All He Wants For Christmas...: Flirting With Intent / Blame it on the Bikini / Restless

CHAPTER SIX

THE aftermath of love-making wasn’t always easy, conceded Damon. There could be awkwardness and boundaries to re-establish. Control to find. Leave to be taken, provided clothes could be found. So far, Damon had managed to find his clothes. Ruby hadn’t even managed that, but then, she didn’t have family waiting and wondering where the hell she was.

‘What time is it?’ she said.

‘Four.’

‘That late?’ She sat up abruptly, every inch the dishevelled wanton, and the corners of Damon’s mouth kicked in response.

‘I’m taking that as a compliment.’

‘And so you should.’ Ruby slipped from the bed and found her dress, no awkwardness in her whatsoever and it helped ease his. ‘Your powers of distraction are truly—’

Ruby laid a hand over her heart ‘—truly stupendous.’

Damon smiled at her words and turned away and headed for the en-suite. There’d been a hell of a lot more than distraction going on here this afternoon, but if Ruby wasn’t inclined to point it out then he certainly wasn’t going to. Ruby—it seemed—had bypassed awkwardness and moved straight to the setting of boundaries. Which was fine by him.

No promises and no regrets. They could do this. And then Ruby came into the bathroom with her dress on and leaned back against the bench as he splashed his face with water and took the hand towel she offered him.

‘I need to get going soon,’ he said, and wondered at his sudden reluctance to move.

‘Want a lift?’ And when he studied the towel instead of answering, ‘I can drop you at the door?’ He moved away from the basin and Ruby took his place, took one look in the mirror and gasped and then grabbed for her hairbrush. ‘Boy, am I dropping you at the door.’

‘You look fine.’ He took the brush from her and stepped in behind her, setting brush to hair. His gaze met Ruby’s in the mirror and it hit him like a train that he wanted this picture in his life. Wanted it with an intensity he usually reserved for his work. ‘And you’re welcome to come in.’

‘No. Thank you, but no. If you’re planning on attending your father’s Boxing Day luncheon I’ll see you tomorrow. If you’re not …’

‘I’ll be there,’ he murmured and handed her back her brush. ‘I’ll be at my father’s until the thirtieth.’

‘More information?’ she purred. ‘Why, Damon. You spoil me.’

‘No, I don’t.’ But he wanted to.

‘Anyway …’ she said with a shrug that reminded him of the shrugs of his youth. The ones designed to make people think he wasn’t hurting. ‘Time to get you home.’

She drove him to his father’s door. And then she smiled and blew him a kiss and drove away.

Russell West’s inaugural Boxing Day luncheon had been Ruby’s idea. An informal drop-in for business associates and friends, it started at midday and would go on until late as guests cycled through, staying for as long or as short a time as they wanted. The caterers were the best in the business and came complete with service manager and wait staff, which left Ruby very little to do but stay out of the way unless issues arose.

Instigator she might have been but host she was not. She left that to Russell and his family and could not fault any of them. Both Poppy and Lena were wearing the clothes she’d chosen for them. Both looked stunning—even if she did say so herself.

Ruby wore a simple ivory skirt and jacket with a violet camisole beneath. No lace. No frou-frou at all except for a tiny crystal-embedded hair clip to hold her hair up and out of her face. Her father’s reputation preceded her these days, but she did her best to be unobtrusive in this type of company so that her presence would not reflect poorly on Russell.

No need for people to know how Russell had come by his recent social savvy. All they needed to know was that a new social circle had opened up and that it glowed with opportunity when it came to matching investors with developers, visionaries with the more practically minded, movers and shakers with those who could oil their way.

Damn right no one paid her any attention—everyone was too busy doing what they did best.

Ruby allowed herself a tiny smile. At least two major business deals would get stitched up here today. Maybe three. Not bad for a former corporate lawyer turned social PA.

‘Ruby? Is that you?’

Ruby looked up at the sound of her name, her smile turning genuine as she recognised the speaker. ‘Juliet! How are you? It’s been too long. And you are still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I want your secret.’

‘Flatterer,’ said the other woman warmly as they exchanged kisses. ‘Your father taught you well.’

‘So true.’ Ruby stood back and caught the other woman’s hand. ‘I heard you’d remarried. Renauld Lang, yes?’

‘Yes.’ Juliet’s face softened. ‘He’s a good man, Ruby. A kind man. I got lucky.’

‘You deserved to,’ murmured Ruby gently. Juliet had been Ruby’s father’s lover once and had made the fatal mistake of getting serious about him, and befriending Ruby, and trying, bless Juliet’s gentle heart, to make a place for herself in Harry Maguire’s life.

It hadn’t ended well.

‘I know what they’re saying about your father, Ruby,’ said Juliet gently. ‘And for what it’s worth I don’t believe a word of it. Harry was restless, and ruthless, and frustratingly enigmatic more often than not. But he wasn’t a thief and he would never have walked away from you. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Sometimes I know it,’ said Ruby with a wry smile. ‘It means a lot to hear you say it.’

‘Any time,’ said the other woman gently.

‘Ladies,’ said a deeply delicious voice with just the right amount of wickedness in it. ‘I’m doing the rounds on behalf of my father. May I interest either of you in a drink?’

Ruby looked up and her smile grew even wryer as she took in the elegance that was Damon all suited up and primed to behave. ‘Juliet Lang, Damon West,’ said Ruby. ‘Juliet and I are old acquaintances. Damon and I are new acquaintances. Juliet, will you have a champagne?’

‘Of course,’ said the older woman.

‘What about you, Ruby?’ asked Damon.

‘Thanks, but no. I’m working. I have a glass of water around here somewhere.’

Damon nodded and moved away and Ruby watched him go. She’d been trying not to watch him for the best part of the afternoon. The way he mingled easily and endured his father’s pride in him with wry good humour.

The way he drew daughters, wives and grandmothers to him like locusts to a plague.

Charmer, no question.

Be whatever someone wanted him to be.

‘Impressive,’ murmured Juliet.

‘Very. But strictly short term.’

‘Heartbreaker,’ said Juliet warningly.

‘Only if you let him be.’

Ruby smiled and found her glass, caught his gaze and sent him a silent and appreciative toast.

‘Don’t bait the man, Ruby. Didn’t your father ever tell you not to play with fire?’

‘He did,’ said Ruby. ‘But it’s so much fun.’

She laughed with Juliet for a while and met her lovely husband, and then it was time to slip away and do the rounds of the powder rooms to make sure they were tidy and well stocked. Three bathrooms available to guests. Two off the atrium and living areas and another at the end of the hallway, past the guest bedrooms.

Ruby’s shoes clickety-clacked as she made her way back down the hallway towards the mingling throng of powerful people, and then her shoes stopped their noise-making midstride as a strong arm snaked out from a bedroom doorway and drew her inside onto carpeted floor. The bedroom door closed firmly behind her, and then Damon backed her against it and set his hands either side of her head and his lips to the curve of her neck.

‘Damon, I’m working,’ she whispered, even as her hands went to his waist and she tilted her head to allow him better access. ‘What are we? Twelve?’

‘I prefer to think of it as innovative,’ he murmured silkily and then set his hungry mouth to hers, at which point all talking ceased for quite a while. More kisses followed. Delicate open-mouthed explorations that fed desire. Deep and drugging declarations of desire gone mad. Whatever this was, Ruby could no longer control it, and as for Damon …

‘God, Ruby.’

He seemed bent on encouraging the insanity.

And then the doorknob turned and the door at her back began to open and Damon slammed it shut with the palm of his hand. Ruby stilled and stared at Damon, the fear of discovery heady when mixed with desire.

Who? she mouthed silently and Damon just shook his head and raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t open the door and for that she was truly grateful.

The doorknob turned again and this time Damon frowned. ‘Who is it?’ he said.

‘Lena.’

Damon grimaced, and his gaze cut from Ruby’s face to the en-suite doorway.

Silently, Ruby ducked beneath his arm and made her way to the en-suite and carefully shut the door behind her. Damon’s cue now, to open the door to Lena and guide her elsewhere so that Ruby could make her escape.

She heard the door open and Damon’s guarded, ‘What is it?’ and Lena’s exasperated, ‘For heaven’s sake, Damon. Let me in. What is wrong with you?’

‘I was just coming back out,’ said Damon, and in the relative safety of the bathroom Ruby nodded her agreement.

‘Wait,’ said Lena. ‘I need to talk to you. Privately.’

Not good. Definitely not good.

‘Now,’ said Lena firmly, and, cursing silently, Ruby closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall to wait.

‘Lena, not now. This really isn’t a good time.’

But Lena wasn’t listening and Damon stood back and let his sister into the room. Better to get it over with then, whatever it was, for Lena had that look on her face. The one that promised no mercy whatsoever for whoever had been stupid enough to irritate her in the first place to the point of explosion.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you had news on Jared’s whereabouts?’

‘What?’ he said warily.

‘Last night you told me you hadn’t found a thing. Today Poppy tells me that you’ve already hacked into the ASIS database and found Jared’s personnel record and pulled a coded file from the system that you now need Poppy to decode.’

‘Lena, please,’ he said urgently and pressed his fingers to her lips, something he should have done the moment she’d stepped in the room, only he’d still been dazed from Ruby’s kisses and he hadn’t even seen it coming. ‘Not now.’

But she wrenched his hand away, eyes flashing. ‘Why not? Am I too fragile to know the truth all of a sudden? Is that it?’

‘Lena—’

‘You lied to me. You sat there the other day and you lied to my face.’

‘No, I told you I didn’t have any information on Jared’s whereabouts. I still don’t.’

‘Don’t you dare pull that half-truth crap on me. Hacking might be your business, and secrecy your way of life, but I am your sister and this is Jared we’re talking about. How could you? How could you shut me out? Has it not occurred to you that I might be able to help? That I might know ASIS operational systems and codes better than you?’

‘Lena. Not. Now,’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘Why not now?’

And then the en-suite door opened and Ruby stood there pale but composed, and looking anywhere but at him.

‘Probably because he doesn’t want anyone overhearing your conversation,’ she said quietly. ‘So if you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to … leave. Thanks, Damon, for the, ah, use of your bathroom.’

Smiling brightly, Ruby executed a hasty exit and shut the door firmly behind her.

‘Oh, hell,’ said Lena and stared at him in dismay. ‘Damon, I’m so sorry—’

But Damon was already halfway out of the door.

He found her directing the wait staff with the precision of a conquering general. He stood back and watched, and let her do her thing and manoeuvre guests and charm her father. She hadn’t fled, she had a job to do, and it suited Damon to stand and watch her do it while he planned how best to deal with a situation he’d never encountered before.

He went back to his room, with a bleak-eyed glare for Lena, who passed him in the hallway, where he filled his backpack with the things he would need and then returned to the main room and simply walked up to her in the kitchen, took her hand and headed for the door and to hell with what people thought. His father would get over it. His father’s business friends and associates could think what they liked, and as for Ruby …

If she objected to his high-handedness she made no mention of it as she collected her work satchel from the cloak cupboard and strode through the apartment door he’d opened for her, with her hand still firmly ensconced in his.

Perhaps she was as glad to see the back end of the party as he was. Perhaps she had something to say. Time would tell, because she sure as hell wasn’t saying anything now.

Such a fascinating face—the one she presented to him as they stepped into the lift and turned around to face the closing doors. Not classically beautiful—no Grace Kelly here—but those eyes could drown a man and her lips were the work of a master. A lovely, lively face, and if a man preferred it to classical perfection, well, that was his preference.

If a man wanted to walk blindfold off a cliff and entrust her with his darkest secrets, well … that was his business too.

They rode the lift in silence, all the way down to the car park and only when they were heading for her car did she finally choose to speak.

‘So … I don’t know much about hacking but I do know that the term hacker can have multiple meanings,’ she began quietly. Careful words from a lawyer’s mind. Ruby Maguire was thinking things through. ‘What kind of hacker are you? Or perhaps the more appropriate question would be, to what end do you hack?’

‘You cross-examining me, Ruby?’

‘You planning on answering the question, Damon?’

Impasse.

‘Because, please correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounded to me as if you hack to acquire information. Like your brother’s whereabouts, for example.’

‘That one’s more of an unofficial side project detour … thing. Tiny. Really.’

‘Right,’ she drawled cuttingly. ‘So the rest of your work relates to the official collection of restricted information. How very reassuring.’

‘Shades of grey, Ruby,’ he murmured and Ruby shot him a filthy glare.

‘So you’re a spy. An information thief, all jacked in, new millennium style.’ And when he said nothing, ‘God, Damon. Have you any idea how many ethical buttons this pushes for me? There are other ways of getting information. Legal ways.’

‘Like, for example, you asking the FBI to share whatever information they have on your father? How’s that working out for you,

Ruby?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Second oldest profession, or so they say. It’s not as if I’m breaking new ground here. Just newer ways of doing it. I work towards maintaining peaceful power balances between nations. How is that wrong?’

Ruby’s steps had quickened, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Damon walked too, silence clearly the best option for now. How the hell had he got into this mess?

Headbands were the devil’s work, he decided grimly. The next time he saw one he’d know to run.

‘I knew you had secrets,’ she said and fumbled through her satchel for her car keys. ‘I chose to spend time with you anyway. But this … I’ve got to hand it to you, Damon. Even for me this is a whole new level of secrets and lies. I knew I should have stayed away from you,’ she muttered. ‘Why the hell didn’t I?’

He had no answer for her there. ‘You can’t tell anyone, Ruby.’

‘Yes, I gathered that,’ she said, and raised a shaking hand to her head. ‘Who else knows?’

‘My immediate family. My handler. Now you. Six people in ten years.’ It wasn’t a bad effort. He didn’t think it too bad a record.

‘God.’ She looked worried and so she should be. ‘I won’t tell anyone, Damon. You have my word.’

‘And in an ideal world, your word would be enough,’ he said quietly, but this wasn’t an ideal world. He needed to secure her silence and her loyalty. Bind her to him now, with whatever he had in hand.

‘What if I said I could help you find your father?’

‘What?’

‘That’s what you want, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes, but …’ “

She didn’t, or couldn’t, finish her sentence. Typical lawyer. Always a But.

‘I’m offering to contract out to you,’ he continued. ‘In return for your silence. You get news of your father. I acquire a hold on you I currently don’t have. Everyone wins.’

‘That’s blackmail.’

‘It’s necessary,’ he cut back hard. ‘And at the end of the day you get to walk away, I get the peace of mind I need to let you walk away and the people I work for get to remain none the wiser as to what you know. That’s worth something, Ruby. More than you know.’

‘Well, aren’t you chivalrous,’ she murmured, and favoured him with a tight-lipped smile.

‘I try.’

This discussion wasn’t exactly going according to plan, decided Damon grimly. But then, nothing involving Ruby ever did.

‘I’m trying to protect you,’ he said curtly, and maybe Ruby heard the frustration in him for she eyed him uncertainly before looking to the car-park walls for answers, only there were none to be had there. He’d already looked.

‘Or I could let my superiors know I’ve broken cover with you and let them deal with the fallout. They won’t harm you, they’ll recruit you. Like it or not, you won’t have a choice. That’s the value they place on the work I do for them, Ruby. The cost of maintaining my cover. And the reason I never wanted you to know any of this in the first place.’

‘I knew you were trouble,’ she said again. ‘I knew.’

Again, Damon said nothing. It wasn’t as if she were telling him anything new.

‘How would you do it?’ she said after a time. ‘My father could be anywhere. How would you set about finding him? Where would you even start?’

‘I’d access files various authorities have on him and get you to read them. See if what they have to say fits with what you remember. See if it throws up any ideas. And then we’ll continue from there.’

‘Couldn’t you just … send me a report?’

‘Sorry, Ruby. You don’t get to stay clean while I get dirty for you. I want you with me.’

‘And equally culpable.’ Damon shrugged. The short answer being yes.

She looked ready to weep but she tilted her chin and squared her shoulders. ‘When do you need my answer on this?’

‘Now.’

‘And when would we do it?’

He gentled his tone and hoped for her sake she could handle this. ‘Just as soon as we get you back to your apartment and get into different clothes.’

‘What kind of clothes?’ Ruby was willing to be distracted by the little things. It was a start.

‘The kind that don’t stand out.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

IF RUBY could press a rewind button she would.

This day would disappear for starters.

Russell’s society luncheon would go.

She wouldn’t go so far as to wipe Damon from memory completely but there were definitely things she would have done differently when it came to dealing with him.

Such as not push him for personal information he so clearly hadn’t wanted to give.

And not allow herself to become so enamoured of the physical side of their relationship that she lost all sense of self-preservation.

Fooling around with Damon in his bedroom, with a party in full swing not six yards away. What kind of idiot behaviour was that?

She’d thought she could play with Damon without consequence. Use him, as it were.

She really had thought she could be intimate with him and come away unscathed. Wrong.

‘First a father who may or may not be guilty of the biggest heist in banking history, and now a computer hacker for a lover,’ she murmured, and a small cat peeked out from beneath her bed and regarded her solemnly. ‘I’m really not having a good run. And what the hell kind of clothes does a person wear when committing a hacking offence?’

Damon had clothes in his backpack, or so he said. He’d retired to Ruby’s bathroom to get changed.

Ruby tossed her jacket on the bed and began to rifle through her wardrobe. Jeans, they’d do. A black T-shirt she usually wore when cleaning things. Flat shoes … apart from the ones she wore around the apartment, and they were little more than slippers, flat shoes really weren’t in her vocabulary. Almost-flat shoes, by way of a pair of black patent leather pumps with black and white spotted bows across the front of them, would have to do.

She put her hair up in a ponytail, left it ornament-free and returned to the lounge room in search of Damon, the man with the vagabond lifestyle, the secrets she didn’t want to know, and a moral fluidity she couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Don’t judge.