Fiona Brand - Keeping Secrets

Medinos. Zara tensed even further.

The island was exotic and beautiful and was popularly styled as the Mediterranean isle of romance. It had also been Zara’s home as a child while her father, Angelo Atrides, the last conte of the once-aristocratic but now-impoverished Atrides line, had been alive. But in Zara’s experience, since Angelo’s death when she was barely seven years old, the only thing that had come out of Medinos was trouble. “I don’t know why Emily would run off with Ben. They’re total opposites.”

Ben, though ridiculously handsome, was too young for Emily and a little spoiled. He hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in his mouth; it had been platinum.

While Zara had been reading, Damon had been pacing around her office, examining her walls with their job-notice boards and career displays, reminding her of nothing so much as a large wolf on the prowl. “It would seem Emily’s decided to take a break from work with Ben—”

“You think this is just a holiday?” Damon’s tone was laced with disbelief.

Still upset at the physicality of her reaction to Damon, a reaction that should have been as dead as a doornail by now, Zara snatched up the newspaper and stared at the grainy photo. “What else could you call it? I don’t see an engagement ring, so they’re not eloping—”

Damon’s gaze pinned her. “Damn right. Ben will not be marrying Emily.”

The flat denial, which somehow implied that Emily was not good enough to marry Ben, flicked Zara on the raw. “Ben should be so lucky. Emily is smart and mature. Apart from this... error of judgment, she’s an exemplary personal assistant.”

“If there’s been an error of judgment, then that also applies to Ben.”

Zara slapped the newspaper back down on the desk. “Why does it always come back to that? You know, people can simply fall in love. When my father died, it took my mother years to find—” She stopped, appalled by what she had almost given away.

There was a moment of vibrating silence. “What do you mean by ‘Why does it always come back to that?’”

Relieved that Damon had bypassed her comment about her mother, Zara blurted out her thoughts. “Isn’t that what rich men automatically think? That women are attracted by their wealth?”

She cringed the moment the words were out, because she didn’t actually believe that about all wealthy men.

Damon’s gaze pinned her. “Is that what you believed about me?”

Three

The soft, flat question made her chest go tight and her heart pound. Damon zeroing in on their short, secretive fling was disorienting when a moment ago they had been firmly focused on Ben and Emily.

Zara found herself once more staring at the pulse throbbing along the side of Damon’s jaw as she desperately tried to find a neutral way out of a conversation that had careered out of control.

She took a deep breath and decided on the truth. After all, what did it matter now? “Yes.”

A curious satisfaction registered in Damon’s gaze. “So that’s why you didn’t want a relationship. You thought I would think you were after my money.”

It was only part of the truth.

The whole of it was that if Damon ever found out her real identity, he wouldn’t just think she was after his money, he would be certain of it. Although, the irony was that, from the first moment she had met him, she couldn’t have cared less about his wealth.

When she had walked into the interview with Damon, his remote gaze had connected with hers and for a split second she’d had a weird premonition that everything was about to change. She could not explain exactly what the phenomenon was, just that for her, at least, it had been instant, visceral and electric. Like a piece of flotsam caught in a powerful current, she had allowed herself to be swept along and had accepted the job. Two weeks later, she had ended up in Damon’s bed.

Determined to redirect the conversation back to the situation with Emily and Ben, and hustle Damon out of the door before Rosie woke up, Zara briskly stepped around her desk and busied herself tidying piles of pamphlets that did not need tidying. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience of Emily taking an unplanned leave of absence—”

“Along with my little brother,” Damon said drily.

With effort, Zara controlled her temper. She tended to see things from another angle entirely. It was a matter of record that the men in Damon’s family were extremely good at seduction. Damon’s uncle Tyler had swept Zara’s mother off her feet; Damon had gotten Zara into bed in a matter of days. And now it seemed clear that Ben—who had routinely shambled into work around ten o’clock, taken long lunches and drifted away by four—had seduced poor Emily!

Zara moved on to another shelf of pamphlets, which was much nearer the front door, hoping Damon would take the hint. “As far as I’m concerned, Emily is outstandingly qualified and my best temp, and Ben has enticed her away. If anyone needs protection, it’s Emily.”

Damon gave Zara an incredulous look.

She checked her watch as if she was in a hurry to be somewhere. She had gotten seriously distracted by the Emily/Ben situation, but now she needed to wrap up the issue and get Damon out of her office before Rosie woke up. “I investigated Emily thoroughly before placing her on the books—she’s perfectly trustworthy.”

“Emily Harris is, but Emily Woodhouse-Harris isn’t.”

Zara froze as Damon slipped a folded sheet of paper out of his coat pocket and handed it to her. She stared at what was obviously a photocopy of a newspaper cutting depicting a more youthful Emily, the daughter of a disgraced financier who had lost all of his money, and that of the pension fund he had founded, in a financial crash. In the shot, Emily was dressed for the beach in a bikini and filmy sarong, and she was clinging to the arm of a prominent playboy businessman. One who, from the caption, had apparently dumped her in favor of marrying a socialite with her fortune intact.

Zara’s jaw tightened. Her motto for Westlake Employment Agency was Reliable, High Quality, Vetted Office Staff, Privacy and Discretion Guaranteed. In this case, the reliability part of the motto hadn’t held. Neither had the privacy or the discretion.

However, the tacky little article, far from making Zara feel disappointed in Emily, only made her feel even more fiercely protective of an employee who reminded her an awful lot of herself. Even down to the way Emily had lost everything and had been forced to invent a new life. She knew exactly how Emily was going to feel when she saw the piece.

She set the incriminating article down on her desk. “You had Emily investigated .”

Damon’s expression grew impatient. “I waited for you to call back. When you didn’t, I made some calls of my own. As it turns out, I should have done it a whole lot earlier.”

“Choosing to use one half of a double-barreled surname, and a previous relationship do not make Emily a bad risk!”

“Maybe not, but before Vitalis, Emily was involved with another wealthy businessman.”

Now that she knew Emily’s full name, the whole embarrassing scandal was coming back to her, which made her feel even sorrier for Emily. “From memory, the Woodhouse-Harrises moved in wealthy circles, so, of course, Emily would meet wealthy men.”

“The relationships wouldn’t be such a problem if Emily hadn’t tried to conceal her past.”

“Maybe she had good reasons for doing so.”

Damon crossed his arms over his chest. “Such as?”

Zara’s chin came up. She felt she was fighting on two fronts, for Emily and for herself. “For a start, it can’t have been much fun having the media hounding her.”