Chapter Six Sienna
“Stay there. I’ll open the door for you,” Oliver says, which is probably the most he’s said to me since Darcy proposed we have dinner at Bluefin Marina.
I didn't bother engaging him in conversation on the car ride over. I’m saving my conversation-starter questions for dinner when we have to converse like a couple.
He opens my door with a charming smile that seems to have come out of nowhere. “You’re a fantastic actor,” I say, getting out of the car. “You dive right into the boyfriend role.”
“Just part of the job.”
Why does he feel the need to remind me he doesn’t have genuine feelings for me and that kiss we had last week wasn’t personal?
Oliver has the host take us to a table with a view of the bar and orders us a bottle of California Chardonnay. While the server prepares it, we look at each other and chat about menu items like we're so enraptured that we can't tear our eyes away to watch an uncorking.
The wine is scrumptious. Oliver curls his fingers through mine and leans toward me. “Why are you so beautiful?” he asks in a playfully bashful way.
“If I was as beautiful as you think, you wouldn’t be the first person to ask me that question,” I tease back.
“There’s no way I’m the first guy who’s called you beautiful.”
“Ah, but it didn't mean a thing to me until you said it.” I raise my brows the same way I’m raising the stakes of our silly, lovey-dovey conversation.
He thumbs my cheek, tilting my head to the side, and brings his lips to my ear. “You win. I don’t think I can beat that one.”
I gasp at the carnal tingling that descends through my body. His voice is like honey. Very spicy honey.
He eases away far enough for me to look him straight in the eyes. “Pretend I’m saying something outrageously dirty to you about how I’d like to spread my legs for you so you can get a good look at what I have to offer.”
His pupils dilate. “Don’t say that.”
I’m fairly certain that roughness in his voice is something less wholesome than plain old anger. “What if I mean it?”
“Sienna, this is a game. Play the game.” He spits out the words with such agitation that I think he’s trying to convince himself it's the truth.
"I am playing."
The server brings us Caprese salads. The dressing is garlicky and sweet.
I ask Oliver questions about the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu he does each afternoon in the den.
I walk by while he practices and fantasize about what it’d be like to have his body wrapped around mine in one of those leg-clenching, controlling moves.
We get main courses of potato-crusted grouper and crab cakes. Like a good couple, we exchange large helpings of each other’s dishes.
In the middle of talking about how he wants to visit Rio de Janeiro, Oliver goes suddenly quiet. “Over at the bar. It looks like him.”
Adrenaline spikes in my veins. I move to glance behind me.
“Face forward,” Oliver orders in a low voice. “Come closer and whisper something into my ear.”
Ignoring the fact that Blake is in the same room as us, I lean across the table. “I want to fly to Rio de Janeiro with you. We’ll explore the city and find you the best A?aí smoothie you’ve ever had. Then we’ll go back to the hotel and make love so hard and for so long that neither of us can move.”
“That’s….” He sounds roundly pissed at what I thought was a girlfriendy thing to say. “It’s too much, Sienna. I can’t take that much.”
“Then kiss me. Let’s show him how we kiss.”
Oliver's gaze is dark and desirous. “Sienna,” he says, coming toward my mouth, “I've been dying to kiss you.”
The way he says it has me fooled. I believe he wants me, and that turns me into a wet, desperate creature. A reedy sound escapes my throat.
Oliver growls like he’s having a hard time reining himself in. We come together in kisses that are too hard, too open, and too punishingly delicious to be marina restaurant appropriate. It makes my body weep in relief. “God, how I’ve wanted this.”
Oliver weaves his fingers through my hair to the base of my skull. Somehow, our kisses deepen.
“He's gone,” Oliver says against my mouth. “He got up and left.”
“Oh,” I say, pulling away. The disappointment in my voice is unmistakable.
“Not yet. Keep looking at me like I’m your boyfriend. Blake could still be watching.”
I force my lips into a smile. Inside, I’m crushed. Another phenomenal kiss and another abrupt end. Another night spent listening to him turning in his bed while I finger myself silently and imagine him sliding into bed beside me.
I can’t take this.
I steel myself. “Can we go back home?” I try to sound seductive, but it comes out flat.
"Of course."
He leads me to my side of the car and opens the door. The consummate boyfriend in many ways, expect, perhaps, the most important.
We get on the road back to Mangroves Club. Oliver keeps rubbing the pad of his thumb against the inside of the steering wheel, a small movement, but a big tell. He's agitated. There’s something he wants to say, but he doesn’t know how to say it.
“Oliver, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“You know I’m a professional. I know privacy and discretion. Also, because I’m a therapist dealing in a highly charged physical and emotional environment, I’m good at emotional detachment. I know how to be physically affectionate without investing my feelings.”
He faces forward, but he must be listening because his thumb stops moving on the leather.
“I think you and I have good chemistry. As a professional, I’m not really sure what that means. But in our case, I take it to mean we’ve got a connection that feels natural and easy. Basically, I'm asking—and not for the first time, I realize—if you’d be interested in a no-strings-attached affair.”
He swallows hard. “It wouldn’t work.”
“Because of your job?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t do these things. I don’t have affairs.”
“I didn’t think you were the type of guy to have affairs on the job, which is why I’m pretty sure you’re going to reject me for a second time. But I can’t help asking when I feel this strongly that you and I have something special. For me, I’ve never felt a connection like this with anyone.”
Finally, he looks at me. “Really?”
I get the inkling of a small victory. “Yeah. That’s why I think we can do this.”
The guard at the front gate waves us through. Oliver waves back. “It’s not just my job.”
Ugh. There must be someone else. Oliver strikes me as a devoted man. Even if he doesn’t have a girlfriend, is his heart somewhere else? Is he hopelessly in love with a married woman? A woman who lives a thousand miles away?
“When I said I don’t do these things, I wasn't talking about work. I was talking about….” He pauses. “I have a hard time saying this, but I want you to know. I’m a virgin.”
I'm at a loss for words. I would’ve guessed Oliver was inexperienced. He's no man-whore. He's not cruising for a lay with the summer holiday hoppers at Sandbar & Sips.
But didn't he have a high school girlfriend? A college girlfriend? I guess the answer's no. Surprise ebbs, and excitement fills me. “As far as I'm concerned, that's not a problem. It’s actually an opportunity. I’m highly skilled, if I do say so myself. I can show you the ropes. However you want.”
Silence builds as he drives along the circular road through Mangroves Club. His face is expressionless, like when I give him a smoothie in the morning.
He stops the car in the driveway. “I have to think about it.”
“Okay,” I say breezily. “You know where to find me.”
He nods.
I wake at six. Half an hour early. Because I’m energized.
Is this the day? Will he decide on us?
I put on a Dave Matthews Band playlist, which Oliver will hear from his room since he gets up when I get up. I set my morning coffee to brew and look on my phone for this morning’s smoothie recipe.
I hear Oliver doing his morning warm-up exercises, and I swear he’s moving with the music. I know he loves it because I saw him scrolling through his Dave Mathews Band playlist when he was doing work at the kitchen table.
As usual, he’s in a T-shirt and running shorts when he comes into the kitchen. “Good morning,” he says without looking at me, as usual.
God, I hope he says yes to an affair, because his resistance to looking at me in my running bra and shorts is plain evidence that his morning wood would shoot right up if he dared. And I want that morning wood.
He wanders over to the French doors facing the lawn and the fairway. His body stiffens. “Stop,” he commands. “Stay over there.”
Fear tears through me. He pulls out his phone and holds it to his ear. “There's a knife, a weapon, on Sienna's back deck.” He listens to the response. “Alright see you soon.”
I stay at the back of the kitchen frozen by despair for the tediousness of Blake's stalking and anger at him for ruining my life and especially this morning with Oliver.
Oliver surveys the yard and the side of the house with a view into the kitchen. Finally, he faces me. “Looks like Blake left a knife on the deck table. It could have blood on it. Hard to tell. Darcy is on her way over.”
"Last night, I thought Blake finally understood I didn't want anything to do with him. I thought when he left the bar that he was leaving me alone for good. But no. He’s doubling down."
Oliver nods.
“I can’t stay here.”
“No, you can’t.”
He stands outside my room while I pack the two suitcases I brought with me. He leaves his post to turn off the alarm system and let Darcy, along with two police officers, into the house. She gives me a hug and goes to work with the police officers in dealing with the knife.
Oliver’s bag is in the foyer when I roll mine out of my room.
“If it’s okay with you, we’ll go to my place at Cove Marina. It’s highly secure. You’re safest there at this point.”
“Okay.”
Oliver takes charge of the bags, and we walk out to his car.
“How are you doing?” he asks as I buckle in.
“I hope this is the last I see of this place. I'm ready to go back to Houston get my life back.”