Nineteen

Dahlia

 

“An emotional talk about feelings, cocktails, and ice-cream.” Damien shoved his hands in his pockets, stretching his legs right out in front of him and tilting his face up to the sun. “This is the most feminine day I’ve ever had, and I have two sisters.”

“You do?” The question escaped before I had a chance to hide the surprise in my voice. Did I know that? Had it ever been mentioned?

He paused for a moment, something that looked familiarly like pain turning his lips down before he regained control of it. “Yep. I’m the eldest of three. Two younger sisters.”

Hmm.

Were they the complicated part he spoke about when he talked about his family? Obviously, I was an only child, but I’d experienced enough sibling rivalries growing up around Abby and her siblings.

“Oh,” I said. I wouldn’t push it further—hell, it was the most information he’d ever willingly offered me. I’d been given more personal info from my pet rock when I was seven.

I pulled a hair tie from my purse and swept my hair back into a ponytail. The sun was falling lower in the sky, but it hadn’t cooled down any from earlier this afternoon. The traffic had reached a crazy level, too, so we’d left my car in the shaded parking lot and once again taken to the streets of the city by foot.

Damien had even stopped to buy a short-sleeved shirt. Of course, it was black, but the damn thing fit him like a glove, even though it’d come right off the hanger.

“Can I ask—”

He jerked his head toward me with a firm look.

Right. Don’t ask if I can ask. Just do it.

Like Nike. Except I usually put those yoga pants on to watch Netflix, so maybe not that kind of just do it.

“Do you ever take a day off?” I turned to face him.

His eyebrows raised, and pleasant surprise shone out of his dark eyes, twisting his lips up slightly. “From what? Work, or annoying you?”

I was tempted.

I settled for saying, “Work.”

Damien stared at me for a moment before he responded. “No. Not really. I don’t have much of a reason to. What would I do? Wander around my empty house? Sleep? Play video games?”

“Do you have a video game console?”

“No.”

“Well, then, that was a stupid idea.”

His mouth twitched to one side before he started laughing. “I didn’t mean it literally. It was just an idea. But, literally: the answer is no. I don’t take time off. Something always needs to be done, no matter where I am or what I’m doing. My attention is always required.”

“Wow.”

“What?”

“I just…I can’t imagine doing all the things that you do all by myself.” The admission had me tearing my gaze from him and looking at a tree on the opposite side of the street. “How do you not go crazy? There are so many different clubs and staff members and managers. The mere thought makes my head spin.”

“I’ve learned to delegate,” he said slowly. “I deal with the, shall we say, broader picture of things. A lot of the stuff you deal with is probably far more personal than I ever will. That’s the manager’s job. Mine to make sure everything lines up.”

“But there’s nobody to take your place. If I need a break, I know I can count on Abby. Hell, she just did it for months when I left.”

“You were grieving. There’s a difference.”

“It doesn’t mean I was right to leave.” I sighed and sat up straight, looking down at my feet. “The longer I’m here, the more I know I was wrong to go for three months, no matter how much I was hurting. But I could, so I did. I had someone here who could take up the slack for me. I could have a breakdown tomorrow and my business would be okay. Do you have that? Do you have anyone who would do the same thing for you if you broke?”

Damien slid his hands from his pockets and clasped his fingers behind his head. “No.”

He didn’t go on.

“Just no?” I asked.

“Just no,” he confirmed. “I have nobody. My father could do it for a few days, but he’s worked his entire life and shouldn’t have to. Otherwise, I have nobody who could or would do this for me.”

“Not even…your sisters?”

“Neither of them are able to.” Vagueness surrounded his answer, as simple as it was. “Even if they could, they probably wouldn’t.”

“That’s sad. I like to think that if I had a brother or sister, they’d help me.”

“If you had a brother or sister, your life would be very different,” Damien said quietly. He dropped his arms, laying one along the back of the bench. His fingers brushed my hair as his hand fell down next to my shoulder. “Your childhood would be filled with memories of fighting for attention and never being good enough unless you were the princess. Which, honestly, you probably would’ve been.”

I would’ve argued that, but it was true.

“There was always something.” He stared out in the same direction I’d been looking for the past few minutes. “Whose turn it was in the bath, why was there no hot water, where the hell was the TV remote, why was there no space on the DVR, why didn’t you get off the phone…It was an endless stream of bullshit that, given the chance, I’d probably take back. Not all of it. They deserved the shit occasionally. But sometimes, I would.”

I said nothing. I didn’t even move when he brushed his fingers through the end of my ponytail that hung over my shoulder.

“I’d give them the phone or shorten my shower. I’d delete a show from the DVR or not hide the TV remote in my laundry basket. Actually, no. I’d never not do that last one because that was too evil to not ever be fun.”

Laughter bubbled out of me. “That’s such a guy thing to do. And the grossest thing ever.”

“Depends if you’re the one getting the remote or not.”

“Didn’t you have to take it out?”

“No. My mom learned pretty quick to empty my basket without stuffing the clothes in the washer first.” He laughed quietly, if a little sadly. “Then she stopped washing my clothes until I learned my lesson.”

“Did you?”

“Of course. I put the controller in their laundry baskets instead.”

Resting my foot on the edge of the seat and hugging my knee to my chest, I looked over at him with a smile. “I feel like young Damien was really fun.”

“He was.” His laugh was louder, brighter, more infectious than normal. The laugh of a man who, just for a moment, had been able to let go of just enough pain to let it go free. “I was. I guess I grew up and amongst all the bullshit, forgot how to be him.”

What bullshit?

What happened to change him this way?

I wanted to know.

I had to know.

Just…not today.

“So, take a day off,” I said, resting my cheek on my knee as I looked at him. “Take a day off and do something totally stupid. Wake up at ten in the morning, shout at the TV, eat junk food, screw around… do anything but work. It’ll be good for you. You’re pretty uptight.”

His eyebrows shot up. “I’m uptight,” he said flatly.

“You’re more uptight than a nunnery full of rejected virgins.”

“Sounds like my kinda place.”

I shoved him in the arm, laughing. “Do it. Take a day off.”

Damien stared at me. Dark eyes flitted across my face, shining with skepticism. His jaw clenched in a random way, probably aligning with the same thoughts that clouded his expression with conflicting darkness.

He looked at me as though the idea was foreign.

Ridiculous.

Unthinkable.

Yet, he wanted to. I could see it. It was hanging in his silence, dancing in his stillness, screaming in his hesitation. He wanted to do it, to breathe, to separate himself from the business that controlled his life so staunchly. Could he do it, though? He was a workaholic. I didn’t know if the way he worked was healthy. Then again, I was still settling into it fully myself.

“All right,” he said after a minute or two of silence. “I’ll take a day off. Tomorrow. If you take one with me.”

I knew there’d be a catch.

Lie. I didn’t. But it makes perfect sense.

“And do what?” I asked, hugging my leg a little tighter.

“Wake up at ten in the morning, shout at stupid TV, eat junk food, screw around…with each other.”

“You always have to make sex part of the equation, don’t you?”

“Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”

I sighed and dropped my foot back to the floor. “Fine. I’ll take tomorrow off, but you will, too.”

“Tomorrow?”

“No, let’s plan this in six months time,” I scoffed. “Tomorrow, Damien. You have…” I glanced at my watch. “Enough hours left today to let all your minions know.”

He twirled a lock of my hair around his finger. “You underestimate how angry my father is going to be.”

“And you’re a thirty-year-old man without the dramatic flair of Fergus,” I replied dryly. “Perhaps you should not be worried about your father because he doesn’t run the business anymore, you do.”

“He still owns it.”

“So do you.”

“Stop making so much sense.”

I grinned. “It’s a female thing. I can’t help it.”

He met my eyes, then turned, rolling his. He stretched his hands far above his head and said, “Tomorrow, then. We’ll both take a day off and you’ll show me how to relax.”

“In a way that isn’t sex.”

“I’m not agreeing to that.”

Of course, he wasn’t. “Well, if you’re good, I’ll drop you on the Strip and you can pick up a friend.”

He shook his head, briefly closing his eyes. When he opened them again, he stood, stopped, then turned to lean over me. His hands gripped the back of the bench on either side of me. The tightness of his grip radiated up his arms, exaggerating the veins that trailed up his forearms and the muscles that bulged on his biceps. “No need,” he said in a low voice, face inches from mine. He reached for my jaw and cupped it, tilting my face up toward it. “The only picking up I’ll be doing will be when I pick you up to fuck you against the wall.”

“You sound pretty certain of that.”

His fingers dug into my jaw and—

Just like that—

He kissed me.

One kiss. Firm. Confident. Hot.

His lips pressed against mine with the certainty of a man who had every intention of following through with the words he’d just said.

While my mind protested, my body did not.

“See you tonight,” he said, lips still touching mine. “When you’ll be against that wall.”

“Tonight?” I jolted back, swallowing.

“Day off starts at midnight.” He pushed off the back of the bench to stand up straight. His upper body blocked out the sun, and the light streamed around him as if it were framing an angel.

The glint in his eyes told a different story.

The sun wasn’t even highlighting a devil.

It was highlighting a walking, talking, sin.

One I should be saying no to.

One I couldn’t say no to.

One who enthralled me and held my attention in the palm of his head, who distracted me at every possible turn.

If I had to compare him to something, it’d be a romance novel. One that was deep and dark and questionable, full of secrets and twisty-turns layered under lies and sex and lust.

“Midnight, then,” I said, my voice barely louder than a whisper.

“Midnight.” He winked and turned, and as he disappeared from my view, I didn’t have the words to ask him where he was going.

But me…I had to go home.

I had to think about what the hell was going on and what the ever-loving hell I was doing, playing with fire the way I was.