to reach for her wine and shut her mouth and hope that someone else’s manners would prevail when clearly hers had not.
‘Geneva’s a pleasant city,’ said Damon as a waiter appeared from nowhere to top up everyone’s wineglasses. ‘I was there this time last week, on my way through from a job in Brussels. Catching up with an old employer.’
Damon didn’t look at her as he delivered his words. He didn’t look at anyone, just locked his gaze on the entreé another waiter placed in front of him and kept it there. ‘He took me on a backdoor tour through the Palace of Nations. I recommend it.’
Ruby wasn’t the only one who stared at him in astonishment. Both Lena and Poppy were gaping at him too.
Where to begin? What to pick up on? What to leave the hell alone?
‘Huh,’ said Lena, amazement running deeply through that one incautious sound.
Ruby couldn’t even manage that.
‘You didn’t tell me you were in Brussels?’ said Poppy, and her voice held disappointment and sorrow rather than amazement. ‘We could have met up somewhere. Oxford’s not that far away.’
‘Sorry, Poppy.’ Damon shot Poppy a guarded glance. ‘You know I don’t do family when I’m working.’
What the hell did Damon West do for a living that he had to eschew his family while he was doing it?
But Damon didn’t say and Ruby sure as hell didn’t ask. She just looked at him and Damon looked back, his bleak gaze meeting hers, and there was no smile in them, no invitation, just a man who knew he’d said too much already and had to shut it down before he came unstuck completely.
‘Pretty place, Brussels,’ she said, in a weak attempt to halt the growing silence. ‘It’s probably my favourite city centre of all the European cities. Not too big or overwhelming.’ Unlike, say, Damon’s attempt at openness and transparency. ‘And then there’s the chocolate.’
‘And the waffles,’ said Lena, joining the rescue party. ‘And the beer.’
‘Cherry beer,’ said Ruby.
‘Trappist beer,’ said Lena, and with a gamine grin, ‘Warm beer. Something for everyone.’
‘Indeed.’ Ruby could come to like Lena. A lot. ‘Damon, what did you like best about Brussels?’ Keeping it casual, forcing a direction, and to hell with letting the conversation find its own ebb and flow. Ruby had the helm now, and she was keeping it.
‘The history,’ he said, and talk turned to the fields of Flanders and the hallmarks of war.
Wine flowed and the food was indeed superb. Conversation flowed too, and turned to future endeavours. To Lena hoping to build her strength and get back to work, and Poppy, who couldn’t decide whether to learn Korean or study Mayan script, and to Russell, who wanted to expand his banking services into Shanghai. No one asked Damon what lay on his horizon and he didn’t say.
Washington, DC, perhaps? Maybe some other old employer would whiz him through the White House in their spare time?
Dessert was worth waiting for, and then it was time for Ruby to thank Russell for the marvellous meal, wish them all a Merry Christmas and see herself home.
She thought she’d executed a clean getaway as Damon rose to pull out her chair.
Until Russell insisted on everyone heading to the hotel foyer together, presumably so they could see her into a taxi, only by the time they got there Russell had rearranged events to his liking, in that everyone could fit in the limo, and his chauffeur would drive everyone home.
Ruby knew when to cut her losses and go with a superior plan, only by the time they arrived at Russell’s high rise the plan had changed again.
Ruby didn’t even see it coming until Russell alighted and helped Lena and Poppy from the car, and then leaned back down and asked Damon to see Ruby home, and by then the limo door was closing, and the limo—with her and Damon in it—was pulling smoothly away from the kerb.
‘Old fox. He planned that,’ she murmured, and Damon responded with a smile. ‘And you let him.’
‘My father has a chivalrous streak,’ countered Damon.’ Surely you know that by now.’
She did know that. ‘And you? What kind of streak do you have?’
‘Right now I’m going to have to go with masochistic,’ he said with a twist of his lips as he leaned his head back against the black leather interior of the limo. Had Damon known how intimate this ride would be with the others gone and just the two of them in here now?
And then he turned his head towards her and the seat space she’d made sure to put between them seemed to disappear. ‘I tried to answer your question,’ he said quietly.
‘I know.’ And in doing so he’d got to her. Again. ‘Did you think it would get you into my bed?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘Then why do it?’
‘Maybe I just wanted to know what it felt like to be that open.’
‘And what did it feel like?’
‘Wrong.’
They lapsed into silence again, a brooding, swirling silence that complemented the black leather seats and the cavernous limo interior. Ruby rested her head back against the seat and closed her eyes against the pull of him.
She’d wanted honesty from him. She hadn’t realised just how much it would hurt.
‘Maybe it’ll get easier,’ she offered quietly. ‘Maybe you just need to find the right person.’
‘Maybe.’ But the word held a world of defeat in it, and Ruby opened weary eyes and turned her head and held his gaze.
She edged a little closer, moving slowly. It was the only way she knew to approach such a wild and wary thing. He didn’t move towards her, but he didn’t move away. Just watched in silence and when she set gentle lips to his he shuddered in silence too, before pulling slowly away.
‘What was that for?’ he whispered.
‘That was for you. For trying, because I asked you to, even if it didn’t go so well. Consider it my Thank You.’
‘Oh.’
This time he was the one to initiate the meeting of lips, and although he had no way with words he knew exactly how to pour emotion into a kiss. Longing and regret and she knew he still wanted her in spite of his inability to be open with her, and it made her want to cry.
‘That was You’re Welcome,’ he whispered.
And then he kissed her again and she wound her arms around his neck and his hands were gentle on her waist as he drew her onto him, over him, and pressing up into her with a sensuality she’d always known he commanded.
Not just kisses any more but the slide of her body against
