do you mean, ‘hiding out’?”
Although the fact that she had been in hiding for the past thirteen months, hiding a pregnancy and now a baby, put an annoying blush on her cheeks.
Damon’s expression was deceptively mild. “You haven’t been answering your phone or returning calls, and the address you gave me over the phone a couple of months ago is incorrect. I’ve spent the past half hour walking the streets and questioning shop owners who had never heard of you. It wasn’t until I went online and checked your social media site that I managed to get your real address.”
Zara struggled to control another surge of heat to her cheeks. Weeks ago, when Damon had contacted her out of the blue, she hadn’t meant to give him incorrect information. In a moment of panic, thinking that he had somehow found out about Rosie, the transposed figures had just tumbled out of her. But neither should he, a CEO, have been even remotely interested in the whereabouts of her office. When she had agreed to take on Magnum Security as a client, she had only done so because she had desperately needed the money and on the condition that all of her dealings were with Damon’s dry-as-dust business manager, Howard Prosser. In theory she should never have had to deal with Damon, period.
She stiffened at the image of the extraordinarily wealthy and private Damon Smith walking the streets and questioning shop owners.
Hunting her.
A sharp little thrill shot down her spine. Instantly, her jaw firmed. That was the kind of feminine reaction toward Damon that she had never been able to afford, because he was, literally, the one man she should not want and could not have in her life.
Aside from being a link to a past she was determined to leave behind, she had found out that Damon was also the trustee of his uncle’s estate. He had requested, through his lawyers, that she, as Angel Atrides—her name before she had legally changed it to Zara Westlake—sign a legal document relinquishing any claim on Tyler’s estate in exchange for a one-off, extremely offensive cash offer.
Raw with grief, insulted and hurt, Zara had refused the offer and had refused to sign the horrible legal agreement. She had been sickened by the tactics of a family who had obviously bought into the media hype around her mother as a model who was past her prime and who had inveigled her way into Tyler’s über-rich, normally sensible life. No doubt Damon believed that Angel Atrides was just as trashy and opportunistic, and that a chunk of cash and a legal agreement was a necessary insurance against her ever darkening his doorstep or, horror of horrors, trying to make a claim on Tyler’s fortune.
Once again, the calculated risk of accepting Magnum as a client made her heart pound. Her chest seized on a sudden thought. Could Damon know about Rosie?
Last night he had left a message on her answering service, a terse command to call him back. It was something she had deliberately left for Molly to attend to.
Summoning a smooth smile, and trying to control her racing pulse, Zara made it to the safe haven of her desk. “I’m sorry you had trouble finding me.”
Feeling pinned by his gaze, she opened a drawer on the pretext that she wanted to check the address on her business cards. Although, she knew there was nothing wrong with her cards. Her mother might have been a creative, artistic personality who resisted being organized and hated dealing with numbers, but Zara was her polar opposite. A perfectionist and a details person, she preferred to lead, not follow, and she liked to get things right.
The flush on her cheeks seemed to grow more heated as she jerkily closed the drawer on her stack of perfectly aligned, perfectly correct business cards. “I’m sorry you somehow ended up with the wrong address.”
Grim amusement flickered at the corners of Damon’s mouth. “The number was reversed. But something tells me you already knew that.”
Her chin jerked up. “What are you insinuating?”
Damon shrugged. “Thirteen months ago, you quit your job and disappeared. For the past couple of months, ever since I discovered you had opened up your own employment agency, apart from picking up my first call, you’ve consistently failed to return my calls—”
“You know I prefer to work via email. Besides, all the correspondence and contracts go through Howard.”
He glanced around her office again, his gaze briefly settling on the door of the interview room where Rosie was sleeping. “Maybe the address you gave me was a genuine mistake.”
But his tone told her he didn’t believe that.
His gaze shifted thoughtfully back to the door of the interview room and a sharp jolt of adrenaline made her heart pound.
She was suddenly certain that he knew.
A little feverishly, she straightened piles of paper that did not need straightening. The only way Damon could have found out about Rosie was through Emily, although her contact with Emily had been minimal, two interviews and a couple of phone updates. She was not even sure Emily was aware that Zara had a baby. Of course, there were other ways he could have pried into her life. Given that he was in the security and surveillance business and had once been some kind of Special Forces agent in the military, she was certain he could find out whatever he wanted.
Damon’s gaze skimmed her neatly arranged office and Zara did her best to conceal her relief that he was no longer concentrated on the door to the interview room in which Rosie was sleeping. When it came to Damon, usually, she erred on the side of fighting, but today running was at the top of the list—with Rosie tucked invisibly under one arm so he would not uncover that particular guilty secret.
Shockingly, his gaze touched on hers before shifting and she realized he had noticed her hair. She took a calming breath and willed her heart rate to slow. There was nothing wrong with messy hair. It was a windy day. Her hair could have gotten disheveled when she’d gone out for coffee.
A weird part of her acknowledged that she had always known this could happen, that one day her most lucrative client, who also happened to be the father of her child, would walk into her office and she would have to deal with him face-to-face. But, not now, not today, when she was struggling from lack of sleep and with Rosie just feet away in the next room.
The last thing either of them needed was to be inescapably linked by Rosie. A small shudder went through Zara at the thought of the media attention that would erupt once it was found out that Petra Hunt’s daughter, using a new identity, had had a child with Tyler McCall’s nephew. They would come after her; they would come after Rosie. And Damon, apart from making it crystal clear that Zara was not welcome in his life, would hate that she had fooled him.
On cue, a small, snuffling sound came from the interview room. Zara’s heart sped up. Lately, Rosie, who was usually a very good sleeper, was waking up after just a few minutes of restless slumber. A little desperately, she reached for a random file and slapped it down on the desk, trying to make enough noise that Damon would not hear Rosie. “So, now that you’ve found me, what can I do for you? Is there a problem with one of the employees I sent to you? Troy? Or Harold?”
Troy was young, just eighteen, with tattoos and a brow piercing, but he was bright and earnest. Zara had thought he would be perfect for Damon’s IT team. Harold had been an older public servant who had failed to find a job through other employment agencies, owing to a rather unfortunate skin condition, and in desperation had come to Zara. She had found a place for him in Damon’s accounts department.
Damon frowned slightly, as if he didn’t
