Feeling distinctly outmaneuvered, Zara tried to check out the driver, but the windows of the car were too darkly tinted.
Another pump of adrenaline made her stomach churn as she noted the kind of car Damon had sent. She had hoped for a taxi, and had been resigned to a company car, but the glossy curves of a long, low sports car did not bode well. It looked like the car Damon had been driving last night. A split second later, Damon climbed out from behind the wheel.
Feeling suddenly vulnerable, she opened the door a split second before Damon could knock and tried not to notice how broodingly masculine he looked in a dark suit teamed with a black V-neck T-shirt. A pair of dark glasses added a remote edge that seemed to negate the intimate things they had done in bed just hours ago.
Movement off to the right caught her eye. Her heart sank when she saw Edna, who, if Zara wasn’t mistaken, was in the process of noting Damon’s license plate and the make and model of his car.
“I thought you were sending a driver.”
“I’m the driver.” Damon’s glittering gaze swept over her, making her feel acutely conscious of how sexy the blue dress was and the fact that, from his height, he could probably see more than just the hint of cleavage she had noted in the mirror. “I thought we should spend some time together before we go into the office.”
Desperate to control the sudden warmth in her cheeks, Zara switched her attention back to Edna, who was now taking down details about Damon himself. No doubt height, weight, hair color and any other distinguishing features.
Although she wouldn’t find any of those unless she managed to get Damon naked.
“What do you mean, ‘spend some time together’?”
“There’s a little café along the waterfront. It’s quiet. The coffee’s good, and we could walk on the beach, if you want.”
In public? A small shudder went through her at the thought that they could get snapped together by a reporter. If that happened, her quiet life of anonymity, and the chance she needed to tell Damon who she was before the media spoiled everything, would be gone. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“We need to talk about Rosie and I’d prefer a more private setting than the office.”
Zara noticed a bright blue hatchback driving slowly down the street, as if the driver was searching for an address. The hatchback glided past. Maybe she was being paranoid, but after what had happened yesterday, she could not help the crawling suspicion that the driver was a reporter, in which case, the sooner they left the better.
“A walk on the beach is not a good idea right now,” she said hurriedly. “Rosie’s sleeping.” And if that had been a reporter, they could be followed to the beach. “We should go straight to the office.”
Damon lifted a brow. “The sooner you start working, the sooner you can finish up and leave?”
Zara picked up the baby bag and portable crib and handed them to Damon, before collecting Rosie, who was still sound asleep in the car seat. Zara set the car seat down on the step and locked the front door. By the time she’d returned the key to her bag, Damon was back and had picked up the car seat.
Zara hurried after Damon, stepped outside her front gate and stopped dead. Last night when she had seen Damon’s car, it had been dark, but now, in the full light of day she realized Damon was driving the same car he’d had when they had been dating.
The very last time they had made love, before she had disappeared, had been in that car. Memories she had ruthlessly suppressed unfolded. Her acute emotionalism at being pregnant with Damon’s child coupled with her need to be with him just one last time, to store up memories. The awful feeling of emptiness when she had thought she would never see him again.
The car flashed and beeped as Damon unlocked it. “What’s wrong?”
Zara quickly smoothed out her expression. Note to self, she thought grimly, if she wanted to conceal her emotions, she needed to get a pair of dark glasses herself.
“Nothing,” she said brightly.
She slipped into the front passenger seat while Damon strapped Rosie into the rear. As Damon slid behind the wheel of the Audi, Zara fastened her seat belt, then turned to check on the baby. She noticed a second safety seat, which Damon had installed in the back. A much nicer, more expensive seat than the basic model she had bought.
Suddenly, any notion that Rosie could be just a novelty for Damon evaporated. He must have gone shopping for the seat the previous afternoon. If he had gone to the trouble of buying a car seat, then that meant he was serious about fatherhood.
As Damon pulled away from the curb, Zara sank back into the luxurious seat. “I don’t mind accepting a lift today, but in the future, I would prefer to take my own car to work.”
Damon braked for a traffic light before accelerating through an intersection and joining the flow of cars heading for the central city. “If you want to drive your car to work, you can have Ben’s parking space.”
She glared at Damon. “You could have let me use that today!”
His gaze, still frustratingly masked by the dark glasses, connected with hers. “I didn’t want to risk you not turning up for work.”
“I agreed to work for you. I honor my agreements.”
Damon stopped for another light, this one in the busy hub of downtown. “You walked out on me a year ago.”
She dragged her gaze from the taut cut of Damon’s cheekbones, the clean line of his jaw. Her heart was pounding again, but this time for an entirely different reason. It suddenly occurred to her that no employer manipulated and then personally drove an employee to work because they couldn’t risk them not showing up. Certainly not a billionaire like Damon.
And he had refused to accept just any assistant; Damon had wanted her. He wanted her in his bed and at his work.
She was abruptly certain that whatever Damon was feeling, it wasn’t just sexual attraction.
Her mood soared. Suddenly, Damon wanting her as a person, maybe even falling for her, seemed...possible.
Minutes later, using a key card to gain entrance, dim shadow swamped the car as Damon took the ramp down into the underground garage of his building. Zara’s stomach did a nervous flip at the sheer familiarity of the garage as Damon removed his sunglasses, killed the engine and exited the Audi.
Before he could walk around the front of the car and help her out, Zara hurriedly unfastened her seat belt, collected her handbag and swung the door of the sleek, low car wide.
As she exited the car and straightened, she found herself close enough to Damon that when she inhaled she caught the clean scent of his skin, the utterly familiar tang of his cologne. In the dimness of the garage the impact of his gaze made her breath catch in her throat. Yesterday she would have kept her manner neutral and breezed past him, but today was a new world.
Hooking the strap of her bag over her shoulder, she allowed Damon to close the door with a thunk. Before she could lose her nerve, she met his gaze. “Thanks for being so understanding about Rosie. The last thing I wanted was for you to feel trapped into fatherhood.” And trapped into a relationship with her.
Balancing herself by resting one palm on his shoulder, she lifted up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek.
Damon cupped her neck, stopping her from stepping back. The heat of his palm burned into her skin as, slowly and deliberately, he bent his head and kissed her on the mouth.
Long seconds later, her legs feeling as limp as noodles, she stumbled back a half step. It occurred to her that while the garage was a secure one, it did still service a number of clients.
“Maybe we shouldn’t kiss in public,” she said a little breathlessly. As soon as she said the words she realized that Damon would pick up on the clear implication that he could continue to kiss her in private.
Surprise and a glint of masculine satisfaction registered in his gaze as he caught her close and kissed her again. The kind of kiss shared by couples who were not just lovers, but who were in a real relationship. Couples who liked one another. The very nature of it filled Zara with hope because she was certain that in the past few minutes they had turned some kind of corner.
As he released her, Zara noticed a blue-suited janitor and froze. As quiet as their conversation had been, in the cavernous garage it had echoed. From his frozen posture, the janitor had heard every word.
Zara’s breath froze in her throat as he disappeared from sight behind a large concrete pillar. For a split second she tried to buy into the fantasy that maybe the janitor hadn’t heard. And if he had, who would he tell, anyway?
Potentially everyone.
Now thoroughly rattled, the warm sense of togetherness with Damon splintered, Zara freed Rosie from her car seat and lifted her out. As she straightened, in her hurry, the back of her head caught the frame of the Audi’s door, which was lower than that of her own car. She winced and straightened. As she did so, her bag, which she’d hooked over her shoulder, flopped to the ground, sending items scattering.
Damon steadied her. “Babe, are you all right?”
Muttering that she was fine, Zara clutched Rosie’s warm, soft little body securely against her own and rubbed at the sore patch.
Babe. The surprise of the endearment was so distracting that Zara forgot she’d dropped her handbag and stepped back. Something crunched beneath her heel.
Her mood plummeted even further. That would be her phone. A little awkwardly, she retrieved it. A cracked screen, and the insides were undoubtedly mashed too. It would be a miracle if it ever worked again.
Before she could pick up any other items, Damon collected the keys and compact that had scattered, dropped them into her bag and handed the bag to her. Seconds later, he collected Rosie’s things, locked the car and indicated the elevator. “If you’re worried about the phone, don’t be. I was giving you a company phone in any case.”
Zara walked into the familiar private elevator. As Damon joined her, the feeling of disorientation that she was actually returning to work for Damon intensified.
The first person Zara saw as she stepped into the foyer was Howard Prosser, Damon’s office manager. Howard’s look of surprise that Zara was holding a baby informed her that Damon had been true to his word. If he hadn’t confided the fact that Rosie was his child to Howard, then he hadn’t told anyone.
Zara adjusted her grip on Rosie, who was becoming restless, and tried to look as if her relationship with Damon was as casual and incidental as Howard clearly thought it to be.
Damon glanced at a file Howard handed him. “Zara’s just filling in for a few days, until the McCall takeover is complete.”
Howard looked distinctly grumpy. “That’s not likely to happen unless you track down whoever has that block of missing voting shares.”
Damon’s palm briefly cupped her elbow as he urged her toward the door to her old office. The small, proprietorial touch sent a small thrill of awareness through her.
“A rival firm’s been buying shares,” he explained as he set the baby bag and portable crib down behind the desk. “That wouldn’t be a problem except that ten percent of the voting shares are held by an anonymous shareholder, something that should never have happened. The net result is we’ve been having difficulty securing a majority of the stock.”
Zara set her handbag down beside the desk. “Why shouldn’t the shares be held by an anonymous shareholder? Surely that happens all the time.”
“Not with voting shares. And these were Tyler’s personal shares. By rights they should have remained in the family, since they guaranteed the majority vote. At some point, and for some reason I can’t fathom, he must have sold them. We’d buy them back but, unfortunately, there’s no record of the transaction.”
Zara shifted Rosie from one arm to another and became immediately aware that the baby needed a diaper change. As she rummaged in the baby bag for a changing pad and a diaper, Rosie wriggled and craned around and sent Damon a smile that was literally blinding. She held out her arms as if she had already recognized that Damon was her daddy.
Damon lifted a brow. “May I?”
“She needs a diaper change.”
“If that’s supposed to frighten me, you’re failing.”
“Because you’re already an old hand at it, having changed her diaper last night.”
Damon’s gaze caught hers. “I figured you could use the sleep.”
Zara’s cheeks burned as she considered exactly why she had needed the sleep and, with an odd reluctance, because up until now Rosie had been solely hers, she allowed Damon to take his daughter. As he balanced Rosie against one broad shoulder, his hand cradling her head, Zara experienced a curious sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She should look away, she thought a little desperately, except that she couldn’t. There was something about Damon cradling Rosie that was utterly mesmerizing.
With effort, she dragged her gaze from the too-fascinating juxtaposition of Rosie’s cute pink beanie and the tough line of Damon’s jaw and concentrated on laying the changing pad out on the desk. While Damon was dealing with the dirty diaper, she found baby wipes, ointment and a plastic bag.
When Rosie was freshly changed, Damon picked her up as if she was a fragile piece of porcelain, hugged her close for a few seconds, then handed her back to Zara. “By the way, I’ve received confirmation that Ben and Emily are on Medinos, staying at a house we own there. I’ve arranged to fly out in the company jet and talk to Ben.”
Sudden crashing disappointment hit Zara. A trip to Medinos and back meant Damon would be away for the best part of four days. When she didn’t know how much time they had before the media discovered Damon had a daughter, four days was an eternity.
“Can’t you just talk to Ben on the phone?”
“He would have to answer his phone for that to happen.” Damon walked to the windows and stared out at the view as if he was mulling something over. When he turned, the morning light threw his face into shadow. “Since it’ll be a working trip,” he said quietly, “I want you and Rosie to come with me.”
As shocking as the idea of flying overseas anywhere with Damon was, the idea of going to Medinos irresistibly appealed. For one thing, because she’d been absent for so long it wasn’t likely that she’d be recognized. And the trip could prove a lifeline because it would buy her more time with Damon away from the Auckland reporters. It would also allow her to check out her mother’s safe-deposit box. Added to that, traveling in the Magnum company jet would cost her nothing.
A cautious sense of relief gripped her. Could it be, after so much had gone wrong with her life, that her luck had finally turned? “Okay.”
Damon didn’t try to hide his disbelief. “You agree?”
“Either way I’ll still be working, and at least it’ll stop that nosy reporter from sniffing around.” Zara struggled to keep her expression bland when what she really wanted to do was give in to the relief and either grin or cry. She checked her watch and saw it was time for Rosie’s feeding. She grabbed at the excuse to do something, anything, that would distract her from revealing to Damon just how important it was for her to get to Medinos.
Frowning, Damon perched on one corner of the desk as she made a production of finding the insulated container that held Rosie’s bottle.
“There’s just one glitch—we’ll need to get Rosie a passport. Walter can probably pull some strings and get one in a day or—”
“Rosie already has a passport.” Zara could feel her cheeks burning as she directed what she hoped was a matter-of-fact smile in Damon’s direction. As if it wasn’t at all unusual for a four-month-old baby to have a passport. As if they hadn’t been planning to go to Medinos all along. “When do we leave?”
There was a small silence during which the sounds of the office registered: a phone ringing, the low burr of Howard’s voice, the tapping of a keyboard.
Damon checked his watch, his expression oddly grim. “The only holdup would have been getting Rosie a passport. Since you’ve taken care of that already, I’ll call the flight crew. We leave this afternoon.”