“I don’t like that you tested me, Oliver.”
“It wasn’t a test. A test would mean that I thought about it prior, and I didn’t. I assure you.” He nibbles on his bottom lip. “I like to think of myself as a man in control, but tonight, that slipped.” He watches me out of the corner of his eye. “I wasn’t leaving you alone to see what you would do, and it wasn’t intentional to leave you alone with Marius. Trust me. But I was … shaken, a bit, I guess. I reacted to the situation without thinking it through and that will keep me up at night for weeks. I didn’t expect to get to the gala with you on my arm and …”
His voice trails off, but a glimpse of a smile kisses his lips.
“And what, Oliver?”
“I needed to know that you were there with me and not as my EA.”
The grittiness of the tone catches me off guard. It’s laced with an honesty, a vulnerability, a sweet rawness that hits my heart with the force of a cannon.
“And not as my EA.” This sentence percolates through my brain, sending shock waves through my chest. “And not as my EA.”
Holy crap.
He gathers the fabric of my dress in his hand, never taking his eyes off the road.
My breath hitches as his fingers dip beneath the fabric. His fingertips drag across my left leg. His touch is the weight of a feather, barely slipping across the sensitive skin of my leg—touching here, then there as it drifts toward the apex of my thighs.
I pant, my gaze lasered on the side of his face and the sharpness of his jawline as he toys with me. My legs part—offering him an opening if he chooses to take it.
And he doesn’t.
He scoots my dress back toward the floor and pulls his hand away, leaving me breathless.
“You know what?” I say, fighting off a full-body shiver. “I’m starting to hate you.”
He laughs. “There’s a thin line between love and hate. Isn’t that what they say?”
“Yes, but I never knew it was this thin.”
He puts the car in park and kills the engine. “We’re here,” he says, motioning in front of us.
I look up and see the most statuesque home that I’ve ever seen. It’s lit up with lights tucked beneath pristine hedges.
“Where are we, exactly?” I ask, withholding a gasp.
“My house.”
I turn in my seat to look at him. His eyes are wary.
“You brought me to your house?” I ask. Even though I’m experienced in the art of dating, I know from Lisbeth’s tales that men don’t always take you back to their homes. There are a myriad of reasons, from what I’m told, but it’s always a big deal to Lis when they wind up at a guy’s abode.
Yet here we are.
Oliver grins. It’s a new one to me. Not the uber-sexy CEO smile nor the sweet one that I saw earlier. This one is vulnerable and hopeful. This one melts my heart.
“Want to come in?” he asks.
I smile. “I definitely want to come in.”
He laughs and climbs out of the car. I sit in my seat and say a quick prayer.
Please, let me know what I’m doing.
Twenty-Three
Shaye
“This is incredible,” I say, the words barely a whisper.
The floor-to-ceiling windows in Oliver’s living room showcase an unmatched view of the property below. I walk to them and peer out, taking in the pool, trees, and immaculate yard stretching as far as the eye can see.
“How far does that go?” I ask, pointing at a nonexistent spot on the horizon.
“Not as far as it looks tonight.” He stands behind me, his body so close that his chest nearly hits me as he speaks. “There’s a creek back there that winds through the trees. That’s the property line.”
“Can you see it during the day?”
“No. The trees are too thick.”
I grin. “When I was a little girl, I loved playing in creeks.”
“Did you?” he asks, seemingly amused by the admission.
I nod. “We had one behind our house. It wasn’t huge or anything, but I’d spend hours back there messing around and trying to re-route it.”
“Coy and Boone did that behind Mom’s house.” He chuckles. “They’d come in all muddy and Mom would threaten to strangle them. Of course, they would traipse through the house like the heathens that they are and get that shit everywhere. And Larissa would follow them, matching them step for step.”
Images of a pint-sized Boone marching through a fancy house like this one with mud all over his shoes makes me laugh.
“It sounds like you had a nice childhood,” I say.
“I did. I can’t complain. What about you?”
“Oh, I can complain,” I say, laughing.
He wraps his arms around me from behind. I don’t expect him to do that, and it feels infinitely more intimate than him touching me in the car or dancing with him in a roomful of people. To my surprise, I relax into his chest and feel my body give up the stress it was holding—that it always holds.