf of StarZone?” She asked, referring to the production company looking to produce the show. “Or as Dylan Day?”
He grinned, quick and unapologetic, his eyes smiling and open. “Can I ask as both?”
Naomi laughed even as she scanned the dining room, wanting to hurry along the bill. “You’re persistent.”
“I want what I want,” he said, lifting a finger to flag down the server. Dylan paid for dinner on his corporate Amex and, a few minutes later, helped her into her coat as they stepped out into the fall evening.
“There’s a great cocktail bar just around the corner. Nightcap?” His fingers brushed her neck under the guise of freeing a straud of hair caught on her earring as he asked it, and Naomi waited for the tingle. Hoped for it.
Nothing.
She was both relieved and disappointed. “Actually, I should be heading home,” she said, pointing in the direction of her apartment.
To his credit, he knew when to back off. “I’ll get you a cab.”
“I’m just a few blocks over. I can walk.”
“Did I mention I’m from Alabama?” Dylan asked, adding a bit of Southern drawl to his voice.
“And?”
“And I was raised to see a woman home, walking or otherwise,” he said, gesturing for her to lead the way.
Naomi shrugged, rapidly learning that the best way to handle Dylan Day was to pick her battles. A half block later, she was regretting her decision. What she’d hoped would be a semi-quiet, relish-the-first-nip-of-fall kind of walk quickly turned into his hard sell.
“I don’t mean to push you,” Dylan said for the third time. “It’s just that we really want to get this in for the fall season, and to ensure we get the right cast, the right team . . .”
He droned on for two more blocks about the opportunity, how the exposure was exactly what could bump her business to the next level, how it was the chance of a lifetime . . .
Finally her building came into view, and she could say without hesitation that she had never been so glad to see 517 Park Avenue. They came to a stop outside her building and she faced him. “How much say do I get?”
“Sorry?”
“If I agree to this show, do I get to review the script? A say in casting? The stories you tell?”
He hesitated. “Well, you’d work with our team upfront to get the details of Max right—”
“Max?”
“That’s what we’re hoping to call the show. A catchy shortening of your company name, easy to remember.”
Naomi nodded. She didn’t hate it.
“I want to do this,” she told him honestly. “But there are parts of my life that are off-limits.”
“Which parts?”
She smiled slowly. “The ones I haven’t told you.”
“The men?”
She laughed at his persistence. “Among other things.”
He rocked back on his heels, hands in his pockets. “What about one guy? There’s got to be one we can talk about. Sexy investor in your business, maybe a little off-limits?”
Naomi shook her head again. “I specifically targeted female investors who’d get the vision.”
“What about a charming TV producer?”
Naomi rolled her eyes. “Good night, Dylan.”
He caught her arm. “Look, Naomi. There’s a conflict of interest here, I get that. What if I hand off the proposal for your show to my boss? I’m just the acquiring producer, anyway. That way you won’t technically be mixing business and pleasure by going out with me.”
“I didn’t realize we were going out.”
“I was getting to that,” he said, his smile cocky and reminding her uncomfortably of the night she’d met Brayden at a West Village wine bar. Brayden’s smile had been equally as cocky, his confidence level through the roof, and she’d bought it. Every bit of it. And maybe it wasn’t fair comparing Dylan to Brayden just because they were quick with a smile and a line, but all she could think was that it didn’t feel like enough.
For the first time in her life, she had the sense that maybe she wanted more, deserved more, than a fling with a good-looking guy. The realization was . . . annoying. She’d never overanalyzed flings with guys before. Usually she picked the ones who were uncomplicated, made her laugh, and didn’t make her feel anything too deep.
In other words, Dylan Day was exactly her type. And yet . . .
“Dylan, I’m flattered, but—”
Her rejection froze on her lips when another couple approached from her right. She glanced their way, then back to Dylan, then her gaze swung back to the couple again. To the male half of it, anyway.
Oliver Cunningham met her gaze steadily before looking at Dylan, his expression unreadable.
Well, crap.
The woman with Oliver was chattering away, unaware of Oliver’s attention on Naomi. Unaware of Naomi and Dylan altogether. Oliver said something that made the woman laugh, and she reached out for his hand.
Naomi’s stomach clenched, and that was the exact moment she realized:
There it was.
The feeling she’d been missing all night with Dylan Day had just occurred with Oliver Cunningham of all people. That awareness, that want. Surely her reasoning for suddenly wanting more in her relationship with a man wasn’t due to her childhood nemesis.
But then it got so much worse, because as she watched Oliver smile at the other woman, another emotion took over. Jealousy.
Her eyes slammed shut. This was not happening. She was not actually jealous of . . . what had Oliver said his girlfriend’s name was? Layla? Lana?
“Naomi?” Dylan’s voice was bemused.
She opened her eyes. “Sorry. I must have had too much wine.”
Oliver’s girlfriend giggled, but Naomi kept her gaze purposefully on Dylan, ignoring the other couple.
“We should go out again. Definitely,” she said.
Dylan blinked in surprise, smart enough to have realized that just a few moments ago she’d been gearing up to reject him.
He recovered quickly. “Sure. Friday?”
“Done,” she said before she could change her mind. “I’ll text you?”
“Okay—”
“Great. Looking forward to it.” Naomi stepped forward and gave him a quick peck on the cheek to end the conversation.
She kept her pace deliberately slow as she walked toward the front door, casually digging in her bag for her keys, even as her heart pounded, far more aware of Oliver and his date than she was of Dylan Day.
Still, she didn’t look back, and once inside, she leaned against the wall, just for a second.
Had that just happened?
Had she just agreed to a date with Dylan simply because she couldn’t bear the thought that she might actually want to date him . . . The front door opened, and she opened her eyes to see Oliver Cunningham, pairing his usual conservative navy suit with an impervious glare.