Uncovered (7 page)

When I heard the door to her office slam
shut, I was on hold waiting to speak to someone with the cleaning service she
employed for her Upper East Side apartment—my father’s old apartment. I scooted
my chair back and glanced out just in time to see her stalk on the elevator in
an angry huff.

Finally
,
I thought, feeling a burst of giddiness.

With her gone, tomorrow I would be free
to look around her office without getting caught.

“Ms. Emerson?” a voice on the other line
spoke up, and my heart automatically jumped into my throat even though I knew
he was referring to Margaret.  

“No, I’m Mrs. Emerson’s assistant, Ms.
Connelly,” I quickly corrected.

“Ah, sorry about that. I checked our
records and it looks like your boss’ apartment was cleaned this morning.”

“Perfect.” That was one item I could
scratch off my list. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Brandon.”

Grabbing an owl-print Post-It from the
top of the stack, I scribbled a quick note in case there were problems and
stuck it to the bottom of my computer monitor. “Thanks, Brandon. You have a
good one, okay?”

“You do the same.”

Typing quickly, I sent Margaret a
one-line message letting her know her apartment was clean and ready for her
stay. No sooner than I hit send, a new email from her appeared in my inbox with
the subject line
To-Do List Pt. 1.

Already? My head fell back against the
headrest. It would be my luck her to-do list would be so long I’d barely have
time to breathe, much less look around her office. Surprisingly, though, the
email was short with only one task.

Hello Lizzie,

Can you please drop by Manning? There’s a
package I need you to pick up from the receptionist. Thanks. 

Thanks? I wasn’t even aware that word was
in her vocabulary, but I immediately responded that I would. Then, looking at
her email one last time, I laughed. She was sending me to Oliver’s company. And
I thought she wanted me to keep my distance from the man.

*

Since
it was more than two weeks into October, the weather was perfect, a clear and
sunny eighty degrees as I followed the directions on my phone to the Manning
Hotel Group headquarters. I took my time, allowing the heat to warm my skin
during the walk to Oliver’s building.

Twenty minutes after leaving work, I
stood on the bottom step of a light brick office building that I would have
passed right by if not for the GPS app on my phone. Even from the outside, this
place was the polar opposite of Emerson & Taylor, with its nondescript sign
and plain architecture.

I couldn’t help wondering if Oliver’s
office followed the same design—or if he was here today.

Smoothing down the front of my dress, I
walked up the steps and into the building. The lobby was nice, unsurprisingly
reminding me of a hotel atrium with its ambient lighting and diamond-pattern
carpet. Spotting the circular receptionist’s desk, I waited for the skinny guy
behind it to finish the call he was taking before approaching.

“Welcome to Manning Hotel Group, do you
have an appointment?”

“I’m actually picking up something for
Margaret Emerson.”

He pulled his thick brows together. “What
was your name?”

“Lizzie Connelly.”

As soon as I replied, his eyes widened in
recognition, and he bobbed his head enthusiastically. “Ah, okay. I have you
listed. Take the elevator.” He pointed to the two cars on the side of the
lobby. “Go to the fifth floor, and when you get to the desk upstairs, just tell
Danielle who you are.”

Patting his desk twice, I started toward
the elevator as the phone began to ring. “Thanks.”

Smiling crookedly, he reached for the
receiver. “Yeah, no problem.”

As I waited for the elevator, my own
phone buzzed from inside my purse. I checked it as I rode the car to the fifth
floor. I’d stupidly linked my work email to my device, and I cringed when I
spotted the new message from Margaret with the subject line
Tasks 10/17
& 10/18.
Sighing, I dropped my phone back into my bag and waited for
the doors to open.

I should’ve known the single task from
the first email was too good to be true.

Stepping off the elevator, I came
face-to-face with another receptionist’s desk. “Danielle?” I asked hesitantly,
and, putting on an obligatory smile, the bespectacled brunette glanced up at
me.

“Ms. Connelly?”

“Yes, that’s right. I was supposed to be
picking up a—”

“It’s alright, Dani, she can come back
with me.” My gaze lifted to a boyishly handsome man, whose head was poked
around the corner. The receptionist gave me an encouraging nod, and I frowned
as I walked behind the desk to join him in the next hallway. With a head of
curly black hair that I was immediately envious of, he wasn’t incredibly tall,
but I still had to tilt my chin back a little to look at him. “I’m Easton
Campbell, head of IT.”

“So, I’m picking up a computer?”

His deep brown eyes crinkled as he
laughed and shook his head. “Not exactly.” Walking ahead of me, he opened an
office door on the right, and motioned me in. When I stepped through the
doorway and into the large office, I froze.

Blue eyes that had haunted me for the
past week and a half stared from behind a large, U-shaped mahogany desk. I let
my gaze wander down slowly, feeling a pang in my chest when Oliver’s full lips
stretched into a grin. My mouth was still hanging open when he looked past me
and said, “Make sure you delete it from Margaret’s sent box.”

I heard a soft chuckle behind me.
“Already taken care of,” Easton assured him. “Enjoy your lunch, boss.” Then a
second later, the office door closed quietly behind him.

“What the hell is going on?” I finally
managed, and Oliver stood from his desk. My eyes helplessly followed the
motion, taking in his broad chest and powerful shoulders through his business
suit. He walked in my direction, but just before he reached me, he stopped and
gestured to the right of the room.

I twisted slightly to see a tiny,
two-person dining set positioned between a mini fridge and a recliner. The tabletop
was covered with takeout boxes. “I ordered us lunch.”

“The package for your mom…” But he shook
his head, and I allowed myself to reevaluate the respectful way Margaret’s
message was worded and what he’d said to his IT guy a couple minutes ago. “You
sent me that email, didn’t you, Oliver?”

Walking across the room, he sat down at
the dinette, his eyes burning into me. “Guilty. But the last thing I want to
talk about is my mother. For the next hour, you’re all mine.” He motioned at
the other chair and added, “Sit down.”

Pinching my lips together, I reached for
the doorknob. “What if I turn around and leave?”

He dipped his head, drawing my attention
to that ruffled light brown hair that was just begging to be touched, and a
shiver coursed through my body. “Then I’ll consider you uninterested. The
choice is yours.”

For what felt like the longest minute of
my life, I stood completely still with my hand on the doorknob behind me. My
heart pummeled my rib cage, my breathing sounded uneven and broken in my ears.

“Sit down, Lizzie,” he implored.

Before I knew what was happening, my legs
moved me toward him. I settled into the chair and covered my knees with the hem
of my dress. The moment I looked up from the tabletop and into his eyes, I
instantly regretted it because his slow, conquering grin swallowed me whole.

“Hope
you like Mexican food.” Oliver’s smooth voice flowed over me, adding a few more
butterflies to the ones already flitting erratically around my stomach. He
worked the lids off the takeout containers and began piling two disposable
plates with food.

Despite my nervousness, I inhaled deeply;
the aroma of chicken tacos and rice was tantalizing enough to draw a sigh from
me. “It smells
incredible
.”

“So do you.”

His eyes locked with mine, and I couldn’t
bring myself to look away—Oliver Manning was hypnotic. He’d probably been
hearing that his entire life from women and gossip columnists, yet he
completely owned what he was. What he could do to a woman with the slightest
jerk of his mouth.

What he could do to
me
.

“You look terrified,” he drawled.

I carved my hand through my hair,
noticing the way his eyes carefully traced my movements. “Why do you say that?”

Setting my plate in front of me, he angled
his head to one side. “You haven’t moved an inch since you sat down.”

I reached forward and grabbed a fork from
the center of the table and removed it from its plastic wrapping. “That was
about nine inches,” I declared, and he let out a low chuckle of amusement.

When his full lips parted, I was almost
certain he was going to follow up with something absolutely naughty, but then
he asked, “Thirsty?”

I nodded, observing him from beneath my
lashes—finding it impossible to tear my gaze from his toned body as he strode
to the refrigerator. Even the most unassuming task, like getting a drink,
seemed ridiculously sexy when Oliver was performing it, and my pulse felt like
it was going to race right out of my skin. I pretended to be more interested in
sifting my fork through the rice on my plate, but it was obvious he knew I was
watching.

I could tell from his enormous grin when
he faced me.

Satisfaction drenching his husky voice,
he told me, “I’ve got water, Coke, Dos Equis, and Oktoberfest.”

I cleared my throat. “Water, please?”

He returned to the table with a bottle of
San Pellegrino and an Oktoberfest, which he placed beside his plate. Standing
next to my seat, he twisted the top off my water before leaning over me. His
face was close to mine. So close our noses skimmed. So damn close his mouth
would claim mine if I moved even the slightest bit. And, dammit, I wanted to
move.

Oliver Manning serving me—
me
—was
the hottest thing I’d ever seen.

“What?” I croaked.

“You. You’re beautiful,” he mused aloud,
and I shivered when I felt his hands on mine. Breathing became a thing of the
past as he wrapped my fingers one by one around the cold green bottle of water.
“And you
still
look terrified out of your beautiful mind,” he added
before standing straight.

The early afternoon sun filtered through
the partially open blinds, and when it touched his tall, bronzed body and
golden brown hair, I felt every muscle in my body contract—from my neck, to my
core, to my toes, which had curled inside my shoes.

Yeah, he was gorgeous.

“Are you going to challenge me to move
again?”

He lowered his chin, considering my
questioning expression, and then at how close his belt was to my mouth, and a
wicked look burst across his face. Despite the fact I’d inadvertently given him
sexual innuendo gold, his next words were surprisingly tame. “Tell me something
about you.”

“What do you want to know?” I managed a
laugh. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Everything.” He sat down, and his long
leg brushed up against mine, but neither of us rushed to break contact.  There
was something a little intoxicating about the way the material of his charcoal
tailored pants felt against my bare leg. “I want to know
everything
about you.”

Dear body
, I thought pleadingly,
please,
please
don’t betray me right now
. I took a sip of water in hopes it would help the
hoarseness forming in the back of my throat. “I’m twenty-five,” I said.

Which was a lie. Lizzie was twenty-five,
but
my
twenty-fourth birthday wasn’t until the beginning of November—the
day after Halloween. Although I already knew Oliver’s thirtieth birthday was in
December, after I popped a piece of chicken in my mouth and finished chewing
it, I coyly asked, “What about you?”

“Twenty-nine.”

He gestured his hand for me to keep
going. I’d gone over my story more times than I could count, but my chest hurt
at the thought of reciting it to Oliver. Almost as soon as I let the thought of
wanting him to know the real me wriggle its way into my mind, I shook my head
dismissively. 

“I’m woefully boring.”

“You’re lying.”

“Hmm?” I crossed my legs, bumping his in
the process, and I immediately noticed the movement of his Adam’s apple. Good.
It was about time I wiggled one step ahead of him and got to
him
instead.

“Is it hard?”

“Of course it isn’t. I come from a
politically independent family in Oregon. I have one brother, one sister. My
mother is a stay-at-home mom and my father—” I struggled to keep my breath from
catching.

My father is dead, and in the last couple
years of his life,
you
saw him more than I did. Both of my parents are gone, and here I am lying to
you about everything from my family, to where I’m from, to what my damn age is.
 

“My dad retired a couple years back,” I
finally said, the lie sounding flawless. “What about
your
dad? What
about
you
?”

“What? You haven’t read about him in
Forbes?” he teased, and when I shook my head he laughed. “Honestly, you
wouldn’t find him there. My dad is surprisingly simple. I guess you could say I
am, too.”

“Simple?” I repeated. I’d already figured
out that simple didn’t exist when it came to Oliver Manning, but I wanted to
hear what he had to say. “How so?”

He gestured his hands to his office and
looked around the oversized room. “This place—the company—my dad was never into
it. My grandfather always says that the sense of family duty skipped a
generation.” He was silent as he focused on his meal and I did the same,
occasionally peeking up at him, until he finally rested his elbows on the table
and said, “He lives with his wife and my half-brothers near Red Rock Canyon.”

I immediately recognized the community
Oliver was referring to—it wasn’t one that was here in Los Angeles, but in
Vegas. A luxurious, exclusive neighborhood filled with lush yards and
multi-million dollar homes. The opposite side of town—the opposite
lifestyle
—from
when I had lived there. 

“The Ridges is a beautiful area,” I said
without thinking, instantly regretting the words the second they fell out of my
mouth.
Damn
. Maybe he hadn’t noticed. Maybe …

Lowering his chin, his blue eyes stripped
away my layers, and I squirmed beneath his stare. “You’re familiar with Vegas?”

“It’s not that far away from here,” I
reminded him, silently cursing myself for being so stupid to let my guard down,
even momentarily. Tracing my tongue over my lips, I crossed my legs under the
table, my knee bumping against his in the process. “Besides, I stayed with a
host family who lived in The Ridges during a summer camp several years ago.”

The truth was I had gone out on several
dates with an executive who lived by himself in the community. He’d been one of
the good ones—kind and respectful—and had immediately stopped contact when he
got married early this year.

“A summer camp?” Oliver questioned, and I
nodded. He rubbed the pad of his thumb over his square jawline, moving it back
and forth like he was carefully considering what to say next. “Let me guess,
you were a cheerleader in high school,” he said suddenly, and I threw my head
back and laughed.

“Wrong.”

“Tennis?”

“I’m not going to say I don’t pick up a
racket every now and then for exercise, but I didn’t play in high school. I was
very non-athletic.”

I felt his eyes drink in the sight of
every bit of my body that was visible. “You were—”

“On the social studies academic team,” I
told him, my revelation surprising even myself, because it was one hundred
percent the honest truth. When my mother and I had moved to Vegas, I’d wanted
something to keep busy for those nights when she was away or working on a late
shoot—something that involved interacting with other people. With the sports
season already in progress, I set my sights on the academic teams. “Thanks to
my slight obsession with my mother’s romance books, I was a whiz when it came
to history. Go ahead, ask me anything about King Henry VIII and his wives.”

“Gave up on
The Tudors
a few
episodes in,” he admitted, and I stared at him in mock horror. Holding up his
hands defensively, his face stretched into a grin. “I’m more of a
Justified
and
Game of Thrones
type of guy.”

“I was about to call out your blasphemy,
but then you made up for it with the other shows. You should watch
Vikings
next. My best friend and I are obsessed with that one.” I turned the cold
bottle of San Pellegrino to my mouth, shivering at the resulting chill that
coursed through me from drinking too quickly. “By the way … what was your next
guess?”

“Debate team,” he replied. “Seems like
you like to argue.”

“I could say the same thing about you.”

His expression went dark for the briefest
moment before returning to its usual state of cockiness. “Hell, no. I had a
stutter for a long time that drove my mother up the fucking wall. Therapy got
rid of it—Margaret wouldn’t let me stop until it was unnoticeable, and she
reminded me of that
every
day—but I was still gun-shy about public speaking
when I started high school.” He shrugged indifferently, but pressure squeezed
my ribs at the thought of Margaret making her own child feel inadequate. “My
stepfather got me involved with sports.”

“Did you”—I cleared my throat, trying not
to let emotion get the best of me at the mention of my father—“did you
like
your stepdad?”

“He was rarely around, but I liked him
more than my mother.” When I didn’t respond, he lowered his voice to a murmur
and asked me, “You think it’s wrong of me to say that, don’t you?”

“It just makes me a little sad.” It made
me hurt for both of us, though I could never admit that to him.

I felt his fingers on my chin, and I
braced myself for the deluge of emotions I knew would shake me when he forced
my eyes to his. “Don’t feel bad for me,” he said, before dropping his hand from
my face and grabbing his empty beer bottle.

From my research about him, I already
knew he’d played three seasons of Ivy League college basketball before a
compound fracture ended his sports career. As if to demonstrate, and take my
mind off the fact he’d given more of himself than he probably wished to offer,
he sunk the bottle into the trashcan across the room.

“Show off,” I laughed.

He raised a thick eyebrow. “I haven’t
even started, beautiful,” he promised, and anticipation sliced through me.
Every intelligent fiber in my body was yelling for me to get up and leave now
before it was too late, but I recklessly brushed it off.  “So what brought you
to L.A.?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” When his lip quirked,
I leaned closer and said, “I wanted to be around fashion.”

“
And you picked my mother.” His broad shoulders vibrated as
laughter ran through him. “Not that I’m complaining, but why the
hell
did you do that?” he demanded incredulously as he got up and grabbed a second
beer.

“Must be nice to drink and work,” I said
lightheartedly, changing the subject when he returned to the table, and the
dark lashes I’d coveted that morning in the HR department came together as he
narrowed his eyes.

“I hit a sore spot. I’ll have to remember
that, but I’ll play along. There’s a difference between refreshment and getting
wasted. Still, I’d be happy to give you a job
here
. Maybe then you’d be
compelled to answer my emails.”

“What?”

“You haven’t answered my emails.” He
emphasized his words, not as pronounced as Margaret would, but still enough to
irk me.

“I’ve answered everything you sent.”

“I’ve sent you a few since last week.”
Unhooking the buttons on his shirt cuffs, he rolled his sleeves up. My
attention dropped to the forearm closest to me. I traced my eyes over the
strong, muscular lines of his flesh to a tattoo that peeked out from the crisp
white shirt, and I wanted to know what it was. “You didn’t receive them?”

Hesitantly, I dragged my gaze from his
arm to his eyes. “The only things I’ve received are the flowers. Thank you, by
the way, they were beautiful.”

“So no emails at all?”