Melt Into You

by Lisa Plumley

  Humor was a gamble. Damon knew that. His situation was tenuous. But if anyone could get away with cracking wise at that moment, it was him. He’d always been blessed with an unfair share of charisma—and a lifetime supply of get-out-of-jail-free cards, too. He’d used them time and again, even with Natasha.

  Obviously, a crueler woman—a woman like Tamala, who’d exacted her revenge on him with the help of his own dense, clueless, horny, and always affection-craving self—would have walked out on him already. She would have left him (and had) for a hapless member of the housekeeping staff to discover sometime tomorrow. But Natasha would never have been so cruel to a hotel employee. She was too kind. Too considerate. Too giving.

  She would, it turned out, be cruel to him, though.

  “Yes, Damon,” Natasha said. She spoke clearly and yet somehow he still couldn’t believe it. “This is the thing that makes me leave you.”

  He felt as if he was hearing her from underwater. Maybe he had chocolate couverture in his ears. Just in case, Damon decided to brazen out the conversation. She’d probably been kidding anyway. That was the relationship they had. “Well, you can take that ten pounds of tempered milk chocolate with you, if you want. God knows, it didn’t do me a damn bit of good today.”

  This time, Natasha appeared even stonier. He’d meant she could take the chocolate with her because it hadn’t helped him create something amazing to impress the world with. He’d meant it hadn’t helped him wow his father or secure his future at Torrance Chocolates. But Natasha didn’t know that, because she was the only person on the entire freaking planet who didn’t already know about his humiliating workshop-based breakdown.

  Vaguely, Damon wondered if this was what hitting bottom felt like. But then he remembered: he was him. He was fine!

  At a loss for another quip, Damon gazed directly at Natasha. Yes, Damon. This is the thing that makes me leave you, he heard again, if only in his desperate, befuddled mind, and he knew that that couldn’t be what Natasha had said, because that would be bad. Bad things never happened to him. He didn’t want this to be happening … thus, it wouldn’t occur. It couldn’t occur.

  In the silence, Natasha stared at him, almost as if she was waiting for more. Damon could have sworn there were tears in her eyes … except that was impossible, too. Natasha had nothing to be upset about. He did. He was the one who was tied up, wasn’t he?

  “Hey, don’t cry,” Damon joked. “You weren’t even there. You’ll have to get the workshop director’s cut on DVD. It comes with bonus footage of me making an ass of myself in public!”

  But Natasha didn’t hear his last, despairing joke. Instead, from far across the room, she gave a mystifying, muffled sob.

  “I can’t stand this anymore, Damon,” she said. “You, me, all these … situations you get yourself into. I can’t do it.”

  Well. That couldn’t be good. “I know,” Damon began, trying his best to sound contrite while simultaneously racking his brain to remember what Jason had said to him this morning. “I’ve been on a bender. It’s not good. You want to go to bed early!”

  “No, I don’t want to go to bed early.” Her quizzical look was replaced by a mighty sniffle. She sighed. Then, before Damon could guess what was happening, Natasha hurried to the chaise.

  She dropped beside it, then began untying the red velvet scarves with hasty, jerky motions. Were her hands … shaking?

  He didn’t want her to shake. Not like this. Not because of him. As soon as Natasha had freed his arm, Damon caught hold of her hand. Cradling it, he peered intently into her face.

  Immediately, he discerned that those were tears. Uh-oh.

  “Natasha, I’m sorry! I know things have been a little out of control lately. But it’s got nothing to do with you. You’re—”

  Wonderful. Amazing. The only person who really “gets” me, Damon meant to say. But Natasha interrupted him before he could.

  “I’ll submit my formal resignation to Jimmy tomorrow, after I get back to San Diego.” Natasha pulled free the final knots, then plucked off the Liberace-worthy scarves. “You won’t have to tell him yourself. If he’s disappointed, it’ll all be on me.”

  “No. See?” Feeling truly alarmed now, Damon nudged up her chin. “You’re still trying to take the fall for me! You’re still trying to protect me.” He gave her a fond smile. “That’s how I know you’re only kidding with this quitting stuff. You don’t mean it.” God, he prayed she didn’t mean it. “You could never mean it. You and me … we’re a team. Together we’re like—”

  “I quit, Damon. Listen to me: I quit,” Natasha said. “I’m leaving. I’m finished making excuses, finagling appointments, and juggling pouty ex-girlfriends for you. That’s it.”

  He couldn’t comprehend it. “But I need you,” Damon protested. He wanted to get to his feet, but he couldn’t move. His legs had fallen asleep sometime during his vigil. “Natasha, I …” He hesitated, searching for something that might make her stay. There was only one thing that always—always—worked in these situations. “I love you! I do. Please don’t go.”

  Disbelievingly, she stared at him. “You love me.”

  Eagerly, he nodded. Inwardly, he held his breath.

  “I told you never to tell me you love me.”

  Vaguely, Damon remembered that. Don’t tell me you love me, Natasha had stipulated during their initial meeting at Torrance Chocolates. Don’t flirt. Don’t inform me of your sexual conquests or expect me to bail you out of them. Well, three out of four wasn’t bad. Until tonight, he’d been batting .750.

  “How else can I do it,” he asked, “except with words?”

  “Easy. Don’t do it at all.”

  “But I can’t just let you leave! How will I”—urgently, Damon cast about for something really convincing to tell her, something incontrovertible—“get through my day without you?”

  “You’ll manage. You’re the luckiest man I know.”

  Just then, Damon didn’t feel very lucky. Instead, he began to feel angry, unfairly judged … and most of all, stuck on the chaise. With a groaning lurch, he managed to get upright.

  Next, he made himself stand. The effort almost made him fall over. Pins and needles shot through his legs. For modesty’s sake, he cupped his groin—because his nougat covering didn’t feel super sturdy—then released a pained, involuntary groan.

  Instantly, Natasha was at his side. Her brow furrowed.

  “See?” he pointed out, gratified by her response. “You do care. You can’t be that upset. Besides, it’s not as though you haven’t seen me naked before. You have, just this morning. It’s not as though you haven’t bailed me out before. You have, plenty of times, and from worse situations than this.”

  Not much worse, he knew, but still …

  “No.” Natasha clenched her fists. “This is different.”

  “Why? Because I interrupted your ‘date’ with Scott?”

  At that, Natasha shook her head. Tears still glimmered in her eyes—tears that left Damon awash in commiserative misery.

  He’d made her cry. He’d made his mother cry, and he’d made Natasha cry, both in the span of a single awful day. The two of them were the kindest, gentlest, most generous women he knew.

  If he could hurt them … what the hell would he do next?

  All of a sudden, Damon didn’t really want to find out.

  “It wasn’t that you were naked and called me to bail you out that upset me, you idiot,” Natasha said. “It was that you lied and said you loved me! I’m not one of your good-time girls, Damon. I’m me. I deserve better. For you, talk is cheap.” Sadly, she shook her head. “But for me, I love you means something.”

  “It means something to me, too!” he insisted. “It means—”

  It means I might get my way … and make you stay.

  Just as he realized that ugly truth, Damon met Natasha’s gaze. She’d already known that about him, he understood as he looked into her eyes. She’d known, and she’d stayed anyway. />
  Until now. How many people would have done that for him?

  “Oh.” Uncomfortably, Damon rubbed the back of his neck. He shifted his gaze away from hers. “I see what you mean.”

  All at once, he felt embarrassed for Natasha to see him as he was. He was nearly naked. He was painted with multiple kinds of chocolate. All his enthusiasm for having a good time showed.

  So did all his weakness when it came to being a good man.

  “I guess I have to let you go, then,” Damon said quietly.

  “I guess you do,” Natasha agreed. She touched his face, then gazed into his eyes one more time. “Take care of yourself.”

  He knew he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t fathom why Natasha didn’t. He quirked his mouth. “I’ll try. You do the same, okay?”

  “I will.” She inhaled, then let her hand drop to her side. At least she was no longer shaking. “Bye, Damon.”

  He’d never thought he’d hear those words from her. The sound of them made him want to howl with grief. It was probably self-centered grief, Damon acknowledged, but still … “Bye, Tasha.”

  He’d never called her that before. Other people did, but not him. Doing so would have meant thinking of her as a woman, not his assistant, and Damon had needed the distance he’d gained from calling her Natasha. Natasha. That semi-formality between them had helped him not be tempted to seduce her into abandoning her marriage vows, the way he’d secretly wanted to do. But now …

  Well, now Damon didn’t need to create any false distance, because they’d have genuine distance between them. Forever.

  Fifteen seconds after he realized that, Natasha was already gathering her things in the sitting area of his penthouse suite. Her high-heeled footsteps sounded. There was a final, lingering silence. Damon held his breath. Then, an instant later, came the muted thump of the suite’s door closing behind Natasha.

  It had really happened. For the first time in years, Damon realized, he was truly on his own—and he had no freaking idea what came next.

  Chapter 9

  San Diego

  As the days piled up since quitting her job at Torrance Chocolates, Natasha gradually realized that her impulsive decision had caused some sort of elemental shift in her world.

  It had begun right away. When she had checked out of the hotel that had hosted the chocolate conference, the night after leaving Damon, the perky hotel employee at the front desk had informed Natasha that she was the hotel’s “mystery guest” of the week—and had won a week’s prepaid stay in the form of a special voucher, for use any time she wanted a getaway. It was the first thing Natasha had ever won. She could hardly believe it.

  At first, she hadn’t believed it. It had occurred to her almost immediately that Damon might be behind her “comped” stay. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d used his money and influence to try to make amends for something he’d done wrong.

  But then, when she’d boarded her flight home and found herself seated next to a fascinating neurosurgeon—a man who had been obviously (and flatteringly) interested in getting to know her better—she’d begun to suspect something more inexplicable was afoot. Not even Damon Torrance could cajole a man like Lance, the neurosurgeon, into spending more than an hour talking with her … and then inviting her to dinner after they landed.

  By the time Natasha had agreed to that date, then retrieved her luggage—and her Civic from long-term airport parking—she’d fully expected fate to catch up with her. Surely the universe would teach her a lesson, right? She’d been too lucky so far.

  She’d even spontaneously tried out a slot machine at McCarran International Airport—and been rewarded with a nearly thousand-dollar jackpot on the spot. There was no way Damon could have had anything to do with that. That was just good fortune.

  It was, she figured, good fortune that she’d inevitably be made to pay for, one way or another. With that thought in mind, Natasha warily pulled onto the freeway. By accepting a free week’s hotel stay, gambling and winning, spending an enjoyable morning being flirted with, and making an actual date for the following week, she knew she must have already used up her meager share of good luck. Half expecting her car to pull its usual unreliable routine, she listened carefully to the engine as she merged into the whizzing San Diego traffic.

  Oddly, her Civic practically purred along. No blowouts. No scary “check engine” lights. No weird noises. What’s more, other drivers graciously allowed her into their lanes. Once, when she accidentally cut off another driver, the man waved off her mistake with obvious goodwill. That made her do a double take.

  Polite drivers. Huh. What in the world was going on here?

  But the oddities had just kept coming after Natasha arrived home to her duplex apartment. She expected the yard to be overgrown with weeds and in dire need of a trim; as the head of her household, Natasha didn’t have the luxury of offloading yard work to a “honey-do list,” the way other women sometimes could. Instead, she saw as she wheeled her luggage up the walk, her green grass and borders of geraniums looked like something out of House Beautiful magazine. Puzzling over that, Natasha inhaled the welcome, briny scent of ocean air. This couldn’t be Carol’s work; her mother-in-law was wonderful in many ways, but she hated gardening and was too thrifty to pay to have it done.

  “Oh, hey, Natasha.” Her neighbor, Kurt, lifted a pair of long-handled gardening shears in a welcoming gesture. He’d obviously been out working in his yard. “You’re home.”

  “Yes, I just got back. I couldn’t wait to get here.”

  “Your yard looks incredible,” Kurt said with obvious admiration. His own green thumb was legendary. “New gardeners?”

  “I don’t know. Carol might have hired someone.”

  It had seemed like a good guess. But later, Natasha had found out that her mother-in-law didn’t know who’d tidied and trimmed their yard, either. “I guess it was garden pixies.”

  “‘Garden pixies’?” Natasha had repeated dubiously. But as her unlikely good fortune had continued to pile up, “garden pixies” had seemed as likely an explanation as anything else.

  The next day, Natasha’s habitually hopeless weekly purchase of a “lucky” lottery scratch-off ticket had actually won almost fifty dollars. Her favorite boutique in La Jolla had called to say they had received a pair of shoes she’d ordered weeks earlier—and they were now on sale at forty percent off.

  Her “good mornings” to her neighbors had been greeted with grins and chatty conversations. Her veterinarian had informed her that her dog, Finn, a golden retriever/bulldog mix, was in perfect health … and she wanted to use Finn as a model for the adjacent pet store’s upcoming ad for training classes, too.

  Finn, while undeniably lovable, was only seven months old. And a rascally mutt. He needed to be in a doggie training class; he in no way exemplified the ideal canine graduate. But Natasha had agreed anyway. Finn would be compensated for his work in the form of free veterinary checkups and dog treats, and maybe he’d pick up a few obedience tips while he was being photographed, too. It was sort of a win-win, even if it was unexpected.

  Natasha’s date with the neurosurgeon, Lance, had gone without a hitch. Her suggestions to Carol regarding the duplex’s exterior repainting job were met with enthusiasm and agreement. When she went out, men smiled at her and turned flirty; when she saw her friends, they laughed at all her jokes and hugged her warmly and complimented her effusively on every outfit she wore.

  Upon learning that Natasha had left Torrance Chocolates, headhunters called her with tantalizing offers of new employment. They wooed her with lavish expense-account meals and promised her unbelievable perks. Her page on LinkToMe, the online corporate networking site, practically brought down the server with constant activity from people trying to reach her.

  “Wow.” Natasha gaped at her laptop’s screen, blinking at the dozens of requests for new associations. “I should have left Torrance Chocolates years ago. Who knew I’d be in so much demand? I was afraid
to take that leap and risk giving up my income, but I could accept any one of these new jobs and start tomorrow—with my own office, more authority, and identical pay.”

  “I knew you should have left,” Carol told her warmly. “You should have done it as soon as you met Demon Damon. You always deserved better than the crummy way that man treated you.”

  Demon Damon. Yes, he’d been that, at times. But he’d also been so much more, especially to her. Which only brought Natasha around to the one lingeringly painful truth: no matter how terrific things had seemed lately, she still missed Damon.

  She missed feeling the energy crackling from him as he arrived in the office—usually running late after having had some adventure or other—and greeted her with his special smile. She missed hearing the good humor in his voice as he confided in her about some grandiose plan he was hatching. She missed seeing his winning smile, feeling his casual touch as he held doors open for her and escorted her through, and knowing he was only a phone call away at any moment. She missed him. Period.

  “You didn’t know him,” Natasha said in her former boss’s defense. She raised her chin. “Damon wasn’t that bad.”

  “Not ‘that bad’?” Her mother-in-law stared at her in disbelief. “He made you buy flowers for the women he broke up with. He made you come up with the cards. How many of those ‘sorry I broke your heart’ bouquets did you send, anyway?”

  “Too many to count. But at least he sent them!”

  Carol gave a dismissive snort. “Yes, he’s a real prince.”

  “If you ever met him—”

  “That will never happen,” Carol said, “and I’m glad.”

  But Natasha wasn’t glad. Because despite her own recent good fortune, she couldn’t help wondering: If she was experiencing an unprecedented streak of good luck (and she was), what exactly was happening with Damon these days?

  Standing in the middle of his formerly posh living room, Damon gazed with dismay at the wreckage before him. He stood calf deep in murky water. Sandy grit clung to his furniture, revealing the yellowed places where the water had risen during the flood that had made his oceanfront home uninhabitable.