Passion on Park Avenue (Central Park Pact #1)(49)

“Yes, and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t want you putting your life on hold for him.”

“Really?” Oliver asked, a rare caustic note entering his usually carefully unreadable voice. “I think that’s exactly what the bastard would have wanted.”

She fiddled with her fork, careful not to give away her agreement that the Walter Cunningham she remembered was the sort of selfish bastard who expected others’ lives to revolve around him.

“So he and Serena didn’t mesh, huh?” she asked.

“Not at all,” Oliver said, after swallowing. “It’s why I came down here in the first place. For whatever reason, he seems attached to you.”

“For whatever reason?” she asked with a smile.

“Yeah, well. He doesn’t know you like I do.”

Oliver winked as he said it, and it caused a warm churn in her stomach that had nothing to do with the pasta.

“I’m happy to stay with him during the day until Janice gets back, but I’m not accepting your money.”

He set his fork aside. “Naomi, I can’t ask you to watch him in exchange for nothing.”

“I won’t be the hired help,” she snapped, her own fork clattering noisily to her plate.

“Whoa,” he said slowly, leaning back in his chair.

She took a deep breath to calm herself and reached for her glass. “If I do this, I do this as your equal.”

Oliver frowned. “Whatever gave you the thought I didn’t think of you as an equal?”

Tell him! Just tell him who you are!

And the fact that she couldn’t told Naomi the real problem. She was afraid that if she did tell him, if she revealed her past and why she was living in the building in the first place, then she really wouldn’t be his equal.

He’d stop seeing her as confident Naomi Powell, and start seeing her as the daughter of the whore housekeeper who’d seduced his dad.

“Never mind,” she said irritably, picking up her fork again.

“Naomi.”

“What.”

He waited until she looked at him, then smiled slightly. “Will you please watch my father while I’m at work tomorrow? I promise not to try to insult you with money, but I’m going to insist you let me at least feed you after. Final offer.”

She studied him, looking for a catch, but saw only . . . kindness.

“Okay.”

His smile grew wider, and he resumed eating. “Good.”

After a moment, he said, “Question.”

“What?” she asked warily.

“Are you as prickly with female friends as you are with male friends?” He put the slightest emphasis on the last word.

She shrugged. “Hard to say. I don’t have a ton of them.”

“What about Claire and Audrey?”

“They’re friends,” she admitted. “But we’ve only known each other a few months.”

“You don’t think it’ll last?”

She fiddled with her fork, thinking this over. “Honestly? I don’t know. On one hand, we clicked. Almost immediately. On the other hand, the circumstances of our friendship are . . . unusual.”

“Maybe you clicked because of the circumstances. The same man was interested in all three of you. You must have something in common.”

“I don’t know what,” she grumbled. “Claire is kind and responsible. Audrey’s sweet and fun.”

“And you are . . . ?”

She smiled. “Ambitious and prickly?”

“Driven and guarded,” he countered.

“The first one I take as a compliment. The second I can’t help. Wouldn’t you be if you learned that the person you were sleeping with was married?”

“Perhaps. But I also suspect you kept people at a distance long before that.”

She pushed her plate away. “The pasta’s really not good, huh?”

“No,” he said, looking like he wanted to press her for an answer on his last question but decided to let her dodge it. “Got any ice cream?”

“Now you’re talking, Ollie,” she said, standing and going to the freezer. Then she turned back. “Do you need to get back to Walter?”

He hesitated, and she saw the internal battle raging within. The compulsive need to do his duty by his father. His desire to stay.

“I’ll double-check with Serena,” he said, pulling his phone out of his pocket and waggling it at her. “Last call to back out of your offer.”

Naomi pulled the lid off the Ben & Jerry’s carton and looked across her kitchen at the man who’d once made her life utterly miserable. And who also made her feel the most alive she had in years.

“Let’s do it,” she blurted out before she could rethink the fact that she was willingly entangling herself with a family she’d spent a lifetime resenting.

“Good,” he said, turning his attention to his phone. “Oh, one more thing.”

“Hmm?” She dug a spoon into the carton and plopped a bite of cookie dough ice cream in her mouth.

“You still dating Dylan with a Y?”

The question caught her off guard, and a chunk of chocolate chip lodged in her throat.

“Not sure that’s your business.”