Keeping Secrets Page 8

  Caroline was a case in point. She was classically beautiful and stylish, a virtual carbon copy of Damon’s ex-wife, Lily. The similarities reaffirmed that Zara was the exact opposite of the kind of woman he clearly preferred.

  Which begged the question, why had he slept with her in the first place?

  Feeling annoyed with herself for falling into the trap of comparing herself with other women who had nothing whatsoever to do with her life—unless one of them became Rosie’s stepmother, and she didn’t want to think about that—Zara found her laptop. Sitting down on the couch, she flipped it open. Usually she checked in with a few friends on social media or read a downloaded book until she felt sleepy, but on impulse, she typed Caroline’s name into a popular search engine.

  A huge selection of hits appeared. At the top of the list was a video feed of a charity dinner that had been posted less than thirty minutes before.

  Stomach tight, knowing she shouldn’t do it but unable to resist, she hit the play button. Her screen filled with an image of Caroline in a sexy pale peach gown with a plunging neckline and a slit that revealed one slender, perfectly tanned leg. According to the commentary, normally, Caroline preferred her blonde hair up, but tonight she had opted for a more natural look, and had styled her hair smooth and straight so that it flowed silkily around her shoulders. The reason? Her soon-to-be fiancé, Damon Smith.

  Zara stabbed the pause button, but she was too late. The screen froze on a shot of Caroline, one arm coiled around a dark sleeve as Damon, looking broodingly masculine in a tux, half turned to end up center shot.

  Her chest tight and burning with an emotion she did not want to label, Zara wondered if she was actually going to be sick.

  Suddenly, the dilemma of accepting a lift to work, even with the risk of a nosy reporter, was decided. She would rather die than get into one of Damon’s fabulous, glossy company cars. If Damon’s driver was parked outside her house at eight thirty, then he would have a wasted trip, because she would be gone by eight.

  She dragged in one breath, then another. Dimly, she registered a piece of knowledge that she had avoided for some time through the simple tactic of refusing to think about it, period.

  She was jealous of Caroline. And there was nothing either gentle or half-hearted about the emotion, which pulsed through Zara in fiery waves. She had been jealous for months, ever since she had read on a social media site that Damon had started dating the blonde.

  Jumping to her feet, Zara began to pace. Just seconds ago, she had felt tired, maybe even a little depressed. Now restless energy hummed through her.

  Damon was going to marry Caroline.

  How could he? When he had just found out he had fathered a child? Their child.

  Clearly, Rosie did not mean as much to him as he had implied today. Although, unpalatably, it wasn’t Damon’s relationship with his daughter that was upsetting her so badly. It was his utter lack of a relationship with her.

  The reason she was jealous of Caroline was blazingly simple. It had been staring her in the face for weeks, but she had been too intent on burying her head, and her emotions, in the sand.

  She still wanted Damon.

  Six

  Zara ended up at one end of her tiny sitting room, staring at the rain streaming down her window. Feeling like an automaton, she jerked the curtains together, closing out the night.

  Blankly, she forced herself to face the fact that Damon and Caroline were soon to be engaged. And why not? They had been dating for months. It should not have come as a shock.

  But it had, she thought grimly, especially after the kiss they’d shared.

  Numbly, she moved to the small set of French doors that opened out onto a drenched patio and yanked a second set of curtains closed. The fact was, the kiss had stirred up feelings she had thought she had suppressed, making her feel intimately, possessively connected with Damon, as if he was still her lover. And now Caroline had taken him.

  The reality was that Damon had never been hers. Neither of them had ever committed to anything more than a brief, secretive fling, and that fling had been more than a year ago.

  But they had a baby together. That meant something.

  Surely Damon could have taken some time to reassess. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she tried to rationalize the emotions that kept hitting her out of left field. Maybe she felt so shocked because, for the past year, even though she had left Damon, in a sense he had still been hers because, until Caroline, he had only dated sporadically.

  Jemima had only lasted three weeks. Zara knew, because she had checked.

  As she sat down, her knee brushed the mouse pad of her laptop, jolting it. The screen saver dissolved and she found herself once more looking at the happy couple.

  If Damon was getting married, that meant Caroline would become Rosie’s stepmother. Somehow that thought made her feel even more miserable.

  If she was brutally honest, it was the knowledge that while Damon had been happy to sleep with her on the quiet, he clearly wanted marriage with the kind of woman who moved in his own social circle. Just seeing Caroline and Damon together ignited the same kind of deep, tender hurt Zara had experienced when she had left him and realized that, as formidably equipped as he was to find her, he had not cared enough to do so.

  An unpleasant thought struck her. If Damon was planning on remarrying, it made all the sense in the world to clean out any skeletons in the cupboard. She and Rosie were a substantial skeleton.

  Zara found herself back on her feet and pacing. Just seconds ago, she had felt chilled and more than a little sorry for herself. Now heat flamed through her, flushing her cheeks and making her heart pound.

  It was no wonder Damon had left his sealed penthouse office and prowled the streets to find her. No wonder he was suddenly so keen to keep her close, even down to offering her a job and dangling a huge fee! Locked in his high-security office with all his ex-army cronies there to help him keep an eye on her—that was the definition of keeping her and Rosie, his two shady secrets, under wraps.

  Zara tried to calm down. She had been feeling guilty about keeping Rosie a secret. She had even been feeling guilty about who she was, Petra’s daughter, as if she had to apologize for her very existence.

  But she wasn’t the only one with secrets. She did not imagine that Caroline would be very happy to find out Damon had recently become a father.

  Burning with indignation at Damon’s double-dealing sneakiness and suddenly sick to death of living in the shadows and trying to be invisible—of feeling that she had committed some terrible crime just because she had slept with Damon a few times—she snatched up her phone. Unlocking it, she hit Redial on Damon’s number. The second Damon picked up, Zara froze, caught in the kind of panicked state that usually had no part in her carefully organized life.

  “Zara?” Damon’s deep, curt voice sent adrenaline zinging through her veins.

  Her throat seized up. A fraught second later, she disconnected the call.

  Horrified that she’d lost control to the point that she had actually called Damon to find out whether he really was marrying Caroline—as if she had a right to ask that question—Zara placed the cell on the coffee table. She needed to pull herself together, to get back to the crisp, businesslike state of mind that had been her go-to with all things Damon over the past few weeks.

  The phone chimed, almost stopping her heart. Damon’s number glowed on the screen.

  She stared at the cell as if it was a bomb about to explode, then kicked herself for not answering when a message popped up, informing her she had a new voice mail. With a sense of inevitability, she picked up the phone. Damon’s message was edged with impatience. He wanted to know if Rosie was okay. He finished with the command that she call him.

  When hell freezes over.

  She should never have called him in the first place. With a
jerky movement she did what she should have done just minutes ago—she turned the phone off altogether.

  Still feeling crazily on edge, she looked in on Rosie, who had finally fallen into a deep sleep. Softly closing the door, Zara padded to the laundry and put on a load of clothes to wash, then did her last job of the night, which was preparing a bottle for Rosie’s night feeding. As she tightened the screw lid on the bottle, the chime of her doorbell made her hand jerk.

  Her first thought was that it was Damon, but she dismissed that possibility, because he was at the charity ball with the love of his life, Caroline. She glanced at the oven clock, disoriented to see that it was only nine thirty. It felt a whole lot later, probably because it had gotten dark so early.

  Frowning, she put the bottle in the fridge and walked through the hall. Her front security light was on, illuminating the porch. Through the frosted glass side panels of the door she could make out a tall masculine figure, wearing a dark suit.

  Adrenaline pumped. It was Damon.

  Keeping the chain on, she opened the door a few inches.

  Damon’s gaze pinned hers. “You didn’t call me back. What’s wrong?”

  The cool directness of his gaze paired with the five o’clock shadow decorating his jaw gave Damon a remote edge that made her spine tighten. “Nothing’s wrong.” She tried for a neutral smile. “It was a mistake.”

  His cool gaze seemed to laser right through her. “Is it Rosie? I thought she might be sick.”

  “Rosie’s fine. She’s asleep.” Despite knowing she shouldn’t, but too furious not to, Zara took the chain off the hook and opened the door wide enough that she could look past Damon to where his car was parked. She wanted to know if Caroline was with him. Frustratingly, because the windows of his car were tinted, she couldn’t see a thing. He could have half a dozen women in the car for all she knew.

  A little impatiently, Damon’s gaze recaptured hers. “Now that I’m here, we should talk. I think we need to get clear on a couple of things.”

  Such as his impending marriage to a woman who was perfect for him, and the fact that Zara and Rosie had the potential to ruin those plans.

  Zara gave the sleek black car at her gate a last probing glare. “It’s late. Can’t we do this some other time?”

  Damon gave her a look of disbelief. “It’s only just past nine thirty.”

  Zara stared at Damon’s jaw. Now that she was aware of the scary chinks in her armor when it came to him, she was determined to avoid eye contact where possible. The last thing she needed was for him to know how much he affected her. “I usually go to bed early, because I have to get up for Rosie in the night.”

  He leaned one shoulder against her porch wall and crossed his arms over her chest. “Okay, let’s talk here.”

  “Can’t we discuss whatever it is you want to talk about at work?”

  “We could, but I thought you were concerned about keeping our relationship and Rosie under wraps.”

  Her gaze snapped to his, which was a problem because then she had trouble ripping it away. “We don’t have a relationship.”

  His expression was infuriatingly calm. “But we do have a daughter.”

  And suddenly the gloves were off. “And I guess, at this point, keeping our relationship and Rosie under wraps suits you just fine, doesn’t it?”

  His brows jerked together. “Would you care to explain that?”

  Bright light, intense enough to make her wince, washed across Zara’s front lawn and lit up her porch. Her next-door neighbor’s security lights had just come on. That meant that Edna Cross, who lived alone and seemed to be unusually inquisitive about every move Zara made, had no doubt logged that she had a visitor. Edna was the secretary of the local neighborhood watch group, and so was also likely now to be out with her flashlight and possibly even a digital camera. Any conversation on Zara’s porch could no longer be considered private.

  Damon stared in the direction of the high-powered light. His gaze narrowed. “There’s someone standing on the other side of your hedge.”

  “My neighbor Edna Cross. She’s head of the local neighborhood watch.”

  “That would explain the military-grade spotlights.”

  Ignoring the dryness of his voice and feeling embattled, Zara opened the door a little wider. She didn’t want Damon in her house, but he clearly wasn’t going to leave anytime soon and what she had to say needed to be said in private. “You had better come in.”

  With a last glance in the direction of Edna’s silhouette, Damon stepped into Zara’s hall, dwarfing it and making the space feel distinctly claustrophobic. Zara closed the door and, out of sheer habit, locked it, although the second she did so, it occurred to her that the one person she didn’t want in her house was already inside.

  As she turned, she realized Damon was waiting for her. She noticed that his tie was dragged loose, the top button of his white shirt was undone and his hair was disheveled as if he’d run his fingers through it repeatedly. All of it made him look even more sexily gorgeous. A pang of heat shot through her, making her clench her stomach. She could not believe she was turned-on, even in a marginal way when she was still so angry. Grimly, she reminded herself that it was far more likely that it was Caroline who had run her fingers through his hair.

  Suddenly self-conscious about her leggings, the old sweater that dragged past her thighs and the fact that beneath all the soft layers she wasn’t wearing a bra, Zara led the way to her sitting room.

  Damon padded straight to the window that looked over Edna’s property, pulled back the curtain and looked out. He lifted a hand. Seconds later, the glaring security lights flicked off. Amazing. Usually, if Edna felt impelled to investigate at night, the place was lit up like a landing strip for a good hour. In his blunt, masculine way, Damon had dealt with Edna by summarily checking her out and dismissing her.

  He closed the curtains. “She’s persistent.”

  Amusement invested his tone with an intimacy that spun Zara back to evenings spent together in his apartment watching movies and eating gourmet takeout. As he turned from the window, the easy humor was replaced by a flicker of masculine awareness that informed her that if she thought he hadn’t noticed she wasn’t wearing a bra, she was wrong.

  Folding her arms across her chest, Zara indicated that Damon should have a seat. Unfortunately, he chose the seat she had been sitting in and her laptop was still sitting on the coffee table.

  Panic gripped her. She couldn’t remember whether she’d closed the video clip about Damon and Caroline, or not. In her rush to grab the laptop, all while avoiding getting too close to Damon, she brushed the mouse pad again and the screen saver dissolved.

  Damon’s gaze settled on the screen a split second before she snapped the laptop closed.

  His expression answered the question. No, she had not closed down the video.

  Cheeks burning, she found her briefcase, which was on a sideboard, and stowed the offending laptop away. When she turned, Damon was no longer seated, but prowling her small sitting room. He came to a stop in front of a small oil of a Medinian ancestor, one of the few family pieces left from her Atrides past. As he studied the gloomy picture, she felt a crazy sense of relief that, in keeping with her new identity and her new life, she had made it a rule not to have any family photos on show. Those were all kept in albums in a drawer in her room.

  Plastering a bright smile on her face, she decided to grab the bull by the horns.

  “I hear congratulations are in order.”

  Damon seemed to go very still. “What for, exactly?”

  “Your engagement to Caroline Grant.” Despite every effort at control, she couldn’t quite keep the husky note from her voice. “No mystery now as to why you were so keen that I should come and work for you and bring Rosie along.”

  There was an odd moment of silence. “I’m guessing that woul
d be because you think I don’t want Caro to find out that you’ve given birth to my child.”

  Caro. A red mist seemed to form in front of her eyes. Zara could feel her precarious hold on her temper slipping. “I don’t think—I know. I can see why we never had a chance, quite apart from the fact that Caroline’s blonde.”

  Two steps and Damon had covered the distance between them. “As I recall, you were the one who laid down the ground rules for the time we spent together.”

  Zara flushed guiltily at the reminder that she’d had very good reasons for limiting their involvement. “Ground rules that suited you.”

  His brows jerked together. “Why, exactly, did they suit me?”

  Zara met his gaze squarely. “Because I’m not your type.”

  “Which is...?”

  “Blonde. Your wife was blonde. Caroline is blonde.”

  Damon pinched his nose, which made her even more furious, so she listed another three blonde socialites from the past. Even the names made her feel slightly crazy: Jenna, Hayley, Tiffany. They were all pretty, flirty names, nothing like Zara, which sounded somehow heftier. “It’s all over the media that you like blondes. And not just blondes. You like a certain type of blonde. Basically, slim, elegant and rich. I’m not any of those—”

  “Therefore, I couldn’t possibly want you.”

  She drew a rapid breath and tried to calm down, but she couldn’t seem to stop hemorrhaging the disappointment and anger she’d bottled up for over a year. At some point she must have taken a half step closer to Damon, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body, smell the faint, enticing scents of soap and cologne.

  She jabbed a finger at his chest. “Couldn’t have said it better myself. Maybe if I had dyed my hair blonde or bought a wig, we would have had a chance at a real relationship.” She delivered the kicker. “I don’t even know why you slept with me in the first place.”