Next to You Read online

  “I am stuffed. Jake, that was the best burger I’ve had in ages,” Phlox declared.

  “Not counting the one I made for you two days ago,” Jared said.

  “What’s your secret ingredient? Mulch?” Jake winked at her.

  “I don’t need a secret ingredient,” Jared shot back.

  Aidan and Emma looked back and forth between their father and their uncle.

  “Uh oh. Here we go. Girl fight.” Mina rolled her eyes.

  “Okay, I didn’t mean to step into the middle of some sibling rivalry,” Phlox backtracked quickly. She put her arm around Jared’s shoulders and squeezed. “Your dessert was better.”

  She could feel the heat rolling off Jared as he blushed.

  “Uncle Jared, I think you’re running a fever. Mom, should I go get the thermometer?” Bless Emma’s little heart.

  Mina looked over at her husband, then said, “I think he’s going to be okay, sweetie.”

  “Mind sharing that recipe, brother?” Jake said. “We’re always looking for some new dessert ideas.”

  The innuendo did nothing to cool Jared’s blush.

  “I like ice cream for dessert,” Aidan chimed in.

  “Speaking of dessert.” Mina stood and began gathering up plates. “Jake, come help me.”

  Phlox pressed her lips to Jared’s ear and whispered, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  “It’s okay. I’m a continual source of amusement to my brother.” He turned his face and gave Phlox a quick kiss on the lips.

  “Uncle Jared and Phlox, sitting in a tree—” Emma began to sing.

  “K-i-s-s-i-n-g,” Aidan joined in, loudly.

  From inside the house, she could hear Jake wheezing with laughter. When he and Mina returned with trays of ice cream and footed ice cream parlor bowls, his eyes were still bright with laughter though his expression was rather more chastened.

  “Dad, can we see your phone?” Emma asked when she had finished wolfing down her ice cream.

  “What for, sweetie?”

  “So I can take a selfie.”

  Jake pulled his phone from his pocket and slid it down the table toward her. “Just one, Emma.”

  “I want to take a selfie too!” Aidan wailed.

  “You can each take one,” Mina instructed. “But just one.”

  When Emma and Aidan were done mugging for the camera, Emma held the phone out to Jared. “You and Phlox take one now. Together since you’re boyfriend and girlfriend.” She aimed a look of mild disgust at her younger brother.

  Phlox glanced over at Jared. She couldn’t imagine he was given to taking selfies, but she sensed that he would never deny his niece and nephew anything. He took the phone and held it at arm’s length in front of them. Phlox leaned her head against his shoulder and smiled. He took the photo, then passed the phone back to Jake without even looking at it.

  “Phlox, what’s your number?” Jake immediately asked. “I’ll send you the photo.”

  * * *

  Half an hour later, Phlox was drying the last ice cream bowl and handing it to Mina to put in the cupboard. Mina’s kitchen was a lot like her own—soapstone counters, professional-grade appliances. The difference between Jake and Mina’s life and Jared’s was stark, and it puzzled Phlox. Not that there was anything wrong with being a caretaker or working with one’s hands. But if she had met Jared Connor at a party, caretaker would be pretty far down her list of guesses as to what he did for a living.

  His hands were as rough as you’d expect, but nothing else was. He’d brought a fifty-dollar bottle of wine the night he came over for dinner. He owned a bowtie. What was that from? His Chippendale’s Halloween costume? She thought not.

  He was a mystery to her. Meeting his family had shown her another side of him but there were other sides he still wasn’t revealing.

  From outside came shrieks and laughter as Jared tossed the kids into the pool over and over. It had to be way past their bedtime.

  “Emma and Aidan are adorable,” she said. “Jared’s quite the uncle.”

  “Yes, he is. We let him spoil them. But only up to a point.” She laughed, then her eyes grew serious again. “You really like him, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. I do.” Phlox neatly folded the dish towel in half and draped it over the towel rack. “I know we seem like a strange pair.”

  Mina was quiet as she wiped down the countertop on the island, scrubbing at invisible spots. “There’s more to Jared than meets the eye.”

  “I get that feeling,” Phlox admitted. “I just don’t know what that ‘more’ might be.” Please fill in the blanks.

  Mina opened a bag of coffee and proceeded to set the coffeemaker to brewing. “He’s never brought someone to meet us before.”

  “Never?”

  Mina shook her head.

  Please tell me something more about him. Phlox didn’t want to admit how little she knew about Jared.

  “It’s too bad he didn’t get better treatment when he was a kid,” she said. “Although I hate to think of a child going through all the surgeries I did.”

  “He saved Jake’s life, you know.”

  “He didn’t tell me that. He just said their childhood home was destroyed by a fire.”

  The coffeemaker chimed. Mina poured two cups of coffee and slid one across the island to Phlox.

  “There’s a lot he won’t tell you, Phlox,” Mina said. “He doesn’t trust anyone other than Jake.”

  “Are people really that horrible to him?”

  “Yes and no.”

  Phlox bit back a sigh of frustration. Yes and no. That pretty much summed up Jared Connor.

  Chapter 21

  Jared rolled to the side and wrapped his arms around her. He pressed his lips to her bare shoulder and in her post-coital haze Phlox couldn’t discern the impulse behind the kiss. Or the entire past thirty minutes, for that matter. She had never been made love to before—those thirty minutes had just made that clear. Jared had been sweet and slow and the only word she could think of to describe it was lovemaking. It had been skin against skin, his heart beating against hers, their bodies in sync the whole time right up until the moment when they came together, Jared whispering her name. Phlox … Phlox … Phlox.

  She knew she would remember that whisper for the rest of her life.

  It had been magical. She knew that was a silly way to describe it, but that was how it felt. It had to mean something, that specialness. After the day at his brother’s house, she knew what she hoped it meant. But a tiny voice in the back of her head was whispering too, intimating that it meant something else entirely.

  “Are you saying goodbye to me?” she asked quietly.

  Jared didn’t say a word. Though she couldn’t see his face, she knew he hadn’t fallen asleep yet.

  “Because I think I’ve fallen in love with you,” she added.

  Another soft kiss brushed her shoulder.

  “I’ve never been in love, Phlox.”

  “Are you saying you are now?” Her heart soared on wings of hope.

  “You have a life I can’t be part of.”

  Her heart crashed back to earth.

  “Why not?”

  “You own a high-profile business. You can’t date a caretaker. Especially not one who looks like I do.” He kissed her shoulder a third time. “Every photo of us will be captioned ‘beauty and the beast.’ I can’t do that to you. Or to your company.”

  “You never answered my original question. Are you saying goodbye?”

  “I don’t want to say goodbye to you, Phlox.”

  She took a deep breath to stem the tears that were threatening. “You’re waffling.”

  He turned her body in his arms so that they were face to face. His hands cupped her face. “The way you make me feel … I’ve never felt this way about a woman before. Usually, it’s the woman who is leaving me, not asking me to stay.”

  “They thought they could deal with your face but then couldn’t?”

&n
bsp; “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “I’m not embarrassed by you. I don’t care what other people think.”

  “But other people care what other people think.” He wiped away the tear running down her cheek, then kissed her long and deep. “I’m not saying goodbye.”

  She wasn’t so sure. Mina had said that there were lots of things he wouldn’t tell her. Why couldn’t he trust her?

  “I’m just saying that this thing between us has to stay in Connecticut,” he added.

  “Are you staying in Connecticut?” She held her breath.

  “As long as you don’t fire me.”

  “I have no plans to do that.” Though she didn’t really want him working for her. It made things too weird, that she was paying him, supporting him. Maybe he felt obligated to sleep with her. But if he wasn’t on her payroll, then there was nothing to keep him here.

  “Then we’re good.” He kissed her forehead and tucked her body in against his.

  * * *

  The insistent ringing of her phone woke her. A sharp glance at the alarm clock confirmed what she suspected. It was still the middle of the night. The ringing stopped, then started again. Reluctantly, she lifted Jared’s heavy arm off her ribcage and disentangled her legs from his.

  “Hello?” she mumbled into the phone.

  “Phlox. It’s me. Zee.”

  “Zee? What’s going on?”

  “People are getting burned by the A2Z Cream,” Zee's voice broke and Phlox was wide awake now. Zee was crying.

  “What? When?”

  “We had several reports over the past couple days. But now it’s up to twenty.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Rye and the attorney wanted to get a handle on things first.”

  “Well what’s going on? No one was having adverse reactions before.” She leaned her forehead against the cool plaster of the bedroom wall. “Fuck. Fuck. I should have been in the lab testing this myself instead of having my face fixed.” Behind her, she heard the soft swish of sheets as Jared sat up.

  “It wasn’t the testing.” Zee choked back another sob. “I think it was Nicholas.”

  “Nicholas? What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been sending him out to the plant to work on increasing production, but I think he might have been working for someone else. I haven’t been able to get in touch with him since the first report came in. I’m sorry, Phlox. God, I was duped by a man.”

  Her brother had said he didn’t trust Nicholas. I just get a bad feeling about him. But now was not the time to mention that to Zee, who was sobbing openly on the other end of the phone.

  “I’m coming back, Zee. Tonight. We’ll get through this. Have you recalled the product?” Damn it, why hadn’t Zee and Rye called her? She yanked open a bureau drawer and pulled out underwear.

  “Yes. We’ve notified retailers to shut down the kiosks and we’re in the process of contacting everyone who ordered the product. At least we’ve been shipping direct on this one so we have every customer’s contact info.” She fell silent for a long moment. “It’s going to get ugly, Phlox.”

  “Yes. It is.”

  “I’m so sorry, Phlox. God, I’m so sorry. I trusted him and … it’s my fault. I was the one who sent him out there. Phlox …” Zee was begging and pleading on the phone, and it was breaking Phlox’s heart.

  “Hey, we’re all in this together. I’m packing right now.” She opened the closet door and dragged out her duffel bag.

  When she turned around, Jared was buttoning up his jeans.

  “I have to go. We have a business emergency.” She flicked on the bedside lamp. “I’m sorry.”

  “What can I do?”

  Besides stand there shirtless, looking at me with those sleepy puppy dog eyes? Tell me you’ll be here when I get back? She had no idea when she would be back to Connecticut.

  “Are there things downstairs you need packed?” he asked.

  She pressed her fingers against her temples, thinking. “My laptop. There’s some laundry in the dryer in the basement.”

  “I’m on it.” He pulled her into his arms, smoothed back her hair, and kissed her. “And I’ll hold down the fort here. No worries in Connecticut, okay?”

  “Thank you.” She kissed him back fiercely, wanting more than anything to just stay there in his strong arms and listen to his heart beat against her cheek. She had no idea when she would see him again.

  Chapter 22

  Phlox looked down at the street from the window of her eighth-floor office. Phlox Beauty was headquartered in an older office building in New York, not one of those new sleek glass and metal structures that were popping up everywhere. She liked the charm of the older building, even if the rooms were smaller and the elevators slower. Rye had been talking about the need to move to a larger space soon. Phlox knew it was unavoidable, given the company’s growth, but she would miss this building. She got attached too easily to things, she knew that.

  Below her, taxis and cars jostled for position. Pedestrians scurried down the sidewalk on their way to work, to cafés, to the subway. It felt as though she hadn’t gone anywhere, hadn’t just spent two weeks in Connecticut. Everything was the same here.

  She turned away from the window. Her glass-topped Parsons desk was as neat and tidy as ever. Not a speck of dust marred the antique mirror hanging on the wall. Her plants had been watered while she was gone. Cherise had kept her inbox—both virtual and not—blissfully clean. Out in the halls, staffers rushed back and forth. The receptionist paged people into conference rooms. It was all just as she had left it.

  Only … Phlox didn’t feel the same. Two weeks in Connecticut and her whole world had changed. And all because of a man. A year ago, she wouldn’t have dreamed of a man changing her world. None had ever seemed interested in the job. But Jared Connor—her prickly but tender, sexy but self conscious caretaker—had flipped her world upside down.

  Swept her off her feet.

  She slumped into her big executive office chair and tried to focus her mind on the more immediate problems at hand. She had driven like a bat out of hell from Connecticut to the city, stopping in her apartment just long enough to throw on a suit and makeup before coming into the office. Since then, she’d been poring over customer complaints, reports from the factory (who suspected Nicholas, as well), and the results of the lab tests Zee had ordered on random batches of the product.

  High concentrations of carbolic acid had been added to the batch of the A2Z Cream manufactured three weeks ago. It was only one week’s worth so Rye and Zee had been able to trace the shipments. And the injured customers would recover, some with better skin than they had before—though that was small consolation at the moment. Nicholas had turned the product into a deep chemical peel. But the recovery period for that kind of peel was not fun. Customers would have to put up with a lot of redness, swelling and peeling before it got better.

  Sales had plummeted across all of the company’s products and it would take awhile to turn that around. Needless to say, the Glossy Award nomination had been withdrawn.

  Phlox watched the black phone on her desk like it was something alive. Rye was handling the product recall, Zee was staying in touch with affected customers and Phlox had agreed to handle the tide of calls and emails coming in from the media. Normally, Zee handled most of the media relations work but Phlox was better at talking about product ingredients and what people could do to mitigate the effects of the peel.

  Even so, she was not looking forward to the next morning’s scheduled appearances on CNBC and two other financial shows. There weren’t many good ways to spin this problem. They’d been taken advantage of. They had trusted someone they shouldn’t. No way to make that look anything but bad.

  We’re not in Connecticut anymore, Toto.

  She spent the day fielding calls from reporters and investors. Even her mother called wanting to know if she should return her tube of the A2Z Cream.

  “Just throw it awa
y, mom … yes, I had a good time in Connecticut … yes, the repairs were perfect … no, I haven’t had a chance to call David Cook yet … we’re a little busy here right now.”

  At six, Cherise popped her head into the office. “Need anything before I go? Want me to order dinner for you?”

  “No,” said Zee, who appeared behind Cherise in the doorway. “We’re leaving now too.”

  “We are?” Phlox gestured toward the sticky notes with phone numbers to call back that were plastered all over her desk.

  “Yup. We’re going to burn the midnight oil at my place, where it won’t worry people as much as if we’re here in the office until three am,” Zee answered. “Chinese okay for dinner?”

  * * *

  Jared stood in the main house, waiting for the cleaning crew to arrive. He had no idea when Phlox would be able to come back to Connecticut but when she did, her house would be spotless. It had taken all his willpower not to hop into his truck and follow her back to New York. He had never minded the quiet and the solitude here before. Now he dreaded it.

  Phlox Miller had been in his life a mere two weeks. How could he miss her so fiercely?

  He took the stairs to the second floor two steps at a time. In her room, he stripped the sheets from the bed then buried his face in the armful of high thread count cotton, inhaling her sweet scent. How could it be that just last night, they had stripped each other’s clothes off and made tender, passionate love to each other? The night ahead was going to be long and lonely, the bed in the cottage empty and cold without the warmth of her legs tangled in his, her soft breath against his chest.

  She’d been so fucking sexy standing there completely naked and talking business with her partner. Smart, beautiful, sexy, brave, successful, okay with the way he looked. Phlox Miller was perfect for him—if only he weren’t her fucking caretaker. Whose brilliant idea had that been, to take care of people’s houses?