She leaned into his touch. “I’m sorry.” Sorry for making him worry, sorry for setting off smoke alarms, sorry for upending his life. She was sorry for things that hadn’t even happened yet but were still highly likely to occur.
“Don’t apologize.” His voice was deep as he lifted her face. “Not to me,” he said against her lips.
She shouldn’t lean into the kiss. She shouldn’t want him and she certainly shouldn’t take what he was offering. If she had half a brain, she would catch a ride to a nice hotel and spend the next week or so ordering room service and watching television. If she watched enough Food Network, she’d probably learn a lot about cookies.
But she didn’t want to. It was selfish and greedy, but she wanted to kiss a man who wanted her—only her. So she did. She wanted to wrap her arms around his waist and pull him against her so that her breasts were pressed against his hard chest, so she did that, too. And when the elevator dinged to a stop and the doors opened, she didn’t want to end the kiss.
But she had to when Oliver pulled away from her, his eyes dark with desire. “We should get inside,” he said, but he didn’t let her go. He slid his free arm around her waist and guided her down a short hallway with only three doors. “My condo is half the floor. Of the other two condos, one is an oil baron who only sleeps here when he’s in town on a business meeting and the other family, I believe, is summering in Paris. So the only people who come off the elevator should be me or Lucille.”
She suppressed a sigh. “All right.” Like Oliver had said—there were certain realities that neither one of them could ignore. Oh, how she wanted to ignore them.
Wouldn’t it be lovely to pretend that they were coming home after an evening out, just the two of them? That this was an everyday occurrence, kissing on the elevator and struggling to keep their hands to themselves until they were behind closed doors? Oh, how she wished that this were her real life instead of a brief, wonderful interlude.
He’d said that all she had to do was ask and he would do his best to give it to her. Somehow, she didn’t think he’d been talking about the rest of their lives.
Because she couldn’t ask that of him. Sooner or later, her family’s scandal would catch up with her. Even if nothing came up about their misadventure with the fire department today, eventually word would get out. That was just the nature of scandals. She’d be called back to New York to testify, kicking off a fresh round of gossip and hatred, especially because she was more noticeably pregnant every single day. When that happened, it wouldn’t be just her caught in the cross fire. It would be Oliver.
She shouldn’t have barged into his life. If she were smart, she’d bail now.
But then he opened the door to his condo and ushered her inside. When the lights came on, she gasped. “It’s beautiful.”
The apartment she had lived in with Chet had been worth close to six million, but in reality it had been a smallish two-bedroom apartment. Chet had hated it, hated that they hadn’t been able to get the place he’d really wanted, which had gone for ten million and had four bedrooms and a formal dining room. Renee had always considered their snug condo to be perfect and she’d known that, sooner or later, they would move out. But that had never been good enough for Chet. He hadn’t looked at it as a starter home. He’d looked at the smallish condo with only four windows and no balcony and seen nothing but failure because it wasn’t the very best.
Renee had always feared that he’d had the same feeling when he’d looked at her.
But Oliver’s place? There were floor-to-ceiling windows that wrapped around a wall behind a dining table set for six and continued around the corner to another full wall of windows with plush leather sofas and chairs that was interrupted only by an elaborate fireplace and mantel. She glanced around, but she saw no signs that this place was occupied by more than one person.
The place looked...lived-in. Like his study out at Red Oak Hill. Everything in here was of the highest quality. She knew an expensive Persian rug when she saw one and there were three scattered around with various seats grouped around them. All that wealth was understated.
This was his home, on the top floor of a thirty-story building with a view that encompassed half of Texas.
Nothing could touch her here. No other windows looked down into his apartment because this was the tallest building for blocks. She was above the fray here—literally. “You can see for forever,” she said in a sigh, drifting to a window and staring out at the twinkling lights of the city. It wasn’t as perfect as Fred and Wilma swimming in the pond but it was amazing.
Oliver came up behind her. Her breath caught in her chest when she saw the look in his eyes. Even the hazy reflection in the window couldn’t blur away the desire in his eyes. And she was still in her leggings and a T-shirt. After everything that had happened today—and especially with her looking like she did—how could he still look at her like that?
“The view is always spectacular,” he said as his gaze dipped to her chest. Her nipples hardened to tight points and she heard him suck in a deep breath. Then he stepped into her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “But it’s even better now.”
* * *
Oliver watched Renee’s reflection in the glass as he rubbed
