One-Click Buy: September Harlequin Presents

by Penny Jordan

  But the very fact that he was struggling at all meant the world. It meant her hope, her trust, had never been misplaced. Her instincts were right. He was different. He was worth the fight. And her spirit was not completely downtrodden yet.

  ‘Damien…’ she said, reaching out and laying a hand upon his chest. The moment her fingers curled into his cotton shirt his eyes darkened, his breaths grew deeper beneath her hand, and she knew she wasn’t ready for him to not be there. Would never be. ‘If you’d like to stay that would be okay with me.’

  He breathed deep through his nose. All neck-wringing thoughts seemed to have dried up as his gaze dropped to her mouth. ‘Never has a man heard happier words.’

  ‘I meant for dinner,’ she explained.

  His gaze travelled up her warming cheek and back to her eyes. ‘Are you sure?’

  Sure? Sure that she wanted him back, even though he’d not once told her he loved her, or could promise her more than he already had? She’d never been less sure in her life. But she was willing to take the chance that he cared enough he might yet one day grow to love her.

  She swallowed the lump in her throat. This was it. Time to test her newly unfettered heart. ‘I’m highly protective of my family. I’ve never invited a man to eat dinner with them before.’

  His left eyebrow rose. ‘Yet you chose me. A fully fledged suit-and-tie conman?’

  She nodded. ‘And if you don’t behave there are plenty of places out here in which to hide a dead body.’

  And for the first time since he’d arrived, he laughed. The beautiful sound raced through her veins.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ Damien said, leaning in against her flattened hand until her elbow brushed against the tree and their noses were mere inches apart.

  ‘Will you stay?’ she asked.

  ‘I did come all this way,’ he murmured.

  ‘Stalker,’ she said, biting back a smile.

  ‘Cynic,’ he shot back before closing the gap between them and kissing her with such heat she clenched a fist into his shirt.

  His tongue swooped into her mouth and took her breath away with such intensity she truly believed he’d wanted to kiss her from the second he got out of the car.

  He pulled back and whispered against her swollen lips, ‘I knew I missed you for a good reason.’

  ‘If that’s the only reason, then I warn you I consider that already misbehaving.’

  ‘If I get my way we’ll both be misbehaving a hell of a lot more before this night is done.’ He leaned in and kissed her again, with even less restraint than he had before.

  And she let herself do the same. She let go. Completely. Allowing her love for him to overflow, to tell him just how much she missed him through her actions rather than her words.

  He pulled away far too soon. ‘I can smell dinner.’

  ‘She’s a bad cook. It can wait.’

  He smiled. ‘The sooner we eat, the sooner we can think about moving onto after-dinner pursuits.’ He let her go, easily as you please, and walked past her headed back to the house.

  She hugged her arms about herself, amazed anew that he had come. That he was staying. And that she was letting him. But the absolute truth was he wasn’t the same man she’d left the night before. There was still something different about him. Some kind of calm resolution she couldn’t put her finger on.

  She wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad thing, just that somehow, after today, things were never going to be the same again.

  Her heart ached to know if this weekend would be a bitter-sweet end to the greatest week of her life. If he might stay with her a month. Two. Or if the whole dream really was there for the taking.

  He turned to walk backwards, away from her. ‘Coming?’

  She pushed away from the tree and followed.

  ‘Still want to know what I’d write on your T-shirt?’ he asked as she approached.

  She nodded.

  ‘You’d need enough cotton to go to the moon and back to fit upon it all the things I think make you you.’

  And with that he jogged up the weedy back steps and into the house.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHELSEA followed Damien into the cottage on shaky legs to find the place in uproar. Kensey stood over Slimer with a tipped-over cake-mix pan while Slimer sat on his rug trying to lick the delicious mixed ingredients off his fur.

  ‘Chelsea, thank God,’ Kensey said. ‘Can you do the honours while I whip up another batch? Lucy, stop crying, honey. There will be birthday cake.’

  Chelsea kept on walking into the laundry where she found the Slimer pack: a bucket, soap, a pair of clippers, and a hard bristled brush.

  ‘Slimer, outside,’ she called out and turned to run smack bang into a hard wall of Damien.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

  She glanced at his beautiful suit with the paw-print stains already baked on. Then thought that if she left him inside how quickly the kids would smell fresh blood and climb all over him and what else Kensey would let on if she wasn’t there to stop her.

  ‘Are you sure? It’s getting cold out and I can do it by myself.’

  ‘Not gonna happen,’ he said, shucking off his jacket and laying it casually atop the dryer.

  Her certainty there had been some kind of change in him intensified until it actually gave her goose-bumps. ‘I class being bossy as misbehaving.’

  ‘Well, that’s just tough. The way I see it I’m going to need a firm hand if we are going to have any kind of chance at turning this crazy attraction into what it seems determined to become. So get over yourself and let me be there for you.’

  He reached out and took a hold of the handle of the bucket, his thumb brushing against hers, sending sparks of electricity from her hand to his.

  ‘What this seems determined to become?’ she repeated, fixated on the words rather than the dark, dangerous look in his eye.

  His voice dropped as he said, ‘I have no intention of having that conversation in a place that smells like wet dog and detergent.’

  She wasn’t letting him off the hook that easy. ‘If you want anything to do with me, Slick, you’re going to have to get used to the smell.’

  He rolled his eyes to the heavens. ‘Hell, Chelsea, I wouldn’t want to do it surrounded by computer terminals and screaming, overworked day traders either.’

  It? What it?

  ‘Fine,’ she said, letting go and sliding past him, through the kitchen and outside to the grassy area at the side of the cottage. ‘Slimer! Here!’

  Slimer came bounding outside, as usual too thick to realise what the hose in her hand meant until she had him chained to the clothesline.

  Damien followed in his wake, dark and broad and beautiful in his designer threads with muddy dog prints on his chest, dead leaves attached to the bottoms of his shoes, and a crazed old bucket in his hand. He still looked out of place, but beautifully so.

  She turned on the hose and he kept on coming. Let him get his perfect clothes all wet and muddy. Then he’d really see how literally messy her life was.

  ‘Come here, boy,’ she called out. Slimer came to her, she held out the hose and at the last second he darted away. She instinctively tipped the hose in the opposite direction to herd him back where she wanted him.

  The shout that came from Damien’s direction swung her gaze his way to find him standing with his feet shoulder-width apart, his face dripping with water, a neat spray covering his shirt and the bottom of his trousers soaked. He looked so shocked, she had to bite her lips to stop from laughing.

  He looked up at her, his eyes blazing. ‘You did that on purpose.’

  ‘Did not.’

  He took a gigantic step towards her and she squealed. She held the hose in front of herself as a shield.

  He shook the droplets from his hair which left it spiky and left him looking like something out of a magazine photo spread. With his dark eyes, stormy expression and clothes clinging wetly to him he was unbelievably hot.

 
‘Don’t you dare tell me you’re turned on right now,’ he demanded, and her eyes shot from the fabric stretching across his thighs to his face and her cheeks turned a degree warmer.

  But his eyes were now dancing. Bright and beautiful and laughing.

  She cocked her hip and let the water tilt away from him. ‘And what if I am? Watcha gonna do about it?’

  He took another step her way and she baulked. The hint of a smile quickly turned into a devilish grin. Then he moved with such speed she brought the hose between them only to have his hand clasp down on hers. The water shot skyward, showering them both in a thick spray of water.

  Slimer barked and frolicked and generally loved the fact that anyone else was getting wet bar him.

  Chelsea screamed, and tried to kick Damien in the shin but he was too quick. He turned the hose on her full blast, her hair flew back from her face and her white long-sleeved T-shirt soon became sodden.

  When the water spray disappeared, she spat out a clump of hair and opened her eyes to find Damien standing before her staring hard at her breasts. She looked down to find her T-shirt and beige bra had become completely see-through. Her cold nipples stood out hard and dark through the thin fabric.

  He dragged his gaze to her face, and her breath caught in her lungs at the level of desire surging behind his eyes.

  Love me, she thought with such desperation he must have heard. Instead she said, ‘Don’t even think about it. There are kids just inside the house.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, his voice a deep growl. ‘But if there weren’t, I want you to know that your dry-cleaner would be trying to get grass stains from your clothes come Monday.’

  ‘I don’t have a dry-cleaner. Like most regular people I wash my own clothes.’

  His mouth tilted into a smile. ‘You’re frozen solid, drenched to the bone, without a weapon, and breathing so hard you look like you are about to pass out from it, yet you still manage to dredge up a way to keep me from getting too big for my boots. I love you.’

  His words hung on the air like snowflakes. Delicate, ethereal and in danger of melting away lest she pay close attention. Chelsea licked her suddenly dry lips. ‘Did you just say—’

  ‘I did,’ Damien said, his own breaths suddenly coming harder. He reached over and turned off the hose at the tap and the world turned silent. Even Slimer chose that moment to have a little lie-down.

  Damien let the hose slump at his feet and walked over to where Chelsea stood shivering, much less from the cold than from the events consuming her.

  He reached out and ran his hands up and down her arms, warming her, inside and out. And then he closed the gap completely and drew her to him and kissed her. Softly, fully, deeply and full of the feelings he had just admitted.

  When he pulled away and looked down into her eyes Chelsea wasn’t shaking any more. She wasn’t scared, she wasn’t unsure, she wasn’t even the least bit overwhelmed. She loved him and he…he was real, after all.

  ‘Since I drove away from you last night,’ he said, his voice low and intimate and true, ‘I have been miserable. Wretched even. But hitting that low was what I needed to realise that you are my high. I drove here planning on whisking you away somewhere beautiful, and most of all somewhere private in order to convince you of what I feel for you.’

  ‘Here’s fine,’ she said, her voice breathless.

  He smiled, crinkles fanning out from the edges of his stunning eyes. ‘So it is. Now for this moment to at least end the way I planned for it to end I need you to look me in the eye and know, to the bottom of your heart, that I have gone right ahead and fallen madly in love with you.’

  Chelsea did as she was told. She looked into his Pacific-blue eyes, and saw the truth. The whole truth. That was the difference she saw in him. He not only loved her, but he was ready to love her and to keep on loving her.

  ‘I’m in love with you too,’ she blurted, the words spilling from her like a rainbow splashed across a rain-cleansed sky. ‘From the moment I met you you made me feel like for the first time in my life I could dream as big as I wished. You may own a suit or two, and you may be a touch arrogant, but that’s only scratching the surface. You’re good and kind and generous and fun and playful and you’re hot. Have I even told you how beautiful I think you are? And tall. I lo-o-ove that you’re really tall. And when you kiss me…’

  Her next words were lost within the warmth of his lips. Thank God, she thought, because once she’d opened the flood gates she felt as if she could go on and on for ever telling him how alive he made her feel.

  He slid the wet cotton of her T-shirt upwards until his warm hand made direct contact with her waist and before she knew it his thumbs were running along the undersides of her breasts.

  ‘Hey, guys, is Slimer done?’ Kensey came round the side of the house and Chelsea hid behind Damien and tugged her shirt back into place.

  Kensey placed a hand on her hip and glared at them, though Chelsea caught the delighted twinkle in her eye. ‘My dog is now covered in cake mix and is muddy and wet. And you lot look just as bad. Can I not leave any of you alone for just one second?’

  ‘We’ll wash him now,’ Damien said. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Mmm. You’d better. Though if you turn out to be a bad influence on my little sister, Damien Halliburton, I may just kiss you myself.’ Kensey winked, turned tail and left.

  ‘She means it,’ Chelsea warned.

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’

  Damien grabbed the hose, Chelsea the brush and they had Slimer clean in five minutes flat. She rubbed him down with a towel and sent him running in the direction of the house.

  ‘I’m getting the feeling,’ he said, wiping his hands down the only dry patches of his trousers, ‘the events of this past week, the loss of my phone, the stalker claims, the animal-print-underwear fiasco, the food poisoning, aren’t actually anything unusual for those in the London family. This is what life with you is really going to be like from now on, isn’t it?’

  When she looked back over her shoulder and realised just how wet Damien was, wet and still beautiful, while she must have looked like a drowned rat, Chelsea burst into laughter.

  She padded up to him and threw herself into his arms, snuggling up to him, sliding her cold hands beneath his clothes and up his warm back. ‘If I admit it is are you going to leave and never come back?’

  He nibbled at the soft skin below her ear. ‘No. I’m thinking I could get very used to your life. So much so, in fact, it would mean less nights on Caleb’s couch and more at your apartment, I’m afraid.’

  She shrugged, her breasts rubbing deliciously against his front. ‘We’ve proven my bed’s big enough for the two of us. And I loved how you looked in my kitchen. And my shower. And on my couch. I could get very used to that too. Move in with me.’

  He looked down into her eyes, searching, hoping, dreaming as big as she’d ever seen any man dream as the idea of moving in with her obviously sat well on his shoulders.

  A light sprinkle of autumn rain fluttered against her eyelids. She blinked them away and held her man tighter still. Her man. The man of her dreams. Whatever she’d done to deserve this, to deserve him, she was planning on doing it a whole lot more.

  ‘It would be my pleasure,’ he said. ‘Though I do have some things in storage I’d like to bring over to make me feel more at home. A couch and some bookshelves and a desk and some appliances I’ll need if we are going to eat anything more nutritious than leftovers.’

  ‘I like leftovers,’ she said as she nipped at his neck.

  ‘I hate chintz,’ he warned as he angled his chin to give her better access.

  ‘I hate dark leather and stainless steel.’

  ‘Of course you do. But I washed a dog today.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘So next week you come to a bar with me.’

  It wasn’t a question. Chelsea sank further against him. ‘I’ll come. I’ll even play tennis with your parents. But I won’t drink Martinis. I prefer
Harvey Wallbangers with my sporting endeavours.’

  ‘You can play tennis?’

  ‘Surprised?’

  Damien grinned down at her as he slid his right thigh gently between hers. ‘Infinitely.’

  Chelsea’s phone buzzed in her back pocket.

  ‘Leave it,’ he said.

  ‘Can’t. Might be important. Life-changing even.’

  She flipped open to find a message from Kensey:

  CHELSEA! DAMIEN! DINNER!

  ‘We have to go in now or we’ll be in big trouble,’ she said, sliding her phone back away.

  Damien growled as he disentangled himself from her. ‘Will I never get past second base with you again?’

  ‘Tonight,’ she promised.

  ‘So I’m staying after dinner now, am I?’

  ‘If you don’t mind sharing a room with me, which is on a different floor from the bathroom, has creaky floorboards and a lumpy double bed.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘What if I guarantee you a home run? Or two if you’re very nice to me.’

  ‘That’s the best you can offer?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said on a sigh. ‘I can guarantee the same the next day and the next. If that’s what it will take to get you inside now before Kensey blows her lid.’

  ‘Minx,’ he said, rubbing her nose with his.

  ‘Hunka Hunka,’ she said, kissing him hard, and long, and slow before ducking under his arm and running towards the house.

  He caught her in about three steps, grabbed her around the waist and threw her over his shoulder. She kicked but soon dissolved into raucous laughter. ‘So this is what life with a Halliburton is going to be like,’ she managed to say between giggles.

  ‘Sweetheart, you have no idea what you’re in for.’

  And while a week ago the thought of having no idea what the days ahead might bring would have frightened her silly, she let herself droop until she could slide her hands into the back pockets of his jeans and she hung on tight. And grinned. From ear to ear. Because she knew the most important thing—he’d be there with her.