Uncovered Read Online Free PDF Page B

yet
commanding. It was a touch from a man used to getting his way.
    "Wait," he ordered,
and my pulse skipped. Unhurriedly, I turned on my heel to look at him warily.
Although he should have released my arm, he didn’t. Instead, he pulled me
closer to him and touched my chin with his thumb.
    “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.