by Meg Ripley
Taking a deep breath, Brianna continued her walk. She had to get home—if she could even allow herself to think of it that way—and she couldn’t let all the money and the fashion that she was suddenly surrounded by get to her. The only people that mattered were Damien and Stephanie. The little girl seemed to like her just fine, and she had a feeling Damien would have said something yesterday if he didn’t like the way she kept herself.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” barked a voice.
It startled Brianna. She had been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t been paying any attention to her surroundings, and she looked up to find a woman staring at her. With short, blonde hair that frizzed a little at the end and harsh eyes that were caked in blue eyeliner, she stared at Brianna with vehemence.
“Excuse me?” Brianna squeaked.
“I said, what do you think you’re doing? That’s my daughter in that stroller.” She pointed a long, lacquered nail toward Stephanie.
Brianna swallowed. The only person she had really talked to since arriving had been Damien, and he had been nothing but courteous. Clearly, this wasn’t the case with the woman who must be his ex-wife. “I’m her au pair. Her father hired me to take care of her.”
The woman folded her arms in front of her narrow chest. “Oh, I see how it is. He gets me out of the house, accuses me of cheating, and then he turns right around and moves a little floozy in across the hall.”
“It’s not like that, ma’am.” Brianna’s heart surged against her ribs, and she took half a step back. Inside, her body reacted, threatening to shift. But she refused to be embarrassed on the street like that where anyone could see her losing control.
“Ha!” The other woman didn’t seem to notice that the other passers-by were staring at their little scene. If she did, then she didn’t care. “I know how he works, and eventually, you will, too. He’ll lure you in, and then he’ll turn around and completely change. Do yourself a favor and don’t fall for him, because he’ll yank the rug right out from under you!”
None of what she was saying made any sense, but it wasn’t any of Brianna’s business what happened between Damien and his ex. “I don’t think we should be talking about this…”
“Oh yes, we should. Damien has Stephanie right now, so you have a job. But I’ll be getting her back in a month or two. My lawyer is already working on it, and he’s a shark. So you’d better be checking the want-ads for some other sucker’s kids to watch, because you’ll be out on your ass in no time.” Her face suddenly changed, and she started snickering. “Do you have any idea what kind of tax breaks you get when you have a kid? Not to mention all the child support I’ll be collecting from Damien. Better tell him to be looking for another job, too, because he’ll have to work at least two of them just to keep up with the payments.” She waggled her fingers in the air, her nails quickly extending into claws, and marched on down the street.
Brianna remained still for a moment, too shocked to do anything else. She had been enjoying her outing, but now, she didn’t want to do anything but get back to Damien’s house and focus on her job as a nanny.
With that thought, she looked down at Stephanie. The little girl was happily playing with the little Strawberry Shortcake doll she had brought along for the ride. She had taken no notice of the fact that her mother had been standing a few feet away from her. There had been no begging to get out of the stroller or cries of “Mommy!” There must be a lot to the story behind their breakup, but Brianna wasn’t sure she wanted to know about it. She put her sneakers in gear and headed back.
Chapter Five
Damien loved it when he left work early. The roads were relatively clear, and he had a chance to let the engine of his Porsche 944 really open up. Driving it brought him great satisfaction, but most of all, he knew that his little girl was waiting for him at home, and he never minded leaving behind the urgency of work to relax a little with Stephanie before dinner.
It had been three weeks since he had picked up Brianna from the airport, and he hadn’t regretted a single day. Many mornings, he left the house early to get a head start on work so that he wouldn’t feel guilty about those afternoons that he missed, and he knew without a doubt that Stephanie would be clean, fed and happy while he was gone. There was such a sense of relief that came with that, more than he had anticipated.
If Damien were honest with himself, he hadn’t really had any reservations about Brianna once he’d met her. She was young and perhaps a bit naïve from the way she goggled at the scenery, but she was sweet and extremely devoted. When Damien came home from work, he never found her lounging in front of the television while his daughter was left to play alone. Instead, the two of them were always doing something together. It was amazing, and he hoped that Brianna would want to stay at the end of her probationary period. Damien couldn’t imagine finding someone else as fit for the job as she was.
I’ve got a few other jobs in mind for her, his dragon groaned. As tempting as the pictures flashing through his imagination were, he tried his best to push the torrid thoughts from his head.
The phone rang in the kitchen just as he came in from the garage, and he grabbed the receiver off the hook. “Hello?”
“Hey, Damien! It’s Gordon!” The man on the other end had to shout over the bad connection. “I’m going to be in your neck of the woods in about five minutes. Mind if I drop by for a bit?”
“Yeah, sure. See you soon.” Damien hung up. He and Gordon had met at one of the numerous parties that Linda had dragged him to. He didn’t always care for the kind of people who hung out at them. Gordon wasn’t much different, except that he insisted on being Damien’s friend for some reason. He had to wonder what the man wanted, but it would still be nice to have someone over, especially since he didn’t see any sign of Brianna and Stephanie.
The front doorbell rang a few minutes later, and Damien threaded his way through the house to answer it. A bright red Lamborghini was parked out front, and Gordon was on his doorstop, running a hand through his wavy blonde hair. He wore brightly colored Hawaiian print board shorts and a white guayabera button down, which coordinated perfectly with his flip flops. “Hey, there you are! You know, I hadn’t seen you in such a long time that I was starting to wonder if you still lived in the state.”
“I’ve been around. I’ve just been busy.” Gordon’s assessment hadn’t been completely off the mark, considering that Damien had been so busy with Stephanie and work since the divorce that he hadn’t really been out at all. He hadn’t even missed it.
“Yeah, I’m sure you have been busy, you tiger,” Gordon said as he stepped inside. “Busy chasing babes now that you’re single again.”
“Not quite. Why don’t you come have a cup of coffee or a soda?” Damien turned toward the kitchen. “Help yourself to whatever you’d like.”
Gordon followed him, but he wasn’t ready to let that conversation go. “What? You’re not going to tell me about all your conquests? Are you too much of a gentleman to kiss and tell?” He punched Damien on the arm and laughed.
“It’s not like that.” He busied himself with getting coffee filters and mugs out of the cabinet, wishing he hadn’t let Gordon come over at all if they could only have locker room talk. There was a place for it, but he wasn’t really in the mood. “I’m focusing on myself and my daughter. That’s all that matters to me right now.”
“That’s easy to say when you’ve got a babe like that prancing around the house.” Gordon had grabbed a Pepsi out of the fridge, but it was unopened in his hand as he leaned a hip against the breakfast bar and gazed through the window wall.
Damien followed his line of vision and nearly dropped his coffee mug. Brianna and Stephanie were playing in the pool, the nanny’s back turned to the kitchen. She wore a simple one-piece maillot cut high on the thighs, and she had tamed her waves of hair into a high ponytail. She was innocently playing with Stephanie in the shallow end, splashing, jumping, and trying to teach the little girl to flo
at. It was all perfectly natural, but he couldn’t believe just how amazing she looked in that suit. And how perfect those hips are for mating, his dragon added. Damien cleared his throat. “Um, that’s my au pair.”
“No wonder you don’t leave the house anymore. What kind of action are you getting off that?” Gordon continued to stare through the windows, even moving his head a little to get a better angle.
It angered Damien, but he tried his best to play it cool. “It’s not like that, Gordon. She works here, and that’s all.”
Gordon finally turned to look at his friend, his golden eyebrows raised. “Seriously? You’ve got a bodacious chick like that working for you, relying on you to be able to stay in this country, and you haven’t done anything but write her a paycheck?”
“It’s not like that, man—”
“But it should be! Come on, Damien. You’re a dragon; you can be a smooth operator when you want to be. I bet you could make her obey every whim you have, every beck and call, and she would do anything for you. I can tell. She’s got that look in her eyes, like she’s just dying to be your sex kitten.”
“You haven’t even seen her eyes,” Damien pointed out, irritated that it had come to this. He knew Gordon was a womanizer, just as most of the other men around him were, but he all of a sudden found it annoying. “And I’m not about to take advantage of her. She’s wonderful for Stephanie, and I can go to work without worrying whether or not Stephanie is taken care of. It’s a purely professional relationship, and nothing else would be appropriate.”
Gordon rolled his eyes, looking at Damien with disbelief. “Hey, we’re all adults. If the two of you decided you wanted to get together, then nobody would have anything to say. It’s the eighties, man.”
“Eighties or not, I’m not doing something like that. I couldn’t find a better caregiver for my child, and I’m not messing that up for anything. Besides, I’ve only been divorced for a couple of months.”
“Pfft.” Gordon waved his hand in the air as though none of that mattered. “So? You’re free, and it’s your right to get out there and explore, have a little fun. Look, why don’t you drop Stephanie off with a babysitter and take that girl out. You show her a good time, a little wining and dining, and she’ll be yours. Guaranteed.”
“Just stop.” Damien felt the flash in his eyes as he spoke the words, and a chill rippled down his back as his body threatened to shift. He could only be pushed so far. “She’s not like that, and I’m not like that.” Maybe he should have been. There were times, when he lay awake at night after the divorce, that he wondered if he could be as much of a cat-about-town as most of the other men he knew. There was a certain appeal to loving and leaving, but it just wasn’t in his blood.
“Okay, okay.” Gordon put his hands in the air and took a step backwards to show that he was done with his argument. “I’m just looking out for you. I know it must not have been easy to go through that divorce, and I don’t want to see you waste away.”
“Trust me, I won’t.” He had plenty to keep him busy, but it would be hard to get that image of Brianna in her swimsuit off his mind. Why did he have to find a woman who was so damn sexy, even when she wasn’t trying?
That glint was back in Gordon’s eye. He leaned forward on the breakfast bar. “All right. Well if you’re going to just let the opportunity go to waste, then mind if I go out there and introduce myself? I’d like to get to know her a little better, if you know what I mean?”
Damien stared down at the black liquid he had just poured into his mug, trying to control the urges that were surging up inside him. How had he ever become friends with this asshole? If Gordon was a symbol of what his life had been when he was still with Linda, then he was delighted to let him go.
“Get out.”
“Whoa, man. I wasn’t trying to piss you off. And hey, at least I asked. Plenty of guys would have just come back when you weren’t home.”
The fact that Gordon had even come up with the idea infuriated Damien. He came around the end of the breakfast bar until his face was only a few inches from Gordon’s. “I don’t want you talking to her or even looking at her,” he warned, his teeth thinning into ivory daggers. “If you so much as drive by my house, I’ll fucking end you.”
Gordon could feel the heat of Damien’s raging fire on his face as he spoke, and his head shrank down into his shoulders. “W—What’s your beef, man?”
“My beef is that there’s a complete douchebag in my house, and if he doesn’t leave in the next five seconds, he’s won’t have any arms or legs left to drive that Lambo.” His vision was turning red around the edges, and he felt a chill on the backs of his arms where his scales were beginning to show.
“I get the point, man! I’m out!” Gordon booked toward the front door.
Damien watched him go, trying to slow down his breath as he watched the sleek sports car screech away. He might have overreacted, but he didn’t care.
The sound of Stephanie’s giggles suddenly carried through the house, breaking the threat of shifting that still slithered just underneath Damien’s skin. He turned back into the kitchen to see that Brianna and his daughter were just coming in from the pool.
Brianna looked startled to see him, and she turned a frantic glance to the wall clock. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize you were home already. We were having so much fun, and I completely lost track of time.”
Stephanie ran to him, and he scooped her up, wet swimsuit and all. “Don’t worry about it. I’m home, but I still have some work to do. I’ll be in my office for a bit, if you don’t mind staying with her a little longer.”
“Not at all!” The way she beamed at Stephanie let him know that she truly meant it. “You want to go back in the pool for a bit?”
“Yeah!”
They went back through the sliding glass door, and Damien stomped off to his office, more frustrated than he’d been in some time.
* * *
There was plenty of work he could have done. It was both a blessing and curse that there was always more than could possibly be done in a forty-hour week. He had an entire folder of song lyrics to look over, and the good ones would need to be matched up with the right artists. The band he had brought in to do a trial recording was fantastic, but they still needed a singer. There were several acts that he really needed to go see in person. But when he returned to his office, his mind wouldn’t let him focus on any of that.
His lifestyle had completely changed now that he was single. He used to spend so many hours per week at work that he had stopped keeping track of them. He would stay up until all hours just to make sure the artists and the record label had everything they needed. He was constantly on call, no matter what. And it was all worth it, because Rising Star paid him well—and he enjoyed being away from Linda.
But now Stephanie was his priority. Even with Brianna there to take care of her, Damien discovered that he was spending less and less time at the office. Even when he promised himself that he would go to his home office after Stephanie went to bed to finish up a few things, it didn’t usually happen. There was always something else to keep him occupied, something else that seemed more important.
One night, he had found Brianna in the kitchen with a bowl of ice cream and a magazine. She was dressed simply in a t-shirt and jeans, with her hair braided over one shoulder, but she looked positively elegant as she lowered her spoon into the bowl and then lifted it to her lips. She’d looked up at him a moment later, that alarmed look in her eyes, and started to apologize.
“Stop. I told you to make yourself at home, and I’m glad you’re doing it. I don’t want you to feel like you can only be in your room if you’re not with Stephanie. In fact, I’ll join you.” He had dished out some strawberry Frusen Glädjé for himself, trying to remember that last time he had indulged like that.
He had expected Brianna to say a little bit about herself or to talk randomly about celebrities and television, but the only thing that was on her mind was Stepha
nie. She told him how bright his little girl was, how well she had played at the park with a boy about her age, and how she had stubbornly refused to wear a purple bow because it wasn’t quite the same shade as her dress.
Damien hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but as he tipped back in his desk chair and stared blankly at the screen of his computer monitor, he began to wonder a little about himself. What had made him join her in the kitchen that night? What had made him get so defensive when Gordon had suggested he was sleeping with Brianna? There were worse things he could have been accused of, but it had riled him to no end when Gordon had suggested taking Brianna to bed himself.
One point on which he couldn’t argue with Gordon was that Brianna had looked phenomenal in that bathing suit. His dragon wouldn’t let him forget that sight.
I’m being an idiot, he thought as he leaned forward and began aimlessly shuffling papers on his desk. I’m just lonely, and I’m looking to fix that in places where I shouldn’t. Maybe I need to start dating again just to keep myself in check—
The soft knock on the door was a welcome reprieve from his thoughts.
“Come in.”
Brianna looked apologetic as she poked her head around the doorframe. Her hair had dried into those soft waves that seemed to come naturally to her, still holding the volume that was so popular without looking fake or forced. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m about to put Stephanie to bed. I thought you might want to say goodnight.”
Damien slowly set his papers down. “Have I been in here that long?”
“I’m afraid so. But don’t worry, Stephanie’s had dinner and her bath and everything.”
