The Last Girl (Sand & Fog #7)

by Susan Ward

  “Like I said, it’s a feeling. It’s not good that he’s here.”

  “Perhaps you’re reading the feeling wrong. Damon might just be here because he’s interested in you. You have been known to turn a few heads from time to time and inspire a wide and amusing variety of tactics from men to get close to you. You’re not exactly uncomplicated to foster a friendship with. It wouldn’t be the first time a guy did something nuts over you. Damon Saxe, despite his title, is just a guy. And as I pointed out before, you’re exactly his type.”

  By no stretch of the imagination was I Damon Saxe’s type. He surrounded himself with beautiful women of accomplishment, personal notoriety, and a more high-profile, glamorous existence than mine. The sort of women who, when splashed on a tabloid, you’d want to race through the pages to read about. Women who complemented and, in many ways, matched who he was.

  Damon was one of the most sought after and notable bachelors in the world. He was twenty-nine, the third and youngest son of the present king by his American actress second wife, an adventurer, thrill-seeker, and naughty playboy. Being born the second spare to the heir, with a mother generally looked down upon by the British people, had left Damon without purpose and unleashed a hellion on the global stage. His troubling youth had been rife with scandals and danger-seeking moments preceded a five-year distinguished military career that included combat deployment. After his mother was killed in a terrorist bombing, he’d been forced to leave the service for his personal protection, and returned to years of whirlwind affairs, more scandals for the house of Saxe, and the eventual dismissal by his father from royal duties. It was then he’d abruptly vanished from any sort of public life and was not even a thought in my head until he’d showed up in my suite in Paris.

  The finger I was running along the rim of my wineglass stilled. “I’m not his type. Far from it.”

  “He’s famous. Bored. Rich. Single. With a complicated family background. Clearly not interested in marrying, given his relationship history. How is that not your type? Damon Saxe is the male version of you.”

  My eyes closed. Cody had left off his list gorgeous, sexy, and temptingly masculine. Damn Damon Saxe. I wished I’d never heard the name and now I couldn’t stop thinking it.

  “He followed you to California, Khloe. Rather than hide out here with me, don’t you think it’s time to find out why?”

  I looked at him. “With my parents hovering over him, that’s hardly likely to happen. But you’re right. I hate the feeling that I’m stuck in the middle of something and I’m the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on. For no other reason, I need to get Damon out of here quickly.”

  Cody’s eyes softened with sympathy. “You’re smart. You can figure out a way to finagle some time to talk with him alone to find out why he’s here. Unless you decide you want to tap him instead. Then I suggest you stay away.”

  That made me roll my eyes. “Hardy-har-har. Not funny. Damon Saxe is the last man I need in my life.”

  “And yet, here he is.” Cody’s serious expression melted into calm resignation. “Go to the patio. Have tea with the naughty prince. From what you’ve told me, I’m thinking he’s sticking around until he sees you again. It’s a nice touch you’ve kept him waiting and you’re still wearing the clothes from the plane. Not exactly a stir the interest in a guy kind of outfit. If he’s lusting after you, he won’t know what to make of that. Maybe that message will be enough that he leaves.”

  That made me smile. “I hope you’re right.”

  Cody stood. “Call me later to let me know how it works out.”

  “Are you visiting with your parents longer or going home to see Gideon?” I made my way down the steps to the narrow walkway between the cottage and the main house.

  “Home,” Cody called at my back. “But call me anyway.”

  “Yeah, Gideon’s going to love that. My interrupting your first night home.”

  “If we’re busy, I won’t answer.”

  I whirled around on the pavement to face him. “Then why have me call?”

  Cody shrugged. “It felt right to offer, and I do feel invested in what happens in your life.”

  “Isn’t that one of Gideon’s complaints about you? How much time you devote to other people’s mess.”

  He grinned. “Generally. Except where you’re concerned. That Gideon understands. He fully supports my excessive involvement with you.”

  “He doesn’t say that, does he? That you’re excessively involved with me?”

  “Yep, he does. But when I tell him about the naughty prince, he’ll want to know all the details, and I think that’ll earn me a pass from Gideon if you interrupt my nonwork hours tonight like you habitually do. Especially if you decide to bang Damon instead of pushing him out the front door.”

  Bang him. That was my cue to leave fast. I didn’t need anyone planting that thought in my head, not even jokingly. Damon Saxe did that to a woman on his own quite well.

  I HAD NO REASON TO be eager for tea on the patio with Damon, but I dutifully went straight there. Before I rounded the privacy fence, his voice floated out to me as he conversed with my parents. He sounded confident and commanding with them, something I rarely heard from those in my dad’s presence, and his easy laughter flowed in rich, friendly waves. Its huskiness and evidence of good humor made my heart race and heat rush my flesh.

  For a few moments, I remained listening out of view. It was juvenile to eavesdrop, but I hoped I could get a feel from his words as to why he was there. There was nothing in their conversation that alarmed me. But the minutes listening to him were enough to make me wary of joining them. It felt as though Damon dominated the space around me and I couldn’t even see him.

  I took a deep breath, because not going out onto the patio and continuing to spy on Damon became ridiculous, and it was past time I stopped letting him intimidate me in my parents’ house. He was a hard man to read, but it started to feel as if Cody was right that my worry over Damon being there was excessively silly.

  After all, what was the worst Damon could unleash in my life? Let slip to my parents something about party lifestyle and that I bed hopped between two guys while away? Given all they’d been through with me the last eight years, I doubted that would even hit them as a jolt. Most probably, my mom would skip past the discovery as if she hadn’t heard it—her daughters’ sex lives weren’t a discussion Chrissie ever willingly engaged in—and instead lecture me about the dangers of my diet and alcohol consumption. The most my dad would want is to try to understand why I felt the need to keep some things private from them and how my relationships with Zane and Cade fitted in with the larger picture of me that my parents struggled with.

  Realizing that shrank the wrinkle of Damon Saxe to a manageable worry.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I CAME FROM BEHIND the fence and made sure to smile brightly as I stepped onto the patio...a smile that quickly felt like it turned to heavy stone at the sight of Damon rising to his feet.

  “Hello again, KK,” he murmured, the rich vibration of his voice shredding my hard-fought composure.

  I flushed with embarrassment, unable to find my words despite my parents being on the patio, and I damned Damon in my head for calling me KK after I’d asked him not to. It suggested a familiarity with each other and a friendship we didn’t have, and worse, he seemed committed to fostering that impression with my mom and dad.

  The air left my chest in a rush, followed by my thoughts spinning again. The vignette I stared at was such a bizarre blending of unlikely things that I was sure no woman could wing through it with her equanimity intact.

  Iced tea and my mother’s ordinary American snacks on the patio had turned into a formal English afternoon tea, with china and steaming pots, biscuits, and those dreadful little sandwiches my father liked. Dad’s attire had shifted from t-shirt-and-jean casual—he now wore an impeccable button-down shirt with slacks—though, to his credit, Damon had slummed down. His loose cashmere sweater
was gone, and covering what was undoubtedly a hard and delectable torso was a snug t-shirt he must have been wearing underneath.

  His more casual look did nothing to temper his effect on me. I could now see his biceps, muscled and cut, and the fabric of his shirt clung to a stomach with the smoothness of a hard slab. His hips were narrow, his legs strong, and his posture radiated power and complete ease being here with my parents.

  His attention was solely on me, without a pretense of being otherwise, and I in turn focused on the only thing normal in the setting by our pool: my mother. She sat across from the men, curled on a chaise in the sun, still in her white linen pantsuit and beach sandals—Chrissie California-blond beautiful nonetheless—with a Diet Coke in one hand and a plate of Oreo cookies on the table beside her. Like me, she wasn’t fond of a proper English tea, and even royalty joining her on the patio couldn’t get those cheap sandals off Mom’s feet.

  It was then I noted that my dad and Damon, who sat together at a table beneath a giant sun umbrella, hadn’t started their tea. Their cups were empty.

  “I’m sorry I’ve kept everyone waiting.”

  “Don’t be,” Damon said, smiling. “Your entrances are always so memorable.”

  Both my parents laughed, amused and lovingly.

  Startled, I blinked. “What are you talking about?”

  My mom’s face brightened. “Prince Damon was just entertaining us with how you two met, and then, as if by cue, you pop out of the shrubs, beautiful and you. You couldn’t have planned it better, Khloe.”

  How we met?

  Every nerve in my body felt a zap then tightened. The warm affection in my mother’s voice did little to stop the growing color on my cheeks. Worse, I could tell she liked Damon, something that rarely happened quickly for my mother, and was even a wee bit charmed by him.

  “I assure you it was neither memorable nor amusing, Mom,” I grumbled because nothing made me combative faster than people talking about me when I wasn’t there. It was a bane on my existence—the endless closed-door family discussions about Khloe—and my irritation came not just from Damon spinning tales about me but that as well.

  He charmingly furrowed his brows as if concerned by my reaction. “I hope you’re referring to popping from the shrubs and not our delightful first meeting. I’m sure I’ll remember it always.” He closed his fingers around the vacant seat beside his as an invitation for me to sit there.

  I admired how calm and cool he remained navigating what was a situation that must have been as tricky for him as me, since whatever he’d said before my arrival had left both my parents very overtly speculating about us. Instead of taking the chair he proffered, I crossed to where my mother was and lowered myself on the chaise beside her.

  Damon’s gaze moved with me and it was searing. I tried not to look at him and failed. As my gaze was pulled to meet his, his lips curved into a heart-stopping smile and I was quickly surrounded by that crackling electricity between us I’d felt in Paris.

  Fighting not to fidget in the hold of his eyes, I curled my leg underneath me in the manner my mother sat and grabbed an Oreo. “There’s not much of a story to how we met, Damon. I can’t imagine what you’ve been telling my parents or even why you’d remember it.”

  “Simple stories are the most amusing when they’re told well, baby girl,” my mom praised, settling her impish blue eyes on Damon. “I look forward to hearing more, Prince Damon. You’re much more forthcoming about Khloe’s adventures when she travels than she is.”

  I choked on my half-swallowed cookie. My entire history with Damon was a handful of minutes in a hotel suite, nothing more. I couldn’t comprehend why he’d gone to inventive lengths to make it sound more, though it was clear by my parents’ expressions that he had.

  I inhaled sharply. “We were in the same room less than two seconds, Mom. Nothing worth discussing over tea, no matter what version Damon conjured to amuse you guys with. He came to Paris to join up with Zane. They’re cousins, remember? We bumped into each other. The end. Must you make a big deal out of everything in my life, Mom, even this?”

  “Khloe,” my father chided, his sudden stillness while pouring tea warning me I’d pushed my rudeness too far. “I’m sorry, Damon. You’ll have to excuse my daughter. Traveling tends to exhaust her more than most.”

  Now my face burned.

  Damn it—Dad apologized for me and combined it with their unshakable tolerance of anything I said or did, and that brought to mind the inescapable reality of why my parents behaved this way.

  “Don’t make apologies for me, Dad. I’m the one who should apologize. I’ve been impolite and there’s no excuse for it. I’m sorry.”

  I cast a fast glance at Damon, then settled my pleading gaze on Chrissie. First in the kitchen and now on the patio: me snapping and Mom worrying with my dad joining the concerned-over-Khloe brigade. Not a great start to my being home for the next six months, all that entailed, and the farthest thing from what I wanted.

  My mom quickly covered my hand with hers, and I could feel her entire focus on me, protective, in that way that made me want to run off to Europe again despite how much I loved her.

  I set down my unfinished cookie and rose. “Why don’t you go on with your tea and visit? I think I’m going to excuse myself. You’re right, Dad. I’m tired from traveling. I need to sleep.” I was at the patio doors before I remembered my manners. I stopped and looked back. “It was nice seeing you again, Damon.”

  He stood across the patio facing me, his beautiful face impassive but his gaze sharp like a tiger’s. “The pleasure has been mine, Khloe.”

  I thanked him with my eyes for his gracious reply, hyperaware of him and teased by the thought of staying rather than fleeing. But the quickening of my blood in my veins whenever he was near signaled it was better to get away from Damon Saxe. I’d never been so thrown off balance, attracted to and intrigued by a man.

  “Goodbye, Damon,” I whispered, hastily stepping into the house.

  IN MY EN SUITE, I SAT on the edge of the sunken tub, holding my hand beneath the streaming water. It didn’t matter that I traveled by private jet; when I got home I still felt grubby. A long soak in a bath would cure that and the restlessness I was feeling.

  My cell lay on the vanity, dinging away, but I ignored it as I removed my clothes. It was most likely my siblings texting. Cia and Gretchen wouldn’t pop up in my world this soon after parting at the airport, and Cade wasn’t likely to contact me after having cut ties with me in Paris.

  The minutes on the patio proved it wasn’t safe for me to talk to anyone, not yet. My first day home was rockier than they usually were—thanks to Damon—and there was much about that man filling me with troubling thoughts and emotions.

  Sinking down into the fragrant bubbles, I leaned black, closed my eyes, and tried to figure out my odd reaction to him. I met handsome, charming, tempting men all the time, but never one who unsettled me the way Damon did. Perhaps it was because the attraction I felt for him was as powerful as it was unlikely. Beyond his physical resemblance to Zane, there was very little about him I considered my type.

  Though I was sure Cody didn’t think I had high standards in men, I did, my own strictly adhered to Khloe litmus test: I liked men who were emotionally easy to be around, the kind that made you feel good and not internally messy; dominant—yes, that was sexy, but it couldn’t feel overwhelming; guys who were complication free because I wanted to breathe and savor the pleasure of living.

  Anything short of a man satisfying every criterion led to the worst kind of disaster for me: men wanting more than I had to give and my heart invested more than it was kind for either of us for me to allow it to be.

  I used my toes to turn off the faucets, and felt warm streams burning down my cheeks. I brushed my tears from my face.

  Damn it, why was Damon stirring up all the crap inside me and making me cry? He was nothing to me and never would be. I didn’t want to think about the parts of me I couldn’t ch
ange, but for some reason his presence had cracked open the vault in my head, and out my disappointments rolled.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t dream about having wonderful things in my life; it was that dreams were pointless for me. I wanted to be in love as much as any girl—blindly, madly, passionately in love, in that get married and have lots of babies kind of way—but what we wanted and what we could have were often two different things. Dreams weren’t hopes for me; they were heartbreaks.

  And it wasn’t so bad, not really. Never letting myself dream or fall in love. Never letting myself know the kind of love my parents had. What was the phrase I heard too often? First do no harm. It was better to do as little harm to others as I could than hold on to selfish wants I could never have.

  Loving me was a one-way trip to pain and misery.

  Or a fast run in the other direction. To hearing a second time in my life, “I love you, Khloe, but I can’t do this.”

  Or seeing another man I love crying over me as I saw my father do held in my mother’s arms as I hid just out of sight from the kitchen.

  The emotion convulsing in my throat was a welcome ache. My thoughts would only take me where I didn’t want to go—one of my scary dark moments—and quickly I sank head deep in the water so my tears could not escape.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I WISH MOM WOULDN’T do that,” I groaned into the phone. “There’s no reason for you to come tomorrow to take me anywhere. I can get around by myself perfectly well.”

  My sister Krystal let out an exasperated hiss of air. “That’s not the point, Khloe, and you know it. Mom’s trying to help. She called me to take you tomorrow because she’s under the impression she’s already getting on your nerves.”

  The sharp wave of emotion made me tense. “Damn it, she isn’t. Getting on my nerves, I mean. It’s just hard to come home and have her suddenly helicopter over me. They both helicopter over me and I wish they’d stop.”