by Fiona Brand
Emily stiffened. “And do you think I’ll hurt you?”
“Only if you leave me.”
“I wasn’t intending to leave. Why would I? I love you.”
Relief washed over Ben’s face. “Ditto. I don’t care about your past relationships, and the truth is I’ve hardly been an altar boy myself, if you know what I mean. If you’re happy with me, that’s all I want to know.”
Emily threw Zara a radiant glance as Ben hurried her out of the hotel. “Sorry about the job, Zara, but it looks like I’m definitely not coming back!”
Zara watched as Ben settled Emily into a low-slung sports car, which was parked just across the road. Feeling a little stunned by what Ben had revealed about Damon’s past, Zara made a beeline toward the elevators.
Damon having a father who had driven the family broke with his spending on mistresses neatly explained his attitude toward Petra, and to Angel Atrides. It also made sense of his attempt to pay her off and get her to sign that insulting “go away” agreement. Ben had also mentioned scars, and that their father had been violent. She had always thought Damon’s scars had been earned in battle, but some of them must have been inflicted by his father.
Slowly, quietly, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place and her heart squeezed tight at what Damon must have endured as a child. She was beginning to understand why he had such an issue with trust.
As the elevator whizzed upward, her stomach tensed. Emily’s expression had glowed; she had gotten her happy ending. An ending Zara now very much doubted would be hers.
When she stepped into the suite, Rosie, who was lying on a rug on the floor playing with a rattle, crowed, flung the toy aside and held her arms out to Zara. A rush of pure maternal love brought tears to Zara’s eyes. It might not be possible that she could ever have the true, adult love she needed from Damon, but she had her daughter.
Zara carried her handbag, with all of its incriminating evidence, into Rosie’s room and stashed it in a dark corner. She walked back out to the sitting room and scooped Rosie up, needing the comfort of her child in her arms.
Damon strolled out of the adjoining study, a cell in his hand. Zara decided to take the bull by the horns. “I saw Emily and Ben in the lobby. Luckily, Ben had the maturity to see beyond Emily’s past to what a nice person she is.”
Damon dropped the phone into his back pocket. “I agree that Emily is nice,” he said mildly. “But if she had been up-front about her past to begin with, there wouldn’t have been a problem.”
“Maybe Emily had some very good reasons for keeping her life, and her name, private.”
“Most people don’t deal with it by changing their name.”
Zara stared at Damon for a long moment, wondering if there was a double meaning to his words because he knew she had changed her name. Rosie, who had slumped into a contented doze almost as soon as Zara had picked her up, stirred, as if even in sleep she could sense the uncomfortable currents. “You say that as if she did it to deliberately deceive Ben, when all she wanted was to escape the press and keep her privacy.”
Damon frowned. “The press were not exactly hounding Emily. As I recall, it was one gossip columnist.”
“Just one? Then Emily can’t have been that notorious.” Afraid that she would lose her temper and reveal too much, Zara walked through to Rosie’s room, placed her in her crib and covered her with a light cotton blanket. She drew a deep breath and discovered that her hands were shaking. The one ray of hope was that, given that they were still talking about Emily, maybe Damon hadn’t yet received a report about her.
When she walked out to the sitting room, Damon’s gaze was wary. “What have I done now?”
He was standing at a set of French doors that opened out onto a sun-drenched patio. With his arms crossed over his chest, making his shoulders seem even broader, he looked brooding, utterly masculine and more than a little dangerous.
Zara got straight to the point. “Emily said you got Walter to dig into her past.”
“Ben’s my brother. He’s in love with a woman who, at some point, changed her name.” He shrugged. “Of course, I got Walter to do a little digging—”
“I suppose you think Emily’s not good enough for Ben?”
Damon’s brows jerked together. “These days what I think doesn’t really impact Ben.”
But it impacted Zara! “Okay, then, you don’t think Emily’s good enough.”
Damon reached her in two strides. Linking his fingers with hers, he pulled her close, which was disorienting when she was still bracing herself for the fact that he had received some kind of damning report on her.
“Forget Emily,” he muttered. “I had hoped we might be doing something else right about now.”
The bell to the suite buzzed. Damon swore softly. “Talk about bad timing.”
He opened the door to a waiter, who wheeled in a cart with a bottle of champagne on ice and two glasses. Damon tipped the waiter and closed the door behind him before wheeling the cart off to one side.
His expression was rueful. “I was supposed to give you something before that happened.”
He fished a velvet box out of his pocket and flipped the lid. For a split second she thought he had an engagement ring, then she saw a pair of gorgeous diamond earrings.
For a moment she battled disappointment, then the sheer relief that Damon still wanted to give her a gift, and the sheer beauty of the earrings, took over.
Despite his contention that he wanted to keep things on a businesslike footing, he had obviously been thinking about her and wanting to please her, even down to doing something romantic like ordering champagne. A lump formed in her throat as it occurred to her that, even though everything seemed to be happening in reverse—as in having sex and a baby!—Damon was now courting her.
“You don’t have to give me jewelry—”
“After last night, I wanted you to have something.”
Understanding dawned. Last night she had told him that she had only ever been his.
Fingers shaking slightly, she picked up the gorgeous earrings, walked over to the mirror and inserted them in her lobes. She had been about to say that she couldn’t accept them, but now she didn’t want to let them go because she was certain they were a genuine gift of love, even if Damon didn’t realize it.
“They’re...beautiful.”
Damon came up behind her and pulled her back against the warmth of his chest. “You’re beautiful.”
He turned her around in his arms and kissed her. Zara wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back, happiness shimmering through her as she wallowed in the sheer warmth and comfort of being back in Damon’s arms, but the moment was bittersweet. As wonderful as it was to just be with Damon, to let her imagination run riot and pretend that they were both in love, it was a fact that they were on borrowed time.
And she had the sudden premonition that if she didn’t make love to Damon now, she never would again.
A little feverishly, she began undoing the buttons of his shirt.
Damon lifted his head, his gaze heated. “Now?”
For an answer, she kissed him again and dragged at more buttons. Damon’s shirt dropped to the floor. This time he pulled her close and kissed her. Long drugging seconds later her dress followed suit and she found herself propelled in the direction of the bedroom.
Damon kicked the bedroom door closed behind them as they stepped through. By the time they reached the bed, Damon had stepped out of his pants and her bra was gone. There was a momentary pause while Damon sheathed himself with a condom then they were lying tangled together on the sun-drenched bed.
She felt the glide of Damon’s fingers as he peeled her panties down her legs. Desire shivered and burned as he came down between her thighs. With one smooth thrust he was inside her and they were deeply, perfectly linked.
Damon’s gaze
locked with hers and his fierce tenderness struck her to the heart. For a split second, she felt the utter rightness of being together, that he truly belonged to her and she to him.
She clasped his shoulders as they began to move, tears blinding her at the sheer intimacy of what they were doing. She felt as if she was finally, truly getting to know Damon and at the same time saying goodbye.
Eleven
Damon woke to small noises signaling that Rosie was awake. Carefully, so as not to disturb Zara, he disentangled himself, slid from the bed and pulled on his jeans. Walking into Rosie’s room, he found her cuddle rug, which was lying on the floor, then looked around for her favorite toy, a rattle, which had also ended up on the floor. As he picked up the rattle, he noticed Zara’s white leather handbag, which was lying at a drunken angle between an armchair and the wall with her phone precariously balanced on top. Probably in a rush to put Rosie in the crib, she had simply dumped the lot.
He handed the rattle to Rosie, who instantly started to chew on it, then retrieved Zara’s phone. As he did so, the bag, which seemed stuffed full, slumped to one side. A number of items spilled out on the floor, among them a black velvet bag that scattered brilliant crystals. Jaw tight, Damon stooped to gather up gems that burned with the fiery, unmistakable glitter of diamonds.
He was no expert, but given the size, number and weight of the stones, he was looking at a small fortune. He tipped the stones back into the velvet bag and placed it in Zara’s handbag. As he did so, he noticed a thick envelope, which had also fallen out of the bag. The envelope was plain, but the contents, which had partly slid out of the envelope, looked gut-wrenchingly familiar. He picked up the envelope, already knowing what he was going to find. Even so, his stomach contracted when he pulled out the sheaf of old-fashioned and utterly familiar share certificates.
The missing McCall shares.
Why would Zara have the shares in her possession? How had she gotten hold of them?
The only answer that made sense was that Zara was somehow connected with Tyler. Because the voting shares were supposed to be held only by family members, he had considered the possibility that Tyler had given them to Petra, then on Petra’s death they had ended up in Angel’s hands. But the shares had never appeared on the market, so he had scrapped that idea.
It suddenly occurred to him that Zara was the same age as Petra’s daughter, Angel Atrides. It was a leap—a big one. She looked nothing like Petra, but the more he thought about it, the more the facts fitted. It explained why Zara was so sensitive about any contact with the press, and why she had been so protective of Emily changing her name.
He had a sudden flash of Zara’s bedroom, which had been decorated in a distinctly Medinian way and suddenly he was sure.
Zara Westlake was Angel Atrides.
It was there in the mystery about Zara’s nondisclosure, the fact that she had gotten passports for her and Rosie, and had been surprisingly willing to come to Medinos. If he didn’t miss his guess, Petra had stored the diamonds and the share certificates at some bank, and Zara had needed to come to Medinos personally to retrieve them.
Keeping hold of the envelope, Damon rose to his feet. He felt as if the scales had fallen from his eyes. He had been bedazzled, incapable of operating with his usual methodical precision.
A little grimly, he wondered if this was how Tyler had felt when he had fallen for Petra and handed over the shares of a business that had been his life’s work. A company he had built up with clever innovation and long hours of hard work. A company he had always maintained would remain in the family.
A soft buzzing distracted Damon. He retrieved his phone from the back pocket of his jeans. Walter’s text advised Damon that the report on Zara was in his inbox and he needed to read it before he did something stupid.
Too late. Damon walked to the study and used his laptop to read the confirmation that Zara Westlake was Angel Atrides.
Picking up the envelope that contained the shares, he walked back to the bedroom as Zara’s eyes flickered open.
The words Ben had spoken over the phone just before he had flown away with Emily came back to haunt Damon. He lacked emotional intelligence.
He had no argument with that summation. He had ignored his usual caution and allowed himself to be conned by Petra’s daughter.
It had all been a sham from the first moment.
He dropped the envelope on the pillow. Some of the shares slipped out, fanning across the tangled sheet. He saw the comprehension in Zara’s gaze and the cold in his stomach seemed to settle a little deeper.
“How did you get hold of the shares?”
Zara jackknifed, clutching the sheet around her breasts. “You searched my bag?”
“I didn’t search anything. I went in to check on Rosie. I noticed you’d left your phone on top of your bag. When I picked it up your bag fell over and a few things you obviously didn’t want me to see fell out.”
“It’s not what you think.” She averted her gaze from the certificates. “They were in a safe-deposit box at my mother’s bank.”
“Which was why you wanted to come to Medinos.”
“I didn’t know the stock certificates were there!”
“What about the diamonds?”
“Not those, either! I came because I wanted to find out what was in the box. I had hoped my Atrides family jewelry would be there, and it was.”
“Atrides, as in Angel Atrides.”
Her gaze turned fierce. “That’s right. I changed my name for practical reasons—”
“Like Emily.”
“I did it to escape the media. Not that I would expect you to understand that!”
“And the small fortune in diamonds didn’t really matter?”
“Actually, yes, it does, because right now Rosie and I need the money. To be honest, I was glad there were diamonds.”
“Not that you need the diamonds, with the shares being worth a small fortune.”
Her face went white. “I told you I didn’t know the certificates were there. I didn’t know any of it was there!”
Damon’s jaw tightened. “Just like you didn’t know when you slept with me that I was Tyler’s nephew?”
“You think I slept with you and got pregnant, deliberately?” Zara clambered from the bed and dragged on one of the hotel robes, belting it tight. “You’re wrong about my mother, and you’re wrong about me! My aunt Phoebe pulled some strings to help get me the job. And, yes, she had an agenda, but she didn’t let me in on it! If I had known which Smith you were, I wouldn’t have taken the job—I wouldn’t have touched you with a barge pole—”
“I can’t believe you didn’t know who I was.”
“Your name is Smith. Do you know how many people have that surname? The firm is Magnum Security, which I had never heard of before. It wasn’t until I started working on the McCall takeover that it finally clicked that you were that Smith.”
Damon dragged lean fingers through his hair. He couldn’t believe how much he wanted to believe her. “Maybe if the shares weren’t involved—”
“Tyler gave those shares to my mother because he loved her.”
“And you have proof of this?” Damon couldn’t keep the sardonic twist from his mouth. Although there was no humor in a situation that took him straight back to his childhood and his father’s penchant for lavishing expensive gifts on his mistresses.
Zara shot him a fiery glance. “You think you have all the facts, but you don’t. My mother wouldn’t agree to marry Tyler without a prenup, because she didn’t want his money. Tyler agreed, but in return, he insisted she take shares in his company. I can prove it. There was a note from Tyler in the safe-deposit box.”
Damon’s expression was utterly neutral. “Sounds like true love.”
“It was. My mother took off her wedding rings. If you had known her at all, you would h
ave known what that meant, because she adored my father and grieved him for years. Until she met Tyler she never took off her rings. But you didn’t know Petra, just like you don’t know me.”
Damon followed Zara as she marched into Rosie’s room, found her bag, carried it out to the sitting room and feverishly searched through it. When she couldn’t find what she was looking for she began emptying items onto the coffee table. After a few minutes, she quietly repacked her bag.
“No note?”
Frustration brimmed in her gaze. “I must have left it in the vault. Although you won’t believe that because you think I’m lying.”
He frowned. “I didn’t say that.”
“I’ve told you what happened,” she said flatly, “but I don’t think you want the truth. You’d rather see me as flawed and dishonorable, because if you were convinced that I was genuine, then that might demand some kind of genuine response from you, and that’s something you don’t want to give. What happened a year ago is a case in point. I left and you didn’t come after me.”
“I did,” he said quietly. “And I found you, but I left before you saw me.”
Her expression was oddly stricken. “That’s even worse.”
* * *
Zara marched back to the bedroom, gathered up the shares and shoved them back into their envelope. She remembered the earrings Damon had given her and which she was still wearing! Fingers shaking, she fumbled the earrings out of her lobes, located the box they had come in, then placed the jewelry box on the coffee table with the shares.
“The shares are yours—I don’t want them. You can have the earrings back, as well. Consider yourself freed.”
Silence seemed to stretch between them, hollow and unbridgeable.
Damon’s phone buzzed. Turning on his heel, he walked back into the study and closed the door.
Moving on automatic pilot, Zara made it to the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Feeling sick to her stomach, she stared blankly at her reflection in the lavish mirror, which occupied most of one wall. Taking a deep, slow breath that hurt because her chest was tight with misery, she noted that, with her hair a wild tangle around her face and the robe gaping slightly over her breasts, she looked lush and wanton. The complete opposite of the woman she knew herself to be.
