by Fiona Brand
Damon took the seat next to her and dragged at his tie. “Is there something wrong?”
Zara found herself snared in the net of his gaze. Adrenaline zinged through her and her heart sped up. She took a deep breath and attempted a smile. “Rosie’s just a little unsettled, that’s all.”
At that moment Buffy strolled by on her way back to the flight deck. She paused by Damon’s seat and beamed at Rosie. “Cute baby. If you need help settling her, Mark can give you a hand. In fact, you could think about moving her into the bedroom at the rear—it’s quieter there and she might sleep better.”
And no doubt with Rosie tidily out of sight and out of Damon’s sleek, high-powered executive space, the flight would go more smoothly for the boss.
Zara fought another unreasoning spurt of annoyance. Buffy couldn’t know that Rosie was Damon’s daughter because they’d agreed to keep that a secret for now. “Thanks, that’s a good idea, but I think Rosie will be happier here in the cabin with me.”
When Buffy strode through the door of the flight deck Zara glimpsed the copilot, who was an older military type, just before the door closed.
Damon, his gaze tinged with amusement, offered to take Rosie. Feeling embattled, Zara handed over the baby and Rosie settled like a lamb on his shoulder.
Mark, who was busy stowing bags, looked bemused. “Hidden talents, Damon?”
“Looks like.” Damon patted Rosie on the back, but he scarcely needed to because she had already fallen asleep.
Minutes later, Damon lowered Rosie into the crib and tucked a cotton blanket around her. Zara busied herself zipping the baby bag closed before stowing it beneath the seat closest to the crib. She searched through her handbag and found her phone so she could check and see if Molly, who had agreed to work full-time in the agency until Zara got back, had sent her any last-minute texts. There were none, which was a relief—
“You should come and sit down.”
The low timbre of Damon’s voice made her tense. She took a deep breath and tried to calm down, but despite the good talking-to she had given herself, she was still terminally annoyed at the way he had flirted with Buffy. The kind of conversation that underlined the fact that despite Rosie, despite them sleeping together again, she had absolutely no claim on Damon at all.
Slipping her phone back into her handbag, she took her seat and snapped open the magazine she had bought for the flight and found herself staring at a page filled with photographs of women dressed for glamorous occasions. Caroline Grant was center stage, wearing the exact same dress she had worn to the charity gala she had attended with Damon.
Zara stuffed the magazine into her bag.
* * *
“You don’t have to be jealous of Mac,” Damon said quietly.
Zara fastened her seat belt with a crisp click. “I’m not jealous,” she muttered, keeping her voice equally low, so that Mark, who was seated at the rear of the cabin, couldn’t hear. “Although I guess Buffy is blonde, and you do seem to have this thing for blondes.”
“You’re not blonde.”
The jet picked up speed before leaving the ground. Zara’s stomach tightened automatically as they gained height.
“And neither am I your date.” She made the mistake of turning her head and was instantly ensnared by the molten silver of Damon’s gaze.
“You were last night.”
Heat flooded her along with a raft of memories she had been working hard to suppress and which now, literally, welded her to the seat.
“Mac is the wife of a friend. She was in the air force, part of the crew attached to our Special Forces group. She married one of the team, Brendan McNamara, which is why she goes by the nickname Mac.”
Relief surged through Zara, making her feel a little shaky and ridiculously happy. Happy that Buffy/Mac was just a friend, but even happier that Damon had been considerate enough to reassure Zara. It seemed to signal another positive turn in their relationship.
“I wasn’t going to do this right now,” Damon murmured with an odd flatness to his voice, “but now that we’re in the air and you can’t walk out on me, I have a proposition for you.”
Zara tensed. “A proposition?”
“As in marriage. We have a daughter. We’re good together. It won’t be a marriage in the usual sense, but I think what we have is workable.”
Not a marriage in the usual sense... Workable.
Zara wondered if she’d just time warped back to the nineteenth century. “Let me get this right. You’re proposing a marriage—with sex—on the basis that we have a child?”
She drew a deep breath. The conditions he was offering were businesslike but more than a little hurtful. In a blinding moment of clarity she understood why. It was because a ‘workable’ marriage of convenience was the absolute opposite of what she wanted.
Because somehow, despite everything, she had fallen in love with Damon.
For a split second her heart seemed to stop in her chest. When it started up again, it pounded so hard she could barely breathe.
“I think you know by now that I’d like to, but I...need some time.”
Because there was no way she could agree to an engagement, no matter how much she longed to. Not until he knew who she really was.
And once he knew that, he probably wouldn’t want to marry her.
Ten
When Zara exited Damon’s private jet, it was night. She didn’t think she would be recognizable as Petra Hunt’s daughter on Medinos, since it had been years since she was last here, but even so, she took precautions.
As she stepped onto the tarmac outside the terminal, she fished in her handbag and pulled out the white ball cap she had bought before boarding the flight. She had bought it expressly because it matched her white linen shirt and she could pull the bill of the cap down low over her forehead so the upper half of her face was shaded.
They stepped into the terminal and waited to clear customs. Zara relaxed a little when she noticed groups of tired tourists, a couple of people with high-visibility vests and uniformed officials, but no one resembling either a journalist or photographer.
She sent Damon a brilliant smile and tried not to notice how gorgeous and natural he looked with Rosie over his shoulder. She glanced anxiously around for their luggage. “Mark’s taking a long time with the suitcases.”
Damon gave her an odd look. “It’s only been fifteen minutes.”
Just then Mark appeared, trundling some kind of prehistoric cart with all the luggage from the flight, including that of the flight crew, who would be staying on the island until Damon and Zara were ready to fly back.
Despite the fact that it was night, it seemed to have gotten even steamier. She wiggled her toes in her white sneakers, which had been perfectly comfortable on the flight, but which were now hot and sticky.
Damon glanced at her hat as they collected their luggage. “Aren’t you hot in that cap?”
Beneath the cap she was pretty sure her hair was already wet and plastered to her scalp. That was the second reason she wasn’t taking it off. “It’s not that hot.”
“It’s got to be over ninety degrees.”
“I like the cap.”
Damon lifted a hand to his mouth. It could have been an innocent gesture, but as Zara wheeled her case to the customs line she was pretty sure Damon had the nerve to think something about her cap was amusing. She sucked in a lungful of damp, warm air, feeling irritated because she longed to fling the blasted thing off. Her hair was already thick; the cap just added an extra sweltering layer. She caught Damon’s gaze on her again as he joined her and this time she was sure he was laughing.
“I guess Rosie’s going to be just like this.”
“Just like what?”
“Frustrating. Cute.”
There was a moment of vibrating silence during which Zara found it i
ncreasingly difficult to breathe. The moment was broken as the line moved forward to the customs desk. Zara dragged the hat off and quickly tried to finger comb her hair, which did feel horribly flattened and damp. The cooling relief was only momentary because a pair of dark, vaguely familiar eyes met hers. She froze like a deer caught in the headlights. Jorge—the son of her mother’s gardener, Aldo—who now clearly worked for airport customs, was looking at her as if he had seen a ghost.
Before he could open his mouth and say the only name he had ever known her by—Angel—she shook her head. His eyes widened perceptibly, but he seemed to get the message, because his gaze swiveled to Damon.
Groaning, she kept her head down, and Jorge whisked her through customs so quickly she barely had time to look around and log the changes. The last time she had been on Medinos, the airport had been on the small side and lacking in amenities. Now it was considerably larger and more complicated, with a sophisticated set of duty-free shops attached.
Half an hour later, they arrived at the hotel, an old but sumptuous building that looked like it had once been a palace of some sort, with gorgeous tiled floors, jewellike water features and lavish displays of white roses and trailing star jasmine.
The suite Damon had booked was on the sixth floor. It was was breathtakingly luxurious, with three bedrooms, two reception rooms, a study and a fully equipped kitchen.
Feeling a little off balance that Damon had booked a multiroomed suite rather than two separate suites, as if they were already a family, Zara stowed Rosie’s things in one of the rooms. When the bellhop had gone, and Rosie was tucked into bed, Damon opened the French doors that led out onto a stone balcony. He threaded his fingers with hers, sending a sharp pulse of awareness through her as he pulled her outside.
As distracted as she was by Damon standing beside her, muscular and relaxed in a white T-shirt and jeans, as problematic as being on Medinos was, Zara couldn’t help but drink in the view.
The stars were out, along with a silver half-moon. Whitewashed buildings, bleached by moonlight, with their dark, terra-cotta tiled roofs, tumbled down to the bay below. In the distance, she could make out the promontory, with its cluster of villas that used to be home.
Out of nowhere, her throat closed up. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed Medinos, missed having a place to truly call home. Added to that, since her mother had died, she hadn’t been able to afford to come back. This would be her first opportunity to visit Petra’s grave.
“It’s...beautiful.”
Damon plucked the cap from her head and tossed it over the balcony.
Utterly surprised, Zara yelped. She had no time to grab for the cap; all she could do was watch as it sailed down to the gardens below.
Damon tugged at her fingers, coaxing her in close. “That’s better.” His fingers tangled in her hair. “Your hair is too gorgeous to hide. Never wear that cap again.”
Terminally annoyed, because she needed that cap, Zara’s palms landed on his chest. Although, as annoyed as she was, a renegade part of her loved that he had pulled her close and didn’t want to push him away. “That hat was mine.”
His expression turned rueful. “I suppose you’ll just go out and buy another one.”
“I don’t need to—I’ve got a spare in my suitcase.”
He shrugged and released her. “Okay, wear it if you want. Just not around me.”
In the instant he let her go, contrarily, she didn’t want to be free. Taking the half step needed to bring her close again, she wound her arms around his neck in a loose hold.
She was aware that she was playing with fire, but she couldn’t resist. Something had changed with Damon, and she couldn’t put her finger on quite what it was, except that he seemed suddenly extremely confident of her.
“I’m interested. What else am I not allowed to wear around you?”
“Clothing. Of any sort.”
With a grin, Damon swept her into his arms and carried her to a sumptuous master bedroom. He tumbled her onto the very large bed, which looked like it had been made for an entire family.
A little breathlessly, Zara watched as Damon peeled out of his shirt and pants. Lit by the golden glow of a single lamp, she decided that with his broad shoulders and olive-toned skin, the black hair and tough jaw, he looked remarkably like one of the Templar knights depicted in a Medinian oil painting she had once seen.
He came down on the bed beside her and propped himself on one elbow. He ran one finger down her throat to the first button of her shirt, popping it open. “Now you.”
Her breath dammed in her throat at his playful streak, which was new and unexpectedly precious because it seemed to signal the kind of intimacy she hadn’t dared hope for. She climbed from the bed and began to undress, but when she got down to her bra and panties her nerve gave out, and she clambered back onto the vast bed, making up for her sudden shyness by straddling him.
Damon pulled her so that she sprawled across his chest. “That’s it?”
She cupped his jaw, the clean scent of his skin making her clench her stomach. “Uh-huh. I’m not that experienced at this.”
Damon went oddly still. “What, exactly, are you saying?”
She frowned because when they had first made love she had expected him to know. When he hadn’t mentioned anything, she had kept the knowledge to herself because the relationship was so new and she hadn’t wanted him to think she was trying to tie him to her.
Before she could actually say it, he muttered something short and flat beneath his breath. “You were a virgin.”
She traced the line of his mouth with the pad of her thumb and tried to make light of it She hadn’t consciously set out to stay a virgin; she had just never met anyone she actually wanted to make love with until Damon. Petra’s death and the problems with the media hadn’t helped. Zara had basically retreated into her shell and stayed there.
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. But I’m glad that you know.” Then, even if the worst happened and he hated her for being Petra’s daughter, he would at least know that the tabloids had lied about her.
He caught her fingers in his and pulled them to his lips. “I’m sorry I missed that moment, babe. But I’m glad you’ve only ever been mine.”
Babe. Happiness seemed to expand inside her as he rolled so that she was beneath him. But despite the heat that shimmered through her, despite the coiling tension that was already making it hard to breathe, let alone think, a tiny thought niggled. “What about you?”
Damon had dispensed with her bra, now he cupped her breasts, his palms faintly abrasive against her tender skin. His thumbs swept across her nipples, making it difficult to concentrate on what was, suddenly, a very important question.
His gaze captured hers. “What do you mean, what about me?”
She drew in a sharp breath as he took the nipple of one breast into his mouth. “I mean, Caroline.”
Damon moved and she lifted her hips to assist him as he peeled down her panties. “Remember that reporter who came to your office?”
Zara drew in a sharp breath as Damon parted her legs with his thigh. She tried to think, but with his muscular weight now pressing her down into the mattress, her normally excellent memory had deserted her. “Um...Red Glasses.”
Damon grinned and rewarded her with a kiss, which sent a ridiculously happy glow through her.
“Vanessa Gardiner. She was a friend of Caroline’s. Why do you think Caroline put a reporter on my tail?”
Zara tried to gather her thoughts, but with the enticing pressure between her legs and the heated ache low in her belly, it was difficult to think of anything but how long it was going to take Damon to actually start making love to her. “I give up.”
Damon’s darkened gaze pinned her. “Caroline wanted to know who I was sleeping with.”
Understanding finally dawned. “Because
you weren’t sleeping with her.” She swallowed, feeling suddenly, unexpectedly teary. “That means—”
“I haven’t slept with anyone else.”
Feeling just the tiniest bit fierce and possessive, she coiled her arms around his neck and pulled him close, relieved when he finally began entering her. When he was fully sheathed, she wrapped her legs around his hips, trying to pull him closer still.
She thought she had already felt everything she was going to feel with Damon, that nothing could be more intense and more meaningful than the lovemaking they had already shared. But as they began making slow, exquisite love to each other she discovered she had been wrong.
The knowledge that he had been celibate for the last thirteen months changed things. It made the deep, lasting love she craved with Damon seem possible. As she kissed him back, touched him back, with every breath, suddenly the night was alive with emotions that shimmered and burned, melded and entwined...
* * *
Zara awoke to sun streaming through the French doors and Rosie patting her cheek. A little startled that she had slept so late and that Damon had taken charge of Rosie, Zara shifted up in the bed, pulling the linen sheets around her breasts as she cuddled her daughter.
Damon looked gorgeous in light jeans and a white T-shirt, his phone to one ear. He terminated the call, bent down and kissed her on the mouth.
“Stay in bed and rest. I’m driving out to the house to talk to Ben. Rosie’s had her breakfast, so if you like, I can take her with me. I’ll only be a couple of hours at most, and Mark ordered a car with tinted windows and a car seat, so she’ll be safe and incognito.”
Zara watched, a faint lump in her throat, as Damon strapped on the front pack and neatly fitted a gurgling Rosie into the cushioned frame. He seemed to be an expert at the fatherhood thing already. But she was all too aware after Damon’s revelation and the fact that they seemed poised on the brink of a real relationship that the bubble of happiness she was presently living in could burst at any moment.
