by Fiona Brand
There was no reason he couldn’t successfully incorporate Zara and Rosie into his life. But he had to be careful. Zara had walked away from him once before, disappearing almost without trace; he could not afford for that to happen again. This time he would move more slowly and the way forward seemed clear.
“Okay, let’s talk business. Now that Emily’s gone, I need a PA.”
The wariness disappeared from Zara’s expression with fascinating speed as she shifted into business mode. “I have a couple more possibilities on the books,” she said smoothly. “A retired accountant who is looking for part-time work—although I’m sure he’d be happy to fill in for Emily for a couple of weeks. And a researcher who will probably be perfect—”
“Like I said before,” Damon said flatly. “I don’t want the temps on your books. We’re out of time and you’ve worked on the takeover. I want you.”
* * *
Shock reverberated through Zara at the flat demand of the last three words.
Even though Damon had couched the barely concealed demand in business terms, for a sharp, visceral moment Zara still registered that he wanted her. Not good.
She took a deep breath, which she suddenly desperately needed. The chemistry thing was happening again. Her heart was beating too fast and her skin felt oddly sensitive, her breasts taut. In certain places there was a distressing, tingling heat that was all too familiar...
She crossed her arms over her chest and tried to get a grip on herself. Because this was the same craziness that had gotten her into trouble in the first place. “I’m not available.”
“If you’re worried about this office, I’ll compensate you for the cost of increasing Molly’s hours, or even employing someone to replace you while you work for me. I’m also happy to pay for childcare. In fact, all of Rosie’s childcare.”
He glanced around the small room, which normally Zara barely registered, but she was noticing it now. Aside from Rosie’s clutter, there was just the cheap desk and two chairs. Even the carpet, which was gray and threadbare in places, highlighted the fact that she had run out of money when it came to this room. The small decor budget she’d allowed herself had all been expended on the front office, because first impressions counted.
Damon’s gaze pinned her. “This isn’t charity—it’s a business proposition.”
Zara drew a swift breath. Damon’s offer shouldn’t have flicked her on the raw, but it did, since the last time Damon had offered her money it had been so she would go away for good. Not that he knew that!
“Like I said before, I really don’t want your money.”
“But you need it.”
Shock jerked through her at the flat certainty in his voice, as if he knew just how financially stretched she was. Panic gripped her, making it hard to breathe. “You’ve been investigating me.”
She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of that before. Damon was in the surveillance business after all and she had read enough about Magnum to know that the company included a range of complementary businesses, one of them an actual detective agency.
Damon’s gaze narrowed. “Believe it or not, I don’t make a practice of investigating the women I sleep with. I like to think I can step away from the paranoia of the security business and have something approaching a normal life outside work hours. The reason I know you need the money is that you agreed to take Magnum Security on as a client. Given your reluctance to even take a phone call from me, it was fairly easy to conclude that you needed the money.”
Zara drew a deep breath and tried to calm down. She had always known that if Damon decided to put her life under a microscope, he would unravel her secrets fairly quickly. Logically, the fact that he hadn’t turned up at her door until now meant that he hadn’t. Even so...
“It’s still got to be no when it comes to money,” she said stiffly. “I can manage.”
Damon frowned. “Whether you want my money or not, the second I declare my paternity and apply to pay child support, you’ll receive it, anyway.”
The words declare paternity and child support stopped Zara in her tracks. Damon declaring his paternity was a legal process, which would inevitably result in Rosie’s birth certificate being updated to include his name. Then that document would be supplied to Damon. When Damon looked at the birth certificate he would see Zara’s name change and that her mother had been Petra Atrides, aka Petra Hunt.
If that wasn’t bad enough, when the tax agency assessed his income and began making her mandatory child support payments from his bank account, he would hate her even more. Originally, he had tried to get rid of Zara, aka Angel, with one cash payment; now he would be stuck with years of payments. And because Damon earned a great deal, those payments would be substantial.
Zara tried to think, but she felt like she was caught in a whirlwind. Now that he had discovered Rosie, those legal processes would happen. There was nothing she could do to stop them. The only thing she could do was angle for time while she tried to figure out how to tell Damon the truth about herself without forever damaging his relationship with Rosie. And how to make the money problem go away.
Suddenly the interview room seemed claustrophobically small. In need of air and a few seconds’ respite so she could think, Zara opened the door and peered out into her office. It was empty, and thanks to the rain, the street outside was fairly deserted.
The reporter seemed to have disappeared. Although, Zara didn’t think she had seen the last of Vanessa Gardiner. She had stared at Zara as if she was a hound dog on the scent. Zara had gotten the distinct impression that Vanessa knew Zara used to work for Damon and now she was busily putting two and two together. That meant Vanessa would be back, and if she saw Zara with Rosie, the game would be up.
Zara tried to shake the horribly familiar hunted feeling—the same feeling she’d experienced when the press had tracked her after Petra’s death—but it wouldn’t go away. Whether she was right or wrong, her instincts told her she needed to be absent from Westlake Employment for a while.
Right now, her only option seemed to be to work for Damon. It felt a little like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, but it was a fact that Damon worked in a hermetically sealed, high-security environment, fourteen stories up. Even the underground parking area was private and secure. To all intents and purposes, unless Gardiner found out where Zara lived, she would have seemed to have disappeared off the face of the planet.
Turning back, she met Damon’s gaze squarely. “I could work for you, but on the condition that I’ll need to bring Rosie with me. If that reporter tracked you here and thinks we might be involved, then there’s no way I’m risking having her find out about Rosie or tracking her to her day care center.”
“Not a problem. If you want an alternative center, I have a friend who owns a childcare franchise.”
He mentioned the name of an exclusive franchise that was way out of her price range. The only problem was, she didn’t think any center was safe, at least for the moment. And the way the tabloids had jumped on the story about Ben and Emily was just a dress rehearsal for the way they would behave when they discovered Zara had given birth to Damon’s child.
“I just don’t want to risk the press finding out Rosie is yours until we’ve had time to...settle things.”
Suddenly, needing to have her daughter close, Zara held out her arms and was inordinately relieved when Damon instantly handed Rosie over. Unfortunately, in the process, Zara had to get closer to Damon than she liked. His arms brushed hers and his breath washed over one cheek. The intimacy of the contact sent another one of those sharp little pangs through her.
Damon shrugged out of his jacket, which had a small milky spill on it and picked up a container of baby wipes that resided on the desk. “Can I use one of these?”
She nodded and tried not to watch as Damon perched on the edge of the desk and dabbed at the stain. Sudde
nly, he seemed too large and too male for the tiny office, with the breadth of his shoulders stretching the cut of his jacket and the bronze color of his skin glowing through the white cotton of his shirt.
Feeling edgy and unsettled and still whirling from the decisions she’d had to make, Zara placed Rosie on one shoulder and gently rubbed her back, encouraging her daughter to stay asleep. Anything but dwell on the relaxed intimacy of Damon cleaning the stain from his jacket with Rosie’s wipes—the kind of small, fascinating action that went with couplehood, or families.
He looked up, catching her off guard. “Rosie’s teething, by the way. When she put her fist in her mouth her gums were red and I saw a glimpse of white.”
Instantly distracted, Zara lowered Rosie into the bassinet. Gently, she examined her mouth and was stunned to see a tiny glimmer of white edging through Rosie’s gum.
Three months was very early for teething, although Zara had learned from another young mother whose baby had been born with tiny “milk teeth” that anything could happen. “You’re right, it must have just come through. No wonder she’s had trouble sleeping.” She shot Damon a faintly chagrined look. “How did you know?”
“My ex-wife’s sister had twins. They both teethed early.”
Zara could feel herself stiffening at his easy mention of his ex-wife, Lily. Shortly after Zara had discovered who Damon really was, two weeks into her tempestuous six weeks with him, she had searched online for snippets about his gorgeous, blonde and seemingly perfect ex-wife. Lily had since married again to an extremely wealthy banker.
Lily and Damon had seemed to have a poster-perfect marriage, which had ended in a quick and quiet divorce a few years ago. Logically, Zara knew that all the talk about perfection had to be untrue, since Lily and Damon had divorced, but Zara’s mood had plummeted, anyway. It had underlined her decision to leave without telling Damon she was pregnant. If Damon had not been satisfied with Lily, how on earth could he ever contemplate a real relationship with Zara?
Damon shrugged back into his jacket. Zara was caught and held by the way his shirt briefly stretched across his muscled chest, and the flood of intimate memories that sight evoked, most of which had to do with breathless heat and naked skin. Predictably, his gaze caught hers in that moment, but this time she managed to quickly look away, although she couldn’t do a thing about the warmth that seared her cheeks.
A split second later, he closed the distance between them as he came to look down at Rosie. Zara was caught and held by the softness of his expression. It was a softness she had only ever seen in flashes, usually for the elderly or the very young.
“I’ll let Howard know you’re taking the job.”
Her heart jolted at the singular clarity of Damon’s gaze, the silvery irises with their dark striations, the thick, silky fringe of lashes. For a long, breathless moment her mind went completely blank. “Just so we’re clear, I’ll work for you for the time it takes to complete the McCall takeover, on the condition that your relationship to Rosie is kept secret until after the deal is completed.”
Damon’s incisive, wintry gaze settled on hers for an uncomfortable period of time, reminding her that when it came to deception she was a desperate amateur, while he had a formidable skill set. In terms of her deception she was suddenly profoundly aware that the clock was ticking.
He shot the cuff of his jacket and checked his watch, as if he needed to be somewhere. “Agreed. I’ve no more wish that the press get wind of this than you. I won’t let on that Rosie is mine until the takeover is completed, and until after we’ve settled the custody arrangements.”
Custody. Another crazy jolt to her heart. Implications she hadn’t thought of flooded her, such as the fact that Rosie now had two parents instead of one. Rosie was no longer solely Zara’s. She was so used to having her soft, sweet daughter all to herself, of being a cozy, self-sufficient family of two, that it was hard to consider the changes that were coming.
She was quite sure Damon would never try to take Rosie from her. She was equally certain that he would be entirely reasonable in terms of custody. Even so, the notion of sharing Rosie shook Zara, underlining that her cut-and-dried, controllable life had just swung wildly off course.
Added to that, with the inescapable link of Rosie binding Zara to Damon, she no longer had the option of running and hiding. She would once more have to face the world as Petra Hunt’s daughter.
The last woman in the world Damon would wish to be the mother of his child.
Five
Damon strolled down the windswept road in the direction of his Jeep Cherokee. His phone vibrated again. He ignored it, just like he’d ignored the last call, then grimaced as he saw his security chief camped out by Damon’s Jeep, phone to his ear.
Walter, a retired assault specialist in the Special Forces, terminated his call. “You could have answered. I was worried. The whole office is in an uproar—”
“Can’t see why.” Damon found his car keys and unlocked the Jeep. “I was only gone for a couple of hours.”
Walter tapped his watch. “Four hours. You missed two appointments, but don’t worry, Howard rescheduled. He’s more of a blunt instrument than a personal assistant, but he managed to quiet old man Sanderson down. Didn’t have much success with Caroline though. Think you’ve got a bit of work to do there.”
Damon went still. “You let Howard talk to Caroline?” Howard Prosser was another ex-army employee—an accountant and steely-eyed auditor who had routinely struck fear into entire military bases. Conversation was an art form that Howard had never mastered. Normally, he happily remained locked in his office and preferred communicating via email.
“It was more a succession of grunts than actual speech.” Walter looked reflective. “I think he likes her.”
Damon could feel a familiar frustration kicking in. Caroline Grant, the daughter of a real estate magnate, was elegant, beautiful and intelligent. She epitomized the qualities of the kind of woman he wanted to be attracted to, but unfortunately, that was where it ended. There was a vital component missing. Ever since his marriage to Lily had quietly imploded, Damon had become acutely aware of what that component was. As perfect as she was, he did not truly want Caroline.
The situation reminded him of his marriage. On the surface everything looked perfect, but there was a lack of spontaneity, of warmth that ruled out real intimacy. The problem was that Caroline, and almost every other woman he had dated aside from Zara, was just a little too much like him, more interested in a cool, carefully negotiated partnership than in flinging caution to the wind and plunging into a fiery, risky liaison.
He tensed as a vivid image of Zara, wrapping her arms around his neck and lifting up on her toes to kiss him, momentarily blanked his mind and made every cell in his body tighten. The honking of a car as it braked behind a delivery truck dragged him back to the chilly gray present and the conversation with Walter.
“Uh, what did Caroline say?”
Walter reached into his pocket. “She left you a note.”
Damon took and opened the note. A ticket fluttered to the pavement. He skimmed the neat, slanted writing, which was heavily indented into the page, as if Caroline had pressed quite hard with the pen as she wrote. The message was succinct. Since he had missed their discussion about his promise of support for her latest charity over lunch last week and canceled their lunch date today, she had taken the liberty of signing him up for the gala evening she had arranged that evening. He could pick her up at six, sharp.
Walter scooped up the ticket and handed it to him. “A ticket to a gala ball. You hate gala balls.”
With passion. Damon slipped the ticket into his wallet.
Walter’s brows jerked together. “I hope you’re not getting maneuvered into anything serious here.”
A grim smile quirked one corner of Damon’s mouth. Walter had been around for his marriage breakup and
was somewhat protective. “Don’t worry. I’ve got a feeling Caroline and I are strictly short-term.”
Caroline needed an escort for tonight, but from the brevity of the note and the depth of the indentations, even piercing the page on the final period, whatever it was they had shared was over.
“All I can say,” Walter muttered, “is that this city lifestyle is a far cry from Afghanistan.”
“You hated Afghanistan.”
“Margot hated Afghanistan,” Walter corrected. “If I wanted to save my marriage, something had to go. Turns out it was the job. By the way, pretty sure I saw Vanessa Gardiner driving away just as I got here.”
Damon’s gaze narrowed as he automatically skimmed the flow of traffic. “She tried to fool Zara into thinking she needed a job.”
Walter’s eyebrows shot up. “I’ll bet that went well.”
Damon climbed behind the wheel and nosed into traffic. He hadn’t told Zara, but he was pretty sure it was Caroline who had manipulated the reporter into doing a little digging. She had become increasingly suspicious that there was another woman. For him, the suspicion spelled the end to a relationship that had grown increasingly irritating.
He was aware of Walter following close behind. Walter and Margot were longtime friends. There was nothing flashy or luxe about them. They had three kids, all grown now, and they lived a comfortable but low-key life. However, ordinary or not, they possessed something that had eluded Damon—a relationship that had lasted through thick and thin, characterized by warmth, loyalty and family values.
The fact that he was a father hit him anew.
He braked as traffic ahead slowed. He was still struggling to come to grips with the surge of possessiveness that had hit him out of left field for Rosie and Zara, and which was now driving a whole bunch of decisions that, twenty-four hours ago, would not have been viable.
Zara was making no bones about wanting to preserve her distance, which should have pleased him. After all, her reaction dovetailed with his own preference for avoiding emotional entanglements. Instead, contrarily, Zara’s determination to remain independent had only served to aggravate and annoy him even more for one salient reason: he still wanted her.
