Passion on Park Avenue (Central Park Pact #1)(62)

“You said you spent your entire date with another guy thinking about me,” he said, digging into a carton of sweet-and-sour shrimp.

“Yes, and—Wait. That was your plan? That is so . . . so . . . you sabotaged me. And Dylan!”

Oliver winced. “So it was him.”

“You already knew I was dating him.”

“Was past tense, or was past participle?”

She paused chewing. “Huh?”

“Are you still dating him?” His voice was somehow both patient and demanding. And far too compelling.

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“Are you going out with him again?”

“I don’t know!”

He continued to watch her, then tossed his chopsticks aside. “I want a beer. You want a beer?”

She stared after him aghast as he went to the fridge and popped the caps off two bottles before bringing both back to the table. Naomi sat back in her chair and studied him as she took a sip of her beer. This version of Oliver was . . . unnerving. The suit Oliver, she could handle. Sort of. Or at least she was working on it. Because suit Oliver was easy to remember as a Cunningham.

But this Oliver, with his bottle of beer, his tired-looking T-shirt that fit entirely too well . . . He unceremoniously wiped his mouth with one of the flimsy paper napkins that came with the takeout, and Naomi bit back a groan.

“You’re doing it on purpose.”

“What?”

She looked away. “Nothing.”

His beer bottle froze halfway to his mouth as he studied her, then he let out a disbelieving laugh. “I don’t believe it. Son of a bitch was right.”

“Who was right?”

“Never mind,” he said, setting his beer aside and turning to face her. “Why Dylan?”

“Why Dylan what?”

He gave her a look that said you know what.

She hesitated, wary of the intensity in his expression. “Because he’s . . .”

She almost said easy, then remembered that’s exactly what Oliver had accused her of the night of the dinner party. Dating Dylan didn’t present a risk. Damn it. Had he been right the entire time?

“Allow me to be clearer,” Oliver said in a low voice, reaching out and grabbing the leg of her chair and dragging it, and her, closer.

“Why”—his hand slipped behind her neck as it had the night of their kiss—“if you were ready to date again after Brayden, why was it him?”

“As opposed to?” Naomi meant it to be a sassy little quip to keep the upper hand, but she was losing the battle.

Especially when his thumb stroked slowly along the sensitive skin on her neck. How could he possibly know how much she liked that? How a hand slipping beneath her hair to the sensitive skin of her neck always made her a little weak in the knees? He’d done it first at the dinner party, and again with the kiss, and now crowded around his father’s kitchen table, the same kitchen table where . . .

Naomi reared back. That kitchen table. The very one where she’d watched through a crack in the guest bedroom door as the three Cunninghams had sat with their perfect posture in their “dinner outfits” eating things like duck confit and asparagus with beurre blanc, while she’d wolfed down a cold burrito from Taco Bell her mom had bought her hours earlier.

“Talk to me,” Oliver said, his grip staying firm even as she tried to wiggle away. “Talk to me about what just happened right there, Naomi. Why do you keep fighting this?”

His voice was soft yet commanding, his touch on the back of her neck gentle but determined.

“This will never work,” she said. “We’re so different.”

“Only according to the skeletons in your closet.”

What?

“Hey, you don’t know—”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know, because you don’t tell me what’s going on in your head, but here’s what I do know, Naomi. We’ve got something here. You want to bring your baggage on in, fine, we’ll deal with it. Because it’s time for you to start admitting that we could be damn good together if you just give it a chance.”

She sat perfectly still, wanting to believe him, to trust him . . .

Oliver studied her expression for a long moment before slowly releasing her.

He picked up his chopsticks. “How’s work?”

She blinked at the abrupt change in subject and mood, telling herself that she wasn’t disappointed, and yet feeling the absence of his touch acutely. “What?”

He opened up a carton of fried rice and dumped some onto his plate. “Work. Maxcessory. How’s it going? How’s working from home?”

“Ah—”

He looked up and smiled. “What, you thought I just wanted you for sex? I definitely want that. But I also like to know the women I’m sleeping with. So tell me.”

She took a deep breath and moved her chair closer back to its original position as she, too, picked up her chopsticks again. “Well. Let’s just say I’m not exactly the paragon of productivity when it comes to working from home.”

“Because of Dad?” he asked, glancing over. “You know I can get a full-time caretaker anytime.”

“No, not that. I mean yeah, he demands quite a bit of my time, but a lot of my non-Walter time has been focused on something else.”