Fiona Brand - Keeping Secrets

“Granted.”

The curtness of his reply seemed to emphasize that the bottom line for Damon was Emily’s so-called deception. “Emily happens to be very good at her job.”

“I’m not disputing that, just her motives in seeking employment with wealthy men.”

That touched a nerve, guiltily reminding Zara that if Damon found out her true identity, he would ascribe the same kind of gold-digging motivation to her. She doubted he would believe that it had been Zara’s well-connected aunt who had set up the job interview and set her up by placing her back in Damon’s orbit in the hope that she might score another cash offer. Or that Zara had zero interest in that money! “So you still think all Emily wanted was a wealthy husband?”

His expression cooled. “Or a lover. It’s not exactly an uncommon motive.”

His flat statement once again dredged up the stark memory of the legal letter she had received from Damon’s lawyers. They’d offered to pay her off so she would not go to the press, attempt to contact his family or get her sticky fingers on the family inheritance.

As if.

Zara could feel her blood pressure shooting through the roof. Before that moment, she had been able to separate Damon from the contents of that insulting letter, even though she knew he was the one who had authorized it. But now she realized how naive she had been. Damon’s contempt for her and Petra was not so different from his ruthless assessment of Emily.

“There are women who don’t give a hoot about your family’s money, and Emily is one of them. She is not predatory.”

A faint rustling sound from the interview room, as if Rosie was struggling out of her cozy blanket, sent a fresh surge of adrenaline shooting through Zara’s veins. Damon’s cool gaze fixed on the door, reminding her that not only did he possess exceptional eyesight, but that his hearing was no doubt excellent, as well. Attributes that, along with an uncanny sixth sense had, apparently, made him some kind of superspy during his time in the Special Forces. She needed to get Damon out of her office, now.

She forced a professional smile and apologized, which was more difficult than she expected. Bleakly, she realized she was still surprisingly angry with Damon. Although, she didn’t know quite why that should be, since she was the one who had left Damon and not the other way around. Plus, she was over him, and had been for months.

She directed another breezy smile in Damon’s general direction. As much as she thought Ben was at fault, it was clear the responsibility for the employment part of this disaster belonged with her. Damon’s firm paid her to supply Magnum with the temping services they required, so it was up to her to fulfill the contract. She needed to find someone else to fill Emily’s position, and fast, before Magnum took their business elsewhere.

“As luck would have it, I’ve got a temp on the books who might do to replace Emily. She’s a little older, but extremely efficient—”

“No.”

Zara blinked and plowed on. “Harriet has a long work record and an extremely good skill set—”

“I don’t want Harriet,” he said in a flat, cool voice. “I want you.”

A pang of heat shot clear to Zara’s toes, despite the fact that she knew Damon could only be referring to his need for an assistant. Even so, memories flickered, vivid and earthy, drawing every muscle of her body tight. She swallowed against a coiling tension that should not exist and desperately willed her body to return to normal. “Why?”

Damon’s darkened gaze locked with hers for a piercing moment, and the reason she’d succumbed to a wild, irresponsible fling with him when she had known it was a huge mistake to sleep with the boss was suddenly crystal clear: chemistry. It shimmered in the air and ran through her veins like liquid fire, the pressure of it banding her chest, making it hard to breathe. For some unknown reason Damon had wanted her and, against all common sense, she had wanted him too.

Damon frowned and dragged lean fingers through his hair and she received the indelible impression that for a long, stretched-out moment he had actually forgotten what he was going to say. “Uh, the McCall takeover. Before you disappeared, you did a lot of the groundwork—”

She stiffened at the mention of the McCall takeover. McCall Electrical being the company that had belonged to Tyler McCall. If there was ever a project she did not want to work on, it would be that one!

“I didn’t disappear—I resigned without notice.” Then she had disappeared. She’d had to get out of town quickly, because she had known that if she had tried to have a normal, aboveboard relationship with Damon, the press would have become interested in her. Even though they had no clue what Angel Atrides looked like, it would only have been a matter of time before her true identity was uncovered, then all the careful work she had done to invent a normal life and career would have been for nothing.

“Resignation?” he muttered in a low growl. “You sent a text.”

Warmth rose in her cheeks. “But I did resign.”

She knew she shouldn’t belabor the point, but a combination of her anxiety over Damon walking into her office and her extreme physical response to him were having a bad effect on her. She couldn’t seem to stop arguing with him, which was counterproductive. She needed to concentrate on getting rid of him before Rosie woke up.

Swallowing the exhilarating desire to argue some more, she reached for calm. “I agree that texting was not the ideal way to finish.” It had just been necessary at the time, because she had not wanted Damon to have her private email address. Email addresses opened too many online doors, some of which led back to her old life, and she knew how adept Damon was at utilizing those sorts of opportunities.

Damon’s thoughtful gaze seemed to burn right through her. “Whatever. Before you left without any notice or forwarding address, you did the groundwork for the McCall takeover. Despite a hitch in the proceedings, I’m now on the point of closing the deal, so I would prefer to have someone who knows their way around the issues.”

Zara had the sudden, suffocating sense of being entangled in a sticky web from which she could not escape. “I had thought you would have completed that months ago.”

“There’s been an unexpected complication, a missing block of voters’ shares that could jeopardize the takeover. And I’ve had...other things that have needed attention.”

A picture of the gorgeous blonde he’d been dating lately, heiress to a media empire, Caroline Grant, flashed into Zara’s mind. That image was instantly followed by a snapshot of the reed-slim redhead he had started seeing on a regular basis not long after Zara had left. Another hot dart of anger unsettled her further.

She did not want to admit that the anger could be linked with the fact that Damon had started dating less than a month after she left his bed. Wining and dining beautiful women while she had been hiding out in her aunt’s country cottage, feeling exhausted and nauseous in the first trimester of her pregnancy. Because, if she was angry, that meant Damon was still important to her, or worse, that she was jealous.

Another small sound drew Damon’s attention back to the door of the interview room. Zara’s heart rate increased another notch. Rosie was definitely awake.

The vibration of a cell, thankfully, distracted Damon. Despite her clear need to get rid of Damon fast, a sudden intense curiosity manifested itself as he extracted the phone from his coat pocket and checked the screen.

Jaw taut, she watched as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. She wondered if the call had been from Caroline Grant, and suddenly her mind was made up.