Passion on Park Avenue (Central Park Pact #1)(30)

Walter smirked at Naomi. “You look just like your mother.”

Oliver inhaled for patience, knowing it was pointless to tell his father that Walter didn’t know Naomi’s mother.

“All right, Dad, time to go,” Oliver said firmly, picking up his briefcase.

His father didn’t move. Neither did Naomi—they stood, locked in a strange staring contest. He expected Naomi to look unnerved, and she did a little, but she also looked angry, and that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t Walter’s fault he was sick.

“He doesn’t know what he’s saying,” Oliver told her stiffly. He hated having to explain his dad’s condition in front of his father, but he had to say something to get that look off her face.

She swallowed and gave Oliver a fleeting look, but the earlier flirtation was gone.

Instead she nodded stiffly, and a moment later he and his father had been ushered out into the hallway like unwanted garbage.

Walter looked down his body and frowned. “Where are my pants?”

“Hell of a question,” Oliver muttered.

He put his hand on his father’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go get you some pants.”

“I could go for some eggs,” Walter was muttering. “And maybe some Scotch. Where’s my bracelet?”

Oliver dutifully answered his father’s questions, handed over the bracelet, then started to follow his father to the elevator.

But not before he cast one last thoughtful glance toward Naomi Powell’s closed door, more certain than ever that he was missing a crucial piece to the puzzle.

And more determined than ever to solve it.





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—