WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10
From the way Naomi had all but run into the building, Oliver had assumed she’d be in the safety of her apartment before he got to the main door.
Instead he stopped short, surprised to find her still standing there.
For a long moment, neither said a word as they gave each other a wary look.
“So,” she said, standing up straight from where she’d been leaning against the wall with the same ugly wallpaper that’d been there since he was a boy. “That was . . . ?”
“Lilah,” he supplied.
Yeah. The Lilah. After he’d stupidly told Naomi that he was dating her, his conscience had kicked his ass until he’d finally dialed the number that had been languishing on a Post-it Note on his desk for weeks. He’d thought to schedule something for sometime next week. Next month, even.
Instead, Lilah had dropped a half-dozen hints about some wine tasting this week, obvious enough that he couldn’t figure out how to say no without sounding like an ass.
Lilah was kind. Sweet. Laughed a lot. As in, a lot.
And while he liked a decent glass of wine as much as the next guy, spending all night discussing whether he was getting more red fruits or dark fruit in the finish of the ’03 Barolo was not exactly how he’d envisioned a rare night away from work and Walter.
“So,” Naomi said as they both began climbing the stairs. “She seemed nice.”
“Quite,” he said, trying not to notice the way her hips moved from side to side as she walked up the steps in front of him. “And your date. Very . . .”
She gave him a dark look over her shoulder. “Yes?”
“Let me guess,” Oliver said, as they stepped onto the landing of the second floor. “His name has a Y.”
“What?” she snapped.
“His name,” Oliver said, leaning a shoulder against the wall next to her door as she palmed her keys as though debating whether to open her apartment or stab his jugular. “Does it have a Y? Ryan. Myron. Bryson.”
“Says the guy named Oliver.”
“What’s wrong with my name?”
“Nothing, if you’re a nineteenth-century orphan.”
“So what’s his name?” Oliver pushed, leaning toward her slightly.
She huffed. “Dylan.”
Oliver smiled. “Now, is that spelled . . . ?”
“With a Y, yes, and now tell me, how is Dickens these days? Do you call him Chuck, or . . .”
“Invite me in for a drink,” he interrupted.
Naomi blinked. “You’re inviting yourself into my apartment?”
“You can serve the drink in a mug. I’m starting to like it that way.”
“What about Lilah?” she said, singsonging the word while crossing her arms, keys jingling in her left hand.
“Well, get this. Every now and then, she allows me to consume a beverage without having to get permission first. What about Dylan with a Y? You guys serious?”
“Actually,” she said, sticking her key into the lock and shoving open the door, “he’s trying to make a show about me.”
“Like porn?” Oliver asked, following her in, even though he hadn’t been specifically invited.
Naomi laughed, a genuine laugh, and tossed her purse on the couch. “No. God no. A TV series about my life.”
“That interesting, are you?” Oliver asked. His voice was joking, but secretly he thought it wasn’t a half-bad idea. The woman fascinated him, though it grated to know he wasn’t the only one captivated. He’d seen the way Dylan with a Y looked at Naomi, and the man wanted a hell of a lot more than a television show from her.
Naomi shrugged and opened the cabinet above the fridge, which apparently served as her liquor cabinet. He watched as she pulled down a tiny bottle of something he’d seen bartenders use, then went to her toes, reaching for a bottle of Woodford Reserve.
Even in the black stilettos, the bourbon was just out of reach. Oliver went to her side, reaching above her to grab the bottle. He didn’t mean to—not consciously—but the gesture had him pressing against her side, just for a moment.
They both froze. Damn. This was what had been missing with Lilah tonight. That elusive something. For that matter, he’d been missing it a hell of a lot longer than that. He cleared his throat and handed her the whisky bottle, which she accepted with a nod of thanks. Still, instead of moving away, her eyes crept from his tie up to his face, giving him a suspicious look.
Oliver smiled ruefully. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Look like you’re always bracing for the other shoe to drop and me to do something wretched.”
She laughed softly and looked down at the bourbon in her hand, tracing the label with a red fingernail. “Let’s just say I’ve been sort of conditioned.”
Oliver felt a sharp flash of anger at whoever had treated her badly, even as he felt relief that he was making progress, that she was finally showing her cards just a little.
“Ah,” he said softly, not wanting to scare her off. “Corner piece.”
Her head snapped up. “What?”
“You’re like a puzzle,” he said with a smile. “And I’ve just found one of the corner pieces.”
“The corner piece?” She looked genuinely, adorably nonplussed.
“Have you never done a jigsaw puzzle before?” he asked, reaching out slowly. His fingers brushed her neck, and she lurched back.
Oliver held up a hand in an easy motion, the way he would to a skittish animal, a little alarmed at her reaction. “Sorry. You’re just still wearing your coat. Your collar was . . .” He made a motion to indicate it was flipped, and that he’d been trying to fix it.
Her hand flew up to her neck, and she blinked rapidly before letting out a forced laugh, as though her reaction to his touch had been no big deal. She set the bourbon on the counter and shrugged out of her coat.
“Here,” she said, shoving it at him.
He glanced down at the woman’s trench coat he was now holding. So she was still putting barriers between them. Literally. Still, she wasn’t kicking him out, and that bourbon looked hopeful. Even more so when she pulled out two glasses.
She looked at him and paused a moment. His heart sank when she turned to put the glasses away. Then lifted again when she pulled out two mugs instead.
“Ah,” he said with a smile. “Our thing.”
“We don’t have a thing,” she muttered irritably, pulling a box of sugar cubes out of a cupboard.
“Sure we do,” Oliver countered, walking across the room and opening the door of her coat closet. He hung her trench and turned back. “Booze out of a mug.”
“How do you know this drink is for you?” she asked, measuring ingredients into the mugs without looking at him.
“Because you left Dylan with a Y out there on the sidewalk looking pissed.”
Her head snapped up. “He was not.”
“Pissed? Sure he was. I know a dude with blue balls when I see one. He thought he was getting lucky.”
“It wasn’t like that. He just wants me to agree to his show.”
“Do you want to do it?”
Her attention was back on the drinks. “Hmm?”
“The TV series,” Oliver said, coming back to the counter. “Do you want to do it?”
A small crease appeared between her eyebrows, and she tucked a strand of dark red hair behind her ear. “Nobody’s really asked me that.”
“Well, they should,” he said, loosening his tie before he realized he was at her apartment, not his. Strange, that he should feel so at home in the lion’s den. He decided to chalk it up to the fact that their apartments were next door to each other, and not that this prickly woman could feel . . . comforting.
Like she was home.
He pushed the thought aside. “So, do you want to do it?”
“I don’t know,” she said, resuming her drink-making by dropping a handful of ice cubes into each mug. “It’s weird.”
It was weird. He couldn’t imagine having his life translated on the big screen, small screen . . . any screen. But then he wasn’t a billionaire entrepreneur with a scrappy background. Yeah, he’d done his Wikipedia stalking, though there hadn’t been much about her pre-Maxcessory days beyond her being from the Bronx.
“I’m thinking about it,” she said by way of answer, shoving the mug across the counter toward him. “I like the idea of encouraging girls and young women to build their own thing, chase their dreams and all that.”
“Hell of a thing you’ve built,” he said, meaning it.
She nodded in thanks. “What do you do?”
“I’m an architect,” Oliver said, lifting the mug.
Naomi looked surprised. “Really?”
He laughed. “Yeah, really. Do I not look it?”
“Not at all,” she said honestly. “You’re more of a take-over-the-family-business type.”
Her words caused a pang, and Oliver looked quickly down at his drink to hide it, but either he wasn’t fast enough or she was more perceptive than he’d anticipated.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I guess with your father . . .”
“I’m almost glad he doesn’t remember,” Oliver said quietly, not meaning to say the words until they were out there. “It was our biggest fight, me telling him I wanted to go to architecture school rather than take the reins of his company. He told me it was a phase. Then we had an even bigger fight when I told him I wanted to start my own firm and he realized it wasn’t a phase, that I’d truly dared to defy him. And I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” he muttered, a little embarrassed.
“I’m sure he was proud,” Naomi said, her tone gentler than usual.
“I’m sure he wasn’t.” His and his father’s relationship, always rocky, had never truly recovered after that. And then Walter had gotten sick, and everything had been redefined. Not that Oliver was glad that his father had lost a part of himself. Alzheimer’s was a true shit disease. But selfishly, Oliver had been relieved to lay some of their old fights to rest, to be able to watch a baseball game, father and son.
He took the first sip of his drink and looked down in surprise. “This is good. Very good.”
“I know,” she said, smiling immodestly. “I make an excellent old-fashioned. Cooking eludes me, but cocktailing? I’m not bad.”
He nodded in agreement, taking another sip. “Why here?”
“Why here what?” she asked, sipping her own cocktail and watching him.
“Why this building? You’re thirty years old and not to be crass, but your financial success is no secret. You could afford to live anywhere.”
“Ah yes, but this is the Park Avenue,” she said.
Oliver sighed. “And just like that, the pieces are all over the floor again.”
“What?” she asked with a laugh.
“The puzzle pieces. Your puzzle pieces. You might as well have scattered them all over the floor.”
“How’s that?”
“Because, Naomi,” he said, her eyes sharpening as he said her name. “You don’t care about the prestige of Park Avenue. You lied.”
“I’m allowed.”
“To lie?”
“To not share every detail of my life and motivations with a man I barely know.”
“And yet here we are, having a nightcap together instead of with our respective dates,” he pointed out.
She opened her mouth, then closed it, frowning in confusion. “You’re right.”
Her grumpy tone should have bothered him, but instead he found himself grinning, relieved that he wasn’t the only one trying to solve a puzzle and finding it difficult.
He lifted his drink. “Can I borrow this? The mug?”
“Why not, might as well add to your collection,” she said, referring to the coffee mug he still had from move-in day. “You’re leaving?”
He carefully hid his smile at the puzzled, almost petulant note in her voice.
“I want to check on Dad. Janice is there, but he was having a rough night before I left. I want to make sure everything’s okay.”
“Sure, of course,” she said.
Oliver nodded goodbye and stepped into the hallway, feeling only a little bad about his partial truth after accusing her of lying. He did want to check on his father, but Janice had already texted him to say that Walter had gone to bed without issue. But it wasn’t the real reason he’d left.
The woman had disliked him from their first meeting. He still didn’t know why, but he did know that in order to redefine her opinion of him, he had to throw her off balance. To surprise her.
And if her assessing look as he’d walked away had been any indication, she’d be thinking about him tonight.
Much in the same way he’d be thinking about her.