Passion on Park Avenue (Central Park Pact #1)(39)

“Great. Very classy, Naomi,” she muttered to herself. Honestly, this was the second time in a week this man had had to fix her clothes.

She started to lift her hand, but his hand was already there, slipping beneath her hair once again, his fingers lightly brushing the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck as he gently adjusted the tag. And lingered.

Naomi’s breath caught at the contact, just as it had the other night. When Dylan’s touch had done zilch, and when Oliver’s touch had kept her up half the night.

She’d convinced herself it’d been a fluke.

It wasn’t.

She looked around to see if anyone had noticed, but Dylan and Claire had paused to watch a full-count pitch on the TV, and Clarke and Audrey were bantering about whether or not squash counted as a vegetable.

The only person paying any attention to Naomi was . . . Oliver. And she saw that he knew. He knew exactly what his touch did to her. And yet there was no gloating in his gaze, no triumph, just awareness. Of her. Of them.

He slowly pulled his hand out from under her hair. “There,” he said quietly. “All better.”

No. No, it was not all better. Her pulse was all jumpy, her breath was a little staccato, and she didn’t even recognize herself.

Naomi was always the seductress, never the seduced, and yet here she was, feeling distinctly fluttery about the one man she was determined to despise.

“Okay,” Audrey said, “Dinnertime. TV off. My house, my rules.”

“Yes, Mom,” Claire said, dutifully turning off the television.

The group took their places at the table, and Naomi realized maybe she’d been wrong about Audrey’s placement of the name tags. Maybe she hadn’t been placed next to Oliver, so much as across from Dylan, making it easier to talk to her date.

She knew this, not because she was actually talking to her date, but because Oliver was talking to his. Regardless of why Claire had asked Oliver tonight, or why he’d agreed, it was hard not to see that they got along marvelously. Apparently, they’d both gone to the same leadership camp back in the day, and Claire, a couple of years older, had been his group leader. Apparently, they had a mutual friend who’d recently been arrested for growing pot at her Hamptons home. Apparently, they both loved spy movies.

The rest of the group laughed at the trip down memory lane. And just as Naomi was pep-talking herself that she wasn’t jealous, that she didn’t care that he didn’t even seem to be aware of her, Oliver glanced over and caught her eye. And winked.

And she knew, with that one should-have-been-cheesy-but-was-unbearably-sexy wink, that he was right.

She was attracted. They did have a thing.

And she didn’t have a clue what to do about it.





FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12

You didn’t have to walk me home,” Naomi said, pulling the collar of her jacket up around her ears and shoving her hands into her pockets.

“Probably not,” Oliver said, tilting his head up slightly to look at the night sky.

She let out a startled laugh. “I guess we’re past the point of nice platitudes?”

“Naomi, you haven’t given me anything close to a nice platitude in the time I’ve known you.”

“Well, that’s true.” Her shoulders hunched slightly. “So why did you?”

“Why did I what?”

“Offer to walk with me.”

“Did I offer?” he mused. “Or did your friends point out eight hundred times that we were headed the same direction?”

Naomi laughed. “Yeah, sorry about that. I thought it was just Audrey, but Claire seems to have joined her in the matchmaking efforts.”

“They care about you.”

“Yeah. Well, that and we sort of made a pact.”

“A pact?” He glanced down at her.

“So, you know that we were all . . . involved with Brayden?”

He nodded.

“We didn’t know it. Obviously. Not until the day of the funeral.”

Jesus. Oliver winced. “You met at his funeral?”

“Sort of. We all meant to go to the funeral, but instead we found ourselves in Central Park. We had the same shoes, and, well, whatever, that doesn’t matter. We were all a little adrift after realizing how thoroughly Brayden had used us, and we agreed to help each other avoid falling into the same trap.”

“That seems like an anti-matchmaking scheme. Claire and Audrey all but linked our hands before shoving us out the door.”

“Don’t flatter yourself—I suspect that’s more steering me away from Dylan than it is steering me toward you.”

That bugged him more than he cared to admit, but her friends were right. Dylan was no good for her. Oliver nearly told her as much, but she spoke first.

“Who’s with your father tonight?” Naomi asked.

Oliver inhaled as reality settled back down around him. As he realized he was in no position to enter a relationship. Not with Lilah. Not with Claire. Definitely not with Naomi.

He’d tried, once, to balance a woman and his father. It had worked for a while. His ex had been sweet, mild mannered . . . and completely uninterested in being with a man who had a sick father.

“Janice,” he replied, answering her question. “She usually takes weekends off, but every now and then I’ll pay her extra for a weekend night.”