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

No regrets—he knew they’d covered that one.

But no promises? What exactly had he promised her last night that he shouldn’t have? What had he given away?

Information? Of a certainty he’d revealed more than enough about his work, and he knew it, but he’d stopped, hadn’t he? She knew his limits in that regard. She’d accepted them.

Had he revealed his total inexperience when it came to letting someone see him, really see him, for what he was? He probably had. Didn’t mean he planned on doing it again in a hurry.

What else had he revealed in the back of that limo? A propensity for getting lost in passion? Well, if he had, Ruby had of a surety revealed the same. No crime there.

So why—as he watched her walk along the garden path towards him, in her pretty blue sundress with her tumbling curls pinned back with a peacock-feathered comb—did he feel so exposed?

Ruby Maguire’s eyes were knowing as they met his. ‘I figured as much,’ she said wryly as she stopped before him. ‘You’re here to tell me that last night was a mistake. That I shouldn’t expect a great deal from you. The word nothing comes to mind.’

‘That about covers it,’ he said gruffly.

‘Well,’ she said lightly, a vision of poise and loveliness and behind the pretty picture a brain that ran razor-sharp when it came to reading people. ‘Seems to me you wasted your time in getting me here if that was the agenda, for it’s nothing I don’t already know. You overplayed the light-hearted, carefree Damon on the phone, by the way, if you want to know what really tipped me off. It just wasn’t you. Still …’ she looked skywards and smiled ‘… it’s a nice day for a stroll and I wanted to get out of the apartment. You don’t mind if I use you as a distraction, do you?’

Was yes even a possible answer after such a gracious and glossy dismissal of his concerns regarding her developing some kind of unwanted attachment to him? ‘No.’

He tipped his hat and held out his arm, and he even managed a self-mocking smile as she slipped her hand in the crook of his arm, and without a word they began to stroll.

‘You excel at making things easy for others, don’t you, Ruby?’ he offered at last. ‘And somewhere in the process you get exactly what you want. It’s very impressive.’

‘It’s a gift,’ she said dulcetly.

‘Or a weapon,’ he countered dryly. ‘Where’d you hone that razor-sharp mind of yours, Ruby?’

‘Harvard.’

It figured. ‘Where did you study?’ she asked.

Damon hesitated, and Ruby sighed.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘I forgot who I was talking to. Although may I point out that sticking entirely to the immediate present when conversing with anyone is a lot like talking to a brick. Nonetheless, I shall endeavour to oblige and make it easier for you to keep your secrets to yourself. See that building to the West, overlooking the park?’ She waved a slender hand in its direction. ‘That’s Hong Kong’s legislative council building. It’s one of the reasons there are so many political demonstrations and marches here in the park. As for the park’s history, did you know that these grounds once housed the most hallowed of colonial institutions, the Hong Kong Cricket Club?’

‘MIT,’ said Damon tightly, and stopped Ruby’s fact-spouting dead. ‘I studied mathematics and computer programming at MIT.’

The hand resting in the crook of his arm tightened, and Ruby came to a standstill. Damon turned to find her regarding him with a mixture of frustration and puzzlement.

‘What?’ he said. ‘You asked, I answered. I was just …’

‘Filtering,’ she said wryly. Which he had been. ‘Trust me, Damon. I know this game. My father never talked much beyond the moment either. You’d have liked him, by the way. He could have certainly shown you a trick or two about sliding graciously past a question you’re not inclined to answer.’

‘How would he have slid past that one?’

‘Oh, I dare say he’d have started spouting rhetoric about the measurement of man,’ said Ruby with a smile. ‘From there you might have swung through a deeply philosophical discussion of the education system or if he gauged you differently perhaps he’d have offered you a champagne and piled on the flattery as he guessed which of the top twenty learning institutes in the world you graduated from.’

‘Have you heard from him today?’

‘Why do you ask?’

Damon shrugged and realised he didn’t have any good answer other than Ruby drew him in, even when he didn’t want to be drawn, and got to him when he didn’t want to be got. ‘Maybe it’s because I know what it’s like to wait for word that never comes.’

‘He hasn’t been in touch.’

And then she leaned into him, butting up against his arm with her body as if she craved connection, and he knew that feeling and that shoulder shove because he’d used it on Poppy as a child. Remember me, it had been shorthand for. The one who cost us our mother by dint of being born. The one who never quite managed to shake his feeling of isolation, even within the arms of family.

So he did what Poppy used to do, and put his arm around Ruby’s shoulder and hugged her to his side and kept her there. He could do that much for her. He did it without thinking.

‘I really hoped he’d call, you know?’ she said finally, with her arm around his waist and their footsteps in sync as they followed the path before them. ‘So that I’d know he was okay. That he was alive. That’s the worst part of all of this mess. The not knowing anything.’

He should have realised that a woman of Ruby’s ilk would have thought past the most obvious reason for her father’s absence from her life. That she would have considered all sorts of explanations for her father’s disappearance, few of them palatable. ‘You think there’s been foul play?’

‘I don’t know,’ she murmured. ‘My father had many faults, don’t get me wrong. Branding him a hero’s just … dumb. But I always thought he cared for me, and the way he left—without even the slightest goodbye or heads up … it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t feel right.’

‘Maybe he was protecting you. You know the terminology, Ruby. Accomplice. Accessory after the fact.’

‘He was smart enough to avoid all that and still say goodbye.’

If he’d wanted to. But Damon didn’t say that and Ruby didn’t go there either.

‘So what do you think did happen?’ he asked quietly. ‘You think he could have been trying to stop the theft?’

‘If I thought that, I’d have to prepare for the possibility that he’s dead. I don’t want to prepare for that possibility, Damon.’

‘It seems to me you already have.’

‘No.’ Ruby looked to the sky and the skyscrapers that crowded into it. ‘I haven’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Not as long as there’s hope.’

Not a fine Christmas Day for Ruby Maguire at all. In behind the peacock feathers and the smiles, Ruby Maguire was hurting.

‘You know what you need this afternoon?’ he said, and pressed his lips to her hair for good measure. ‘A strictly temporary, don’t read anything into this, distraction. Lucky for you, I’m a past Master at distracting people. As every last one of my school reports will attest.’

‘Why, Damon West.’ She sounded less morose already. ‘Was that freely volunteered information?’

‘I think it was. But don’t distract me while I’m busy trying to distract you. I hear there’s a hell of a roller-coaster ride around here somewhere.’

‘Yes, but in order to get on it one has to plan ahead.’