“What do you think—”

He tilted my face up so we were eye-to-eye. "Your name. I asked you your name.”

"Lizzie Connelly."

"Lizzie...” His voice trailed off as he tested the pseudonym on his tongue. Smirking like the cat that ate the canary—or in his case, the petite blond lady—he started, “I'm Oliver—"

I cut him off by tugging free of his distracting grip. Taking the hint, he moved his other hand from my face, and I released a breath of relief. "I already know exactly who you are."

He didn’t look surprised. If anything, his grin only grew bolder. Man-whore here probably thrived on being infamous. "My reputation precedes me."

Of course it did—hell, a photo of him at some red carpet gala with a Brazilian model had graced the lifestyle-and-entertainment section of a local paper just last weekend—but I wasn’t about to jerk off his ego by telling him that. "Not really." I absently trailed my fingers over the wrist his fingers had been wrapped around. My heart rate sped up and tingles rushed across my skin at the memory.

"Honestly, it was impossible to ignore your name when it was attached to 'get the fuck out of my office',” I told him.

“Dora likes to exaggerate.” His mouth twisted in annoyance, dragging my attention back to his lips. Damn, those lips. He backed up to his Viper. “There really wasn’t a need for theatrics.” He slid behind the wheel of his sporty car. If I expected him to simply drive off and forget I was standing there, I was sadly mistaken. The passenger window slid down, and his gaze trailed slowly down my body. I couldn’t remember the last time I let a man’s stare get beneath my skin, but Oliver’s did.

That fact alone made my jaw tighten.

“Believe it or not,” I said, tilting my head to the side, “Dora didn’t even mention you.”

The corner of his lip tugged up. "I'll have your replacement phone on your desk by tomorrow morning."

"That's really not necessary," I argued, but he lifted his shoulders. The pretentious asshole had just brushed me off. For a second, as I stared into his penetrating blue eyes, I wondered if he was the man who’d called me four months ago. But then I let the thought drift away as quickly as it came. Calling me like that wouldn’t have benefited him, and besides, the voice didn’t fit. Neither did the secrecy. Oliver Manning would have announced himself at the very beginning of that call if it had been him.

“I’m serious, Oliver,” I said through gritted teeth. Besides, I wouldn’t even be at the office until Thursday—not that he needed to know that.

"I fix what I break."

I stiffened, remembering his words from fourteen years ago. I’d give anything to fix this for you. Drawing in a few quick breaths, I pinched my mouth. “It’s a phone, Mr. Manning; I promise it’s not the end of the world.”

He started to pull off, but then he slammed on his brakes. I narrowed my eyes, but before I could ask him if he actually planned on leaving sometime today, he said, "I'm not sleeping with Dora."

“What?” I blurted.

“I’m. Not. Fucking. Dora. We’ve never had that kind of interest in each other.”

Wow ... really? I looked down at a crack in the garage floor. "It's none of my business, and I really, really don’t want to know. You don't have to explain anything to me.”

"No, I don't. I just didn’t want you getting the wrong idea about me." His vivid blue eyes examined me one final time, and then he put his car in gear. "Soon, Lizzie.”

*

Once I was sure he was gone, I rushed to my Mini Cooper. With my phone broken, I was even more anxious to get home. I ignored the speed limit, shunning the radio in favor of silence. By the time I closed my apartment door behind me, my body trembled.

Exhaling deeply, I dropped my purse by my feet and closed my eyes. I opened them just in time to see Pen coming out of the kitchen, holding a plate with a bagel slathered in strawberry cream cheese. She paused the moment her slate blue eyes landed on me.

"Oh shit." Her dark brows drew together in concern. "You didn't freak out and tell them everything, did you?"

I shook my head. “I don’t go back until Thursday. Margaret’s out of town, and she wants to be there when I start.” Pen let out a sigh of relief that echoed through her body. Dropping her plate a few inches from the red floral centerpiece on the dining room table, she sat down and motioned for me to take the spot right across from her. As I joined her, she studied me carefully.

"Alright, why are you shaking?" she demanded. “Being in that building didn’t get to you, did it?”

“I can handle the building,” I promised. “I’m shaking because of Oliver Manning.”

She repeated his name and then fanned herself, laughing at the dark look I shot at her. “That man gives me the shivers. Is he gorgeous in person? Or is he one of those guys who just photographs well?” Observing my silence, she leaned forward and whispered, “His mom was married to your dad for all of two years. It’s not wrong to—”

“He’s arrogant.” I left it at that because I absolutely could not look at her and tell her he wasn’t attractive. Everything about Oliver—from his voice to his touch to his knee-weakening looks—was overpowering and stunning. I recounted most of what had happened this morning, from meeting Stella to bits-and-pieces of the parking garage encounter, plunking my destroyed phone on the table between us when I was finished. “He’s bow-down-to-me, fall-into-my-Egyptian-cotton-sheets-right-effing-now arrogant.”

“He’s rich,” Pen pointed out. “You should be used to his type.”

In the last three years, I’d met my fair share of men with money, men who had gladly tossed out a few thousand a night to have me on their arm with absolutely no promise of anything more. But as I sat there trying to compare Oliver to them, I quickly found that my brain refused to make the connection.

He was in a class of his own, and I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

“Hmm ... I’m used to them. Doesn’t make it any better.” Thinking about the way his hands had felt flared over my skin doused me with a bucket full of emotions, and I shoved away from the table. “When are you leaving for Vegas?” I called out, walking into the narrow kitchen. As bad as it sounded, I was determined to get Oliver the hell out of my head, even if that meant powering through my fully stocked fridge.

“About that,” Pen said. I heard her make a noise that I associated with indecision. I knew what was coming even before I returned to the adjoining dining room with blueberry yogurt and a can of Diet Dr. Pepper. The thought made me ridiculously giddy inside. When I slid into my seat and tucked my foot beneath my butt, she folded her hands together and gave me one of those looks that made me feel like we were negotiating a business deal.

She should have known by now that none of this was necessary.

“So I called my boss, who was totally cool with me doing some work remotely, and I was thinking...” she said with a timid look that was so unlike her I bit my lip to suppress my own smile. For the last couple years, she’d been with the same software company, working in what she called a “white hat” position where she tested cracks in the software. She was such an asset to the company that her boss had reached the point where he let her do her own thing. “Well, hell, I was thinking—”

“Of course you can stay with me.” I pulled the foil off my yogurt and licked it clean. “I’d honestly love for you to be here.” Something about having Pen—my best friend and the mastermind who helped launch this complex plan—nearby took pounds of pressure off my chest.

Looking surprised at how easily I agreed, she twisted her head to the side, causing her mane of brown hair to cascade over one shoulder. “Really?”