Passion on Park Avenue (Central Park Pact #1)(55)

“The gig had to end sometime, right?” Naomi said, keeping her voice light.

“Sure, I guess,” Caleb said, sounding a little deflated. Again, he flipped back through his pages, frowning. “You said she was a housekeeper?”

“Yep.”

“You haven’t mentioned that before. You said she was a cocktail waitress. A bartender. Manicure gal . . .”

“Oh, they’re called nail artists now,” Deena chimed in.

Caleb gave her a fleeting smile, then turned back to Naomi, clicking the end of his ballpoint pen. “She have any other housekeeping gigs?”

“No.”

The Cunninghams had made sure of that. Naomi didn’t remember much about those days after the incident other than the god-awful mildewy smell of the homeless shelters in February, but she remembered watching her mother’s face grow angrier and angrier as she was systematically rejected from every housekeeper job she’d applied to, live-in or otherwise.

“All right,” Caleb said, tossing his pen down and putting his head between his hands, expression thoughtful. “That’s fine. This is still good stuff. If the first six episodes are about Naomi’s childhood, I’m thinking this year in Park Avenue can be an entire episode, at least—”

“No,” Naomi interjected.

Caleb frowned. “No?”

“That year is off-limits. You can refer to it, or whatever, but I don’t want to show it.”

“But it’s a huge part of your childhood—”

“I said no,” Naomi gritted out.

Oliver, is that true? Did you and Naomi see your father with that woman? Angry blue eyes had drilled into Naomi’s that day as the lie spilled out of his mouth. I don’t know what she’s talking about.

“Off-limits,” she repeated, her voice a little ragged as the memory of Oliver’s betrayal ripped through her.

There was a long silence in the room, and some other guy whose name she’d already forgotten spoke up. “Respectfully, Ms. Powell, our aim here is to show the full story—”

“Dude.” This time it was Dylan who interrupted. “She said it’s off-limits. Drop it.”

Naomi’s head jerked up in surprise, and she met the producer’s gaze across the table. He gave her a smile and a brief nod, and Naomi made up her mind then and there.

Dylan Day deserved a chance.





SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27

Damn it. It was official. She was broken.

Pre-Brayden, Naomi had loved dating. Specifically, she’d loved getting ready for the date. The primping, the anticipation. The wondering.

But twenty minutes before she was supposed to meet Dylan for their first official date, she couldn’t find even a flicker of excitement. She’d thought looking the part would make her feel the part, but nope. Despite wearing Alexander McQueen leather pants that did excellent things for her lower half, an asymmetrical Trina Turk top paired with gold bangles and tiny gold earrings—she felt . . . flat.

Where was the sparkle? The wondering of what if. What if he kissed her? What if she kissed him? What if she owned up to being an independent twenty-first-century woman and slept with him on the first date simply because she wanted to?

She already knew she didn’t want to though.

Because when she’d pulled out her best black-bra-and-pantie set, she hadn’t been thinking about Dylan. When she’d carefully lined her eyes with a bit of black liner and gray shadow that she knew made her blue eyes pop, she hadn’t been thinking about Dylan. And now, as she stood in front of her shoe rack, debating between red patent Manolo Blahniks and strappy black Jimmy Choos, she wasn’t thinking about Dylan.

“Damn you,” she muttered at a man who wasn’t even present. A man who, despite her friends’ assurances, Naomi wasn’t even sure was interested.

She hadn’t seen Oliver all day, which shouldn’t have been a big deal except for the fact that she’d gotten sort of used to him. She’d gotten accustomed to listening for the sound of his key in the door. Gotten accustomed to their bickering over whether or not ordering pizza counted as proper fulfillment of his end of the bargain to feed her. Gotten accustomed to sitting with a glass of wine, watching him cook when she inevitably won the argument that pizza did not count.

And she’d deny to her dying day that she pushed for the home-cooked meal over takeout because it tended to extend their time together.

But today was Saturday, which meant she was off Walter duty, and since her role as his caretaker was apparently the only use he had for her . . .

“Enough,” Naomi snapped, disgusted with herself. She grabbed the red stilettos. Good enough.

No, better than that. Perfect. They were exactly the shoes that the good girls Oliver Cunningham liked to date wouldn’t wear.

Next, she dug through her makeup bag for a matching shade of lipstick, one eye on the clock as she did so. Plenty of time.

She and Dylan were meeting at the cocktail bar. Her idea. Naomi had never bought into that whole gentlemanly, escort-the-little-lady-to-and-from-the-date practice. If the date was a dud, the transportation time to and from her apartment to the date location only extended the agony. And if the date was a good one—really good—they’d eventually end up at his place. Never hers—that was just asking for a clinger.