Passion on Park Avenue (Central Park Pact #1)(64)

The confusion in Walter’s gaze faded slightly, replaced by something a little . . . meaner. “Sleeping with the help, eh, son?”

Naomi flinched, and Oliver tensed beside her. Walter either didn’t notice or didn’t care about their reaction. He let out a chuckle as he went to the fridge. “Don’t worry about it. I won’t tell your mother. Our little secret.”

Naomi swallowed against the sudden bitterness in her mouth at the memory of another little secret these two men had kept, also involving “the help.” The roles had been reversed, but the damage was the same.

No, not the same, she silently amended. She was not her mother.

And she would not let either of these men treat her the way Danica had always let men treat her.

Oliver grabbed her wrist as she turned away. “Naomi.”

She shook her head. “Take care of your dad.”

She pulled her wrist gently from his grip but turned back once more before leaving. “I’ll be here tomorrow morning to watch him, but after that . . . you need to find another caretaker until Janice gets back.”

He searched her face and frowned, before giving a single nod in confirmation.

He let her go.





THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1

Three days following her ill-fated make-out session with Oliver, Naomi finally had something to smile about.

She and Deena had just finished the first tour of the new office, and it was absolute perfection.

Truth be told, she’d been prepared to make the new office earn a place in her heart, but she’d been smitten within seconds. Naomi thought she’d given the design team an impossible task—make the space feel open while still ensuring everyone had privacy to focus.

She knew “open floor plans” were all the rage, and she was all for collaboration, but she also respected that not everybody worked well staring at the person across from them or listening to their neighbor chirping in their ear. The design team she’d brought in had been worth every penny. Each floor was centered around a communal area with conference tables, couches, and multi-person desks, while the perimeter of each floor housed “micro-offices”—individual spaces for employees to close the door and work in silence or take a phone call, but with glass walls ensuring that even the center workspace was lit by natural light.

Naomi’s own office was a bit smaller than her old one, per her request, but it didn’t feel it. The glass desk and white cabinets felt fresh and fun, as did the pop of coral accents to match Maxcessory’s distinctive logo.

Over the past few weeks, Naomi had deliberately pulled back from her usual 110 percent. Partially to see how her team handled it, partially to address the stress of Brayden’s death, and then Walter coming into her life.

But now she was more ready than ever to get back to it. Move-in day for the new office was Monday, which couldn’t come soon enough. She needed something to distract her, needed distance—literal distance—from Oliver Cunningham.

Naomi was humming a Spice Girls song that had been going through her head ever since it came on her Throwback Thursday running playlist that morning, but she stopped dead in her tracks as she got to her floor in the apartment building.

There were flowers sitting at her door. Not a lavish bouquet, but small and elegant with white roses and little sprigs of green.

“Hello there, my pretties,” she said, crouching down. She poked gingerly amid the buds, looking for a card. Not finding one, she picked up the cardboard box covering the base.

“Birthday?”

Naomi’s head whipped around to see Oliver coming up the steps. She hadn’t seen him since Tuesday afternoon when he’d gotten home from work and told her coolly that Janice would be back on Wednesday, and she was off the hook from Walter duty.

Then, as now, he was back to wearing his usual suits. All signs of casual, teasing Oliver were long gone, and she told herself it was better this way, even as a little sliver of her heart wondered what she was missing out on. What they were missing out on.

“No,” she said by way of response, standing with the flowers in hand. “I don’t actually know what they’re for.”

She didn’t mention that for one idiotic moment she’d thought—hoped—they might be from him. But his expression said otherwise.

“Perhaps they’re from last weekend’s date,” he said casually, coming to lean on the wall beside her door. “Or this upcoming weekend’s date?”

There was a clear question in his voice, which she ignored. “I don’t know who they’re from,” she said honestly. “I can’t find a card anywhere.”

He frowned slightly and reached out to search within the blooms. “You’re right. Maybe in the box?”

“Probably.” She started to juggle the flowers in one arm to get at her keys in her purse, but nearly dropped the bouquet. She shoved it at Oliver. “Here, hold these?”

“Every man’s dream, to hold flowers for a woman.”

“They’re probably from Claire or Audrey.”

“Girlfriends send each other flowers?”

“Sometimes. If they need cheering up,” she said, finding the keys at the bottom of the bag. “Say, like if her love life was feeling really complicated?”

“Hey,” he said, his voice sharp enough to have her looking up. “You’re the one who walked out, Naomi.”