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.