“I want this,” she confessed, ducking her head until her words were almost indistinct. “But I’m not sure I should.”
“I get it,” he lied, reeling from the sting of disappointment.
Although it felt like one, Sammi hadn’t delivered a rejection. She was just demonstrating more restraint than he could summon. She seized her lower lip between her teeth and worried at it. Crushing a groan between his molars, he tore his gaze away and suppressed the memory of her mouth yielding to his. Somehow, he mustered the willpower to take that first, difficult step backward. His chest ached as he moved away from her.
“I mean with everything that’s going on...” she continued, trailing off as she noticed his retreat. “It’s a lot more complicated now, don’t you think?”
“Much more,” he agreed, sending his hands plunging into the pockets of his jeans. All too aware of the uncomfortable pressure behind his zipper, he swallowed a curse and changed the topic. “Earlier you said you were hungry.” He glanced at his watch. “Let’s go have dinner.”
The thirty-day notice Sammi had given on her apartment was disappearing faster than she realized. Between long days spent in photo shoots and evenings spent in Oliver’s company, she’d delayed finding someplace new to live. She was hampered by the fact that she’d never been in charge of her circumstances before and had no idea how to navigate the New York real estate market, and the person she’d normally turn to for help was the one whom Sammi had hurt the most with her decisions.
Celeste had barely spoken a dozen words to Sammi in the last week, and the silent treatment left her feeling isolated and edgy. She didn’t want to fight with her mother. Sammi craved Celeste’s approval and support. It seemed so unfair that she’d done everything her mother had ever asked of her, and the moment that she sought to live her own life, Celeste couldn’t let go.
Maybe if she’d made some attempt to assert her independence before this. At twenty-six, Sammi recognized that she should’ve taken responsibility for her finances and made all the decisions about her career, but her mother had always been in charge, and only recently, when Sammi began to contemplate her future endeavors, had the trap of her dependence become clear.
Nor could Sammi bring herself to ask any of her friends for help or advice, fearing that they’d look down on her for failing to act like an adult and take charge of herself. In fact, with her mother’s control so firmly in place, Sammi was amazed she’d accomplished as much as she had.
Which was why she’d decided to ask Oliver for help with her apartment search. He’d already seen firsthand what her mother could be like and hadn’t judged Sammi’s complex bond with a parent who was both selfish and selfless, bully and champion.
Aware how easily she could come to rely on Oliver, Sammi was determined to remain sensible about him, especially in light of all the attention he’d been showering on her. It hadn’t been easy. For the past week, he seemed determined to cement himself in her life. He took her to dinner every night and secured the most amazing seats at an off-Broadway show that she’d been dying to see. Sammi tried to make light of his attentiveness, but that was easier said than done. She was living out her fondest teenage fantasies, and each day the fairy tale felt a bit more real.
Yet not everything was rosy. She couldn’t help but notice the ever-increasing media frenzy that had begun with the news that Oliver’s father was returning to New York to face criminal charges. The first time she’d asked Oliver about it, he’d shut her down hard. Unable to talk to him about it, she’d satisfied some of her curiosity by reading all she could from articles that revisited the old scandal surrounding the disappearance of the money Vernon’s friends and clients had invested in the exclusive and wildly successful Black Crescent Hedge Fund.
When the funds vanished and Everett Reardon, Vernon’s best friend and Black Crescent’s CFO, had been killed in a car crash while trying to elude capture, everyone speculated that Vernon was dead, as well. In the fifteen years that followed, Oliver’s older brother Joshua devoted his life to rebuilding Black Crescent and repairing his family’s tarnished reputation.
Oliver’s phone was buzzing in his pocket. They were in the back of a taxi, on their way to a preview event at a friend’s gallery. Sammi sat beside him, hands buried in the pocket of her wool trench coat, her senses buzzing pleasantly at his nearness as he pulled out his phone and glared at the screen. She’d lost count of how many media calls he’d dodged. Peppered with requests for interviews, he made sure their outings took place in quiet venues, overlooked by reporters and paparazzi. He hadn’t been keen on publicity before his father’s reappearance had focused the spotlight on him. With each day that passed, he was having a harder time avoiding the statement the media was clamoring for.
“I don’t know why they’re so damned determined to interview me,” Oliver groused. “I was in high school when the Black Crescent scandal broke.”
Oliver had been only vaguely mentioned in the news articles about the hedge fund, including those from fifteen years ago and the one published a few months earlier that had focused on Joshua as CEO. In addition, Sammi had found only one mention of Black Crescent in any of the stories that focused on Oliver and his photography. Or at least that had been the case until a month earlier, when Vernon had been extradited by the Feds from the Caribbean island where he’d been hiding and flown to New York to face charges.
“It’s my father who’s newsworthy.”
“And you’re his son,” she reminded him, glad he was sharing his frustration with
