checked the time then rang Walter, his head of security and one of his most trusted employees. Minutes later, Ben’s flight details were confirmed. He was headed for the island of Medinos, and would, no doubt, be staying in the clifftop fortress Tyler had left to him and Ben jointly.
Retrieving his cell, he found the only number for Zara that he had, her employment agency. After a moment of hesitation, he dialed. In the past two months, ever since he had discovered that Zara had opened her own agency, apart from picking up his initial call, he had invariably found himself shunted through to her answering service. His jaw compressed when, as usual, the call went straight through to voice mail. He left a terse message and set the phone down on his bedside table.
Stepping out onto his balcony, he studied the gray clouds building overhead, blotting out the first scattering of stars. Ben had been right in pointing out the irony that Damon specialized in designing hardware and software to collect, unlock and decode information, and yet he could not unlock the mystery of the woman who had shared his bed and then attempted to disappear with all the skill of a master spy.
Cold droplets spattered Damon’s broad shoulders as he turned from the darkening view, strolled through to the kitchen and lifted the lid on the casserole Walter’s wife, Margot, had left for him. Not for the first time, he was keenly aware of the utter emptiness of his house.
For years he had been living in a kind of deep freeze. Just over a year ago, when Zara had strolled into his office in a beige jacket and skirt that on most women would have looked shapeless and boring, but on her had somehow looked sexy, the thaw had been instant and profound.
He had wanted her. If he was ruthlessly honest, that was also the reason he had reconnected with Zara again when he found out she had opened her own employment agency. To date, he had resisted what he’d come to view as a fatal attraction, but that was about to change. The knowledge that Zara had had his child had kicked away some invisible barrier. They were linked in the most primal, intimate way a man and woman could be linked and he was no longer prepared to tolerate the distance she seemed to prefer.
From now on, they were playing by his rules.
He had not forgotten Ben. As Ben’s only close relative and the trustee of Ben’s inheritance, Damon’s course of action was clear. He needed to retrieve his brother before Ben did something completely irresponsible, like get married to a woman he had only known for a few weeks.
The retrieval of Ben, as luck would have it, dovetailed with Damon’s need to gain access to his child. Zara Westlake stood at the center of both issues, which meant that, whether she liked it or not, she would have to meet with him face-to-face.
Out of the murk of the first two objectives, a third emerged. Despite Zara’s betrayal, despite the grip the past still had on his life, he needed one more thing.
Zara Westlake back in his bed.
A soft chime, indicating that a much-needed client had just opened the door of Zara’s fledgling employment agency, diverted her attention from her four-month-old baby, Rosie. Thankfully, after a marathon effort to get Rosie to nap, her tiny daughter had finally drifted into a restless slumber.
Anxious to snag her client before he or she lost interest and decided to take their very valuable business elsewhere, Zara tiptoed out of the smallest interview room, which today doubled as Rosie’s makeshift nursery. Makeshift, because normally, when Zara was working, Rosie was in day care. But, because Rosie had been a little off-color, the center hadn’t wanted to take her, so Zara had planned to work from home while she kept an eye on her daughter. However, that arrangement had crashed and burned when her assistant, Molly, had called in sick at the last minute, meaning that Zara had been forced to bring Rosie to the office.
It wasn’t until she had gently closed the door behind her that Zara realized she had left her high heels, which she had slipped out of while she had fed and changed Rosie, behind her desk. Added to that, her hair, once smoothed into an immaculate French pleat, was now disheveled from the playful grip of Rosie’s fingers.
Pinning a smoothly professional smile on her face, she turned to her client. In that instant, the room seemed to whirl, reminding her of the last month of pregnancy when bouts of dizziness would hit out of the blue.
Disbelief froze her in place as Zara’s gaze traveled from the rock-solid shape of a masculine jaw, with the hint of a five o’clock shadow, to the scar that sliced across one cheekbone, a fascinating counterpart to the damaged line of a once-aquiline nose. Her own jaw taut, she braced herself for the impact of the magnetic silvery gaze, which had always put her in mind of that of a very large, very focused wolf.
Her heart slammed against the wall of her chest. A complicated mix of panic, edged with another purely feminine reaction she refused to acknowledge.
He had found her.
Damon Smith.
Six foot two inches of scarred, muscular, reclusive billionaire standing in her tiny office, taking all the air, his sleek shoulders broad enough that they stretched the dark fabric of a very expensive black coat.
A stomach-churning anxiety kicked in as she wondered why he was here. Damon Smith had the kind of wealth and power that meant he did not have to leave his private island or his penthouse office unless he chose to do so. There was a small army of devoted, ex-military employees who had been with him for years and who were ready and willing to do his slightest bidding.
Damon turning up in her office was significant.
* * *
Cold air gusted, shaking the windows. Predictably, her door, which had a malfunctioning catch, flung open. Damon caught the door before it could bang against the wall, his dark coat swirling like a mantle as he did so, cloaking its owner in the shadows and secrets that permeated his life. Public secrets due to his work. Private secrets, which she was privy to and wished she wasn’t, because they also scored her life.
He closed the door and tested it to make sure the catch had engaged. His gaze, now distinctly irritable, pinned her again. “You need to get that fixed.”
“It’s on my list.”
Along with fixing the leaky tap in the tiny bathroom and replacing some of the light fittings, which looked like they had been salvaged from a Second World War junk sale. Knowing her landlord, they probably had.
Keeping a neutral smile fixed firmly in place, Zara girded herself to hold Damon’s gaze with the equanimity she had learned in an elite finishing school in Switzerland, all paid for by her gorgeous, restless, jet-setting supermodel mother, Petra Atrides, who had been known in the fashion and media worlds as Petra Hunt. A practiced composure, which had been put to the test by the paparazzi when Petra had plunged to her death along with her new fiancé—Damon’s uncle Tyler McCall.
Not that Damon knew any of that, which was the way she wanted to keep it. There was no way Damon would believe she had not known who he was when she accepted the job as his personal assistant and then practically flung herself into his bed. Not when he discovered she was Petra Hunt’s daughter and had given birth to his child.
The wind buffeted the front door again, the force of it actually making the lights flicker, but this time the door held.
Damon took in her small office in one sweeping glance. “So this
