he ate, he liked to do it standing at counters. He could do a restaurant meal—he’d managed it in Hong Kong and he managed it again when they went into Byron Bay for dinner one night—but it wasn’t his preference.
If there was a pool nearby he’d be in it. A pool table in the room and he’d be at it. The ocean and the toys he took to it could hold him for hours. Making love could also garner his undivided and sustained attention.
For now.
A suspicion formed in Ruby’s mind about the type of kid he’d been, based on the man he’d become. How hard it must have been to educate a boy who couldn’t sit still and whose mind worked that much faster than anyone else’s. How hacking would have been such a natural fit for him given he’d had to sit at a computer and cut a snail’s pace through all the schoolwork anyway.
Damon’s lifestyle choices made far more sense to her now. His work kept him focused, delivered up the adrenalin he craved and kept him on the move. New places, new people, a world’s worth of distraction—chances were he needed all those things in order to be content, and always would.
Not a man to plan a settled, predictable life around, but then, he’d never once suggested doing so.
‘You’re hyperactive, aren’t you?’ she asked him one night as he put together a late-night fruit platter that neither of them wanted, and tried—with limited success—to watch a movie with her.
Damon shot her a wary glance before deciding that the platter needed some biscuits.
‘That’s one label,’ he offered up finally. ‘There have been others.’
‘Like what?’ And when he didn’t reply, ‘Let me guess. Intellectually gifted, easily bored and distracted, physically reckless. How am I doing so far?’
‘You’re very astute.’
‘ADD?’
He wouldn’t look at her. Had to dump a load of mango peelings down the garbage disposal instead.
She took that as a yes, and gave up on ever getting to the end of the movie. Time to leave the sumptuously comfy lounge and take her bare feet and her stripey boyleg panties and vest over to the kitchen counter instead. His side of the counter, mind. They were way past having a bench in between them.
Mango slices had rapidly become a favourite snack of Ruby’s. She selected one, ate it, and smiled when a freshly wet hand cloth landed with a splat on the bench beside her. ‘Thank you.’
She’d need that later. It wouldn’t do to have sticky hands once she started running them all over Damon’s irresistible flesh.
‘So how do you feel about flying to Sydney tomorrow for a couple of days’ exploration?’ she said next. Change of subject, after a fashion. No change of craving for this man detected. ‘I hear there’s a bridge there to climb. The internet tells me there’s a racetrack on offer too. Maybe we can rustle up a car or two and a pair of willing instructors to ride shotgun and have ourselves a little wager on the outcome? I can’t let all that experience on Bahrain’s international circuit go to waste. Because I did get there eventually. I may not have mentioned that earlier. Memories of Carl weeping inconsolably over his Hummer’s split gearbox casing may have distracted me.’
‘You destroyed a man’s gearbox?’
‘Well, not on purpose. Good thing I was wearing my buzzy bee headband at the time, otherwise he may have taken one look at me and seen red.’ She picked up another mango slice and offered it to him. ‘Mango?’
‘You don’t have to scatter your conversation for me, Ruby. Or give me a hundred and one conversation threads to choose from. I can follow a one-track conversation just fine,’ he said quietly. ‘Labels and all. And, yes. Doctors diagnosed me ADHD as a kid.’
Ruby frowned. ‘Were you medicated?’
‘There was medication,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t easy, getting me to take it.’
‘Rebellious.’
‘I didn’t need it. I can control it. I can be still. You don’t need to indulge me by offering up adventure trips to Sydney whenever you think I’m getting bored.’
He sounded irritated and looked defensive. Apparently this was contagious.
‘Is indulging you such a sin?’ she argued mildly. ‘And here I thought it was part of being a good house guest. Sometimes I indulge you, sometimes you indulge me. And sometimes we leave each other alone. Given that you’ve been indulging my every whim for the past few days I figured it might be time to ante up.’
Ruby ate the mango piece, seeing as Damon’s mouth was set in a tightly closed line. She wiped her sticky fingers down his shirtfront and pushed him aside so she could get to the tap and rinse her hands.
‘I wasn’t judging you, Damon. I’m trying to understand you, and every time I think I come close you put up another wall.’ She rinsed her hands and shook the excess water off them with a decidedly annoyed flick, before turning around and running smack bang into a wall of simmering manhood. She poked a pointy finger into Damon’s well-exercised chest. ‘It’s very irritating.’
‘Is that so?’ he said silkily.
‘Yes.’ Another poke for the immovable object. ‘And stop trying to distract me with sex.’
‘I thought you liked the sex.’ She loved the sex. She was fast approaching the conclusion that fighting with Damon and then making up with him could well lead to incandescently memorable sex. ‘That is not the point.’ Another jab, only this time he caught her hand and flattened it against his chest.
‘What is it we’re doing here, Damon? Getting to know each other? Indulging in a no-strings-attached, short-term affair where getting to know each other better is not a requirement? Are you trying to decide whether you can trust me to keep your secrets? What? Because I can’t play this game if I don’t know the rules.’
‘There is no game,’ he said quietly and redirected her hand to his heart. ‘No rules either. Just an automatic defence against a criticism I’ve worn my entire life.’
He could break her heart too, whenever he wanted to. Distract her so that she never pushed too hard when it came to the question uppermost on her mind. The ‘where are we going with this’ question. The ‘what the hell am I still doing here when you won’t even let me know the simplest things about you’ question.
‘I don’t have all the symptoms of ADHD,’ he said gruffly. ‘I can focus when I want to. I think before doing. I can be still.’
‘Really?’ ‘I can.’
‘But you don’t need to be, do you? You’ve organised your life so you don’t have to be still, and that’s fine too. Plenty of other people organise their lives that way too. I’ve spent my entire life surrounded by gifted, driven, workaholic risk-takers who wouldn’t know how to rest or be still if their lives depended on it. Your father’s one of them. My father was another. Stepfather number three too, although he enjoys coming home. That’s what my mother does—she makes him enjoy coming home.’
‘There are women who still do that?’ He looked intrigued.
