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

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?’

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