Uncovered (18 page)

It would make this all so much easier, so
much more bearable.

Leaning his forearm on his desk, Carl
lifted his eyebrow. “Where are you two going?”

“That little Italian place a few blocks
away,” I replied, and he closed his eyes together in anticipation. When he dug
around in his back pocket for his wallet, I touched his wrist and shook my
head.

“Don’t worry about it. Just tell me what
you want, and I’ll bring it back with me.” I still remembered what Stella had
told me about helpfulness being dead around here, and after the week I’d had, I
wanted to at least make someone else’s day a little better—especially Carl,
who’d been at this company forever.

He gave me his order, which I texted to
myself. As I walked toward the main entrance, allowing myself one more peek at
Mom’s picture, Carl’s words warmed my chest. “You’re a good one, Lizzie.”

When I reached the restaurant ten minutes
later, I spotted Stella in a booth near the back. She waved at me, and her Tiffany
charm bracelet jingled prettily against her caramel skin.

“Sorry I’m late,” I breathed, sliding
into the booth, slightly exerted from the walk here.

“Don’t worry. I ordered us garlic knots.”
She gestured to the basket of bread between our seats, her elegant ponytail
swishing around the Peter Pan collar of her beaded black blouse as she moved
closer. “I’ve been doing carb-cycling to tighten up a bit before I head to
Trinidad for Christmas, and it’s my cheat day.”

“You’re beautiful. But I’m jealous of
your vacation,” I admitted. I grabbed a piece of bread, tore off a small chunk,
and popped it into my mouth. “Take me with you.
Please
.”

“I will. Or are you going back home to—”

For the first time since my charade
started, the first city that wiggled into my mind was Las Vegas—the city I had
built my life in for the last several years. So where the hell was Lizzie from?

I’d been so immersed in being myself all
week—being the name written over and over again on my father’s will—I felt like
I was slowly losing my mind.

“Oregon,” I finally informed Stella,
although I prayed that by Christmas next month my façade would be over. “Yes,
I’ll be going home to see my mother and father.”

Stella ate another piece of bread, giving
me a dark look when I grinned and lifted my brow. “Cheat. Day,” she said
slowly.

After our waitress stopped by, and I
ordered a drink and both my lunch and Carl’s food, Stella’s phone vibrated on
the table. Nibbling on yet another piece of garlic bread, she turned it to face
her and rolled her dark eyes dramatically.

“I’ve got to figure out how to stop these
damn things,” she complained.

“Don’t tell me you’re doing one of those
sexting subscriptions,” I joked, quickly realizing how close that hit to home.
The reason I became a phone sex operator was because I’d looked into texting
jobs first. When I found a forum dedicated to both, I’d decided to go the phone
route.

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.

Driving 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.

*

Oliver’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?”

“If I
wanted to unnerve you—” I felt his hand between my legs and before I could push
it away, he flicked his thumb over the center of my panties, sending desire melting
through me. “—I’d start with that.”

Keeping
my face void of any emotion, I cocked my head. “What happened to what you said
about not whipping your dick out at restaurants?”

Pumping
my thigh, he laughed. “I never said I wouldn’t touch your pussy,” he murmured.
Reluctantly, he released me and placed both his hands on the table almost
dramatically, like he was trying to prove he knew how to behave. “How are
things going with Margaret?”

“She
left for Paris today.” I held off my next question until after our waitress
stopped by for our drink order, and then I asked, “Why do you call her
Margaret?”

“I’ve
called her my mother before.”

“Yes,
but it’s usually said derisively.” I knew I was searching in places I shouldn’t
go—and especially during dinner—but I was curious for both the cause I was
committed to and for myself. “I don’t—”

“You
don’t what?”

Twisting
my lips, I fidgeted with the corner of my linen napkin, clanging the silverware
around inside it. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that when I talk about my
mother, it’s a bit softer.”

“Margaret
is complicated. I’m not her biggest fan, but she’s still my mother. We’ve never
been particularly close because she meddles in my life. We both have very
strong personalities that tend to clash.”