Passion on Park Avenue (Central Park Pact #1)(34)

“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.





FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12

Despite her poorer-than-poor upbringing, in the wake of Maxcessory’s success, Naomi had seen her fair share of Manhattan wealth, from black-tie fund-raisers to fancy museum cocktail parties to overpriced dinners with potential investors. She’d thought she’d finally wrapped her head around what life was like for the 1 percent.

But walking into Audrey’s apartment? She realized there was a whole other level.

She’d been invited to Audrey’s once before for a Sex and the City night, but she’d had to bow out at the last minute to deal with an inventory crisis in the San Francisco office. So she was fully not prepared for the fact that she was about to attend a dinner party in what was surely the most expensive building in New York City.

The lobby, with its soaring ceilings, marble floors, and floor-to-ceiling fish tank that looked bigger than Naomi’s apartment, should have prepared her. The fact that the formal, suit-wearing concierge at the reception desk directed her to a private elevator to the penthouse really should have prepared her.