Next to You (12 page)

J
ared wasn’t
sure Phlox wanted to spend the night, even though she had followed him into the bedroom. He watched warily as she looked around the tiny room. Really, “tiny” didn’t do justice to how small the room was. He owned walk-in closets that were bigger. Not that he minded. He didn’t need much space here but he knew what she was thinking. She was feeling bad over him living in the cottage.

She’d feel worse if she knew about his real home.

The evening had turned out to be more awkward than either of them had expected. The cottage was throwing into starker relief the underlying relationship between them. He had invited her to his home and yet it wasn’t his home. She owned the cottage and he lived there only at her pleasure, so to speak. She was his employer, and he was her employee.

But they were more to each other now, too.

Lovers.

Friends.

And that complicated things, left them in some undefined limbo. Jared could fix the problem in one fell swoop. He didn’t have to be her employee. He didn’t have to be anyone’s employee. He could tell her who he really was and they could simply be lovers and friends. She could hire another caretaker.

No, she could hire a landscaping company or a handyman who would come once a week or so, do the work needed, and then go home to his own wife or girlfriend. Jared didn’t want a new caretaker living on her property.

But he had googled Phlox Miller, and there was no shortage of photographs of her online. As the owner of a hot and trendy company, she lived a public life. She was on the boards of several charities and foundations. She had even attended the Met costume ball last year, with a thin weaselly man Jared could snap right in half if he wanted to.

If that was the man who had dumped her after her accident, by god he wanted to snap him in half. And then in half again.

She was looking at him now, having taken the measure of the room. The bodice of her blue dress lifted as she took a deep breath. Steeling herself? Gathering courage? Calming herself? He couldn’t tell. He should let her go home. He had nothing to offer her beyond next week. They could keep fucking each other—and he certainly wouldn’t mind that—but a woman like Phlox Miller wasn’t out just looking for a quickie fuck. She wasn’t the type to dally with the household help.

He wondered whether she had tried googling him. She wouldn’t have found much. When he sold the company to Google, he’d had them scrub much of his past from the internet. Oh, it was still there—the photos, the media coverage—but it didn’t show up quickly in search results anymore. If a person were persistent enough and willing to go through hundreds of pages, he could be found. But who would bother for a mere caretaker?

The relationships he’d had with women in the past had all been shallow, about as deep as a wading pool, but they had all known who he was. Businessman, billionaire, son of a convicted murderer. They put up with the third in order to get the second. Phlox Miller knew nothing about him, nothing that was true. He suspected that wouldn’t go over well were it to become known.

Ah, he didn’t want to ponder such things right now. He was standing naked, save for a bowtie, his lover before him. He wanted to take her to bed and lose himself in her for the night. Figure out the rest later.

“I believe I owe you dessert,” he said.

Her blue eyes darkened, then swept down the length of his body.

“Anything I want, right?” she asked.

He nodded in reply. “Anything.”

She walked over to the small, battered bedside table and switched off the lamp. The room was now dark save for the faint yellow glow of the hallway light. He held his breath as she stood before him, waiting for what she was going to do next.

Her slender fingers tugged at the bowtie around his neck, untying and pulling it off.

“You said anything.” She was asking for confirmation again, or permission.

What he wanted was to make love to her all night long, until the two of them were too exhausted to go a minute longer, too exhausted to worry about what comes next.

“Whatever you want,” he answered.

She pulled his wrists together in front of his waist and neatly bound them together with the tie.

He laughed nervously. “You don’t have any whips hidden in that dress, do you?”

Her breathy little laugh wasn’t much reassurance. Though when she took a step back and pulled her dress over her head, he did see that in fact she had nothing hidden beneath the dress. Not even underwear.

He sucked in a breath. “If I’d known that earlier, we would have had dessert first.”

“I offered.”

She led him by the wrists to the bed, where they laid down together.

“Close your eyes?”

He obeyed, not certain he was going to enjoy this. He hated feeling helpless. His entire adult life had been constructed around not being helpless, around maintaining control all the time. Granted, he wasn’t truly
helpless
at the moment. Even with his hands bound, he could stop her at any time.

Maybe it was just that she wanted the control here. She wanted him not to know where she was going next.
You told her she could, idiot.
Back when he’d thought he was in control. But he was beginning to suspect that where Phlox Miller was concerned, he was quite out of control.

He had cooked dinner naked for her. Gone to the movies. Brought her breakfast in bed and then proceeded to eat it off her beautiful body. He had never done any of that for a woman before. His relationships with women had always been a simple exchange. Sex and the occasional date in a tightly controlled environment—a small dinner party, a high-end restaurant owned by a friend—in exchange for baubles and stock options and trips to Paris or Fiji.

What were he and Phlox exchanging? Sex. She hadn’t asked for anything else from him. She could certainly afford to buy her own trinkets and vacations. So why was it making him feel so out of control?
Because she might want something else from you.
Something harder for him to give than jewelry or a golden ticket to the stock exchange.

He inhaled sharply when he felt her finger trace a long scar on his face.

“Phlox,” he warned. He struggled to keep his eyes closed. He
wanted
to trust her. He did. But his capacity for trust went up in flames twenty-five years ago.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Jared.”

“I’d rather you didn’t—”

“It’s just skin.”

It wasn’t just skin, though. Those scars had driven his entire life. They were who he was, and he never let anyone touch them. It was too intimate and, especially with this woman, too close to the real him.

The real him she didn’t know.

He clenched his jaw as her finger skittered over his ruined skin.
Please stop.
Then her lips and hot breath caressed his cheek.

“Fuck!” he shouted at her. “Phlox!” He bucked his body beneath her. He couldn’t do this. “Don’t touch my scars.”

When he opened his eyes, she was sitting just below his ribs. In the dim light of the room, the scars on her stomach were like a silvery map. He expected her to get up, put her dress back on and leave. Instead she leaned over him and undid the bowtie.

“Touch mine,” she said.

“No … you don’t have to let me do—”

“I’m not letting you do it. I’m telling you to do it.”

“There’s no quid pro quo here. That means—”

“I fucking know what it means, Jared. I’m not asking for
quid pro quo.
I’m asking you to touch my scars.”

He laid a hand flat against her stomach. There.

“Not enough,” she said.

He ran a thumb along one of the pale lines. “The difference, Phlox, is that no one has to see these. You can walk down the street and no one knows they’re here.”

“You’re right. The only people who have ever seen these are my doctors, assorted nurses, Zee and you. Not even my mother has seen them.”

The pale line he was tracing intersected another one, and his thumb followed. “Not your mother? Why not?”

“She’s so happy that I’m pretty finally. It’s easier if we both pretend that the rest of this doesn’t exist.”

Jared continued tracing the web of lines with his thumb. Her stomach muscles quivered beneath his touch. From nervousness or ticklishness, he wasn’t sure. Did her scars spoil it for him? He had been shocked the first time he saw them, sure, because he wasn’t expecting them. But now that he was looking at them—just looking close up—there was a kind of abstract beauty to them. Phlox’s skin was so fair to begin with, and the scars were a different shade of pale, almost glistening. He wasn’t sure he would call them ugly. Not on her.

He looked up at her breasts, and cupped them in his hands. It was too dark to see the scars that ran along the bottom swells, but they hadn’t bothered him in the daylight the other morning. He was a man, of course. Nothing could really ruin a pair of breasts for him. Well, maybe a nipple ring. Those looked painful and he didn’t particularly care for the taste of metal in his mouth.

“So why me?” he asked. “Why let me see them?” He continued to stroke light circles around her nipples. Against his stomach he felt her sex clench, hot and wet.

“I like you. I thought you would understand.”

Did he understand? Jared barely remembered his life before the scars. He and Jake had been raised by his mother’s sister and her husband. Different town, different school. A place where no one knew what he had looked like before, knew who he had been before. Only Jake knew.

“So I’m the only man who has seen these?”

“Yes.”

He moved his hands to her hips and lifted, pulling her stomach to his mouth. This close it was too dark to see the scars anymore so Jared used his tongue to follow each tiny ridge to the next one, a winding path across her skin. Above him, her breathing was shallow and ragged.

He dipped his tongue into her belly button for good measure, then said, “I think I got them all.”

“I trust you, Jared.”

In her words, he heard the question she was really asking.
Why don’t you trust me?
Because Jared didn’t trust anyone? When your own father tried to kill you, it wasn’t difficult to imagine other people turning on you as well. He wanted to trust her. That was as far as he could go, though. Wanting. But normally he didn’t want even that.

She was a braver person than he was. She had come up here to her country home to vanquish some personal demons—not to deal with someone else’s demons, too.

Phlox pulled away from him, but he slid his hands around to her ass and pulled her crotch to his face. He was gentle and slow with his tongue, not like last night when he’d been hungry and wild and out of control with lust for her, for this beautiful woman who was inexplicably giving her body to him night after night. Afterward, she rode him—not quite as gently—the pale lines on her stomach shimmering as the muscles beneath tensed and relaxed, tensed and relaxed.

“
I
had
no idea there were so many hot tubs,” Phlox said, marveling at the aisles and aisles of options. “Clearly I’m in the wrong business.”

Jared had driven them to a hot tub superstore hard on the New York border and she had spent the morning listening to him explain obscure features to her, watching as he fended off overly attentive salesmen, and climbing in and out of dozens of models testing them for comfort. Her knees were beginning to hurt.

“An in-ground spa would just be easier, wouldn’t it?” she asked.

He shrugged from the other side of an eight-person tub. “Easier from a design standpoint. Lot more construction though. It might not be done before fall.”

She sighed. “It’s probably not realistic of me to expect to use it much this summer anyway.”

“How much time do you normally spend in Connecticut?” he asked, stepping out of the tub then turning to offer her a hand.

“Not enough,” she answered evasively. She didn’t want to think about the fact that she’d be leaving soon, going back to New York. She’d felt him pulling away from her last night, his desire for her tempered with reality. “I think I’ll go with an in-ground spa. That’ll be nicer in the long run.”

Jared looked disappointed by her decision.

“I’ll pay you extra,” she hurried to add. “I know this isn’t in the job description.”

“Well, I’ve been doing a lot of things that aren’t in the job description.”

He slung his arm around her shoulder and walked her out to the Spyder. Maybe they could be done being employer and employee for the rest of the day. She wanted to just be Phlox and Jared. Just be a happy woman walking to the car with her boyfriend’s arm around her.

Was that what she wanted? Jared Connor to be her boyfriend?

She liked spending time with him. He was smart and funny. And despite his aversion to a lot of day-to-day human interaction, he was a surprisingly good lover. He had a tender side to him, a vulnerability she found appealing. He wasn’t a Master of the Universe, over-confident and in possession of the belief that the world—or at least Manhattan—revolved around him. David had been a little too much like that.

She was going to miss him when she went home.

They ate lunch on the outdoor deck at Pizza A Go Go. She had suggested it because she thought Jared would feel comfortable there. Even so, he took the seat facing the acres of fields behind the deck.

“The food here is good. Don’t worry about the way the place looks,” she said. “I brought my brother here when he was up.”

“Is he your only sibling?”

“Yes. He’s two years older.” She was about to say that Rye worked for Phlox Beauty, but she caught herself just in time. No more work talk.

A breeze kicked up and ruffled her hair. Jared gently tucked an errant lock of hair back behind her ear. The look in his eyes was soft, affectionate. Had any man ever looked at her that way?

She was falling for Jared Connor. Falling hard, she feared.

“Where do your parents live?” he asked.

“Stamford. I meant what I said the other day. Whenever you want to visit your brother in Boston, just go.”

“I appreciate that. It’s not my brother so much who wants to see me. It’s his kids.”

They ate their pizza and drank two birch beers apiece. Phlox didn’t push him to talk about his family, though she shared a few carefully chosen details about her own. He asked her where she went to school. She asked him where he’d been working before her place. When the check came, they both reached for it. Phlox glared at him but he refused to let go.

Her phone rang and he smiled in triumph. “You going to answer that?”

“Maybe.” She never let employees pay for meals. Of course, Jared wasn’t just an employee here but she could more easily afford it. The ringing stopped, then started up again.

“Sounds important.”

She let go of the check and dug her phone out of her purse. It was Zee. She answered it, having just lost the battle for the check.

“Hey! What are you up to?” Zee’s voice was cheerful and Phlox was overcome with a sudden longing for her best friend. If Jared were anyone else, were just a regular guy and not her employee, she could talk to Zee about him. They could parse his every word and deed, and try to figure out which way was up.

“Just finishing lunch.”

“Sounds like you’re outside.”

“I am.”

“By yourself?”

“No. I went shopping for hot tubs this morning.” She was acutely aware of Jared watching her. “With Jared. We just grabbed some pizza on the way back.”

“Who’s Jared?”

Phlox looked across the table at him, warily. He held out the check and a credit card for the waitress, but she could tell he was still listening to her conversation with Zee as well.

“He’s been taking care of my place while I was gone.”

“Ah. Good. Hey, the reason I called is that my mother has invited us to her movie premiere next month. You up for that?”

“I guess. Sure. Are we going to be a corporate sponsor on this one?” She held back a sigh of frustration. The universe was conspiring to keep reminding Jared that she was his employer.

“If you want to. We could visit some west coast accounts while we’re out there, too.”

“We could.”

“When are you coming back to town?”

Phlox closed her eyes. “Next week, I suppose. Unless you need me sooner.”

“Nope. Just need to know when to reactivate your card key.”

Phlox hung up and set her phone down on the table.

“Everything okay?” Jared asked as he signed the check.

“Yeah. Zee’s mother has a new movie coming out. She’s invited us to the premiere next month.”

“That sounds like fun. You must go to a lot of stuff like that.”

She shrugged. “Zee enjoys it more than I do. I’m more of a homebody. Plus, she usually has a date for these things. I usually don’t.”

“Well, Hollywood. Good for the brand, right?”

“Um ... right.” Sometimes Jared didn’t sound like a caretaker. Like maybe he watched too much CNBC on rainy days or something.

He stood and moved behind her chair. Phlox expected him to pull the chair back for her. He had impeccable manners, more so than most of the guys she had dated. Instead, he laid his hands on her shoulders and leaned his cheek—his good one—against hers. It was such a sweet gesture, not sexual at all, though the smell of him this near was awakening certain parts of her body. She sighed. She was
so
falling for him.

“Come with me to the movie premiere,” she said.

He pulled his cheek away from hers. “I can’t.”

He turned and walked away from the table. Phlox grabbed her purse and hurried to catch up to him. She shouldn’t have asked. It was an impulsive decision and impulsive decisions were usually foolish ones. At the car, he opened the passenger side door for her.

“Why not?” she asked.

“You can’t take your caretaker to a movie premiere. People would have a field day with that.”

“You wouldn’t be there as my caretaker. You’d be my date.”

“Your ugly date. I would just be a distraction, Phlox. You should find someone better to take.” He walked around to the driver’s side and got in.

“I might have to revise your job description, after all,” she said as he pulled the car out of the restaurant’s grassy parking lot. “Add ‘attend events with company owner.’”

“You could do that. But then I would quit.”

“You’d give up a job rather than go to an event with me?”

“I would.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Makes perfect sense, Phlox. I’m a caretaker because it doesn’t require me to see a lot of people. And they don’t have to see me.”

They were quiet as the miles sped by. Her heart was heavy in her chest. Not a good sign. She should have known better than to ask. She didn’t want things with Jared to end when she had to return to the city. But only seeing him in Connecticut meant barely seeing him at all.