‘What’s wrong?’ Lazy smile on a dangerous man. ‘Coffee too hot?’
‘That’s one interpretation.’ Ruby sighed. ‘Regretfully, I’m going to have to ban the touching from now on in. And the teasing. Probably the question time as well. Sorry, Damon. I can’t afford to play with you.’
‘Because you work for my father? Would he really have to know?’
‘Damon, please. I’m insulted that you even tried that line on me. Your father may not keep up with the social lives of all his business acquaintances—that’s my job—but when it comes to the romantic liaisons of his children? Men like your father?’ Ruby slanted him a quelling glance as she topped up her long black with cold water before lifting it to her lips. ‘They always know.’
Ruby Maguire was a babe, decided Damon as he took his coffee back to his bedroom. A high-maintenance glossily gift-wrapped bundle of temptation and contradiction, and what was more she knew it.
Damon couldn’t have asked for a better distraction.
Something to take his mind off a missing brother and a wounded sister and a Christmas that was shaping up to be anything but festive.
He slung his towel on the bed and rummaged through the meagre collection of clothes he kept at his father’s house. A collared cotton shirt in white and a charcoal pinstriped suit. Bespoke, not made to measure. The expensive sports watch that his sisters had given him last Christmas. Clothes to suit his father’s house and reflect his father’s status—a Christmas tradition whereby Damon would look to be the type of son his father expected to see and in return his father would ask no questions as to what Damon had been up to the rest of the year.
What kind of man had Ruby Maguire’s father been before his fall from grace? wondered Damon as he tossed the suit on the bed. Already a wealthy one, if he remembered correctly. Manhattan banking family. Influential. Chances were that Harry Maguire hadn’t stolen the money because he’d needed it.
Maybe he’d been bored.
And colour Damon perceptive but the delectable Ruby Maguire also seemed somewhat overqualified for her current gofer position.
Ruby Maguire was used to dealing with the corporate lions of the world and holding her own. Ruby had severely underestimated her usefulness if she thought that no one but his father would employ her.
Which made Damon feel infinitely better about the seduction campaign he intended to wage on her.
She’d banned touching, teasing and question time but she hadn’t banned looking and she hadn’t banned scent. Her bad.
The cologne collection in the en-suite cupboard gave him a wide and varied selection to choose from. Eeeny meeny miney mo. Catcha … That was the aim. To catch Ruby Maguire and play a while.
Gucci it was.
Run his fingers through his hair, find some shoes, put them on. Plastic in wallet, wallet in pocket.
Damon West was ready to shop.
He found her in the atrium, positioning a delicate porcelain Santa amongst the fern fronds that banked the goldfish pond. ‘There,’ she said as he approached. ‘The perfect spot for Santa to enjoy a little R and R.’
Ruby Maguire stood and turned his way, no comment on the suit. She probably hadn’t expected anything else.
She breathed in deeply though and closed her eyes and smiled. She had the freest smile he’d ever seen.
‘I love that scent on a man,’ she murmured approvingly. ‘Brings back fond memories.’
‘Old boyfriend?’
‘Grandfather,’ she corrected sweetly.
This woman was so bad for a man’s ego. Damon smiled and meant it. Nothing like a challenge.
‘Ready to go?’ she said next, and he nodded and watched in silence as she headed for her oversized satchel, her ballet-style slippers making no sound on the marble floor. Odd choice of shoes to be wearing with crisply tailored grey trousers and a vivid fuchsia sleeveless silk top with an embroidered panel down the front that screamed couture, but all became clear when she opened the coat cupboard beside the front door and swapped her soft slippers for strappy black sandals with a stiletto heel.
‘I can’t stand high heels on marble floors,’ she explained. ‘It’s the clickety-clack. Where’s the elegance? Not to mention the ability to retreat without being seen or heard. That’s a very useful skill on occasion. Not, I hasten to add, that I’ve ever had to use that ability here. Your father doesn’t womanise.’ She reset the alarm before closing the cupboard door. ‘It’s a refreshing change.’
‘Yours did?’ he asked as he ushered her out of the door and closed it behind them.
‘Oh, yes. It was just a game, you see. Everything from stealing another man’s woman to the removal of vast sums of other people’s money—it was all just a game.’
‘Where was your mother in all of this?’
‘Living happily in Texas with oil baron husband number three. He doesn’t womanise either, come to think of it. That’s two I know.’
‘Wouldn’t he give you a job if you asked for one?’
‘Probably, but I don’t work for family, Damon. Never have, never will.’ ‘Another rule?’
‘That one’s more of a survival trait. Work for family and before you know it they’re trying to control your life.’ They stepped into the elevator and Ruby pressed the button to the foyer. ‘How loaded is your daddy’s credit card when it comes to buying Christmas gifts for his children?’ she asked. ‘Because I happen to have it with me.’
‘He bought us a plane once,’ said Damon. ‘We had to share it though.’
‘Poor baby,’ she murmured with another one of those carefree smiles that put him in mind of a kid in a sweets shop. ‘Not sure I can swing another aircraft or two at such short notice, but I’ve absolutely no objection to shopping with the sheiks and the sugar daddies if that’s the norm. The Landmark it is.’
The Landmark shopping mall butted onto the Landmark Oriental Hotel, which meant valet parking and rampant indulgence. Ruby’s mode of transport, an Audi R5 in panther-black with a pearl finish, would fit right in.
‘Yours?’ he murmured.
‘Was that a question?’ asked Ruby. ‘I thought we’d banned personal questions.’
‘You just asked me one.’
‘I asked about the cost of Christmas gifts for your family. That was business.’
‘No, that’s about as personal as it gets. I, on the other hand, merely questioned whether this car was yours. It could be a company car. It could be my father’s, though I doubt it. His taste runs to saloons.’
‘It’s mine. I chose it and paid for it myself. Happy now?’
‘Yes.
