The Singles (25 page)

And phone sex, of course, led to escort work and the creation of my girl-next-door alter ego—Alice.

Chuckling, she shook her head. “No, I opted in for these text alerts for
Lavish
.”

“Ugh,” I groaned. “Don’t tell me you saw that club picture of me.”

Opening the new alert, she nodded. “Don’t worry, I scrolled right past it. Anyone seen with Oliver Manning is bound to—” She paused mid-sentence, her face knitting into a frown as she looked down at her screen. Glancing up at me, she hunched her shoulders. “Well, you get seen with him once, and you’re all over the damn place.”

I knew when someone was purposely hiding something from me, and my stomach twisted. I crossed, and then uncrossed, my legs under the booth. “Stella ... is he all over the place on your phone right
now
?”

“I’m sure it’s not a big deal, but—”

“May I see?”

Curling her glossy lips in disapproval, she sighed and rotated her phone so that the screen faced me. Something painful coiled in my chest when I leaned over to see a picture of Oliver and Finley.

Together.

I recognized the backdrop as a popular, and exclusive, sushi destination in Beverly Hills, but I was more interested by the couple themselves as they stood near the curb, their bodies so close I fisted my hands until my nails cut into my palms.

I couldn’t see the look on his face, but the ecstatic grin on hers was undeniable.

“Oliver Manning and socialite girlfriend Finley Scott in Beverly Hills yesterday,” I read the caption aloud, keeping my voice stable in spite of the ragged emotions storming through me. “Looks like they’re back together.”

When she answered, I didn’t miss the sympathy in her tone. “If they are, it won’t last long.”

“Why is that?”

She waited until after our waitress had brought my lemon water to say, “I can trust you, yes?” When I nodded, she continued, “From what Dora told me over drinks one night, Finley’s got a history of just picking up and disappearing on Oliver. Even in their teens.”

I remembered what his ex-girlfriend had said to me the morning in my father’s house about loving Oliver since she was fifteen, and I clenched my teeth, hoping it looked like a smile to Stella.

Fucking Oliver.

She gave the photo on her phone one final glance before taking a sip of her soda. “There’s—there’s nothing going on with you and him, is there?”

I shook my head almost too rapidly. “Absolutely nothing.”

Stella was smart enough to see through the bullshit, but she responded with a slight tilt of her head.

I’m fine,
I convinced myself.
I’m fine, and he told me all along we’d only have one night together. So why am I irritated?

There was nothing between Oliver Manning and myself, and my focus needed to laser in on figuring out his mother’s motives for ripping my life apart—not ripping his impeccable clothing off his body.

But by the time I returned to the office and dropped Carl’s food by his desk, I was furious. I spent the rest of the day barricaded in my tiny, black-and-white office, transcribing like a mad woman. A few minutes before it was time to leave, I received a new text message, and when I checked it, my heart stopped as I looked down at Oliver’s name at the top of my screen.

Can I see you tonight?

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I snapped. Rolling my chair away from my desk, I glowered at the five words on the iPhone screen, the intense pain in my chest spiking a notch with every second that passed. Starting a text, my fingers flew over the tiny letters.

Why would I want to fuck you again when there’s a picture of you with your ex plastered up online? Thanks, but no thanks.

Hovering my finger over the send key, I reconsidered what I wrote. Then, releasing a sigh that made everything from my stomach to my throat sting, I erased every word, but two.

Fuck you.

––––––––

D
riving my Mini Cooper into the parking garage of my Marina del Rey apartment, I was thinking more rationally. With over an hour and a half away from Emerson & Taylor to clear my mind, I’d taken a step back to revaluate the situation. My response to Oliver and Finley—whatever might be going on between them—was uncharacteristic and admittedly ridiculous.

In my twenty-four years on earth, I had never reacted jealously over a man. For starters, I’d always been so busy with work that dealing with men in my personal life was a headache—like the guy who’d broken up with me after finding out I was an escort or the man I’d dated briefly before him. That hadn’t worked out because of distance.

Meeting Oliver Manning, though, had twisted everything I thought I knew about myself.

In a matter of weeks, he’d worked his way under my skin and tonight—tonight I planned on shoving all that out of my system for a while.

Toting the bottle of wine I’d picked up on the way home and my Prada bag, I took the stairs up to my floor, grateful for the exercise after spending most of the day trapped behind my desk. Although I wasn’t a wino, my best friend adored the stuff, and I was determined to order some takeout and coax her into catching up on one of the many TV shows waiting on the DVR.

But the second I opened the stairwell door and turned onto my hall I knew that Pen was definitely not at home. Otherwise, why would a six-foot-two, gorgeously tan man be leaning against my front door?

His golden-brown hair was damp, giving me the impression he’d showered and immediately come to my place, this was the second time I’d seen him without his customary suit. He wore a casual plaid button down, dark-wash jeans, and cap toe boots. When I slowed my approach toward him, his brows arched over blue eyes that drank in the sight of me.

I averted my own eyes down to the oak floor.

Be strong. Do not look at that man’s shoulders, crotch—
anything
. Get the hell in the apartment,
I warned myself.

“Lizzie.” He spoke my fake name in a growly voice that danced through my pores, shooting fireworks into every vein. “You look beautiful tonight.”

“Oliver.” I held the bottle of wine between my elbow and side. “What are you doing here?
Fuck you
usually means you don’t show up an hour later.”

Although he moved aside to give me room to unlock my door, I felt the hard muscles of his abs against the side of my body, and I clamped the doorknob tightly. “I took your text as an invitation,” he drawled.

I twisted my head to the side, my blond hair falling over one shoulder, and he smirked down at me like he was the damn King of Los Angeles. Cocky smiles like those were meant for one thing, and he’d already gotten that from me.

Rotating the knob, I straightened my back and flung the door open where it banged loudly against the wall. “It
wasn’t
an invitation.”

Molding his body to my backside, his fingers spread over my chest, and he breathed against my neck. “It sure as hell sounded like one, Lizzie.”

Screaming at myself to put on my big girl panties—the ones that also warded off men like Oliver—I darted out of his grip, my shoulders burning from the trail of heat his fingertips left.

“Goodnight, Mr. Manning.” I started to close the door, but the boot lodged in the opening halted my plans. When he shoved his face so close to mine my small nose brushed the tip of his, I sucked in a harsh breath.

“You get pissed at me for doing something wrong, fine. But you’re not going to close doors in my face without giving me a chance to fix whatever it is that’s ticked you off.”

“You don't have to fix
anything
.” But I stupidly held the door open to let him in. Placing my bag and the bottle of wine on the foyer table, I faced him with my arms crossed over my chest. “What do you want, Oliver?”

“I wanted to take the beautifully frustrating woman I spent the night with to dinner. I
wanted
to take her back to my place again for ... dessert. And then, since it’s the weekend, I had no plan of seeing that beautiful body covered by anything other than my cock and our sweat for the next twenty-four hours.”

If I weren’t so irritated, my underwear would probably already be on the laminate wood floor.

“You couldn’t say all that via text?” The breathlessness in my voice earned me a gleaming white smile I wanted to smack right off his face.

“You told me to fuck off,” he pointed out.

Twisting away from him, I swiped the bottle and stalked through the foyer toward the kitchen with him hot on my trail.

“I saw a picture of you with Finley Scott online today,” I said hotly over my shoulder, ditching the bottle of wine on the counter. “Since it was taken just yesterday, I assumed you were no longer interested in
any
of that with me.”

His expression amused, he accepted the fall ale I pulled out of the refrigerator. Opening the bottle cap easily with the corner of my counter, he turned it to his full lips and took a drink. Then, he made a soft noise of admonishment.

“I would have thought that after what happened the other night, you would have learned from my mistakes and not jumped to conclusions.” He reached for my own beer bottle, and I passed it to him. Using the counter as a bottle opener once again, his longing gaze traveled over all five-foot-four-inches of my body.

“Although I have to say, the end result has left me starving for seconds all week. To answer your question about Finley, we are not together again, and there’s no possibility of that happening.”

“Alright.” I downed at least a quarter of my beer before I nodded briskly. “
Alright
.” 

“You still sound unconvinced.” He exhaled. “I'd be happy to take you to my mother’s house right now and have Finley explain the nature of our relationship to you herself.”

My mouth fell open in horror. “Abso-fucking-lutely not.”

“I met with her yesterday to answer questions about this damn birthday party my mother is insisting on. Trust me, there are many other ways I’d love to spend my thirtieth birthday—being trapped in a house with Finley and Margaret is not one of them.”

His birthday party.

The same event Margaret had asked me to help Finley with if she happened to call on me for assistance.

I felt like a fool. A blubbering, jealous fool, but when I glanced at the floor, Oliver left his beer on the counter and held my chin in his hand. I swallowed down my embarrassment, not wanting to look up at him.

What the hell was happening to me? I sounded like the heroine of that Carrie Underwood song about taking a bat to headlights and keying cars, and I was definitely
not
that person.

“Dammit,” I groaned, and a soft grin touched his features. “I don’t even know what to say except you’ll have to excuse my ... temporary lapse of judgment.”

“Bring that lapse of judgment to my bed,” he advised, stroking the corners of my lips. “I've already told you your jealousy makes my cock react.” With his free hand, he spread my fingers on the hard bulge in the front of his pants. “Now that we’ve established I’m not fucking my ex, I’m not leaving here without you. We both want each other—we’ve admitted it already—so there’s no use in denying it.”

I hated that he’d worded it like that because it was the truth.

Because I couldn’t shake what Pen had told me about not falling in love with Oliver. Any man who could provoke such a volatile reaction from me all over a photo of him with another woman—well, that made him dangerous.

“I—”

He drowned my protests with his lips and tongue, drawing quiet moans from my throat as his mouth worked furiously over mine. It was possessive, almost punishing me for assuming the worst in him because I knew he wouldn’t finish what he’d started until he was good and ready.

Breathing raggedly, he broke our mouths apart, gliding his tongue over his lips. “Don’t fight me on this, Lizzie. I’ve been thinking about you since I brought you home the other morning, and I’m determined to be with you, inside of you,
tonight
.”

Damn Oliver with his pretty words and gifted body.

And damn myself for wanting to go with him badly enough to throw caution to the wind. Even though I was nodding, agreeing to leave with him, I heard myself whisper, “Then I’ll be the one whose picture is online.”

“Nobody will take photos of you.” At my skeptical sigh, he pulled away from me. “Contrary to what you might think, they don’t follow me around. We’ll go someplace private.”

“Do I need to change?”

He removed my hand from his zipper but not before squeezing my fingers lightly around the thick flesh. “Not if you want to stay dressed,” he warned.

*

O
liver’s private place turned out to be an incredibly busy international restaurant on Rodeo Drive. It was near the hotel where one of my top ten favorite movies—the ironically fitting
Pretty Woman
—was filmed. When I told him while we waited for our hostess to seat us, he looked down at me sheepishly.

“Never seen it.”

“Who
are
you?” I demanded. “First
The Tudors
and now this? You have to watch it—it’s a classic just like
The Princess Bride.
”

He bent his head, grazing my ear with his mouth. “You better bring bring a hell of a good negotiation to the table to get me on board with watching either of those.” I looked over my shoulder to see his blue eyes gleaming with desire, and my sex tightened eagerly. “I’m talking about—”

“Mr. Manning,” the hostess spoke up, snagging both our attention. Smiling, she held two large menus to her chest. “Your table is available.”

With his hand resting on the small of my back and his fingers drumming on the curve of my ass, I felt nearly every female eye in the building following us enviously as we were seated at an intimate table near the back of the restaurant.

After our hostess departed, he leaned back in the scroll print Parsons chair and stared at me. Though I couldn’t read his expression, it was impossible not to wilt slightly under his intense perusal.

“You like unnerving me,” I said to break the silence. “Don’t you?”