Passion on Park Avenue (Central Park Pact #1)(25)

“Yes,” Naomi said, relieved that he was mentally present enough to know that much. The woman who’d just vacated Naomi’s apartment had indeed been named Harriet. “She moved to Pennsylvania to be closer to her daughter.”

“Shame. Everyone’s leaving.” He looked at her sharply. “Have you seen my Margaret?”

Margaret. His wife. His dead wife. There it was again. That twist of sympathy for a man she’d spent her entire life despising. She pursed her lips, now officially panicked. Did she tell him his wife had passed away? Or would that only confuse him further?

“Do you live upstairs?”

She’d kept tabs on the Cunninghams over the years, and was pretty sure they’d never moved, but she wasn’t positive.

“Upstairs?” He frowned. He started to push past her. Not toward the stairs, but toward Naomi’s own apartment.

“Would you like to come in?” she asked needlessly, since he was already entering her apartment. “I could make us some coffee? Or tea?”

She hoped he wouldn’t say tea. She didn’t drink the stuff and didn’t have any.

“I’d take a whisky,” he was already saying, charging into her living room on steadier steps than before.

A whisky? Oh dear.

She followed him into her apartment, smiling a little as she saw him already settling on her couch, pulling one of her throw blankets over his lap and reaching for the remote. “Got any Scotch?”

“Um, I’ll check,” she said, stalling for time.

What now? Surely someone stayed with him during the day, but she didn’t want to leave him alone while she went up to his apartment to check. She didn’t have Oliver Cunningham’s phone number. She did have the number of Ms. Gromwell, the woman who’d facilitated the move-in process, but it didn’t feel right to call her about the Cunninghams’ personal business just yet.

Wait! Didn’t the elderly sometimes wear those bracelets? The medical emergency kind, with a contact number?

Walter’s thumb pressed the remote with deliberation, obviously looking for a specific channel. “Wish there was a day game today,” he muttered before stopping on the History Channel.

“You like baseball?” Naomi asked casually, sitting beside him on the couch, her gaze scanning his wrists. She closed her eyes in relief when she saw the silver bracelet on his left wrist. It was stylish, compared to the flimsy one in her imagination, but she was pretty sure the red symbol was a medical indicator of some sort.

“May I see your bracelet?” she asked with what she hoped was a calm, friendly smile.

Not friendly enough, apparently. Walter snatched his hand away from her reach, giving her a suspicious look. “Who are you?”

Naomi kept her smile in place as she repeated her introduction. “I’m Naomi, Mr. Cunningham.”

He narrowed his eyes and studied her. “I know you?”

In ways you can’t even imagine.

“We’re friends,” she lied smoothly, because he was starting to look a little bit scared beneath his defiance. “I was hoping to look at your bracelet.”

He pulled his arm even further out of reach, his agitation increasing along with his suspicion.

Inspiration struck.

“Did you know I run an accessory business?” she asked, pretending to lose interest in seeing his bracelet and pulling her legs beneath her on the couch.

“A business?” His gaze sharpened with alertness, and she saw a flash of the cutthroat Walter Cunningham of her memories.

She nodded. “I started it myself. It’s called Maxcessory, and it’s a subscription model. Members pay an annual fee to receive a box of accessories selected for them every month. Earrings, bracelets, necklaces. Sometimes a scarf or sunglasses.”

“Feminine trinkets.”

Naomi couldn’t help the quick laugh at the description. It was such an old-fashioned male thing to say, and yet his tone hadn’t been disparaging so much as trying to understand.

“Most of our members are women,” she admitted. “But last year we introduced an option for men as well. Cuff links, belts, pocket squares. We’ve seen some tremendous growth.”

He seemed to think this over. “You should put some suspenders into the mix. I can’t find any good ones these days.”

“I’ll mention it to the team,” Naomi assured him. And she would, because she kept promises, though she was fairly sure suspenders were too niche a market for Maxcessory’s average customer.

She continued, keeping her voice casual and calm. “I don’t know if I have any of my male accessories here in my home office, but would you like to see what we’re sending out to the women?”

Walter looked unconvinced. “You make a profit from this?”

Naomi named Maxcessory’s astronomically high revenue from the previous year, and Walter’s bushy eyebrows went up. “All right. I’d like to take a look. I used to invest in businesses, you know.”

She did know, but his investment money, whether real or imagined given his current state, wasn’t her goal.

Naomi went into her office. She didn’t have her desk furniture yet, but she had organized her inventory as best she could in boxes along the wall. She picked an assortment of items with emphasis on one type of jewelry in particular.