by Fiona Brand
Although, Damon could not seem to see her.
Suddenly unable to bear looking at herself, she dropped the robe on the floor and stepped beneath the shower. She winced as cool water struck her skin. As the water gradually warmed, her numbness faded and the decision she knew she had to make settled into place.
She had to leave. Now.
She could not afford to argue with Damon anymore. If she did, she would end up begging, and she absolutely did not want to beg.
She loved him, but it was clear that Damon did not love her. Not even close. The death knell had been when he admitted that a year ago he had found her and then walked away.
If he had truly wanted her, he would have pursued her back then, and he would be fighting for her now, just like Ben had fought for Emily. But Damon was clearly more interested in pushing her out of his life than holding on to her.
She didn’t blame him for being angry or distrustful, because she had hardly engendered his trust. She should have told Damon who she was a long time ago. She had been guilty of cowardice, guilty of running away, but it was also a fact that some things had just happened.
Their relationship had been fatally flawed from the beginning, but it had resulted in Rosie, who was gorgeous and lovable and who Zara could never regret having. To Zara’s mind there was nothing that was not forgivable between her and Damon. The problem was that Damon did not trust in love. And the very strength she had found so attractive in him had ended up finishing them.
Minutes later, dried and with the robe once more belted around her middle, she opened the door and listened. Reassured by the silence that pervaded the suite that Damon had left, she walked quickly to the bedroom. A quick peek at Rosie told her that she had fallen back to sleep.
Zara dressed quickly in cotton jeans, a camisole and an airy white shirt. Leaving her hair loose, she used minimal makeup and slipped on comfortable sandals.
Her stomach churned as she quickly packed, but she knew it was the right thing to do. She could not stay with a man who felt contempt for her, no matter how wrong she knew his attitude to be.
She checked the bedside clock. Barely fifteen minutes had passed since she had stepped out of the shower. She didn’t know how much time she had before Damon came back to the suite. All she knew was that after their horrible confrontation, she couldn’t bear to see him again.
In her haste, she emptied an entire drawer into her suitcase, not bothering to fold or be neat. She remembered to grab her toiletries from the bathroom, shoving them into a plastic bag so nothing would leak.
She collected Rosie’s bag and stuffed in clothes, bottles, baby formula and diapers. After making up a bottle, she zipped the bag closed with difficulty and deposited it, along with the folded front pack, in the tray below the baby stroller. After letting the backrest of the stroller down so that it formed a bed, Zara gingerly deposited Rosie in the stroller and tucked her cotton blanket around her. Rosie blinked sleepily.
Relieved, Zara checked the bedroom and the sitting room. She would not be able to take all of Rosie’s equipment with her; the portable crib and the bedding that went with it would have to stay behind.
Zara wheeled her suitcase to the door and collected her handbag. She stopped dead when she checked inside to make sure she had her sunglasses and noticed the bag of diamonds jumbled in among the Atrides jewelry cases. No doubt Damon had thought all the wrong things about her when he had seen them, along with the share certificates.
Tucking the jewelry cases and the diamonds in the bottom of her suitcase, she looped the strap of her handbag over one shoulder, wheeled her suitcase out into the hall, then wheeled the stroller out. She tensed as she walked toward the elevator, pushing the stroller with one hand and wheeling the suitcase along behind her with the other. She didn’t know where Damon had gone, but she was aware that he could return at any time. She punched the call button for the elevator. When the doors slid open to reveal an empty car, she breathed a sigh of relief.
She pushed the stroller in and turned it around and managed to drag the suitcase in beside her just before the doors closed. She pushed the ground floor button, then slid sunglasses onto the bridge of her nose.
As she struggled out of the elevator, she automatically scanned the foyer. There was a group of tourists checking out, their luggage attended by two bellhops. A couple sat in the sleek lounge area and, across an expanse of marble floor, the café and bar was filled with tourists enjoying the thick aromatic local coffee. Heart still beating too rapidly, Zara made a beeline for the door.
When the concierge started toward her, a frown on his face, she fell back into the training she had received at her finishing school and politely smiled as she shook her head. Dismissed, the concierge retreated and, with a weakening sense of relief, she made it through the doors to the first taxi.
She tipped the driver double what she expected to pay for the fare after he folded up the stroller and stowed it in the trunk, and asked him to drive her to the law firm. The driver waited for her while she took Rosie into the office. Fifteen minutes later, Zara exited the building with a baby who was now distinctly unhappy, but she had the document she needed, signed and witnessed by the receptionist.
Sliding into the back seat of the taxi, she rummaged in the baby bag and found the bottle of formula she had prepared. Popping it into Rosie’s mouth, she asked the taxi driver to take her back to the hotel, but to park down a side street where she could walk through the hotel café to the foyer. That way she could get into the hotel without the exposure of parking at the front entrance.
With no alternative but to take Rosie with her, she asked the driver to wait once more, tipping him to make sure he didn’t drive off with her luggage. Jamming the almost empty bottle back into the baby bag, she exited the taxi and walked into the hotel through the busy café, pausing before the open expanse of the foyer, just in case by some chance Damon might be walking through.
When the coast seemed clear, she walked briskly to the concierge’s desk and asked that the document be delivered to Damon’s suite.
* * *
Damon walked into the vault of the third and final bank on Medinos. He’d had to call in some favors, but he’d managed to get access to the vaults, long enough to check if there was anything that resembled the handwritten note Zara had claimed his uncle had written. Maybe it was a wild-goose chase, but despite the odds against finding a note, he couldn’t forget the stark expression on Zara’s face when he had tossed the shares on the bed or the raw hurt when he’d accused her. The report Walter had sent him had been just as conflicting, confirming her identity, and also confirming that—aside from the change of name—Zara was everything she claimed to be.
The first two banks had been dead ends, and he had literally turned those rooms over; this was his last chance to find the note, if it existed.
The clerk accompanied him into the vault and waited while he did a quick search of the room. The small trash can was empty. He was just about to leave when a corner of white caught his eye. A piece of paper had slipped down between the wall and the stainless steel desk used for opening safe-deposit boxes.
He fished out the piece of notepaper and went still inside, all the hairs at his nape lifting. He would recognize Tyler’s firm, slanted writing anywhere.
He read the brief note, then read it again. He tried to breathe, but his chest had closed up. Zara had been telling the truth.
And he had made a mistake, the biggest mistake of his life.
He suddenly became aware of how much time had passed. He checked his watch, thanked the clerk, then left the bank.
It took him ten minutes to reach the hotel, but he had the odd feeling that it was ten minutes too long. As he stepped into the lobby, the concierge stopped him and handed him an envelope.
Impatient to reach the suite, Damon opened the envelope as he stepped out of the elevator. He insta
ntly recognized a copy of the letter he had instructed his lawyers to send to Zara’s lawyer years before, which, if she had signed it, would have meant she relinquished any claim to the estate.
The fact that Zara had not gotten her lawyer to draft a new letter, but had obtained a copy of the old one he had originally sent to her, conveyed a message he couldn’t ignore. Years ago, he had assumed Zara had refused to sign because she had wanted to keep him dangling and her options open, so she could sue for more money later on. Now he knew that her reasoning had been the exact opposite. She hadn’t signed or corresponded with him because she quite simply hadn’t wanted anything from him.
Her signature and the date seemed to jump out at him. It had been signed that afternoon, less than an hour ago, with an initialed condition that Zara would not accept the payment offered on signing or any family share certificates or payment of any kind, ever.
He unlocked the door to the suite and stepped inside and the sense of cold seemed to grow more acute, because he instantly knew that the suite was empty. He quickly searched the rooms, but Zara and Rosie were gone, and he only had himself to blame.
He had accused Zara of being deceitful and manipulative, had seen her as a pretty gold digger looking for the good life, just like her mother. Now he knew how wrong he’d been.
Raw with grief over Tyler’s death, he now realized he had jumped to conclusions and bought into the media hype, but it was a fact that Tyler had been no fool when it came to judging character. He’d had zero tolerance for superficial relationships or fortune hunters, and yet he had fallen for Petra, to the point of asking her to marry him.
The fact that Petra had insisted on the prenup, then Tyler had countered by gifting Petra a 10 percent stake in the company he had loved said it all. Damon had been wrong about Petra. And at a gut level he knew he had been utterly wrong about Zara.
Too late to remember that one of the things that had attracted him to Zara had been her fierce independence, her desire to forge her own way and not lean on anyone, least of all him.
Damon found the number for the airport while he took the elevator to the underground garage. After a short conversation, during which he managed to establish that there were flights leaving for London and Dubai in the next hour, Damon terminated the call. He found his car and accelerated out into the street.
* * *
Zara’s taxi was stalled in traffic.
She spoke in rapid Medinian to the driver, but he simply gesticulated. A truck had overturned on the road; they were going nowhere. Maybe in a few minutes.
Craning around, she checked the traffic lined up behind, trying to see if she could spot Damon’s glossy black car. She was almost certain she had glimpsed it as she and Rosie had slipped out of the hotel, which meant he would have received the document she’d left for him and knew they had gone.
A car honked; they inched forward. Long minutes later, they idled past the overturned vegetable truck, moving at a snail’s pace. She asked the driver to go faster. He gave her a blank look in the rearview mirror.
A wad of Medinian notes solved the problem. Minutes later, the taxi was zooming toward the airport at breakneck speed. The cluttered streets of Medinos finally gave way to hilly countryside dotted with goats and ancient olive groves. Lush vineyards lined with vines that were festooned with leaves and dripping with ripe black grapes signaled that the airport, situated on a plateau in the midst of the most fertile land on Medinos, was near.
Zara’s phone chimed and her heart almost stopped in her chest. She checked who was calling—Damon.
She turned the phone off and held on for dear life as the taxi careened into a space outside the departures gate. After muttering her thanks and shoving more money at the driver, she scrambled out and put Rosie in the stroller. Looping her handbag over one shoulder, she grabbed her suitcase with her spare hand and headed for the desk.
She checked the overhead computer. There was a flight leaving for London in forty minutes. She pressured the attendant behind the counter to let her get on the flight, but was flatly refused. Zara checked the screen; the next flight out was an hour and twenty minutes away.
Just when she was about to give up, she saw Jorge. She called out to him, and he turned, his expression comical.
He grinned and shook his head. “So you’re not too famous to talk to me today.”
He held up a tabloid paper and she almost died on the spot. There was a blurry picture of her and Damon kissing in the underground garage. The janitor hadn’t just overheard them, he had snapped them as well, then sold the story.
She stared at the grainy photo, her mind working quickly. She hated the notoriety of it, but for once she was going to use it. She stared at Jorge. “Now you see why I have to get off Medinos. Can you help me?”
Twenty minutes later, and after paying an exorbitant amount for tickets, she and Rosie were personally escorted to their seats. Zara had had to buy first-class seats, but for once the money hadn’t mattered, and first class had fitted with her celebrity-on-the-run-from-the-paparazzi plea.
A few minutes after that, the flight taxied out, but instead of taking off, it wheeled to a halt. Apparently, there were birds on the runway. Zara’s stomach hollowed out. She was beginning to wonder if they would ever get off the ground.
Twelve
Damon terminated his latest attempt to call Zara when he arrived at the airport terminal. Like every other call had, it would go straight to voice mail. He had already left a message and Zara hadn’t replied, so there was no sense leaving another.
He parked and headed for departures. The flight to London was already on the tarmac waiting to depart, but the Dubai flight had yet to board. He skimmed the passengers massed in the lounge. Zara wasn’t there, so she must have boarded the first flight out, which was London bound.
He called Walter. He needed confirmation of which flight Zara had taken. Walter had connections in the aviation world. If anyone could get the information, quickly, he could.
Walter called him back a few minutes later and confirmed that Zara and Rosie were on the London flight.
Jaw tight, Damon watched as the jet began moving down the runway, picking up speed. A few seconds later it was in the air. Taking out his phone again, he called Mac. He had already asked her to fuel the jet and get ready to fly, but he was aware that they would have to queue.
It took an hour to file the flight plan, another hour to get a takeoff slot. When they were finally in the air, Damon opened up the file on his laptop and read through Walter’s report in detail.
Zara was Petra’s daughter and, yes, there were a few wild media stories about her, but on close inspection, there wasn’t a lot of substance to any of them. He studied the few photos that were included and shook his head. There was a photo of a child who was recognizably Zara, cute in plaits, and a blurred snapshot of a teenager with dark hair who could be anyone. Finally, he stared incredulously at an article entitled Angel Parties Hard. It was an article supposedly about Angel Atrides, but the photograph depicted a long-haired bottle blonde who was a complete stranger.
Grimly, Damon read on. The claims that she slept around were outright lies. He knew that for a fact because Zara had only ever slept with him. Claims that she was a fortune hunter looking for a rich husband were similarly flawed, because she had clearly never been a party girl, or dated anyone who actually had a fortune, except himself, and she’d had no compunction about ditching him.
Walter hadn’t just dug for information, he had mined.
After Petra’s death, Zara had been saddled with Petra’s funeral expenses. Damon knew she could have taken the easy way out and accepted his money, but instead, as a student, she had paid off her mother’s funeral expenses in tiny increments until the debt was cleared.
Those were not the actions of a woman who was looking for some man to bankroll her lifestyle. She hadn’t had a lif
estyle. What she’d had were debts and worry, then a child to care for—his child—and a determination to make her own way. Without him.
Zara had no credit cards and almost no debt, just the mortgage on her business. Somehow, in this modern day and age, she managed to make all of her purchases with cash. From what Damon could glean, despite the Swiss finishing school and the jet-setting mother, Zara only bought what she could afford, and that was mostly necessities. No designer clothing or shoes, and definitely no jewelry. That meant the diamonds were exactly what she had claimed.
Security and stability.
The final nail in the coffin was the information he already knew, but which he had stubbornly ignored. When Zara had become pregnant and could have demanded money from him, she had determinedly made her own way.
Her business was a case in point. Zara had gotten her business degree, worked and saved, gotten a loan, then opened her own business. She had accepted him as a client only because she had needed the cash flow. Then she had insisted on dealing only with Howard, making it clear that she didn’t want Damon to step any further into her life.
Closing the file, Damon checked the time. They wouldn’t land for several hours. He needed to sleep, but first he needed to figure out how he was going to win back Zara when he had done his level best to drive her away.
When they landed at Heathrow, it was only to find that Zara and Rosie had caught a last-minute connection to Los Angeles.
Mac yawned. “What do we do now?”
Damon noted Zara’s arrival time in LA. He didn’t know if she would take a connecting flight from there, or choose to stop over. What mattered was that she appeared to be heading home.
“We get some dinner, get some sleep and then go home.”
* * *
