I ended up being fostered out to different families, and when I was sixteen I got sick of being sent from pillar to post and ran away. No one bothered looking for me and I ended up living on the streets for a year or so.’ Those had been hard times and I didn’t like to think about them too much. ‘Mr Chen caught me trying to steal some money from him and he liked my guts. Thought I had talent. He didn’t have any kids and wanted someone to pass his business on to so he took me in and taught me all he knew.’ I took yet another sip of the cool liquid, my throat feeling dry. ‘He was like a father in many ways.’
Except he never took that final step. He never adopted you.
No, but he’d been clear about his reasons. Yes, I’d been hurt and upset when he’d refused—I’d been just shy of eighteen and desperate to feel connected to someone—but I’d understood. He’d always wanted his own children and I would never be that for him. I was too different. I wanted things that he didn’t and, even though I tried to pretend, I could never quite manage to replicate his brand of cold dignity.
Nothing at all to do with the fact that it felt like you weren’t good enough for him and never would be.
Damian’s fingers had strayed to the back of my neck and began to massage some of the little knots I hadn’t realised had gathered in my muscles.
It felt so good that I nearly groaned, leaning into his hand.
‘You lost him, you said?’ he asked, a gruff edge to his rich voice.
I shut my eyes. ‘He died six months ago. His business is all I have left of him.’
‘So you’re carrying on his legacy?’
That he understood this without me having to say surprised me.
I twisted slightly to look up at him. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘My mother died when I was sixteen.’ His smile had disappeared and, without it blinding me, I saw what I hadn’t before: the lines of grief around his mouth and eyes. ‘Cancer. Basically everything I have now is her legacy.’
The honesty of the admission caught me off-guard, my throat tightening at the bleak look in his eyes. Clearly time hadn’t healed things for him, and I knew that feeling all too well.
Responding instinctively, I reached up and touched his cheekbone. ‘Your company, you mean?’
‘Yeah. She told me to make something of myself, so I did.’ His gaze turned distant. ‘She was a burlesque dancer, loved jewels and feathers and all that sparkly shit. And I promised her once that when I was rich I’d buy her the real thing.’ Abruptly, he looked down at me. ‘So I did.’
All those jewels he collected...they were for his mother?
‘She liked rubies,’ he went on softly. ‘So I bought the Red Queen. Ulysses, Everett and I are going to be launching a new non-profit in a week or so in London, and some of my jewel collection is going to be auctioned off, proceeds to go to the foundation and to a cancer research facility I started up. The Red Queen is the centrepiece.’ Something fierce glittered in his eyes and for once it wasn’t desire. ‘So, yeah, I know a little about wanting to carry on a legacy.’
I pressed my fingertips against his warm cheek, my throat too tight to speak. I hadn’t expected him to be so honest with me. Somehow we’d gone from lightly flirting to deeply emotional, and I wasn’t sure how to deal with that. Deep emotions weren’t things that Mr Chen had liked to talk about.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said huskily, the words sounding ineffectual even as I said them. ‘I didn’t know that about the necklace.’
‘Why would you?’ He put his hand over mine where it rested on his cheek. ‘I haven’t told anyone else.’ His fingers curled around my hand and he brought it down to his mouth, kissing my palm. Then his smile came out again, brilliant and bright, and the grief disappeared as if it had never been. ‘Not too bad a legacy for Mum, though. Could have been worse.’
I wanted to smile with him, but I didn’t. Because for the first time I realised that his smile was a deflection. A mask. A beautiful, stunning mask, but a mask all the same.
And who was the man behind it? Was this glitzy lifestyle he led really him? And, if so, why? What did he get out of it? Or was there something else behind that too?
‘How?’ I asked. ‘How did you do it?’
‘Hard fucking work.’ That smile flashed again, hiding something. ‘Plus I met a couple of guys online who were in the same dire straits I was in. One of them just happened to be great with computers and had a way with crypto-currency.’
‘Ulysses White,’ I murmured. ‘And Everett Calhoun.’
‘That’s right. Everett’s the security guy. Ulysses is the money man.’
‘So what does that make you?’ The details on his role within Black and White were hazy. I’d kind of assumed, given his looks and his ease with people, that it was the PR side of things.
His mouth took on a sly curve. ‘I’m the glue that holds it together.’
‘But how?’ I persisted. ‘What is it that you do?’
‘I collect jewels and beautiful women. I throw parties and live the lifestyle.’ He said the words casually, a throwaway, practised line. ‘I make sure everyone’s nice to each other.’
‘No, you don’t,’ I said. ‘And stop smiling. I can see right through it.’
The smile on his face froze, the tarnished silver of his eyes taking on a sharp edge. ‘You’re an observant woman. Okay, then, tell me what you see.’
I studied him for a long moment and he didn’t look away. ‘I see a beautiful man who dazzles people into thinking that’s all he is. But there’s more to you than that, isn’t there? Something you don’t want anyone else to know.’
His gaze was absolutely unreadable. Then his mouth twisted and he gave a mirthless laugh, shaking his head. ‘Jesus, that’s the last time I ask that question, then.’
‘Well, you did ask.’
‘I know.’ His fingers tunnelled into my hair at the back of my head, his fingertips pressing lightly against my skull, as if he couldn’t stop touching me. He was an intensely physical man, as I was beginning to understand.
‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ I wasn’t sure why I was pushing him, since I hadn’t expected deep and meaningful when I’d said yes to staying with him, nor did I particularly want it. But that curious part of me wouldn’t let go. ‘You’re hiding something.’
He tilted his head slightly. ‘We’re all hiding something.’
It came to me then in a kind of rush that, though we might on the surface be quite different, we were also quite similar. Both of us were guarded, except while I stayed in the shadows, using them to hide me, he hid in plain sight. Using his looks and his charisma to deflect people.
‘I really wanted Mr Chen to adopt me,’ I said before I had a chance to think better of it, almost throwing the words at him, a gesture of trust. ‘But he’d
