by Fiona Brand
His tactics in forcing Zara to work for him had been blunt and crude, but the situation was nonnegotiable. He was a father and that changed everything. He didn’t just want to be a weekend visitor; he wanted Rosie in his life.
And, against all the odds, that was the way he was beginning to think about Zara too.
The lights changed. He accelerated into the inner city and took the ramp down into the parking garage beneath the gleaming office block that contained his offices and a penthouse apartment.
Damon held the private elevator for Walter, who had driven in directly behind him.
Walter grunted his thanks. As the elevator shot upward, Walter stared blandly at the floor numbers as they flashed. “What are you going to do about the baby?”
With a sense of resignation, Damon met Walter’s gaze. He tried to tell himself that if his head of security couldn’t find out that kind of information he would have been disappointed. “You’ve spoken to Ben.”
“First thing when he landed. He’s worried about you.”
The elevator doors glided open. Damon checked his watch as he stepped into the foyer of Magnum Security. By his calculation, Ben and Emily would have landed a couple of hours ago, right about when Damon had been walking the streets, looking for Zara’s office.
Walter waited until they were in the privacy of his office before he fired his next question. “Don’t tell me you’re going to marry her.”
Damon shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the hook behind the door. “With a child in the mix, maybe it’s the logical solution.”
Walter gave him the kind of polite stare that said he wasn’t buying that for an instant. “There are other solutions.”
Damon had thought of them all. He could simply arrange access, offer financial assistance and step out of the picture, job done.
The problem was, he thought broodingly, that Zara had kissed him. And it hadn’t been just a kiss. There had been a fierceness to it that had riveted him.
“The baby changes things.”
Walter frowned. “I don’t see why you would even consider marriage. Zara’s not exactly your usual type.”
Damon’s brows jerked together. “My usual type?”
Walter looked uncomfortable. “Classy, thin, blonde—”
“Instead of brunette, curvy, in charge.” Despite the raft of problems involved with even attempting to have a relationship with Zara, Damon found himself grinning. “Favorite word, no.”
There was a heavy silence. “So there’s nothing I can say?”
“Relax, I’m not proposing a normal marriage.” With its inherent emotional instability. “I’m talking about a marriage of convenience.”
Walter’s expression turned dour. “Seems to me I’ve heard those words before.”
Right before Damon had married Lily. And there was his dilemma.
If a marriage of convenience hadn’t worked with someone as sweet and straightforward as Lily, he was going to have his work cut out convincing a complicated career woman like Zara that it was the ideal solution.
On the plus side, he thought grimly, there would be no issues about whether or not to have children, because there was already a baby. Then there was the sex.
The thought of having Zara back in his bed made every muscle in his body lock up. He was abruptly aware of just how sexy and gorgeous Zara was, and that he had left her alone for over a year. In that time, he had to assume the only reason she hadn’t gotten involved with another man had been because she was pregnant, then dealing with a new baby.
Damon stared out his window, barely noticing the bustling marina below or the grey, scudding clouds. He felt like a sleeper waking up. Just over a year ago, he had convinced himself he needed to walk away from Zara, but in doing so he had left her alone and available. Now he was acutely aware that if he didn’t lay claim to Zara ASAP, it was only a matter of time before some other man did.
And that was happening over his dead body.
* * *
Zara opened the door of her tiny rented house in Mount Eden, which had become her haven in the last few months, and carried Rosie, who was sleeping peacefully after the car ride, through to her room. Frowning a little at the damp chill of the house, Zara laid Rosie down in her cot and tucked a warm quilt around her before turning on the wall heater and tiptoeing out.
She walked back out to the garage, shivering in the chill of the evening as she retrieved her handbag from the car. Hooking the strap over one shoulder, she hefted the bulging baby bag, which was now mostly filled with dirty things that needed laundering and bottles that needed to be washed out. Locking the car, she walked back into the house, awkwardly flicking on lights as she went.
The comforting scent of the chicken casserole she had put into the slow cooker that morning made her mouth water and her stomach rumble. After Damon’s disruptive visit, she’d been too unsettled to eat more than a few bites of the sandwich she had packed. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized just how hungry she was.
With a sigh of relief, she dropped the bags onto a couch. As she straightened, she caught a disorienting flash of her reflection in the mirror over an antique drinks cabinet that had once belonged to her aunt. Apart from her hair wisping around her face and the color in her cheeks, she didn’t look a lot different from that morning. The problem was she felt different, off balance and distinctly unsettled, as if a low-grade electric current was shimmering through her veins, making her heart beat faster and putting her subtly on edge.
And she knew exactly why that was. In the space of a few hours, everything had changed. Emily had run off with Ben; Damon had discovered Rosie; Zara was back working for Damon; that darned reporter had found her...and Zara had kissed Damon.
A sharp pang of awareness zapped through her at the memory of the heated, out-of-control kiss. She had tried to convince herself that it had been an experiment, that in kissing Damon she could somehow exorcise the craziness of their past attraction and put him firmly in his place: in the past. But the truth was, aside from acknowledging her own unwilling attraction to Damon, she had been blindsided by the fierceness of her own need and utterly seduced by the fact that he still wanted her.
Frowning at her instant and unwanted reaction just to the memory, Zara turned on the heater in the sitting room, then walked through to the kitchen. She lifted the lid on the slow cooker. The rich fragrance of the chicken filled her tiny kitchen. She switched the cooker off so that by the time she was ready to eat, the food would have cooled a little. She put water in the kettle, and when it boiled and the tea was made, she wrapped her fingers around the mug and sipped, enjoying the comfort and the warmth and the automatic cue to wind down and relax.
Her cell chimed. She carried the tea out to the sitting room, set it down on the coffee table and fished her phone out of her bag. She picked up the call, then stiffened as she registered an unfamiliar number.
The low timbre of Damon’s voice made her clench her stomach.
“How did you get this number?”
“I needed to access some of Emily’s email correspondence. I found your number listed in her contacts.”
Zara’s stomach sank. She should have seen this coming. Since Emily had actually resigned, of course Damon would have to retrieve correspondence and files from her computer, along with contact information.
“I’m sending a car for you and Rosie in the morning—”
“I don’t need you to send a car. I have a car.”
“That’s hardly practical since you’ll have to find parking and carry Rosie and all of her baby gear through the streets.”
Zara stiffened. The fact that Damon now had a legitimate stake in Rosie’s life was suddenly real and she couldn’t help feeling a certain resistance to the idea. “It’s not a problem—I can put Rosie in a front pack. She’s light, and the bag isn’t much heavier than—”
“This is purely a practical solution, designed to make things easier for you.”
She tensed at the low, curt timbre of his voice. When she had first gone to work for Damon, before she had known exactly who he was, he had made a lot of things easier and much more enjoyable for her. Gorgeous working lunches, a car and driver for office errands or when she’d had to work late. There had even been a clothing allowance, which, of course, she had not spent on clothes but had put aside for a deposit on a house. And the problem was, that generosity hadn’t been just for her. He had been generous to everyone, no matter their position in the firm. Working for Damon, and falling for him, had been heaven—until she had discovered he was Tyler McCall’s nephew.
Zara forced herself to loosen her grip on the phone. She could not allow herself to dwell on the past or become emotional about things she could not change. It had been a stressful day; tomorrow would be even worse.
All she knew was that she had to lay down some ground rules, fast. She could not afford to be seduced by Damon’s openhanded generosity. Especially since, once he knew who she was, he would regret ever employing her. He would regret sleeping with her.
“Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t need you, or anyone, to make things easier for me.”
There was a small silence. “I thought you wanted to keep Rosie under wraps. If you park somewhere in town and walk to the building, that won’t be possible.”
Her stomach sank. “I hadn’t thought about that.” She stared bleakly into space and tried to think. She hated to admit it, but Damon was right. Entering Damon’s office building lugging a baby bag and carrying Rosie was too big a risk. “Okay.”
There was a brief silence. “The car will be outside your house at eight thirty.”
“I suppose you also know where I live?”
“Don’t make it sound creepy. Emily didn’t have that information, but there was mail on the desk in the interview room where Rosie was sleeping. Since the street address was different to your agency address, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that was where you lived.”
Her fingers tightened on the phone. In the panic of Damon discovering Rosie, she had completely forgotten that she had left some personal mail on the desk. At the time it had seemed an innocuous thing to do, because she hadn’t imagined anyone but herself entering that particular interview room. And, somehow, over the past year she had forgotten what Damon had done for a living, that beneath the designer suit and white linen shirt were the kinds of scars that did not come from a tame city existence. That, as effective as he was in the boardroom, he had another far more formidable skill set.
A feminine voice, somewhere in the background, shattered the last illusory remnants of intimacy. Damon coolly requested that Zara give him a minute.
Zara knew she shouldn’t continue to listen, that she should allow Damon a measure of privacy, but she couldn’t help straining to pick up snatches of the muffled conversation and the name Caroline.
Zara jerked the phone from her ear. That would be Damon’s beautiful, wealthy, current girlfriend.
The kind of woman who moved in Damon’s circles and who the tabloids and magazines and social media forums uniformly pronounced had the perfect profile to be the next Mrs. Smith.
Zara’s cheeks burned with a sudden bone-deep embarrassment as she remembered the way she had kissed Damon that morning. She had completely forgotten that he was dating Caroline.
Out of nowhere, gloom settled over her, which was annoying. She should be happy that Damon had moved on so quickly. It put the fling they had shared in perspective.
Suddenly done with the conversation and just a little panicked by her own response to Damon, she terminated the call. Her behavior was abrupt and rude, cutting Damon off midspeech, but she didn’t care. Setting the phone down on the coffee table, Zara paced to the window and stared out at the cold, rain-spattered night. She felt horribly off balance, one minute vibrating with anger at Damon, the next with anger at herself for responding to him. The loss of control was worrying. She couldn’t help thinking that the last time she’d lost control of her emotions, she had gotten pregnant.
Her stomach churned hollowly, reminding her that she still hadn’t eaten, which was probably why she felt so emotional and vulnerable. She was suffering from a blood sugar low.
Walking to the kitchen, she ladled some of the casserole into a bowl, grabbed a fork, returned to the sitting room and curled up on the sofa. After saying grace, she turned on her small TV and ate the chicken. Despite her hunger, she barely tasted it. She even had trouble concentrating on her favorite show, which was all about couples buying their dream homes. It had an irresistible appeal for Zara, because ever since she and Petra had lost their pretty villa on Medinos, she’d longed for a home, something that wasn’t possible with Petra’s jet-setting lifestyle.
For most of the year, she had been away at boarding school. During vacations, Petra would fly Zara to some exotic location, often someone else’s house, or a holiday villa Petra had rented for the summer.
Very occasionally, Zara had stayed with her aunt Phoebe, which she had actually adored because Phoebe’s house had become the closest thing she’d had to a home. She had loved the “sameness” of Phoebe’s old Victorian villa, even if it had involved heavy furniture and walls of dusty books. She had loved having the same room every time, and the same narrow single bed with the squeaky spring. Even the scents of the garden and the fragrant meadow beyond had somehow spelled home.
The show came to an end. Still tense and unsettled, Zara switched the TV off and sat for long minutes just enjoying the sound of rain pattering on the roof and the cozy ticking of the heater. Sounds that should have relaxed her, but which barely registered. Because beneath the anger and the nervy tension was a thread of awareness, a feminine response to Damon, that shouldn’t have been there.
Thoroughly annoyed with herself, she carried her bowl and fork back to the kitchen and rinsed them. If she was going to get through these next few weeks, she needed to get her head straight. It was a chance to sort out the future in a way that was acceptable to them both. A chance to earn money that would help her achieve the dream of her own home. A chance to afford the trip to Medinos to retrieve her mother’s safe-deposit box.
Zara stopped, a damp tea towel in her hand, as the possibility of a future with some measure of financial security opened up. She did not want to be all about money, but with Rosie in the picture, she had to be.
The safe-deposit box could change everything for her and Rosie.
Zara had discovered that there was a safe-deposit box when her cousin Lena had given her a packet of letters that had been stored in Aunt Phoebe’s house. Phoebe had died several months ago, but it hadn’t been until recently that Lena, who lived in Australia, had been able to clean out the house and put it up for sale. When she’d cleaned out her mother’s desk, she’d found the letters Zara’s mother had sent to Phoebe over the years.
One evening, a couple of weeks ago, Zara had finally read through them. The hairs at the back of her neck had stood on end when she had read the final letter her mother had written, which mentioned that she had decided to get a safe-deposit box after a string of burglaries near the apartment she had rented. When Phoebe received the letter, she had been hospitalized, so, understandably, she had never mentioned the possibility to Zara.
After learning of the box, Zara had searched through her mother’s effects, which she had stored in her spare room. She had finally found a small tagged key with the address of her mother’s bank on Medinos.
Her knees wobbly, Zara had sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the key, a tingle electrifying her spine. Petra had always said she would look after Zara, that she had an investment plan. Zara had taken that to mean that her mother had invested with some financial institution or had deposits at her bank, but nothing of the sort had ever come to light.
Petra had, at times, made a great deal of money and she had also possessed some expensive pieces of jewelry that had vanished. Petra could have sold the jewelry to supplement her income as her career tailed off. However, a safe-deposit box suggested otherwise.
With any luck, there might be items of sufficient value to put a deposit down on a house. It was also possible that Zara’s Atrides grandmother’s jewelry, which had been missing from Petra’s personal things, might also be in the box.
Zara did not know if the Atrides jewelry was valuable or not. The important thing was that pieces had been handed down the family line. They were her last tangible link to her father’s family, aside from the name itself and a defunct title, both of which she did not use.
The safe-deposit box could be an Aladdin’s cave of jewelry that would restore her grandmother’s pieces to her, with the addition of enough soulless diamonds to fund a house. Then again, it could contain a disappointing array of trinkets that would not cover the cost of the airfare.
When she completed this temping job with Damon, she would finally be in a position to find out.
She finished drying the dishes, then divided up the remaining casserole, which was enough to make several meals, into containers. Once they were labeled and dated, she stacked them in her small freezer, then moved on to sorting through Rosie’s bag, disposing of rubbish and putting soiled things into the laundry. Zara finished by washing Rosie’s bottles and repacking the bag with formula, fresh diapers and the one hundred other things a baby seemed to need.
Feeling much calmer and more in control, Zara quickly showered and changed into leggings and a soft T-shirt. Shivering at the chill in her bedroom, she also pulled on a thick sweater.
Combing her hair out and leaving it to dry naturally, she padded back to the kitchen. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window over the bench. Not for the first time she was confronted by the fact that, with her dark hair and curvy figure, she was starkly different from the elegant blondes Damon seemed attracted to.