Passion on Park Avenue (Central Park Pact #1)(31)

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.