by Fiona Brand
He noted the fact that Zara was hovering at the door. “She’s mine.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me, because...?”
Her gaze met his squarely before falling away. “It’s...complicated.” Her gaze homed in on his again, brows jerked together in a frown. “How did you find out? Let me guess... Emily?”
“Ben. When he phoned from the airport, he let it slip.” Damon’s jaw tightened. “He thought I already knew—”
“But if you’d known, we would have had this conversation a long time ago.”
Damon tensed against the waft of a familiar flowery perfume as Zara brushed by him and slung a piece of muslin over one shoulder, presumably in case of spills. Picking the baby up with unconsciously graceful movements, she cuddled the infant close, Zara’s expression softening in a way that briefly riveted him and, out of nowhere, desire kicked. Jaw tight, he registered the stubborn, visceral need to reclaim Zara, which should have evaporated in the instant he had uncovered the baby and her deception, and yet it hadn’t.
In a moment of self-knowledge, he noted that it was tied to the fact that Zara was now the mother of his child and therefore qualified for his protection and support. As strong and independent as Zara seemed, he could no more abandon her and the baby than he had been able to step away from his own mother when she had been the victim of his father’s abusive nature.
Added to that, as much as he had tried to intellectualize the process, the fact that Zara had given birth to his child had tipped some internal balance. He had felt the change in the instant that Ben had told him there was a baby. The primitive, testosterone-fueled desire that had gripped him to claim not just his child, but Zara too.
He watched as Zara rubbed the baby’s back and he waited for more unwelcome memories of his childhood to surface and douse a need he didn’t want. The memories didn’t come. Probably, he thought bleakly, because his only memories of a baby in the family were of Ben. And by the time Ben was born their father had been dead and buried.
Damon began noticing other things in the room. A desk, which held what looked like Zara’s handbag and, beside it, a newspaper and a small pile of mail. There were also a couple of chairs, and a large bag in one corner that seemed jam-packed full of baby things. Feeling suddenly overwarm, he shrugged out of his coat and dropped it over the back of a chair.
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
Her gaze flashed to his as, one-handed, she rummaged through the baby bag and extracted an insulated container holding a bottle of what he guessed was baby formula. “I didn’t think, given that I was just an employee and that we’d had an office affair, that you would want to be tied to me by a chil—”
“It wasn’t an affair.”
“It was temporary.”
Damon frowned at her clipped reply. He was still processing the fact that there really was a baby, but he was clear on one point. “Temporary or not doesn’t change a thing. She’s my child. I had a right to know.”
And in the saying of it, he felt a further internal shift, the forging of a link that was irrevocable. It quietly but absolutely changed everything.
Zara’s expression was taut as she settled the baby in her lap and coaxed her to accept the bottle. “You don’t want children—you made no secret about that. I came across a magazine article where your wife claimed the reason your marriage broke up was that you didn’t want children. She wasn’t exactly reticent about the subject.”
Damon frowned, irritated, despite the fact that for once the media was accurate. “That was true enough. Lily and I had an...arrangement—”
“As I remember it, so did we. A short-term liaison, no strings.” She sent him the kind of crisp, businesslike glance that assured him everything was settled.
Unfortunately, the slick managerial technique—straight out of Business Troubleshooting 101—only increased the fascination that had gripped Damon from the very first time he had met Zara. Over the years he had become used to being pursued by beautiful, successful women. With Zara, the opposite had proven to be true. And despite the clear evidence that she wanted him, she still seemed intent on avoiding him.
He should have been pleased. It was permission to step back, to keep his emotional involvement to a minimum, to simply be a biological father with legal access. No messy emotion or fallout when it all came apart.
The problem was, he thought grimly, that just minutes ago, Zara hadn’t just let him kiss her, she had kissed him back. Despite walking out on him a year ago, she still wanted him. The mix of attraction and avoidance had an interesting but frustrating effect, fueling his need to have her back.
With every minute that passed, the desire to understand why Zara had run when she still clearly wanted him intensified. She had said she didn’t want him to think she was after his money, and that she knew he didn’t want children. Both were valid reasons, if their physical attraction had cooled off. But clearly it hadn’t, which left him with a question mark.
“What’s her name?”
The front door chime sounded.
Distracted, Zara peered past him into the office. “Rosamund, Rosie for short.” She looked briefly torn. “Will you hold her while she finishes her bottle?”
A split second later, Zara was close enough that he could smell the flowery scent of her hair and other scents: the sourness of the milk spill on the muslin over her shoulder, the soft sweetness of baby powder.
“Hold her so her head is supported on your arm.”
Damon froze as he found himself awkwardly cradling his daughter.
Zara handed him the bottle of formula, her expression both anxious and imperious. “Don’t hold her so loosely. Closer, like this...”
She readjusted his hold so Rosie was cradled closer against his chest, her head resting comfortably in the crook of his arm. “And tilt the bottle—like this—so she doesn’t gulp air.”
Seconds later, Zara stepped out into the main office, closing the door firmly behind her.
Fumbling with the soft, warm bundle that wriggled and moved, Damon took the chair Zara had vacated and touched the nipple of the bottle to Rosie’s lips. His anxiety that he was doing it all wrong evaporated almost instantly as Rosie’s small hands clamped either side of the bottle and she began to drain what was left of the milk. After a minute or so the nipple popped out of her mouth, signaling that she was done. She stared at him unblinkingly, then put her fist into her mouth.
Gently, he attempted to lift her fist away and succeeded long enough that he caught a pearly flash against the redness of her gum before she was once again sucking on her fist. Feeling out of his depth, Damon let her have her way. If it was her fist that made her happy, who was he to argue?
Setting the bottle down on the desk, he eased himself into a more comfortable position and simply looked at the tiny warm creature in his arms. Something about Rosie informed him that even if she hadn’t been wearing pink, he would have known she was a girl. It wasn’t just that her skin was like porcelain and her features delicate—he guessed all babies shared those in common. And it wasn’t the shock of silky dark hair that already showed a trace of curl, just like her mother’s. Rather it was an indefinable, faintly imperious quality that announced her femininity, a quality her mother had in spades.
He dragged at his tie, loosening it. Rosie’s gaze followed his action before she once more returned to a study of his face as if she was intent on imprinting his features. Caught in the net of his daughter’s gaze, a profound sense of recognition riveted Damon. If there had been any doubt that he was Rosie’s father, those doubts would have been nixed in that moment. Zara’s eyes were a deep sapphire blue; Rosie’s were already lightening to the unusual silvery gray that had run in his family for generations.
She had his eyes.
Something weird happened in the region of Damon’s chest. He reached out a l
ean finger to touch a silky wisp of hair. Petal-soft fingers closed around his finger with surprising strength.
Rosie stared into his eyes, her gaze direct and fearless and, suddenly, she was her mother’s daughter. Pale, delicate skin flushed and for a moment he thought she would cry. Instead her mouth curved in a gummy smile and he logged the moment that he fell utterly and completely under his daughter’s spell.
“This complicates things,” he muttered. “I’m not fit to be anyone’s dad.”
Rosie made a cute cooing sound. He tried to free his finger from her fierce grip, then was completely fascinated when she refused to let go.
“Babies have surprising strength.” Zara’s quiet voice broke his intense focus on his daughter.
He watched as she picked up the length of muslin, which had fallen to the floor, and briskly tucked it away in the baby bag, the movement jerky. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing! At least I hope it’s nothing. But that was not the normal type of client that strolls in off the street. She was too well dressed, too pushy and she seemed more interested in the fact that you were seen walking in here than in applying for a job. I’m pretty sure she was a reporter of some kind.”
Damon frowned. Normally the press didn’t bother him too much. But that was because he usually made damn sure he wasn’t in the public eye. For the past few months, however, he’d had an uncomfortable amount of exposure, because his current date, Caroline, championed a number of charities and had insisted on dragging him along to some high-profile events. As a result, he’d had one reporter in particular dogging his footsteps, trying to snag some kind of exclusive on his personal life.
“Was she blonde, thin, with red-rimmed glasses?”
Zara looked up from jamming the empty bottle into the baby bag, her expression arrested. “You know her?”
“Not exactly. She’s a friend of Caroline’s. She usually covers charity events.”
“Caroline?” Zara zipped the bag closed with unnecessary force. “That would be your current girlfriend, which would make Red Glasses what? A gossip columnist?”
Now distinctly irritated, Damon rose to his feet. The motion seemed to distract Rosie, because she finally let go of his finger. “If we’re talking about the same person, then her name’s Vanessa Gardiner. She freelances for the tabloids and a couple of women’s magazines.”
He knew that because he had seen her parked outside his apartment a couple of times and just last week she had followed him to an exclusive restaurant where he’d had a client lunch. The intrusion had ticked him off to the point that he had tasked Walter, his head of security, with calling her off. Apparently, the tactic hadn’t worked.
“So, she followed you here, to my employment agency? Why on earth would she want to do that?”
Damon worked to release the sudden tension in his jaw. Lately, it felt like he’d landed in the middle of a soap opera. At times like this, he missed the simplicity of the life in the military he had been forced to relinquish when he took over the family business. Chain of command was clear-cut and logical, unlike personal relationships.
“A few days ago, at an awards dinner, Caroline accused me of seeing someone else. Unfortunately, Gardiner must have been close enough to pick up on the conversation.”
Zara straightened, her eyes shooting blue fire. “And are you seeing someone else?”
Damon got the sudden, arresting notion that if he’d said yes to Zara’s snapped-out question she would have done something interestingly violent, like throw something at him. An odd, warm glow spread through him. “I’m not exactly in the habit of dating two women at the same time. Besides, you know my work schedule.”
She blinked as if she was still having trouble controlling her emotions. “So this reporter is stalking you, trying to find evidence that there’s another woman and she ends up in my office, where there’s not only another woman, but a baby, as well!” Zara drew a deep breath. “Just what I need in my life right now.”
Dragging a trailing tendril of hair behind one ear, she began to pace, even though there was very little room for pacing. “You should have called me before showing up—”
“I did. You didn’t return my call.”
Zara stared at him, frustrated. “What I don’t get is why you want to be involved with Rosie or with me! From all accounts, it didn’t take you long to get over me. Within a month you were dating that redhead. What was her name? Janet, Jessica—”
“Jemima.”
She glared at him. “Whatever. Now you’re dating Caroline and her little reporter friend is following you.”
The silence in the small room stretched out, fraught and intense. Somewhere in the distance a car horn honked. The gusting wind was now laced by rain, which pattered on a barred window. It was an odd moment to discover one salient fact that somehow changed everything: Zara had been jealous of Jemima. And if Damon didn’t miss his guess, she was jealous of Caroline.
Out of nowhere, his pulse rate lifted. Dealing with Zara was like trying to get information from a sphinx on lockdown. In normal conversation she was guarded and controlled. The only chink in her armor was that she hadn’t yet learned to control her emotions or her body language.
Just minutes ago, she had kissed him. The memory of it still made every muscle in his body tighten. Now her eyes were shooting fire and she was making no bones about the fact that she didn’t like it that he dated other women. Against all the odds, Zara’s unguarded response settled something in him, a question that had remained unanswered for the past year. He didn’t know why she had left him, but he was now certain it had not been because she didn’t want him.
Feeling oddly buoyed, he cradled a now-sleepy Rosie a little closer and walked the few paces to the window, which looked out over a service lane. The rain had gotten heavier and the temperature in the room had dropped a couple of degrees. He made a mental note to ensure Zara and Rosie had adequate heating. “So, when did you discover you were pregnant?”
“A few days before I left.”
That explained a few things: Zara had had a sick day when she had not seemed to be ill; her suddenly crammed schedule when, from the time they had started sleeping together, they had seldom spent a night apart.
His jaw tightened as memories he thought he had jettisoned came crowding back. He had to keep reminding himself that their relationship, such as it was, had lasted barely four weeks.
“I thought something had happened to you.”
Until he had gone to her apartment and discovered that Zara had systematically packed up and left town. A quick word with the manager of the building had supplied the information that Zara had given notice some days before, which indicated the move had been carefully planned. “You could have talked to me. We could have worked something out.”
Zara sent him a cool glance, left the room and returned almost immediately with the newspaper he had brought. She held it so that Ben and Emily’s picture and the insulting headline were clearly visible. “Like this?”
“I’m not Ben.”
“No, you’re way more newsworthy. The media would have cut me to shreds. They would have made my life a misery.” She tossed the newspaper into the trash can to one side of the desk.
Damon’s gaze narrowed at the extremity of her reaction to the kind of publicity that was literally a five-minute wonder. He adjusted his hold on Rosie. “I could have arranged financial support.”
Zara’s head came up. “Money. Why did I know that it would come back to that? Do you always use money to solve your ‘problems’?” She sketched quotation marks in the air.
He frowned at her reaction. “Not always. Sometimes a conversation works.”
The phone ringing out in the office broke a tension that was suddenly thick enough to cut. There was an audible click as the call went through to the answering service.
“News flash,” she s
aid curtly. “With regard to your money, I don’t want it. That’s why I’m in business—I like to earn my own way.”
Her glance was laced with defiance. With the flush on her cheeks and glossy tendrils of hair curling around her cheekbones, he couldn’t help thinking that despite the buttoned-down suit and the attempt to tame her hair, Zara looked exotic and tempestuous.
Her flat statement underlined the certainty that had grown in him as he had cradled Rosie. He had thought that if there really was a child he would be able to control what he felt, that he could preserve his distance, but that idea had crashed and burned the second Rosie smiled at him.
One gummy smile and suddenly he had a whole new priority list.
He still intended to retrieve Ben ASAP, but, for the moment, Rosie and the attraction that was still very much alive between him and Zara had taken precedence over Ben and Emily’s departure.
The implications were dizzying. After years of managing all his relationships, he was faced with two relationships that were distinctly out of his control. He should be drawing back, looking for ways to lessen his involvement and neutralize his dangerous emotions. The only trouble was, this time he didn’t want to pull back. After years of being out in the cold, he couldn’t seem to resist the warmth.
Damon glanced down at Rosie, who had dropped off to sleep in his arms with a relaxed abandon that was mesmerizing. Her cheeks were delicately flushed, her lashes dark, silky crescents against her skin. For a moment, he was transfixed by the phenomenon, which had at its heart the absolute trust a child gave to a parent. The kind of trust he had never thought would be given to him, but which now seemed vital.
He felt the moment of decision, a quiet settling into place of a plan that, less than an hour ago, would have been out of the question. A plan that would include both Rosie and Zara in his life.
The risk of attempting such a thing registered, but the concept of that risk was almost instantly swamped by a surge of possessiveness.
