Next to You (14 page)

J
ared rolled
to the side and wrapped his arms around her. He pressed his lips to her bare shoulder and in her post-coital haze Phlox couldn’t discern the impulse behind the kiss. Or the entire past thirty minutes, for that matter. She had never been made love to before—those thirty minutes had just made that clear. Jared had been sweet and slow and the only word she could think of to describe it was lovemaking. It had been skin against skin, his heart beating against hers, their bodies in sync the whole time right up until the moment when they came together, Jared whispering her name.
Phlox … Phlox … Phlox.

She knew she would remember that whisper for the rest of her life.

It had been magical. She knew that was a silly way to describe it, but that was how it felt. It had to mean something, that specialness. After the day at his brother’s house, she knew what she hoped it meant. But a tiny voice in the back of her head was whispering too, intimating that it meant something else entirely.

“Are you saying goodbye to me?” she asked quietly.

Jared didn’t say a word. Though she couldn’t see his face, she knew he hadn’t fallen asleep yet.

“Because I think I’ve fallen in love with you,” she added.

Another soft kiss brushed her shoulder.

“I’ve never been in love, Phlox.”

“Are you saying you are now?” Her heart soared on wings of hope.

“You have a life I can’t be part of.”

Her heart crashed back to earth.

“Why not?”

“You own a high-profile business. You can’t date a caretaker. Especially not one who looks like I do.” He kissed her shoulder a third time. “Every photo of us will be captioned ‘beauty and the beast.’ I can’t do that to you. Or to your company.”

“You never answered my original question. Are you saying goodbye?”

“I don’t want to say goodbye to you, Phlox.”

She took a deep breath to stem the tears that were threatening. “You’re waffling.”

He turned her body in his arms so that they were face to face. His hands cupped her face. “The way you make me feel … I’ve never felt this way about a woman before. Usually, it’s the woman who is leaving me, not asking me to stay.”

“They thought they could deal with your face but then couldn’t?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“I’m not embarrassed by you. I don’t care what other people think.”

“But other people care what other people think.” He wiped away the tear running down her cheek, then kissed her long and deep. “I’m not saying goodbye.”

She wasn’t so sure. Mina had said that there were lots of things he wouldn’t tell her. Why couldn’t he trust her?

“I’m just saying that this thing between us has to stay in Connecticut,” he added.

“Are you staying in Connecticut?” She held her breath.

“As long as you don’t fire me.”

“I have no plans to do that.” Though she didn’t really want him working for her. It made things too weird, that she was paying him, supporting him. Maybe he felt obligated to sleep with her. But if he wasn’t on her payroll, then there was nothing to keep him here.

“Then we’re good.” He kissed her forehead and tucked her body in against his.

T
he insistent ringing
of her phone woke her. A sharp glance at the alarm clock confirmed what she suspected. It was still the middle of the night. The ringing stopped, then started again. Reluctantly, she lifted Jared’s heavy arm off her ribcage and disentangled her legs from his.

“Hello?” she mumbled into the phone.

“Phlox. It’s me. Zee.”

“Zee? What’s going on?”

“People are getting burned by the A2Z Cream,” Zee's voice broke and Phlox was wide awake now. Zee was crying.

“What? When?”

“We had several reports over the past couple days. But now it’s up to twenty.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Rye and the attorney wanted to get a handle on things first.”

“Well what’s going on? No one was having adverse reactions before.” She leaned her forehead against the cool plaster of the bedroom wall. “Fuck.
Fuck
. I should have been in the lab testing this myself instead of having my face fixed.” Behind her, she heard the soft swish of sheets as Jared sat up.

“It wasn’t the testing.” Zee choked back another sob. “I think it was Nicholas.”

“Nicholas? What do you mean?”

“I’ve been sending him out to the plant to work on increasing production, but I think he might have been working for someone else. I haven’t been able to get in touch with him since the first report came in. I’m sorry, Phlox. God, I was duped by a man.”

Her brother had said he didn’t trust Nicholas.
I just get a bad feeling about him.
But now was not the time to mention that to Zee, who was sobbing openly on the other end of the phone.

“I’m coming back, Zee. Tonight. We’ll get through this. Have you recalled the product?” Damn it, why hadn’t Zee and Rye called her? She yanked open a bureau drawer and pulled out underwear.

“Yes. We’ve notified retailers to shut down the kiosks and we’re in the process of contacting everyone who ordered the product. At least we’ve been shipping direct on this one so we have every customer’s contact info.” She fell silent for a long moment. “It’s going to get ugly, Phlox.”

“Yes. It is.”

“I’m so sorry, Phlox. God, I’m so sorry. I trusted him and … it’s my fault. I was the one who sent him out there. Phlox …” Zee was begging and pleading on the phone, and it was breaking Phlox’s heart.

“Hey, we’re all in this together. I’m packing right now.” She opened the closet door and dragged out her duffel bag.

When she turned around, Jared was buttoning up his jeans.

“I have to go. We have a business emergency.” She flicked on the bedside lamp. “I’m sorry.”

“What can I do?”

Besides stand there shirtless, looking at me with those sleepy puppy dog eyes? Tell me you’ll be here when I get back?
She had no idea when she would be back to Connecticut.

“Are there things downstairs you need packed?” he asked.

She pressed her fingers against her temples, thinking. “My laptop. There’s some laundry in the dryer in the basement.”

“I’m on it.” He pulled her into his arms, smoothed back her hair, and kissed her. “And I’ll hold down the fort here. No worries in Connecticut, okay?”

“Thank you.” She kissed him back fiercely, wanting more than anything to just stay there in his strong arms and listen to his heart beat against her cheek. She had no idea when she would see him again.

P
hlox looked
down at the street from the window of her eighth-floor office. Phlox Beauty was headquartered in an older office building in New York, not one of those new sleek glass and metal structures that were popping up everywhere. She liked the charm of the older building, even if the rooms were smaller and the elevators slower. Rye had been talking about the need to move to a larger space soon. Phlox knew it was unavoidable, given the company’s growth, but she would miss this building. She got attached too easily to things, she knew that.

Below her, taxis and cars jostled for position. Pedestrians scurried down the sidewalk on their way to work, to cafés, to the subway. It felt as though she hadn’t gone anywhere, hadn’t just spent two weeks in Connecticut. Everything was the same here.

She turned away from the window. Her glass-topped Parsons desk was as neat and tidy as ever. Not a speck of dust marred the antique mirror hanging on the wall. Her plants had been watered while she was gone. Cherise had kept her inbox—both virtual and not—blissfully clean. Out in the halls, staffers rushed back and forth. The receptionist paged people into conference rooms. It was all just as she had left it.

Only … Phlox didn’t feel the same. Two weeks in Connecticut and her whole world had changed. And all because of a man. A year ago, she wouldn’t have dreamed of a man changing her world. None had ever seemed interested in the job. But Jared Connor—her prickly but tender, sexy but self conscious caretaker—had flipped her world upside down.

Swept her off her feet.

She slumped into her big executive office chair and tried to focus her mind on the more immediate problems at hand. She had driven like a bat out of hell from Connecticut to the city, stopping in her apartment just long enough to throw on a suit and makeup before coming into the office. Since then, she’d been poring over customer complaints, reports from the factory (who suspected Nicholas, as well), and the results of the lab tests Zee had ordered on random batches of the product.

High concentrations of carbolic acid had been added to the batch of the A2Z Cream manufactured three weeks ago. It was only one week’s worth so Rye and Zee had been able to trace the shipments. And the injured customers would recover, some with better skin than they had before—though that was small consolation at the moment. Nicholas had turned the product into a deep chemical peel. But the recovery period for that kind of peel was not fun. Customers would have to put up with a lot of redness, swelling and peeling before it got better.

Sales had plummeted across all of the company’s products and it would take awhile to turn that around. Needless to say, the Glossy Award nomination had been withdrawn.

Phlox watched the black phone on her desk like it was something alive. Rye was handling the product recall, Zee was staying in touch with affected customers and Phlox had agreed to handle the tide of calls and emails coming in from the media. Normally, Zee handled most of the media relations work but Phlox was better at talking about product ingredients and what people could do to mitigate the effects of the peel.

Even so, she was not looking forward to the next morning’s scheduled appearances on CNBC and two other financial shows. There weren’t many good ways to spin this problem. They’d been taken advantage of. They had trusted someone they shouldn’t. No way to make that look anything but bad.

We’re not in Connecticut anymore, Toto.

She spent the day fielding calls from reporters and investors. Even her mother called wanting to know if she should return her tube of the A2Z Cream.

“Just throw it away, mom … yes, I had a good time in Connecticut … yes, the repairs were perfect … no, I haven’t had a chance to call David Cook yet … we’re a little busy here right now.”

At six, Cherise popped her head into the office. “Need anything before I go? Want me to order dinner for you?”

“No,” said Zee, who appeared behind Cherise in the doorway. “We’re leaving now too.”

“We are?” Phlox gestured toward the sticky notes with phone numbers to call back that were plastered all over her desk.

“Yup. We’re going to burn the midnight oil at my place, where it won’t worry people as much as if we’re here in the office until three am,” Zee answered. “Chinese okay for dinner?”

J
ared stood
in the main house, waiting for the cleaning crew to arrive. He had no idea when Phlox would be able to come back to Connecticut but when she did, her house would be spotless. It had taken all his willpower not to hop into his truck and follow her back to New York. He had never minded the quiet and the solitude here before. Now he dreaded it.

Phlox Miller had been in his life a mere two weeks. How could he miss her so fiercely?

He took the stairs to the second floor two steps at a time. In her room, he stripped the sheets from the bed then buried his face in the armful of high thread count cotton, inhaling her sweet scent. How could it be that just last night, they had stripped each other’s clothes off and made tender, passionate love to each other? The night ahead was going to be long and lonely, the bed in the cottage empty and cold without the warmth of her legs tangled in his, her soft breath against his chest.

She’d been so fucking sexy standing there completely naked and talking business with her partner. Smart, beautiful, sexy, brave, successful, okay with the way he looked. Phlox Miller was perfect for him—if only he weren’t her fucking caretaker. Whose brilliant idea had that been, to take care of people’s houses?

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.

D
inner 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?”

Phlox 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.