“Your job’s over soon, right?”
I nodded.
“Well…” She furrowed her brow thoughtfully. “Then if that’s really the way you feel, then I think you should go for it.”
*Record scratch*
“I’m sorry, go for what now?” I frowned. “I don’t think I heard you correctly. Or maybe you didn’t hear me correctly.” I tipped my head back and studied her. “But there’s definitely been some sort of miscommunication.”
Cressida gave me a flat look. “Oh, come on Liz. Did you really think I was going to tell you to take a cold shower and stop being stupid?”
I nodded. “That’s exactly what I thought you were going to say.”
“You really must not know me at all,” she rolled her eyes, letting out an overly dramatic sigh of disappointment.
“Hey!” I protested. I didn’t care that my mouth was full of chocolate and I probably looked disgusting. “I do know you! I know that you usually have my best interests at heart.”
“You’re damn right,” she said. “Especially now.”
I eyed her suspiciously, taking a sip of my wine. “I’m not seeing how urging me to pursue a man who clearly regrets having ever met me is in my best interest.”
She sighed. “Liz, I don’t even know the guy and I know there’s a lot more going on under the hood than that.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “What’s going on under his hood is a whole lotta pity.”
“You are selling yourself so short,” she replied. “You guys had rocky beginnings, but that’s how I know this is possible.”
“I’m still not following.” I took another sip of wine to see if it would help.
It didn’t.
“You despised him, too, at first,” she reminded me. “And now you don’t. Who’s to say he doesn’t feel the same way?”
“Him, actually. He’s the one that stopped the kiss today.”
“Like I said, there’s more going on. But he also participated in the kiss, and something tells me it wasn’t just a quick peck.”
I conceded that point by ignoring it for fear of getting distracted if I started to think about that kiss again. Instead, I moved onto my next insecurity. “He’s rich and powerful, Cress. And I’m not saying I’m not awesome in my own way, but I’m not… I dunno. His type.”
“He picked you out of the crowd that night at Repeat. And apparently, you guys still can’t keep your hands off each other.” Cress reached across the table and pulled the remainder of the cake toward her. I was too stunned to stop her.
“Cress,” I groaned. “Can’t you just tell me I’m being stupid? For old time’s sake?”
She smiled. “You are being stupid.”
“Thank you,” I said, leaning back into my chair.
“You’re being stupid for thinking you don’t have a shot with him.”
I glared at her, resisting the urge to give her the finger.
“I’m serious!” she insisted, waving the fork at me. “And as someone who has your best interests at heart, it’s my duty to push you toward this.”
“But if it blows up in my face I’ll only be more upset!” I argued. “How is that good for me?”
Cressida swept her hair back from her shoulder. It had been hanging a little too close to her food.
“Listen,” she said. “If it blows up in your face, it’ll suck. We’ll get shitfaced and dance around to Gloria Gaynor. Maybe we’ll even burn an effigy of him. We’ll see how jazzy we feel.” She tapped her fork against the plate for emphasis. “But if you don’t follow your heart on this? You’ll end up wondering about it for the rest of your life.”
“Maybe not the rest of my life,” I replied.
She locked her eyes onto mine with steel focus. “For the rest of your life,” she enunciated. “I know you, Liz. It was a miracle you were able to walk away from him the first time.”
I gulped. She was right. I could pretend all I wanted that I was saving myself by not revealing my vulnerability, but I was only saving myself in the short-term. I’d inevitably end up face down in a pile of Cheeto dust, wondering why I had been such a coward.
“It’s easy for you to say all this though,” I said quietly. “You’re always certain about everything. You’re like the angel of self-confidence. If this were a movie, they’d send you off to live in some teenage girl’s mirror.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m going to look past that creepy mental image and tell you a story.”
I sighed and settled into my chair, holding the wine close to my chest.
“Remember the night at Repeat when I went off with Oliver’s friend? Damien?” she asked.
“Yeah. The asshole.”
“Exactly. Except I didn’t tell you the whole story.”
Well now I’m interested.
“Go on.”
She sighed, taking a big gulp of her wine. I may be the one upset here, but she was certainly drinking faster.
“You and Oliver went up to the VIP area, and Damien and I went outside to get some air,” she said. “We ended up talking about the most random stuff. He told me about how he has worn a different tie to work every day for the past year, which I thought was crazy.”
“It is.”
She smiled. “Just let me tell the story, okay?”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway, it is a bit weird. But it started because his grandmother has Alzheimer’s and kept buying him ties. He ended up with a ton of them in his closet, but he never wore them because they weren’t really his style.
“Then she died. And he had all these ties, and she’d never seen him in a single one. So he started wearing them. All of them. He wore a different one every day for two months.”
“That’s a lot of ties,” I commented.
“That was what he thought. Too many ties. And so he donated them to a men’s shelter.”
“That’s quite noble of him,” I said, eyeing her warily. “I’m beginning to wonder if he’s really a dick at all.”
“Listen to the story,” she reminded.
“Okay, okay.” I put my hands up in surrender. “Go on.”
“Well people, by this point, had started noticing that Damien wore a different tie every day. People he knew started giving him ties as a joke. He kept wearing them. He kept donating them.”
“Where is this story going?”
She ignored me and continued. “As Damien put it, he couldn’t just donate a tie without donating a matching suit.”
I let out a bark of laughter. “Wait, so because people kept giving him ties, he’d end up donating an entire outfit for each one? That’s funny.”
“It turned into this big thing,” she said. Her face was more animated, her eyes brighter. Now I was really curious what happened that night at Repeat. “Businesses started getting on board. They would make a donation to a charity if he wore the ridiculous ties they sent him. And he did.”
“He’s still doing it, then?”
“No, actually.” Cressida’s smile slipped into something a bit more wistful. “A couple weeks ago I saw an article he was featured in. He stopped wearing the ties and founded a charity instead. It supplies men and women from lower incomes with clothes for interviews and new jobs.”
“That’s super nice.” I furrowed my brow. “But it’s a weird thing to bring up at the club. I’m guessing you rejected him because he was clearly full of himself for telling you all of this?”
Cressida’s smile fell and she drained the rest of her glass. “No.” She looked down into the bottom of the glass, as though ashamed. “All he told me was the different tie every day bit. He laughed it off as some random joke. I think it only came up because I made a comment about the one he was wearing that night. I only read about the rest of the story in that article I mentioned.”
I dropped my mouth into a silent “O”.
“I don’t get it then,” I said a moment later. “What did you guys talk about that put you off? When was he a dick?”
> I’d never seen Cressida look so sullen. “He wasn’t a dick until after I started being a bitch,” she admitted. “He was so nice, and kept asking all these questions about me. He just seemed so… good. But strong. Kind, but fierce.”
“Cress…?” I coaxed.
She shook her head. “I did this to myself,” she said. “I don’t need pity for it. I messed up. I thought he was way out of my league, got scared, and sabotaged it. I didn’t think I’d regret doing so as much as I do.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t know what else to say.
“Hey now,” she said, her smile returning. “I said no pity. I’m learnin’ you a lesson, missy.”
“About regret,” I filled in.
“Actually, it was supposed to be about how we all have lapses in confidence sometimes but yeah, regret too.”
I drank the rest of my glass and walked to the fridge, bringing back the bottle and plunking it down on the table between us.
“Do we have any chicken strips in the freezer?” I asked. Tonight was a wine and crappy appetizer night if there ever was one.
Chapter 24
Elizabeth
I couldn’t believe how quickly the latter half of the renovations seemed to fly by. One minute we were wearing dust masks and ripping the library to pieces, and the next the floors had been laid and the paint was drying on the walls.
“It looks amazing, Rod,” I complimented, inspecting the work.
He smiled, clearly proud. His employees had done most of the work in the library. “I choose my guys well.”
“Clearly.”
The room was already warm from the morning sun. Before long, Oliver would be needing to turn on his air conditioning. In a flash, the wet and windy mornings of spring had turned pleasant and bright.
And my work here was nearly done.
“What’s left on your list?” Rodney asked. “It must feel good to be nearly finished such a huge project.”
I wish that it did.
“Yeah, totally,” I lied. “I’ve got a few more pieces of furniture to order, but only for the rooms that we left for last.”
“Will that give your boss time to return them to the store?” Rodney joked.
I jabbed my elbow into his side. I don’t even think he felt it.
“Sorry,” he chortled. “I forgot that you two are buds now.”
I glared at him, but secretly I was delighted at how easily Rodney accepted that now. It meant that he also saw the change in Oliver, otherwise I’m sure he’d still be offering to kill him for me. More importantly, it meant that I hadn’t made Oliver’s whole change in attitude up in my head.
“We’re just more professional,” I said.
Don’t think about the kiss. Don’t think about the kiss. Don’t think about the kiss.
Rodney snorted. “You’re just more professional? You did a crossword together the other day.”
“We did not!” I defended. “I was doing it and he came up to help. It’s not the same thing.”
“When he stays past helping you with one word, you’re doing it together.” Rodney smiled churlishly. “My wife and I do crosswords together all the time.” The innuendo in his voice caused my stomach to flip. If only it meant what Rodney was clearly implying… But it didn’t.
“It was just a crossword.”
“And the Nile’s just a river in Africa.” Rodney winked. “You two have chemistry.”
“Oh my gosh,” I huffed. “You sound like my mother. Shoo!” I waved my hands at him. “Go lift some two by fours or something.”
He grinned evilly but left me to my own devices, which currently consisted of me trying to figure out what the hell I’d been meaning to do after the conversation. My mind was a blank slate. All I could focus on was the way Oliver had leaned over where I’d been sitting at the kitchen island, doing the crossword while I finished my lunch. His breath had smelled of peppermint and his body had been close enough for me to feel his heat.
My stomach fluttered at the memory and I could tell I was blushing.
Crap.
I shook my head to try and clear it, then dug deeper into my thoughts. Furniture. I’d been thinking about furniture. And ordering it. For the living room.
We’d converted one of the disused bedrooms on the top floor into a theater room for Oliver, complete with two rows of luxury recliners and a projector wall, but I wanted him to have a living room, too. Even a billionaire would want to curl up on the couch and watch whatever was on cable sometimes, right?
I headed to his office and knocked once. He responded right away.
I entered with a smile, which Oliver returned warmly as he closed his laptop. “How’s it going?” he asked.
I noted that he waited until I was fully in the room before he remembered to take off his glasses. I wished he would keep them on. He reminded me a bit of Clark Kent, but without the butt-chin.
“I wanted to ask you something,” I admitted.
He raised a quizzical brow, prompting me to continue.
“Would you like to come to pick out some furniture with me?”
Oliver chuckled. “I’m touched that you’re asking, but doesn’t it seem a bit pointless?”
“What do you mean?”
He ran a hand through his hair, causing a random piece to stick up in the middle. I decided not to tell him.
“I haven’t had any input on any of the furniture so far, and it’s all worked out. In fact, in those early instances where I did have an opinion, you dismissed it… and of course, it turned out you were right. So why start messing with the system now?”
I nodded thoughtfully, supressing the grin that threatened to overtake my face at having him admit, again, that my design choices were the right ones. “That’s true, but today we’re picking out the living room couch.”
“Couches. The specific variety of furniture that I’ve had the least say in,” he teased.
“Hey!” I said in mock outrage, trying to clear the smile from my face. “You had a choice! You just decided I was right.”
He folded his arms over his chest. Again, I struggled not to stare at the way his t-shirt strained to cover his biceps and shoulders. He wasn’t ripped like Rodney, but Oliver trained at a nearby boxing gym four mornings a week and it showed.
“My point stands,” he said.
I sighed. “Fine. I’ll be honest. I want you to help pick the couch in the living room because I’m hoping that if we can find one you think is super comfy and you love, you’ll spend less time here, in your office.”
“I like it here.”
I looked around, taking in the subtle design changes I’d implemented. Just like with his bedroom, Oliver had been very specific that he didn’t want much change. Nonetheless, it looked good.
“And I’m not saying this room doesn’t have its perks,” I ceded. “I just think you’d probably enjoy having somewhere else to relax when you need to.”
He leaned back in his chair. The old hinges squeaked as if adding their agreement to my argument. We both cringed.
I still wasn’t even allowed to think about getting him a new chair.
“Fine.” Oliver stood and rounded his desk. “I’m bored anyway. Let’s go get a couch.”
I pumped my fist in the air. “Awesome!”
Oliver screwed his nose in disgust. “Forget it. I’ve changed my mind.”
I laughed and grabbed onto his arm, tugging him along toward the door. “Too late! I’ll let you drive, though.”
It surprised me how unthinkingly I grabbed onto him.
It surprised me even more that he let me.
The best part about going shopping with a billionaire is the sense of freedom.
Sure, we weren’t shopping for me, but it still felt incredible to be able to go from couch to couch without having to look at the price. I’d come in well under my budget for the renovations, and anyway Oliver didn’t seem to care about money in the slightest. I’d long suspected the origina
l reno budget was simply a figure Todd had concocted to dissuade the designer from ordering 24-karat gold toilets and other such ridiculous adornments.
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