Kitabı oku: «All He Wants For Christmas...», sayfa 7

‘Frail. Not nearly as strong as she wants to be.’

‘She didn’t strike me as weak, Damon. Even in Hong Kong. Begs the question of what she used to be like.’

‘Amazing,’ he said simply. ‘She was amazing. She sends her regards, by the way, and she left you a basket full of bath stuff and creams for you to use during your stay. It’s in your room.’

‘I’ll have to thank her.’

‘There’s a housekeeper who comes in a couple of times a week. I had her prepare a bedroom for you.’

‘Oh,’ said Ruby, and eyed him uncertainly. ‘Thank you.’

‘Doesn’t mean I don’t want you in my bed, Ruby. Just that there’s a room you can call your own as well. I asked Lena if that was the sort of set-up you might prefer. She said yes.’

Lena said.

Thanks, Lena.

He headed towards a wide wooden bowl and dropped his keys in it and took something else out of it.

‘I’m screwing this up, aren’t I?’ he said and ran a hand through his hair for good measure. ‘It’s just … I’ve never brought a woman here before. I wanted to do it right. Lena warned me not to push you into anything you weren’t ready for. Apparently I can be a little too persuasive for my own good. I’ve also been ordered not to wear you out, get you sunburnt, drown you or take you hang-gliding.’

‘Oh,’ she said faintly. ‘Hang-gliding.’

‘You’ll love it. Seriously.’

‘Chances are I won’t,’ she murmured and Damon grinned. ‘I’m a guest, Damon. You’re meant to be indulging me, not trying to kill me.’

‘Yeah, Lena mentioned that too. She also mumbled something about best behaviour, picking up wet towels, keeping regular sleeping hours and not gaming on the computers half the night, and, oh, she said to tell you good luck. Sisters are wonderful, aren’t they?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t have any,’ she said smoothly. ‘Are we done with the household warnings yet? Any locked rooms I must never enter? Broom cupboard I should never open?’

‘By all means open the broom cupboard,’ he murmured. ‘Wouldn’t want to deprive you of the joy of household chores.’ His smile turned wry and his eyes grew serious. ‘It’s all right, Ruby. There’s nothing here you can stumble over when it comes to my work. I never bring it home and I never let it touch the people around me. That time in Kowloon with you was the exception, not the rule. It won’t happen again.’

‘Fine by me,’ she answered quietly, and turned her attention to her luggage and smiled up at him with a false sunshinery her mother would have been proud of. ‘I bought a gift for your household,’ she said, and withdrew from her hand luggage the duty-free Scotch and champagne she’d purchased at the airport. ‘There’s caviar somewhere in there too. I seem to have developed a taste for it. That would be your fault.’

Damon smiled and held something out towards her in return. ‘For you,’ he said.

It was a headband. A cluster of fresh frangipanis twined around a solid frame, only on closer inspection the frangipanis were made of porcelain.

‘Oh, yes.’ Ruby made no effort to hide her pleasure as she slipped off her old headband and replaced it with the new. ‘That’ll work.’

It was then that he kissed her. A meeting of lips that came fleeting at first, and then he returned for more and this time he savoured her.

He did that, she remembered belatedly.

He had a way of sliding into a moment and savouring whatever it might bring.

‘Well, hello,’ she murmured when their lips parted. And thank God. ‘I’ve been wondering where you were.’

‘I was giving you space.’

‘Little hint for when we next meet,’ she said, and punctuated her remark with the rasp of her tongue across his lower lip. ‘Presents are good, presents are wonderful, but as far as space is concerned … I don’t need it.’

Ruby smiled and wove her hands through his hair and let him drag her against his hard, rangy body. ‘Though I am very aware that I do need a shower,’ she protested as he slid her jacket from her shoulders. ‘I’m straight off the plane.’

‘Contrary, Ruby.’

‘Well, yes. Surely you hadn’t forgotten already?’

He had such busy hands. They slid beneath her skirt, and the next thing she knew he’d leaned back against the low-slung sofa and lifted her up, and her knees were finding purchase on it the better to plaster herself against him.

Damon’s thumb slipped between her panties and stroked.

Ruby gasped and he ate it straight from her mouth.

She pushed forward and they toppled over the back of the sofa and onto the cushions and it didn’t matter any more that she’d wanted to shower, she needed to feel Damon’s touch on her skin and his lips caressing hers.

‘I dreamed of you,’ she told him as he ran his hands over her thighs and positioned her exactly where she wanted to be. ‘You were lawless. Bad. And I wanted you even more because of it.’

He took her mouth again and this time his kiss held a hint of savagery in it. ‘I have ethics,’ he whispered. ‘Boundaries. I can even be hospitable when I really put my mind to it. You’ll see.’

His questing fingers slipped beneath the boundaries of her panties again and Ruby shuddered with need of less boundaries and more contact. He dipped a long finger inside her and Ruby gasped her pleasure and she held his hand in place and closed her eyes the better to concentrate on his touch.

‘I dreamed of you, Damon. Lord, how I dreamed of you.’

‘I dreamed of you too,’ he murmured as she dealt with the buttons and the zip at his waist and took him in hand.

‘What was I doing?’ she whispered as she slid her panties aside and positioned him for entry.

‘This.’ His voice guttural as he surged up inside her, his hands at her waist, vicelike as he held her in place. He slowly withdrew, and then rocked up into her again. ‘You were doing this.’

They swam in the surf much later in the day, and then showered together and she used the bubbles Lena had left for her on him, and after that he sat her down at the kitchen counter in her underwear and fed her a toasted BLT sandwich on sourdough with mayonnaise.

He was handy in the kitchen—not fussy about what he put together but competent nonetheless. He put things away when he was done with them. He knew where things lived.

Definitely a point of difference between Damon and the rest of the men in her life. Missing fathers and stepfathers and the like. Staff inhabited kitchens in their world—not them.

‘Have you ever surfed before?’ he asked her later that afternoon as they sat on the sand and watched the waves come crashing in.

‘I’ve skied before,’ she said lazily. ‘I have very fond memories of a winter in Switzerland where I was a fearless snowboard queen of the mountain.’

‘I’m very impressed,’ he said. ‘Then what happened?’

‘Then we went to live in Bahrain.’ A fond sigh escaped her. ‘I learned to drive in Bahrain.’

‘Please don’t tell me you learned to drive in a racing car unless you want to see me weeping with envy.’

‘Of course I didn’t.’ She stood up, brushed sand from her rear. ‘I learned to drive in a Hummer in the desert. My instructor’s name was Carl. Carl set my girlish heart aflutter with his commando impersonation but, alas, he wasn’t much of one for reckless endangerment. Even in a Hummer.’

‘Surfing could be a little sedate for you,’ said Damon in reply. ‘If the wind picks up this afternoon we’ll break out the kiteboards.’

Surfing was not sedate. Nor was the kite-surfing they attempted later that afternoon. The hang-gliding they did the following day didn’t qualify as sedate either. There was more swimming. More love-making. And for Ruby, plenty of naps and lazing about in between the next action-man adventure.

Damon didn’t nap. Not ever. He slept well through the night—when they slept—and needed no rest whatsoever during the day.

He wasn’t one for television unless it was as background to whatever else he happened to be doing at the time. He cooked. He charmed. He rarely sat still. Even when sitting in his computer room he did ten things at once and all of them at warp speed.

When he ate, he liked to do it standing at counters. He could do a restaurant meal—he’d managed it in Hong Kong and he managed it again when they went into Byron Bay for dinner one night—but it wasn’t his preference.

If there was a pool nearby he’d be in it. A pool table in the room and he’d be at it. The ocean and the toys he took to it could hold him for hours. Making love could also garner his undivided and sustained attention.

For now.

A suspicion formed in Ruby’s mind about the type of kid he’d been, based on the man he’d become. How hard it must have been to educate a boy who couldn’t sit still and whose mind worked that much faster than anyone else’s. How hacking would have been such a natural fit for him given he’d had to sit at a computer and cut a snail’s pace through all the schoolwork anyway.

Damon’s lifestyle choices made far more sense to her now. His work kept him focused, delivered up the adrenalin he craved and kept him on the move. New places, new people, a world’s worth of distraction—chances were he needed all those things in order to be content, and always would.

Not a man to plan a settled, predictable life around, but then, he’d never once suggested doing so.

‘You’re hyperactive, aren’t you?’ she asked him one night as he put together a late-night fruit platter that neither of them wanted, and tried—with limited success—to watch a movie with her.

Damon shot her a wary glance before deciding that the platter needed some biscuits.

‘That’s one label,’ he offered up finally. ‘There have been others.’

‘Like what?’ And when he didn’t reply, ‘Let me guess. Intellectually gifted, easily bored and distracted, physically reckless. How am I doing so far?’

‘You’re very astute.’

‘ADD?’

He wouldn’t look at her. Had to dump a load of mango peelings down the garbage disposal instead.

She took that as a yes, and gave up on ever getting to the end of the movie. Time to leave the sumptuously comfy lounge and take her bare feet and her stripey boyleg panties and vest over to the kitchen counter instead. His side of the counter, mind. They were way past having a bench in between them.

Mango slices had rapidly become a favourite snack of Ruby’s. She selected one, ate it, and smiled when a freshly wet hand cloth landed with a splat on the bench beside her. ‘Thank you.’

She’d need that later. It wouldn’t do to have sticky hands once she started running them all over Damon’s irresistible flesh.

‘So how do you feel about flying to Sydney tomorrow for a couple of days’ exploration?’ she said next. Change of subject, after a fashion. No change of craving for this man detected. ‘I hear there’s a bridge there to climb. The internet tells me there’s a racetrack on offer too. Maybe we can rustle up a car or two and a pair of willing instructors to ride shotgun and have ourselves a little wager on the outcome? I can’t let all that experience on Bahrain’s international circuit go to waste. Because I did get there eventually. I may not have mentioned that earlier. Memories of Carl weeping inconsolably over his Hummer’s split gearbox casing may have distracted me.’

‘You destroyed a man’s gearbox?’

‘Well, not on purpose. Good thing I was wearing my buzzy bee headband at the time, otherwise he may have taken one look at me and seen red.’ She picked up another mango slice and offered it to him. ‘Mango?’

‘You don’t have to scatter your conversation for me, Ruby. Or give me a hundred and one conversation threads to choose from. I can follow a one-track conversation just fine,’ he said quietly. ‘Labels and all. And, yes. Doctors diagnosed me ADHD as a kid.’

Ruby frowned. ‘Were you medicated?’

‘There was medication,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t easy, getting me to take it.’

‘Rebellious.’

‘I didn’t need it. I can control it. I can be still. You don’t need to indulge me by offering up adventure trips to Sydney whenever you think I’m getting bored.’

He sounded irritated and looked defensive. Apparently this was contagious.

‘Is indulging you such a sin?’ she argued mildly. ‘And here I thought it was part of being a good house guest. Sometimes I indulge you, sometimes you indulge me. And sometimes we leave each other alone. Given that you’ve been indulging my every whim for the past few days I figured it might be time to ante up.’

Ruby ate the mango piece, seeing as Damon’s mouth was set in a tightly closed line. She wiped her sticky fingers down his shirtfront and pushed him aside so she could get to the tap and rinse her hands.

‘I wasn’t judging you, Damon. I’m trying to understand you, and every time I think I come close you put up another wall.’ She rinsed her hands and shook the excess water off them with a decidedly annoyed flick, before turning around and running smack bang into a wall of simmering manhood. She poked a pointy finger into Damon’s well-exercised chest. ‘It’s very irritating.’

‘Is that so?’ he said silkily.

‘Yes.’ Another poke for the immovable object. ‘And stop trying to distract me with sex.’

‘I thought you liked the sex.’ She loved the sex. She was fast approaching the conclusion that fighting with Damon and then making up with him could well lead to incandescently memorable sex. ‘That is not the point.’ Another jab, only this time he caught her hand and flattened it against his chest.

‘What is it we’re doing here, Damon? Getting to know each other? Indulging in a no-strings-attached, short-term affair where getting to know each other better is not a requirement? Are you trying to decide whether you can trust me to keep your secrets? What? Because I can’t play this game if I don’t know the rules.’

‘There is no game,’ he said quietly and redirected her hand to his heart. ‘No rules either. Just an automatic defence against a criticism I’ve worn my entire life.’

He could break her heart too, whenever he wanted to. Distract her so that she never pushed too hard when it came to the question uppermost on her mind. The ‘where are we going with this’ question. The ‘what the hell am I still doing here when you won’t even let me know the simplest things about you’ question.

‘I don’t have all the symptoms of ADHD,’ he said gruffly. ‘I can focus when I want to. I think before doing. I can be still.’

‘Really?’ ‘I can.’

‘But you don’t need to be, do you? You’ve organised your life so you don’t have to be still, and that’s fine too. Plenty of other people organise their lives that way too. I’ve spent my entire life surrounded by gifted, driven, workaholic risk-takers who wouldn’t know how to rest or be still if their lives depended on it. Your father’s one of them. My father was another. Stepfather number three too, although he enjoys coming home. That’s what my mother does—she makes him enjoy coming home.’

‘There are women who still do that?’ He looked intrigued.

‘Yes,’ she said pleasantly. ‘I’m not one of them. I want a career.’

‘Couldn’t you do both?’ he murmured silkily.

‘Could you?’ she asked in kind. ‘Would you?’

‘We’re circling the relationship question again, aren’t we?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not sure I have that much to offer you, Ruby.’

Not what Ruby wanted to hear. ‘I thought you might say that. This house, is it yours free and clear?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Any others?’

‘A downtown apartment in Massachusetts.’

‘Nice. Any other dependants I don’t know about? Ex-wives? Children? Goldfish?’

She’d won from him a tiny smile. ‘No.’

‘So apart from your work—which you never bring home—you’re actually pleasantly unencumbered.’

‘Are you judging my suitability as a spouse?’

‘Yes. You seem to think you have little to offer in that department. I’m presenting an alternate view. Where were we? Ah, yes. Your family seems sane enough—the ones I’ve met. I’m going to give them a tick.’

‘You just don’t know them well enough yet.’

‘How many times a week would you want to have sex?’

Damon blinked. Then he smiled. ‘A lot. Surely that’s a strike against,’ he murmured silkily.

‘Depends on the woman,’ she offered in counter. ‘The timing. The mood. I’m going to go out on a limb here and vouch for your expertise. How many times a week would you cook?’

‘Depends where we were.’

‘Good answer,’ she said with a nod. ‘Any health issues? Genetic peculiarities? Apart from the ADHD of course. That one’s already noted.’

‘No.’

‘So far, so good, wouldn’t you say?’ she said and speared him with a glance. ‘Alas, there is still your inability to let anyone ever get close to you to consider. That one’s proving problematic.’

‘Do tell.’

Oh, she intended to. But not right yet.

‘You know it was my father who taught me how to judge people,’ she said lightly. ‘He made an art form out of figuring out what makes people tick. Discovering their weaknesses, testing their strengths. His verdict would be that you undervalue yourself, by the way. He’d wonder what the hell happened to make you so insecure about being you. Then he’d play you to his advantage, but that’s a whole other story that I really don’t want to get into right now. Suffice to say that he taught me well and that I know a little something about reading people. Judging them. Playing them, even, but that’s a whole other story that we probably don’t need to dwell on either.’

‘Maybe later,’ he said with a hint of his old smoothness.

‘Maybe never,’ she countered and his grin came quick and free.

‘What is it you’re trying to say to me, Ruby?’

‘What I’m trying to say is that I may be judging you, Damon, but I do not find you lacking. You have many fine qualities. You have plenty to offer. What I’d also like to get on record is that I don’t need any lavish promises from you. I don’t necessarily need a spouse. But if you are interested in exploring some kind of continuing relationship with me I do have one demand.’

‘You’d make a wonderful divorce lawyer,’ he murmured. ‘What is it?’

‘I want you to let down your defences and let me see you. The real you. No obfuscation. No distractions. No best behaviour. Just you.’

He didn’t seem to know how to take her words. What to do with them or say in return. Wary man. Heartbreakingly vulnerable man underneath all the layers.

‘So … I’m about to get naked and wet in that gorgeous pool over there,’ she said and sidestepped him neatly. ‘Care to join me?’

Ruby didn’t wait for Damon’s reply, just headed poolside and started shedding clothes. She glanced back over her shoulder at him.

‘You did say that if I ever wanted to win an argument with you all I had to do was get naked, right?’

‘Right.’

Damon hardly recognised his own voice, it cracked and wavered like a pubescent boy’s.

‘You are so hot when you’re being cautious,’ she said with a siren’s smile. ‘Gives you a totally unfair advantage.’

‘Says the naked woman standing in water up to her waist.’

‘Just so,’ she said archly. ‘Why is your shirt still on?’

‘Beats me.’ He dragged it up and over his head. Let it drop to the ground.

‘Better,’ she murmured appreciatively. ‘Shirtless and brooding is a good look for you. Almost as good as naked and lost in the moment. Want to come and lose yourself in the moment with me, Damon?’ No teasing in her now, just a longing directed straight at him.

‘I just did,’ he said and went to join her.

CHAPTER NINE

HEADING Sydneyside suited Damon. He and Ruby could—and did—play hard here. They had a suite overlooking Circular Quay but they didn’t spend much time there. Out and about was Ruby’s preferred state of being while in Sydney and, for all that Damon often accompanied her, she had no problem heading one way and waving Damon in the other direction if their interests diverged.

She had a confidence he envied. She knew how to be herself, and it was a contrary and fascinating self indeed. Never sloppy in appearance. Analytical when it came to the behaviours of others. He could see her as a lawyer. She had the shrewdness.

And the capacity to argue either way.

‘I mentioned you to my handler,’ he said over breakfast on their third morning in Sydney. They were down at the Quay, sitting in a sidewalk café, with the sun shining brightly and another day of exploration in front of them, give or take a job interview for Ruby and a work appointment for him.

‘You what?’ said Ruby.

‘I figured it was time I told him I wanted to see a bit more of you.’

‘Much as I am bowled over by such a hugely romantic gesture, couldn’t you have told me first?’

‘I need to get back to work soon and I need to know how careful I’m going to have to be. I asked him if anyone had you under surveillance on account of your father and the chances that he might get in contact with you.’

‘And what was the answer?’

‘He said no. According to his sources—and they’re extensive—you’ve never been under surveillance. Not even in the days following your father’s disappearance.’

‘Maybe they’re understaffed,’ she muttered sourly.

‘Seems unlikely. He asked me if I wanted him to do some more digging about your father. I said I’d take care of it.’

‘You already have.’

‘I thought I might take another look. See if there’s something I missed.’ ‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know yet.’ But he was beginning to have his suspicions. ‘Could your father have worked in intelligence?’

Ruby’s surprise was instantaneous. ‘Where did that come from?’

‘The bank handed over an eight-hundred-and-seventy-two-million-dollar recovery investigation to the Feds, the Feds handballed it to British Intelligence and the British backed off. Maybe your father belongs to someone else. You’ve said more than once that he was a master at reading and manipulating people. A man who kept secrets. It’d fit.’

Ruby frowned and lifted her sunglasses to the top of her head. The better to see him or the better for him to see her. Wordlessly demanding a more secure connection between them and getting it too. She was full of tricks like that.

‘As far as I know, my father only ever worked in finance,’ she said cautiously.

‘Would your mother know if he’d ever been involved elsewhere?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Might have been why she bailed.’

‘No, that would be because of the infidelity and my father never being where he said he was going to be, or doing what he promised to do,’ countered Ruby dryly.

‘Must’ve been some childhood.’

‘My father did his best to be there for me,’ she said. ‘Usually he succeeded. But not always. Enough, Damon. You’re barking up the wrong tree. My father was a merchant banker not a spy.’ She dropped a kiss on his cheek and made to leave his company for an appointment with the senior partner of an Australian-based law firm. ‘I need to get to this appointment. I’ll tell you about my woefully overprivileged upbringing another time.’

She kissed his other cheek and drew back to stare at him searchingly before offering up another kiss, this time for his lips. ‘Be good. Don’t dig. Not on my behalf. I have enough trouble accepting that you dig on behalf of other people.’

He accepted the kiss she placed on his other cheek with a faint smile.

‘What happens if they offer you a job?’

‘There is no job. I’m just fishing and so are they.’

Damon watched her walk away, admiring the sway of her hips and the curve of her slender calves. ‘Let me see you. The real you,’ she’d said to him only three days ago. Today she’d told him to be good and not dig. As far as he was concerned that was a bit like telling a shark not to swim.

Ruby would have a job offer within the hour, he predicted.

He’d have more information on her father within the hour too.

And then they would look at each other again and see what came of that.

Damon found another coffee shop and this one had everything he needed. He checked in with the home office, a routine ping and nothing more.

A different café next and another easy public access point and this time Damon turned his efforts to discovering somewhat more about Ruby’s father and the missing millions. FBI records turned up a referral of the case over to the British Intelligence Service. Their records turned up nothing but dross.

On a hunch, he wormed his way into yet another database. Deeper and deeper still, as his coffee sat untouched on the table beside him, the painted wall at his back giving him all the privacy he needed. His senses stayed with the coffee crowd but he gave his mind over to the language in his head, and the pathways opening up for him on screen, no telling where they would lead.

The lure of the unknown, a siren song he’d never been able to resist. A failing, some would say, but he’d never been any different and if indeed it was a flaw, he’d done his damnedest to turn it into a useful one.

Two minutes in and no fixed destination in mind, just a name and a suspicion. A database to search through and eventually a hit. A record of employment, collated not by employer but by counterparts with a need to know. He sipped at his coffee as he waited for the download. Time enough to read it later.

This lot had a reputation for knowing when their security had been compromised. They wouldn’t know who, and they wouldn’t know what he’d been after once he’d had his way with the memory interface, but still …

Time to go.

He gave the waitress a smile, left a tip on the table …

He had an uneasy feeling about this one. A notion that he should have left this particular stone unturned, and it mixed with the rush of the run and made him want to lengthen his stride in the way of a man in a hurry.

Easy now, no problem here.

Just a little light reading for later on.

Ruby was already back at the suite when Damon returned just on lunchtime, several forms of transport behind him, his computer sporting some brand-new motherboard components and his reading up-to-date.

Fascinating reading. King hit on his maiden run. Knowledge was power and power was useful. Provided you knew how to wield it.

Damon far preferred leaving the wielding part of the process to others.

Problem: Harry Maguire had been a key asset for the British Intelligence Service when it came to monitoring—and occasionally enabling—money laundering throughout South-East Asia. Why British and not American? No idea. Maybe they’d simply been the ones to get to him first. Regardless, he’d been on the payroll for over thirty years.

Thirty years. Before Ruby. During Ruby. And he’d never said a word.

Next problem: Harry had been monitoring a sensitive money-laundering deal when he’d disappeared. A deal the British had not wanted to see go through. General consensus had it that Harry was dead but no corpse had been forthcoming so nobody knew for sure.

Damon’s immediate problem: what to tell Ruby?

Right now he was leaning heavily towards telling her nothing.

Ruby smiled when she saw him and indicated an already open bottle of champagne on the kitchenette counter.

‘You got the job,’ he said.

‘I was offered the job.’

‘Did you take the job?’

‘I’m letting them know.’

‘Where’s it based?’

‘Hong Kong.’

‘Handy.’

‘Not for someone who’s looking to start afresh. My father cast a long shadow in Hong Kong, Damon, and not just because people think him a thief. I’m tired of tripping over it.’

Damon said nothing.

‘I also wouldn’t have access to the resources and community a main office would offer,’ she continued thoughtfully. ‘Mentoring. A cohort to learn from, and with. They want me to fly solo in Hong Kong. I could do that for myself.’

‘You could access the company’s resources online,’ he said mildly. ‘Computer conferencing to take care of the mentoring and working together business.’

Ruby’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

‘Not that I’m trying to influence you. But it could be done. Leaving you with a certain autonomy when it comes to running things your way.’

‘Why, Damon West. Are you calling me a dictator?’

‘Course not,’ he said with a shake of his head as he crossed to the counter and filled the champagne flute she’d left there for him.

‘Liar.’

Damon grinned and tilted his glass her way. ‘Here’s to choices and what we make of them. Congratulations on being offered the job, whether you take it or not.’

‘Thank you,’ she said graciously and held out her glass for a refill. ‘Don’t mind me, I’m still debating the offer. I’ll be debating the offer for days and your power to distract me will be fully tested. What did you get up to this morning in my absence?’

‘Nothing much. Bit of sightseeing,’ he said offhand.

‘Ah.’

Ruby didn’t ask for details. And Damon didn’t say.

Damon took Ruby’s preoccupation with career planning as a signal to do a little career expansion of his own. He acquired a contract to design a network security system for a corporate customer. Work that he could do from the beach house and make a start on straight away if Ruby didn’t mind.

Ruby didn’t mind. She’d decided to face the complexities of her burgeoning relationship with Damon on a day-by-day basis. No planning required. No stressing about her and Damon’s future allowed.

Besides, the reality of Damon’s work process was highly entertaining.

Damon worked in a room full of computers with half a dozen programs running at once, and he did it in ten-minute bursts while wearing board shorts and a tan.

Not exactly office-trained was Damon.

In the absence of a whole lot else to do, Ruby set her sights on conquering kite-surfing. Her stomach muscles would thank her once they’d stopped protesting, and Damon’s work pattern meant that every fifteen minutes or so she could hand the rig over to him and take a break.

At which point her stomach muscles would thank her on the spot.