a great deal of effort into forgetting about him completely, even one second was too long.
With an effort of will, Zara smoothed out her expression, but there was another tiny issue that was bugging her. “And Emily being older than Ben by several years would, of course, make her the predatory one.” She could not forget that the paparazzi had nicknamed Petra, who had been several years older than Tyler, “the Huntress.” As if Petra had been cold and calculating, and had deliberately set out to ensnare a rich lover, when Zara knew that it had been Tyler who had pursued Petra.
Damon frowned. “I wasn’t trying to imply that Emily was predatory because she’s older—”
“Good, because we both know Ben is something of a party animal.”
Damon seemed briefly riveted by the shoes, and she realized she was brandishing them in front of her like a weapon. Taking a deep breath, she placed the shoes on the floor and methodically slipped them on. The heels gave her an extra inch and half, which wasn’t nearly enough.
Damon’s gaze clashed with hers again, the hard edge tempered by something she had never seen before, something new, an intent curiosity, as if he was logging the changes in her and taking stock in a completely masculine way.
She suppressed her automatic panic that Damon would somehow equate her extra curves with motherhood. She had to keep reminding herself that Damon’s focus was on rescuing Ben from Emily; he didn’t know Zara had had his child. In any case, the obvious explanation for her more rounded shape was a whole lot simpler, that she had just put on a little weight.
Damon’s expression shuttered. “You know very well that I meant Ben couldn’t take a woman like Emily anywhere she didn’t want to go.”
In the midst of what was for Zara a stressful encounter, Damon’s flat statement informed her that he knew exactly what she was trying to achieve with her line of reasoning. It was also a reminder of just why she had fallen for him in the first place. Most people, quite rightly, viewed him as cold and formidable, even dangerous. But that had not been Zara’s experience. As an employer she had found him to be demanding but utterly straightforward. Far from being intimidated, she had found that, on a purely feminine level, she had liked his air of command and the knowledge that, in a company full of alpha males, Damon was the scariest, most alpha of them all.
Grudgingly, she conceded Damon’s point that Emily was not the type to be coerced. “Even so, this is out of character for her. If she had wanted to take time off, she would have emailed me or left a message.”
Although the instant Zara said the words she remembered that she had seen an email from Emily but hadn’t opened it because she’d been so busy with Rosie and walk-in clients.
Damon extracted his cell from his pocket, flicked the screen with his thumb, then placed the phone down on her desk so she could see Emily’s email. “Her resignation is there in black and white.”
Shocked, Zara flipped her laptop open and scrolled down her inbox to confirm that she had received almost exactly the same message. Hers, however, was peppered with apologies and assurances that Emily would ring once they got to Medinos.
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?”
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