Next to You Page 15

Oh right. Mine.

  He grabbed the towels from the bathroom—willing himself not to remember that particular night—and carried it all to the basement, where he stuffed it into the washer. He poured in detergent, closed the lid and turned the knob to “on.” Then he sat on the basement stairs, his elbows on his knees, as the washer noisily filled with water.

  It wasn’t just that he missed her. He was worried about her. Worried about her business. She and her partner were so young and their business was facing its first real crisis—and a very serious one at that. Jared could help them, advise them … fund them if they needed it. But he would have to come clean with her and tell her who he really was. She wasn’t the sort of person who would forgive lying easily. Phlox didn’t play games, as far as he could tell. She’d had someone deliver a photo album from New York so she could show him what she’d been through. So she could show him what a total jackass he had been.

  She was braver than he was. She deserved someone who was as honest and brave as she was. That, unfortunately, would never be him.

  He stood and climbed the stairs back to the first floor. He had just closed the basement door when his phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket and looked at the caller ID, hoping against hope that it might be Phlox. It wasn’t.

  “Jake.” It was going to be any day now and he dreaded seeing his brother’s name on his phone. “Any news?”

  “Attorney says soon. That’s not why I called though. I, uh, saw some stuff about Phlox Beauty online.”

  “Yeah, I read it too. She left in the middle of the night after her partner called. Sounded like product tampering.”

  “That’s rough. I’m sorry, man.”

  “Well, she was going to have to leave eventually anyway. Crisis or not, she has a business to run.”

  “Mina and I really enjoyed meeting her. I’m glad you brought her. The kids are planning your wedding though. Just FYI. You’re going to be wearing a powder blue tuxedo and white shoes.”

  That made Jared smile. He couldn’t help it.

  If I could marry her, I would wear a powder blue tuxedo and white shoes.

  Where the hell had that thought come from? It wasn’t an unwelcome thought, though. Hell, he’d wear anything anyone wanted him to wear if Phlox Miller was willing to marry him.

  You have it bad. So majorly bad. He’d never wanted to marry someone before. Never even entertained the idea, let alone considered it in relation to someone specific.

  “Why don’t you just come clean with her? Tell her who you really are,” Jake said.

  Jared grunted. The cleaning crew had pulled into the driveway, two cars and a small army of mops and buckets. He opened the front door for them.

  “I can’t tell her I lied to her. And anyway, the last thing her business needs attached to it is a scarred recluse with a father on death row.”

  “Businesses have withstood worse.”

  “Not a beauty business, Jake. Don’t you get it? I’m the worst person she could go out with.”

  “So are you remaining in her employ?”

  “For now. There are some projects here I need to finish up.” The hot tub, for one. She was going to need that when this was all over. “Call me when you have news from California.” He hung up.

  He shook his head at Emma and Aidan’s wedding fantasies. That was never going to happen. He could be content with just seeing Phlox when she came to the country, but he couldn’t imagine her being happy with that. Eventually, she would want a normal relationship, a husband and kids. He would have to stop working for her when that happened. It would kill him to see her with another man.

  * * *

  Dinner at Zee’s apartment turned out to be a glum affair. Even potstickers and fortune cookies couldn’t cheer them up. Phlox’s cell phone rang every few minutes with more press inquiries and Zee was tethered to her laptop, answering customer questions. On top of it all, Zee’s beloved grandfather, Max, was not doing well.

  “You should fly up there and see him, Zee. Fly into Bangor and rent a car. You could be back in a day.”

  Zee pushed her kung pao chicken around the plate. “I don’t know if there’ll be time. Mom still wants us to go to her premiere.”

  Phlox grimaced. “I’d rather not, considering.”

  “I know. Me either. But Hollywood has been good to us and we need to show that we still have their support.”

  Phlox’s phone buzzed with a text. She sighed.

  “When this is all over, I’m not looking at a phone ever again.”

  She peeked at the phone without pulling it fully from her purse. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw Jared’s name

  Miss you.

  She let the phone drop back to the bottom of her purse.

  “Who was it?” Zee asked.

  “Nothing. Wrong number.”

  “God, you are the worst liar. You can’t hide stuff from me here. We’re partners.”

  “I’m not hiding anything.” Just a man. “Nothing important.” How had Jared Connor become so important to her in such a short period of time?

  “Then tell me, if it’s not important.”

  “It was just Rye,” she lied. “Texting me a dirty joke.” It was true, her brother did often text her dirty jokes but he hadn’t recently. No one employed by Phlox Beauty had been in a joking mood lately.

  “Really? Let me see.”

  Zee was not letting this go.

  “Fine,” Zee continued. “I’ll text Rye myself and ask him to tell me the joke.”

  Phlox watched as her friend and business partner texted her brother. Seconds later, Zee’s phone pinged with a reply.

  Zee’s eyebrows lifted. “Rye says he hasn’t texted you all day.”

  “Fine!” Phlox’s voice was laced with exasperation. “The text was from my caretaker in Connecticut.”

  Zee frowned at her. “Why couldn’t you just say so? Your landscaping is so top secret?”

  “No,” Phlox muttered.

  Zee’s hand reached across her tiny kitchen table. “Hey. What’s going on? I’ve been bitching all night about Nicholas but you haven’t said a word about your stay in the country.”

  What was there to say? Phlox missed Jared so much her entire chest hurt. Miss you.

  “I met someone,” she sighed.

  “You did? That’s great, Phlox.” Then confusion colored Zee’s face. “What does that have to do with your caretaker though?”

  “I met the caretaker.”

  “Oh.”

  There was a world of meaning in that one little word. Oh. And Phlox heard every one of them. Zee had grown up in a different world than Phlox and Rye had. Zee had split her childhood between Hollywood, boarding school and her grandparents’ home in Bar Harbor. Zee didn’t fraternize with the help. The Miller family, on the other hand, never had help. Well, other than Phlox and Rye. They had been the help, the free child labor, as was the case for most middle-class families.

  Zee would never fall for a caretaker. The idea would never cross her mind, even if the caretaker looked like the love child of Adam Levine, George Clooney and Joe Manganiello. Falling for the caretaker was inappropriate. No, Zee only fell for men who were intelligent, educated, well-spoken, safe to take out in public to dinners and receptions. Men who could discuss world events, last year’s wine harvest, upcoming IPOs and baseball with equal facility. Men like Nicholas.

  You couldn’t show up at some fancy event with your caretaker in tow. Except … Jared was intelligent. Phlox had no doubt of that. He was well-spoken. In fact, he spoke as though he were very well-educated. And he had seemed very interested in her business.

  But he wouldn’t be comfortable at the sort of events she and Zee had to attend. He hated being seen in public, even if “in public” meant a darkened movie theater.

  “Aren’t you going to text him back?” Zee asked.

  Phlox shook her head. “I’ll call him later. It’s not important.”

  “Ah. So just sex?”

  Ph
lox shrugged, neither denying nor confirming. Was it just sex? Was that all it was? It had to be for him, didn’t it? After all, he had declined to say whether or not he was in love with her last night.

  “Is he coming down to the city?” Zee asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  Phlox sighed. “He doesn’t like to be … out.”

  “Missy.”

  Zee was playing the missy card. Figured.

  “I thought we didn’t keep secrets from each other, Phlox,” Zee said quietly. “You’ve never been this secretive about a guy before.”

  Phlox reached into her purse and pulled out her phone. She found the selfie Jake had forwarded to her and slid the phone across the table.

  “Ahh. I guess I see why.”

  Zee studied the photo for a long minute, then slid it back. “You look happy. He looks terrified.”

  “That’s about where we left it, yeah.”

  “He must be good in bed.”

  Zee laughed as Phlox’s pale skin flushed a deep crimson red.

  “Hey, no shame in that,” Zee added.

  Phlox was quiet as she took another look at the photo before dropping her purse back into her bag.

  “It’s more than that, though. Isn’t it?”

  Phlox nodded, running her hand through her hair. “And I don’t know why. I don’t know why I like him. Because it probably is just sex to him. You know, a woman shows up and throws herself at you—and she happens to be your employer—what man is going to say no to that?”

  “You threw yourself at him? I’m trying to picture that.”

  “He has all kinds of issues about his face, and then I made the stupid mistake of inviting him to be my date at your mother’s premiere.”

  “And?”

  “He said ‘no.’ He said any photo of us would be captioned 'beauty and the beast.’”

  “Maybe he’ll come around.”

  Phlox pushed a pile of rice around her plate with a chopstick. “I doubt it.” She sighed. “He took me to meet his brother’s family in Boston, which seemed like a good sign. But they were totally floored to see him show up with a woman. So that’s probably a bad sign. He doesn’t have a lot of experience with serious relationships and neither do I.”

  “Well as long as he doesn’t screw around with our business, like my asshole so-called boyfriend did.” Zee had only picked at her food, too. She began clearing the table. “You would never let a man lie to you like that.”

  Chapter 23

  Phlox unlocked the door to her condo and dropped her purse on the sofa. No sooner had the bag hit the cushion than her phone pinged with another text. It was a photo of Jared’s bare chest, taken in a mirror. I’m sexting you, he wrote. She smiled and tapped the screen to call him back.

  “Hey,” she said softly when he picked up.

  “Hey you. How are things going?”

  “As well as they can, I guess. We’re making some headway. Our award nomination was withdrawn though.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I wish I were still in Connecticut.”

  “I wish you were too. I’d cook you dinner, pour you some wine, then run you a nice relaxing bath.”

  “Mmm. What else?”

  “I’d wash every inch of your skin until you’re nice and clean. Then I’d get you dirty again.”

  She remembered their earlier night in the tub. Yeah, that had been dirty all right.

  “Are we about to have phone sex?” she asked

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m a phone sex virgin,” she added.

  “Me too.”

  “What are you wearing?” She pictured him in the apron and bowtie.

  “Just sweats,” Jared answered.

  “What color sweats?”

  “Grey.”

  “Anything beneath the sweats?”

  “Let me check.” There was a beat of silence. “Nope. Nothing.”

  She laughed. It felt like the first time in twenty-four hours that she hadn’t been frowning.

  “What are you really doing?” she asked. “Watching tv?”

  “I’m lying in bed, touching myself and thinking about you.”

  Phlox was suddenly flushed and hot. “We really are having phone sex, aren’t we?”

  “Yup. Do you want me to tell you what I’m thinking about doing to you?”

  “Please.”

  “First, I would kiss you. We would just make out for a long time.”

  “That’s all?”

  “We’re just getting started, you know. I like to kiss you, Phlox. You make all these little noises. I like that. And I like the way you start to squirm in my arms.”

  “My body has a mind of its own around you.”

  “I like your body’s mind. Once I’ve gotten you all hot and bothered and squirmy, I’d slide my hands beneath your shirt.”

  She looked down at herself. She was still wearing her suit from work. Switching the phone from hand to hand, she wriggled out of the jacket.

  “Phlox? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here. I just took off my jacket.”

  “Wait. Are you wearing a suit? A business suit?”

  “I am. I always wear a suit to the office.”

  Jared groaned. “I’ve never seen you in a suit. Pants or a skirt?”

  “Skirt.”

  “Heels?”

  “Yeah. Pumps.”

  “What color is the suit?”

  She laughed. “Black. Black suit and black pumps. I thought we were having phone sex here, not playing twenty questions.”

  “We are having phone sex. I’m just revising my scenario, that’s all. What are you wearing underneath the jacket? One of those little blouses with the tiny straps?”

  “Yes. A mint green silk camisole. A little lace around the top.”

  There was silence on the other end, except for some suspiciously heavy breathing.

  “What are you doing to me over there now?” she asked quietly.

  “It’s not what I’m doing to you. It’s what you’re doing to me.”

  “What am I doing, then?”

  “You’re performing a sexy little strip tease, taking off that prim and proper business attire.”

  She laughed again. “Oh am I?”

  “Oh yeah. You’re unzipping your skirt, then you turn around and let it drop to the floor.”

  Phlox put her phone on speaker and set it down on the floor.

  “What are you doing?” Jared asked.

  “Unzipping my skirt.” She let the fabric fall to the floor right next to the phone.

  Jared moaned. “I can so see that.”

  “Oh yeah? Now I’m wearing just the camisole and a pair of matching lace panties. Can you see that?”

  “Clearly.”

  “Hmm. I think I’ll leave these on for awhile. I can be your sexy secretary.”

  “I think I prefer you as my sexy boss. When you were on the phone last night, talking to your partner … god, that was so damn sexy. I don’t know what it is about a woman talking business …”

  “Well, I’ll be on CNBC and Fox Business tomorrow if you want to watch me talk business some more.”

  He groaned. “You’re killing me here, Phlox.”

  “You’re weird, Jared, you know that? I would think you’d be more turned on if I were knee-deep in mud and planting tomatoes or something.”

  “You’re smart, sweetheart. That’s incredibly sexy to me.”

  Sweetheart. A smile graced her lips at the sound of that word. No one had ever called her “sweetheart” before or told her she was “incredibly sexy.” They had to find a way to make this work. She was in too deep here to give this up, to give up Jared.

  “Tell me what you did today,” he said.

  “Besides miss you?” She picked up the phone and pressed it to her ear, then stretched out on the sofa in her underwear and heels. “I talked to the factory and read the results of the lab reports. Everyone suspe
cts that Zee’s boyfriend—well, ex-boyfriend now, obviously—added carbolic acid to the manufacturing line. The factory is reviewing security footage to see if they can determine where he did it. Dermatologists use the stuff when they do chemical peels, so people will recover from it. It’s just not pleasant, especially if you weren’t planning for it.”

  Jared was quiet on the other end. She’d probably put him to sleep.

  “You don’t want to hear all this,” she said. “It’ll be boring to you.”

  “I want to know what you do all day when you’re not baking muffins in Connecticut.”

  She crossed her ankles and took a deep breath. “All right, but I’m warning you. It’s not that fascinating. I spent the rest of the day fielding calls from reporters. Our communications director normally handles media relations but when something like this happens, people need to hear it from the top. After that, I had dinner with Zee at her place. That’s why I didn’t answer your text right away.”

  “That’s okay. I just wanted you to know I was thinking about you.”

  “Actually, your text got me in trouble. I told her it was a joke from my brother and when I wouldn’t show her the joke, she texted my brother. Of course, he told her he hadn’t sent me anything. I’m a terrible liar.”

  “Yeah, I can see how that would be. You don’t exactly have a poker face.”

  “I showed her that picture we took at your brother’s. The selfie.”

  “Did she turn to stone?”

  “She said I looked happy.” Phlox waited for some reaction on Jared’s end but he remained stonily silent. “Men don’t usually make me happy, Jared. Hopeful, frustrated, sad, lonely, heartbroken—lots of other things. But not usually happy.”

  Still he said nothing.

  “I don’t want to talk about my day,” she said after a few minutes more of silence. She wasn’t even sure he was still on the line.

  “What would you like to talk about?” he said, finally.

  “What I’d do to you if you were here right now.”

  “And that is?”

  “I’d want to check out your assets.” If he liked business-talk, she’d give him business-talk.

  “My assets are now fully on display.”

  Her body grew hot at the thought of Jared in the nude, lying on his bed.