Chapter 42: Confused Wife

She stepped around him. He moved into her path. He still hadn’t said anything. "What?"

Dorian’s eyes dropped. She followed his gaze. The gift bag.

Oh.

She slowly looked back at him. He gestured toward it. Naomi’s eyebrows shot upward. "You want me to throw this away?"

A small, approving smile appeared.

"You cannot be serious."

He remained silent. She lifted the bag.

"But... I don’t even know what’s in it."

Dorian gave her a look that clearly said:

Not my problem.

She shifted the dinner into one arm and raised the gift bag slightly. "Can I peek real quick?"

Dorian gave a firm shake of his head.

"Ugh... come on!" she snapped. "It looks so expensive."

Without saying a word, he nudged the bin closer with one foot. She looked at the bag again, weighing her options.

It really did look expensive. Callum did not strike her as the type to walk into a store and buy something normal.

Naomi shut her eyes. "You are a terrible person." She loosened her grip.

The bag dropped into the trash beside the roses. A soft clink came from inside. Her eyes flew open. She winced dramatically.

"Oh my God. That sounded expensive." Naomi stared mournfully into the bin. "Could have been diamonds."

"Then Callum Sterling just made an excellent donation to waste management." he finally said his first words.

"You are so mean."

"Now stop being a drama queen. I got something to show you."

Before she could complain further, Dorian took the remaining bags from her hands.

"Come on." He turned toward the stairs.

Naomi followed, still shooting one last glance back at the bin. They headed down to the third floor.

They passed the open door to Dorian’s office. She had never paid much attention to this floor before. Most of her life in the townhouse had happened between the guest room, kitchen, garage and whichever part of the house Dorian happened to be irritating her in.

She glanced around. "I haven’t been on this floor before."

Dorian looked over his shoulder. "That’s because your sense of exploration is broken."

"You didn’t give me permission to go exploring, did you?" Naomi shot back.

Dorian stopped walking and turned. "You need permission to walk around the house you live in?"

"I temporarily live in."

He turned back around. "Explore."

"What?"

"Consider that permission."

"All six floors?"

"Yes."

"Even your bedroom?"

Dorian stopped again. She immediately grinned.

"Kidding."

"You’re exhausting." Dorian muttered something she didn’t catch and continued down the hallway.

Naomi followed. Then he stopped in front of an open door. The first thing she noticed was the smell of fresh paint and new wood.

Naomi stepped closer. Dorian shifted the bags in his hands.

"The smell is still strong. I have the windows open."

Naomi barely heard him. Her gaze moved across the room. Everything looked freshly done. Her heart gave a strange little kick. "What is this, Dorian?"

"I thought you might need the space to plan for Ginny’s wedding and other contracts you may have while here."

Naomi stepped fully inside. The room was beautiful. There was a proper workstation against one wall with dual monitors already set up.

Beside it was a large planning wall with enough space to clip photographs, supplier notes and whatever else she needed.

Naomi walked toward it slowly. Her fingers brushed over the edge of the desk. She looked toward another wall and saw storage shelves.

An open workspace large enough to spread out wedding plans without having to pile everything on top of dinner plates.

The more she looked, the more details she noticed. It wasn’t just a room somebody had thrown furniture into.

Someone had thought about how she would actually use it. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covered an entire wall.

Naomi walked toward them slowly, her eyes moving over row after row of cookbooks and culinary magazines.

There were even several recent culinary magazines arranged neatly on the lower shelves. She pulled one halfway out, looked at the cover, then pushed it back.

She turned toward Dorian. He was still standing just outside the doorway, watching her reaction as though none of this was particularly remarkable.

A long counter ran beneath another section of the wall. Several empty frames sat there, different sizes but all elegant and simple.

There was a large whiteboard nearby, completely blank and waiting for her to fill it with menus, terrible handwriting and the thousand little details involved in feeding hundreds of people without accidentally poisoning anybody.

She could already picture Ginny’s wedding going across it. She could plan everything here. She turned toward the desk again.

Right in the center sat a simple, elegant nameplate.

CHEF BENNETT

Her throat closed. For some reason, that was the thing that did it. She reached out and touched the edge of the nameplate.

The smell of fresh paint didn’t bother her anymore. She barely noticed it. She turned around. Dorian’s faint amusement disappeared.

Her mouth was open. Her eyes had filled.

"Naomi?"

Her face crumpled and then she started crying. She was trying to breathe through tears while one hand came up to clutch at her chest.

Oh, fuck.

He had done something wrong. He had absolutely done something wrong. "Naomi?" He dropped the bags still in his hands and crossed the room quickly. "I... I just..." Dorian Heathcliffe genuinely did not know what to say. "I’m sorry. Was I being too forward?"

Naomi looked at him through watery eyes. "What do you want?"

"Excuse me?"

"What do you want?"

Dorian frowned. "I don’t—"

"Men always want something."

The words came out broken because she was struggling to breathe properly. She wiped furiously at her cheeks.

"They always do." She gestured helplessly toward the room. "All these nice things and then suddenly you begin to feel indebted, and then they have you in a chokehold." She looked around the office again as though the very thing that had overwhelmed her was suddenly frightening. "What do you want?"