12 ~ OLIVER

“Where’s my dress?”

Darcy stood before me in just her panties and bra and I raked my eyes over her magnificent body.

“Oliver?”

“Come here, Darcy.” It was just after dawn and I was sitting at the desk in my home office going through the costings my CFO had given me for a new superyacht tender that was due Monday. I pulled her onto my lap, slipping a finger under the band of lace that barely covered her pussy. “What are these doing back on?”

“My dress, Oliver? Walking home in my underwear at dawn brings a whole new meaning to ‘walk of shame’. If the over-sixty-fives in this street see me like this I’ll be giving them the first coronaries of their retirement.”

God, I loved how she made me laugh and although I’d have preferred her on her knees under my desk with my cock in her mouth, I knew we had to deal with the dress.

“Your dress has gone.”

“Gone?” She shot a look around the room as if it might be tucked away somewhere. “What? You’ve kept it as some sort of souvenir? Like a serial killer? I’ve heard of guys hanging onto panties, but a dress?”

“I haven’t souvenired it, I’ve trashed it.”

She pushed herself from my lap. “You plan to keep me in this state of semi-nudity?” Her hands waved around her body like she was reshaping her aura.

“I’d like to, but that would be unpractical for your work. Anyway, I don’t want anyone but me seeing these gorgeous bits of your body.” I flicked the leg of her panties and she batted my hand away.

“The dress, Oliver.”

“Where did you get it?” Of all the questions I could have asked, I could see that wasn’t one she was expecting.

“Seriously? You want to know where I bought this dress?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I bought it in town.”

I doubted that. “It’s a Claudia Saint Deveaux design. She doesn’t have an outlet in town, she doesn’t have an outlet in New Zealand.” I watched her carefully. If the dress had anything to do with my stepfather it would show on her face.

“It’s probably a knock-off. I don’t know who Claudia Saint-and-Sinner is, and my budget doesn’t run to designer stuff. Wait, have you dated this Saint woman?”

“She’s related to someone I know.”

“And you just happen to recognize her designs, because, what…she’s some distant acquaintance? You’ve slept with her, haven’t you?”

Her little possessive show was cute, but I needed to simmer her down. “Come here.” I reached for her hand but she pulled it away. “Darcy, I need to tell you something and I want you here, on my lap.”

She narrowed her eyes then made short reluctant steps toward me. I pulled her down and held her close, resisting the urge to mouth her neck, or slip her bra strap off her delectable shoulder.

“I want you tell me where you bought the dress.”

“Fine, okay, shame me. I got it at the charity shop in town. I didn’t have any decent clothes with me and op-shops suit my budget right now.”

“I’ll fix the clothing issue for you. We can shop in Auckland, but I want you to stay away from the charity shop.”

“Oliver, you can’t tell me where to shop. That’s my choice.”

“Okay, I’m asking you not to shop there. That dress belonged to my fiancée, Annabelle. I bought it for her. I know this because Claudia made it as a one-off from a picture Annabelle had found in one of the stacks of fashion magazines she hoarded like some sort of clothing porn. It’s the dress she was wearing the day we broke up.”

I was surprised when Darcy leaned in and kissed me. “Your Annabelle may have her failings, but she has good taste in men and clothes.”

“Forget about her, she’s a bitch.”

She must have dumped her clothing at the op-shop, probably so that I’d get an eyeful of her dresses on other women around town. If that was the extent of her revenge, then it was pretty benign. And for Annabelle, benign was totally out of character. I knew she wasn’t done with me yet.

If it wasn’t so obsessive I’d send someone in there to buy up all the stock because seeing Darcy dressed in Annabelle’s clothes was completely unacceptable. She shouldn’t be wearing second-hand clothes, anyway.

“I still need something to wear to get me back to my house.”

“You could stay in my bed for the day.”

She swung a leg around and straddled me. “I’m tender all over, and tempted, big boy. But Ginger’s picking me up at nine-thirty to take me mountain biking.”

I looked at my watch. It was already after eight. “In that case, I’ll cook you some eggs and toast. Ginger’s a crazy biker so you’re going to need a lot of fuel. I can drop you home after breakfast and you can sneak into your house without the neighbors seeing.”

“Right, because being dropped off at my front door early on a Sunday morning, by Mr. Sackville in his Range Rover won’t raise any eyebrows.”

“It’ll give them something to talk about beyond strokes and hypertension medication during the morning over-sixties group walk. Consider it a service to the community. If we did it daily, you’d receive a civic award and a mention in the Waitapu Bay Sun.”

Darcy thumped my shoulder and swung off my lap. “To the kitchen, chef.”

I gave her one of my T-shirts to wear. It hung to mid-thigh and made me hard whenever I looked at her. Much sexier than the dress on all counts.

She finished up cooking the eggs while I tried to emulate a barista and completely failed. Annabelle had insisted on installing a La Marzocco espresso machine that would happily fill the needs of a large cafe. I’d left its operation completely in her hands and had been cursing it as a dust collector for the past year.

Darcy poached perfect eggs with the competency of a short-order cook and nudged me out of the way to tackle the coffee. “Let me see if I can make this sucker sing.”

She’d made this sucker sing and I almost told her so but something held me back. I believed her story about the dress but when it came to connections with Annabelle and my family, coincidences made me edgy. This was the second one involving Darcy.

Even so, it was frighteningly comfortable to have her around the house and I’d drawn a promise from her that she’d come back again for dinner tonight.

I got her back to the cottage with only five minutes to spare. I gathered her in for one last kiss, loving how the fragrance of my body wash mixed with her unique scent. Finally I allowed her to pull away and she’d popped open the car door without giving me time to open it for her. She’d seemed overly grateful the first time I’d done that for her so clearly whatever douchebag had had her before me was lacking in manners. I’d have to school her on that fast exit to make sure she waited for me to perform door duty.

She blew me a last kiss and said, “I’ll think of you every time my tender bits make contact with the bike seat.”

I could feel myself falling for her already. Another thing I felt was a twinge of envy for the bike seat.