Текст книги "The Singles"
Автор книги: Emily Snow
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Chapter 15
Lowering my hips, I moaned as his erection gradually filled me.
“Fuck, this was worth the wait,” Oliver groaned in contentment, echoing my precise thoughts from earlier, jerking his body up to meet mine until he was totally inside me. I intensified my grip on the ropes the bed hung from, letting my head fall back as I adjusted to his size. And it was impressive—satisfyingly and completely impressive. “When was the last time—”
“Shh.” I grinded against him. “It’s just you and me tonight, remember?” I demanded, turning his very own words against him.
The last thing I wanted to tell him was it had been months since another man had touched me—that I hadn’t touched another man since the call that brought me to him. I couldn’t tell him any of that when he was inside me, his cock throbbing.
Hell, I couldn’t tell him that at all.
“Just use me.”
Palming my breasts, he tweaked my sensitive nipples as I moved against him like a woman possessed. The bed creaked and swung beneath the motion of our bodies, but I didn’t mind the dizzying wave anymore. Now it was erotic, a part of the sensual ebb and flow that was our slick bodies.
Surrounding my throat with one hand, he murmured, “Do you like that?”
I moaned in ecstasy at the slight pressure, lolling my head from side to side. With his other hand, he pressed his index finger to my parted lips. “Suck,” he ordered, and I drew the single digit into my mouth, the lingering taste of champagne and my sex coating my tongue.
As soon as that delicious part of his flesh was wet, he reached it between our hips and swirled my swollen clit. “Ohhhhh!”
“That’s it,” he urged, pounding faster into me. I crashed against him, meeting each pump with my own, my breasts bouncing, the sound meshing with that of his balls slapping against my ass. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“Can’t get enough?” My question caused the vise grip he had on my throat to tighten just a little, which I took as an invitation to clench my sex around him. He closed his eyes and let out a groan that was almost as shattering as our colliding bodies.
“God, no!”
A moment later, when the first bursts of pleasure threatened to overcome me, his palms spanned my arms again, jerking my fingers roughly from the ropes. When he repositioned us, this time I was on my back with my knees to my chest and my legs over his shoulders. His lips hovered over mine.
“I’ve got to see you when you come,” he rasped into my skin. “I won’t be able to let you leave without watching you come.”
Crossing my ankles behind his shoulders, I struggled to nod, but my body seizing up under him halted it. With my head whipping wildly from side to side, I gave up, my core throbbing with release.
“Perfect,” he panted. “You’re so goddamn perfect.”
Fisting the sheets, I continued to meet his erratic thrusts, until I felt the muscles contract under his slick back. The sensation cleaved through me, starting at my feet and ending at my heart, sending my body into pandemonium all over again.
“Let go,” I whispered. “Let go, Oliver.”
A moment later, he threw his head back. As the orgasm ripped through him, destroying him, his erection continued to slide into me, hard and fast. It evoked an animalistic sound from the back of his throat that pierced the quiet November night.
It left my own throat dry with need.
It made me want to give him everything.
Every. Single. Part. Of. Me.
*
When I awoke, I was on my stomach in his bedroom, and it was still dark out. I flipped over to face him, only to discover he was gone, the sheets tangled where his body had lain.
I could smell him.
I could smell him drifting from the sheets, from my naked body, and I couldn’t resist lowering my nose to my bare shoulder and inhaling. Stifling a yawn, I slid off the edge of the bed.
“Oliver?” When he didn’t answer, I padded across the red tile floor toward the door, but the repetitive thump, thump noise coming from right outside the window stopped me in my tracks. Frowning, I slid the linen curtains aside.
And there he was. His sculpted chest and mussed brown hair damp with sweat as he leaned back, concentrating on the basketball goal. Lifting his hands, he threw the ball at the net, sinking it with so much ease I couldn’t hold back my grin.
If he hadn’t been injured in college, there was no doubt in my mind he’d have gone pro. He wouldn’t be the executive vice-president at Manning Hotel Group. He probably wouldn’t have been in Emerson & Taylor the day we met. We wouldn’t have touched, wouldn’t have connected—wouldn’t have been anything.
No, that was wrong. He would still be the son of the woman I was desperate to unravel.
The panicked sound that came from my parted lips startled me, and I blinked away the heat that rose behind my eyelids. Thinking of Margaret was a bitter reminder that I still had so much more to do. I had no idea how much longer something could last between Oliver and me, but I wasn’t about to spend what might be final moments simply watching him.
I wanted to be in his presence. I wanted to let his intoxicating scent screw with my head as I inhaled it directly from his skin.
Spotting a tee shirt draped over the bathroom door, I donned it, smirking at the sight of my small body in a shirt meant for a six-foot-two man. After I swished some of his mouthwash around my mouth, I strode out to the backyard.
He had earbuds in, and he didn’t realize I was there, so I took that opportunity to admire his lean, muscular physique as he bent his knees slightly and took another shot. It dropped through the net, rolling over to me.
I stopped it with my foot. “You do this every night?”
He faced me, his intense expression softening when he saw me in the moonlight wearing his shirt. “Shit. Did I wake you?” He jogged over, his face etched with concern as he pulled the earbuds out of his ears.
From where I stood, I could hear Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie” playing. He paused it and stuffed the iPod in his pocket, but the scalding knife of irony still twisted my chest.
“No, I woke up on my own and realized you were gone. When I heard you out here, I—” I held my breath when he knelt in front of me, his full lips touching my knee cap as he coaxed my foot off the ball. “You’re amazing.”
Tossing the ball back and forth between his large hands, he lifted his shoulders modestly. “I haven’t played for competition in nine years, but I like to vary my workouts. I had this installed after I bought the place.”
“Vary your workouts?” I repeated, and his head moved up and down deliberately. A vivid image of his body leaned over mine, pumping furiously into me hit my memory full force. Automatically, I licked my lips. “Hmm ... well, it worked.”
Slanting away from me, he aimed for the goal and once again easily hit his mark. After he retrieved the ball and returned to my side, he leaned into me, the look in his eyes challenging. “Want to try?”
“Me?” At the disbelieving tone of my voice, he bobbed his head. “Didn’t I already tell you how much I sucked at athletics?”
But he was already moving around me, making sure the front of his body brushed every inch of mine until he was standing behind me. His hands covering mine, he positioned my fingers on either side of the basketball. “Here, spread your legs,” he said.
I moved my feet slightly apart, but it must not have been enough, because a moment later, I felt his hand between my thighs. Palming my center, he sucked in a breath.
“You have no panties on,” he mused, his voice low. “And your pussy is already wet.”
I widened my stance a little more, but the clench in my core was agonizing. “I have no idea what you did with my underwear,” I countered.
“God, you make it hard to concentrate.” But he pulled his hand reluctantly from my thighs, making certain to give my clitoris a harsh squeeze in the process. He grasped my hips to still my trembling then lowered his mouth to my ear. “Alright, bend your knees.”
“Like this?”
“Perfect. You’re perfect, Lizzie.” Releasing my hips, he situated my arms until I was holding the ball a few inches above my waist. “Alright, push it up and shoot it in one fluid motion, like this—” I let him guide me, and a second later the ball slammed into the rim and fell onto the court.
I tossed my head back, laughing. “Told you I was a non-athlete.”
He gave my bare ass a hard smack before jogging to grab the ball. “It was your first time. Besides, you can play tennis.”
He’d remembered me telling him that? It had been mentioned so fleetingly, I was a little surprised. A blush of pleasure sneaking across my skin, I looked down at my feet, tugging at the hem of his tee shirt.
“So you never answered my question,” I said, and he sent a puzzled expression at me just before he went in for a layup.
“What would that be?”
“Do you come out here and play every night?”
“Just when I have a lot on my mind,” he stated.
A light breeze swept through his backyard, and I shuddered, rubbing my hands over the goose bumps that formed on my skin. “Care to talk about it?”
“A bunch of work bullshit. I’m not going to bore you with it.” His smile was almost forced, and I felt an uncomfortable tension in the back of my throat when I let my thoughts wander. He was lying, I could tell. But, hell, who was I to throw stones.
I was a lie.
I turned on my heel. Maybe I shouldn’t have come out here. If this is what he did to ease his mind, I was interrupting. “I’m going back inside to—”
“Are you tired?”
Looking over my shoulder, I shook my head. “No,” I breathed. “I just didn’t want to get in the way.”
“Stay.” He raked his eyes over me. “I won’t be much longer, and I like you standing there in my clothes, looking like you were just fucked.”
“I was just fucked,” I pointed out, smirking.
But God, he knew exactly what to say to send my body into a state of sexual panic. Crossing my legs at the ankle, I watched in silence as he took shot after shot until I heard myself quietly ask, “Did your stepdad...did he teach you how to play basketball too?” At my mention of my dad, my vision blurred, but I immediately separated myself from the negative emotions.
I wanted to hear the good.
The beautiful.
Breaking his attention away from dribbling the ball, Oliver stared over at me, the muscles in his neck tightening. “No.” He alternated, bouncing the basketball with his left hand. “I was almost fourteen when my mom married him, so I already knew the fundamentals of the game. By that time I’d reached the point where I’d lost the stutter and had picked up getting high just like almost every other over-privileged fuck my age.”
He took another shot, this time missing and barely hitting the rim. “My stepfather was the person who talked me into joining the team. He thought it would be good for me.”
“Over-privileged fuck,” I echoed, ignoring the wiggle of jealousy that trickled through me. “God, you put it so eloquently.”
“It’s the truth, beautiful. Greg intervened and got me into this.” Staring up at the basketball goal again, his features wrinkled into a frown.
I was dying to know what he was thinking, but I didn’t want to probe—for both our sake. Digging too deep could be catastrophic, a heartache I wasn’t willing to let consume me tonight. Eventually though, his shoulders relaxed. His movements were slow, predatory, as he crossed the small court to stand in front of me.
Suddenly the racing of my pulse had nothing to do with melancholy thoughts of the past.
It had everything to do with the man in front of me with his hands on my face, his body a mere few inches from mine. “You didn’t come out here to talk about basketball.”
“No,” I admitted, “but I don’t mind.”
“I do.” He gathered me against him. “Call in tomorrow.”
I moaned in frustration. “She’d kill me.”
Releasing a curse, he gripped my ass and lifted me up. Need spiraled through me, and I refused to deny it. I denied so much already, that this—this was one thing I’d admit. Digging my fingers into his light brown hair, I tugged the damp locks back until we were eye to eye. When I tried to speak, he quieted me with his teeth, suckling on my lower lip until my core pulsed.
“I want you, Lizzie,” he growled, carrying me through the door and into the house.
“Again?”
I gasped when his shorts came down around his legs and the head of his erection settled between my folds. Supporting me against the closest wall we came in contact with, his fingers dug into the soft flesh of my hips as he buried himself inside my body. “Yes. Again.”
My pussy contracted around his cock, driving him to thrust harder. One of his hands moved from my hip to my hair, tangling in the straight platinum strands as my body arched and bucked against his.
He groaned. “I can’t get enough of you.”
“Don’t,” I cried out, clawing my fingernails over his muscled back. “Don’t.”
His mouth covered mine, and his tongue invaded my mouth, demanding more, refusing to let me back down. I accepted his challenge, molding my body to his as the orgasm built. A moment after I came, spiraling into oblivion, I felt his body go taut, and then he pulled out of me quickly, his hardness against my thigh. Before he could finish on my body, I wiggled out of his hold.
He watched me, his blue eyes darkening as I fell to my knees, and rounded my lips around him, pulling and sucking, wanting everything from him. Then, with a guttural roar that seemed to echo through the house, he let go.
I tasted him. Tasted him and myself, and I was on fire.
I shook my head fiercely, my hair a blanket between my face and his body, and once I could breathe enough to speak, I heard myself moan, “No, Oliver, don’t ever get enough.”
*
For the second night in a row, when I dragged my tired body into my apartment after work, we had company. Whoever was here reclined on the couch, so I couldn’t see his face, but Pen was sitting on the floor in front of him, running her tongue worriedly over the tiny gap between her front teeth. One thing for sure, it wasn’t Oliver, because the second my best friend’s blue-gray eyes lifted to me, she stopped talking, and her posture slumped.
“Finally! I’ve been texting you all night, Gem.”
“I had ... a few things to take care of,” I said tentatively, thinking that Linc had decided to move his trip back to L.A. up a few weeks. After the third degree he’d given me over the weekend, I wouldn’t be surprised. Peeking over the couch, shock snapped me upright when I saw another familiar face—a man I knew could probably hack into every bit of technology in my apartment in a matter of minutes.
“Hello, August,” I greeted Pen’s longtime associate and friend.
Sitting up, he turned and dipped his head in acknowledgement. “Gemma.”
Keeping my stance behind the couch, I rested my weight against the leather and dug my hands into the cushion. After what felt like an eternity, I exhaled, exasperated. “You’re both looking at me like you want to say something, so spit it out.”
I was sore from last night and in a mood from spending another day transcribing recordings for Margaret. I just wanted a bath.
A bath and my boss’ son—the reason behind my exhaustion and aching muscles.
Pen looked down for several seconds, and when she tilted her chin back, all thoughts of Oliver took a backseat. Her expression was conflicted. Conflicted and hesitant. Waiting for her to speak, a ball of pressure started to form in my ribcage. She was about to say something that would rip me apart—that much was obvious.
When my father died, Mom and I were living in New York. After school, she had met me on the sidewalk like usual, walking all twelve blocks back to our apartment in silence, her beautiful face worked into a series of worried lines. She hadn’t told me about my dad until after we got home, but I’d never forgotten the look she wore all the way there.
It was just like the one marring my best friend’s face at this very moment.
Pen’s chest heaved as she got off the floor. Reaching over to the ottoman, she picked up a packet of papers I hadn’t noticed before and held them close to her chest.
“Sit down,” she suggested, none of the usual gaiety present in her voice.
Numbly, I walked completely into the living room and lowered my butt to the edge of the armchair. “You figured out the court documents?” I whispered, but she shook her head.
“Your mom—she didn’t have any real reason to suspect anything. You were her kid, and she thought you’d been wronged; she was just looking out for you.”
A sob hitched in my chest, and I didn’t know if I was more relieved or furious. If this was over, I could go back to Vegas. But if this was over, that meant my caller had been wrong. That I’d dredged up old doubts for no reason.
That I would be saying goodbye to Oliver.
“So we came here for nothing?” I was unable to keep the hysterical edge from my voice.
Once again, Pen moved her head from side to side. Her hand was trembling so violently, the papers fluttered together when she handed them to me. Even though I looked down, studying the last will and testament of Gregory Robert Emerson—my father—she continued speaking.
“I wanted to make certain before I told you anything, but that guy who called you was on to something.” Pacing the living room, she dragged her fingers through her dark hair. “Are you reading it?”
Gripping the pages with both hands, I cleared my throat. “This is the exact same document I looked at in Scott’s office the day I came to L.A. to meet Margaret. Pen, I—”
“Flip to the other stack,” August spoke up, his deep brown eyes pitying. Taking his advice, I turned to the second set of stapled documents.
It was almost identical to the first—there was my father’s name again—but instead of Margaret Manning-Emerson peppering every page, another name glared up at me.
Gemma Angelina Emerson.
Gemma Angelina Emerson.
My name.
My head was spinning when Pen spoke up, but her words broke through the barrier. “August had a friend compare the signatures to your parent’s marriage certificate and your birth certificate. It looked legitimate because Michael Scott was your dad’s attorney and the witnesses’ names were there, but even their signatures didn’t match up to the original. The one with your name.”
I mumbled something—words that sounded like gibberish to my own ears—but my best friend must have understood because she bent in front of me, nodding slowly.
“The will Margaret and that douchebag attorney filed—it was a forgery. Gemma ... you were screwed. Just about everything that woman has laid claim to is yours.”
Part 3
Truth
noun tro͞oTH
The quality or state of being true.
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
–Oscar Wilde
Chapter 16
The truth hurt.
The truth, even though it worked in my favor, burned with so much fury it nearly demolished my small body, making me want to crawl back into the shadows.
Several minutes after Pen’s revelation, I sat on the floor in my bathroom, my knees pressed up to my chest and the back of my head tilted against the door. I could hear snippets of my best friend’s and August’s conversation on the other side, but I wasn’t even paying attention. I was desperate to wrap my head around this new truth.
Why my stepmother and Michael Scott would do something so horrible to me.
I’d been a child when she screwed me over, and then she’d had the audacity to offer me a settlement when I approached her for help surviving alone.
My lips parted, and I exhaled brokenly.
I’d been a child, but she hadn’t cared that I was the daughter of her dead husband. She had been more interested in what my dad had left in trusts for me. I hated her for that.
And every tiny shred of humanity she’d shown in the last month couldn’t fix that loathing. I didn’t even want to try and let it.
Scrubbing the heels of my palms over my eyes, I swiped away the salty tears that scalded my lids and cheeks. I had what I wanted—the truth—but now I needed so much more.
I needed to know why Margaret and her attorney—the attorney my father had obviously trusted—had done this to my dad, to me?
Fisting my hands, I swallowed back the weakness, willing myself not to bow under the invisible blows of defeat pummeling my body, but it was hard. So damn hard, my stomach churned.
“Don’t crumble now,” I told myself. When that day came—if it came—Margaret would fall right alongside me.
I dried my eyes and picked myself up off the tan tile. With shaking hands, I fixed my appearance in the mirror, washing the mascara that streaked my cheeks—three ragged lines on each side.
Gripping the counter, I leaned close to the mirror and glared at the delicate face staring back at me. “Uncover, expose, and get the hell out of there,” I whispered. And though my brown and amber eyes were bloodshot from crying, the terror that was there my first day at Emerson & Taylor was mixed with something new.
Determination.
Anger.
Combing my fingers through my platinum hair, I exited the bathroom and returned to the living room. August and Pen were on the couch, their heads bowed together as they studied something on his laptop. When she noticed me, Pen snapped the computer shut and leaped to her feet.
“I figured it was best not to bother you—” she started, but I interrupted instantly.
“What do I need to do to take this bitch down?”
Wiping her palm over one of her peacock tattoos, Pen worried her lips together. She looked over at her shoulder at August, who’d started returning his laptop to its bag. Turning back to me, she took a tentative step closer. “There are a couple avenues we can take.”
“Pen, I’m heading out,” August declared from behind her as he pulled the strap of his bag across his body.
She held up a finger and gave me a pleading look. “One second, I promise.”
While they whispered back and forth, I lowered my numb body to the chair and clung to the armrests. Ignoring the sound of my phone ringing from inside my purse, I stared at the stack of documents that were now strewn out on the coffee table until my vision turned hazy.
“Gemma,” August said loudly, breaking my daze. I lifted my chin to see him by the front door. Although we barely knew each other, I could tell he felt sorry for me by the way his shoulders curled forward and the sluggish shake of his head. “I’m sorry it took us so long.”
My chest hitched. He and Pen had done me a favor, solved something I hadn’t been able to even after I was placed right in Margaret’s trajectory, and he was telling me sorry?
Sagging back in the chair, I cleared the dryness from my throat. “Thank you,” I said shakily. “You have no idea what you’ve done for me.”
Turning red from my praise, he dipped his head in a nod and then looked at Pen. “If I find anything else while I’m here, I’ll be in touch. I’ll call you about that Campbell thing in a day or two.”
She crossed her arms over her breasts. “Thanks for everything.”
The moment he was gone, she locked the door and returned to me. She dragged the ottoman over to the chair. “Gem,” she started tentatively, “Are you going to be alright?”
“How do we take her down?” I asked again. I would worry about alright after this was all completely resolved. “I want to know why she did this, Pen. I have to know.”
She fidgeted her hands. “We can go the legal route. But if we do that, we’re going to have to really nail down our story because there’s a good chance we’ll be bent over if we’re not smart about it.” Jabbing her finger at the coffee table, to the paperwork, she took a breath. “That is all we have to go on, and even though I know it’s right, it’s going to be hard as hell to prove because both witnesses and your father have died. It’s our word against Margaret and a douchey attorney who was well-respected before he retired.”
“Both witnesses are gone.” I murmured, and she gave me a pained look.
“Virginia Carroll, the former VP of E & T, died of pancreatic cancer two years ago, and Nick Fairbanks passed away in a car crash a few years after your dad’s heart attack.”
“How convenient for Margaret,” I choked out, but I was thankful to Penelope Connelly for discovering all this. And I was ashamed of myself. The stranger who’d called me had been right. No matter how much I thought of my father, how much I still loved him, I hadn’t cared enough before five months ago to untangle our history.
I’d been too afraid of feeling the sharp pain of rejection again.
Bending forward, I rested my head between my knees, letting the blood flow to my face. “You want to tell Linc, don’t you?”
When she spoke, she surprised me. “Fuck. That. Crap.”
I sat upright. “Okay,” I breathed, “so since you don’t want to involve your brother, what’s behind door number two?”
“You keep working for Margaret. You go into that office tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, and we keep digging until we figure out everything that happened. There has to be a paper trail somewhere, Gemma. There always is. We just have to find it.”
“And once we have that paper trail?”
“Then we go to Linc.” From the unease in her voice, I could tell she’d never planned to involve her older brother, but if there was one person who’d make sure we went about exposing Margaret the right way, it was Lincoln.
“We can figure out another way,” I said, but she snorted.
“I can handle my brother.” She touched my knee, and I examined her chipped metallic nail polish. “We’ve got this bitch, Gem. Now we just need to drag her and Michael Scott down. You’re already in, so use whatever information you can. The woman from marketing. Finley-Bitchface-Scott. O—” Before she said his name, she froze and cleared her throat.
“Oliver.”
“Yes. Oliver.” She slid closer to me and dropped her voice to a warning whisper. “You can’t fall for him, Gem. Because the end of this will tear you two apart.”
Wrapping my arms around my body, my fingers pressed into places his hands had touched last night. I held back the shiver and tried like hell to suppress the emotion, but it didn’t work. I wanted him just as much as before.
At last, I nodded. “I know that, Pen.”
*
Margaret was out the office the next day taking care of last minute details for her Friday flight to Paris, so I didn’t see her again until our nine-thirty ritual on Thursday morning.
She was at her desk when I walked through the French doors, and rage pounded my ears as I approached her with her customary skinny latte.
“Good morning, Margaret,” I forced through a cheerful smile. “All set for France?”
Resting her elbows on the glass surface, she pinched her nose and sucked in a breath through it. “Do I look like I’m ready, Ms. Connelly?”
I handed her the coffee, which she practically jerked out of my hand, and for the briefest moment, I pictured the lid flying off and the liquid covering her cream-colored cashmere and mink Caroline Herrera sweater.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” I offered.
Is there anything else I can do to help you live in that house that’s supposed to be mine? To help you blow money my father left for me?
It wasn’t even about the money, but damn, this was an awful situation.
Biting my tongue, I sat across from her and folded my hands in my lap. “If you need anything taken care of for your trip today, I’m happy to run out and do it.”
Tightening her blue eyes into slits, she twitched her head to either side. “Just do your job while I’m gone. Can you handle that?”
“Of course. Did you receive the transcriptions I emailed you?”
“I did, and I have another set for you to work on in my absence.” Dropping her hand from her nose, her nostrils flared. “I was surprised to see you did such an exceptional job, I need you to fix the mess the little cunt who worked here before you made.”
The little cunt.
Her words brought bile to the back of my throat, and I wondered if she’d used them to describe me before. In spite of the anger that continued to throb in my skull, I could almost vividly hear the words falling from her pinched mouth.
That little cunt Gemma.
Somehow, I made a small sound of agreement and bobbed my head. “I’ll get to work immediately on them. Where can I find the—”
“I’ve emailed you the mp3 files already.” Her desk phone rang, but she ignored it. As soon as the shrill sound stopped, she continued, “The moment you’re finished, email me all the transcriptions and make sure you CC Philip and Cate. You failed to send the last transcriptions to them, and they both need them as well. ”
I made a note on my LCD tablet to email the documents to the company’s VP and CFO. “I’m right on that,” I promised through a smile that felt like it was poisoning me. “I’ll have them to you ASAP.”
“Then, I need you to—” Her phone rang again. Letting out a sharp curse, she lifted the receiver and slammed it to her ear, knocking one of her giant pearl earrings to her desk. “This is Margaret,” she announced in a clipped voice.
I watched her face transform, from annoyance to disgust, and I wanted to know who it was. Who would cause her to feel the exact emotions she inspired in me. When she said the name a second later, I held back a gasp.
“It is a goddamn birthday party, Finley. Not the end of the world. If you can’t handle it, please contact my assistant who will refer you to one of the event planners we’ve used in the past.” Margaret held her breath while the brunette on the other line said something, and then she laughed dismissively. “Well, Oliver knows best. Goodbye, Finley.”
Apparently, there was trouble in paradise, and my curiosity was absolutely piqued.
Making a teepee with her fingers, Margaret breathed against her hands before addressing me. “I’ll email you anything else I need, Ms. Connelly,” she said, her tone dismissing me. As I started to the door, she continued speaking, and my spine stiffened. “My house guest, Ms. Scott, may call you for help planning my son’s thirtieth birthday party. As I’ll be in Paris until nearly a week before the event, I would appreciate it if you gave her a hand.”
I opened the door and looked back at her. “I’d love to help.”
Even though I already knew Finley would rather saw off her own arm than ask me for anything dealing with Oliver. “Have a safe flight to Paris, Margaret.”
The second I returned to my office, I sent Pen a text.
