Flirting With Intent (14 page)

Ruby ate the mango piece, seeing as Damon’s mouth was set in a tightly closed line. She wiped her sticky fingers down his shirtfront and pushed him aside so she could get to the tap and rinse her hands.

‘I wasn’t
judging
you, Damon. I’m trying to
understand
you, and every time I think I come close you put up another wall.’ She rinsed her hands and shook the excess water off them with a decidedly annoyed flick, before turning around and running smack bang into a wall of simmering manhood. She poked a pointy finger into Damon’s well-exercised chest. ‘It’s very irritating.’

‘Is that so?’ he said silkily.

‘Yes.’ Another poke for the immovable object. ‘And stop trying to distract me with sex.’

‘I thought you liked the sex.’ She loved the sex. She was fast approaching the conclusion that fighting with Damon
and then making up with him could well lead to incandescently memorable sex. ‘That is not the point.’ Another jab, only this time he caught her hand and flattened it against his chest.

‘What is it we’re doing here, Damon? Getting to know each other? Indulging in a no-strings-attached, short-term affair where getting to know each other better is not a requirement? Are you trying to decide whether you can trust me to keep your secrets? What? Because I can’t play this game if I don’t know the rules.’

‘There is no game,’ he said quietly and redirected her hand to his heart. ‘No rules either. Just an automatic defence against a criticism I’ve worn my entire life.’

He could break her heart too, whenever he wanted to. Distract her so that she never pushed too hard when it came to the question uppermost on her mind. The ‘where are we going with this’ question. The ‘what the hell am I still doing here when you won’t even let me know the simplest things about you’ question.

‘I don’t have
all
the symptoms of ADHD,’ he said gruffly. ‘I can focus when I want to. I think before doing. I can be still.’

‘Really?’ ‘I can.’

‘But you don’t need to be, do you? You’ve organised your life so you don’t have to be still, and that’s fine too. Plenty of other people organise their lives that way too. I’ve spent my entire life surrounded by gifted, driven, workaholic risk-takers who wouldn’t know how to rest or be still if their lives depended on it. Your father’s one of them. My father was another. Stepfather number three too, although he enjoys coming home. That’s what my mother does—she makes him enjoy coming home.’

‘There are women who still do that?’ He looked intrigued.

‘Yes,’ she said pleasantly. ‘I’m not one of them. I want a career.’

‘Couldn’t you do both?’ he murmured silkily.

‘Could you?’ she asked in kind. ‘Would you?’

‘We’re circling the relationship question again, aren’t we?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not sure I have that much to offer you, Ruby.’

Not what Ruby wanted to hear. ‘I thought
you might say that. This house, is it yours free and clear?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Any others?’

‘A downtown apartment in Massachusetts.’

‘Nice. Any other dependants I don’t know about? Ex-wives? Children? Goldfish?’

She’d won from him a tiny smile. ‘No.’

‘So apart from your work—which you never bring home—you’re actually pleasantly unencumbered.’

‘Are you judging my suitability as a
spouse?’

‘Yes. You seem to think you have little to offer in that department. I’m presenting an alternate view. Where were we? Ah, yes. Your family seems sane enough—the ones I’ve met. I’m going to give them a tick.’

‘You just don’t know them well enough yet.’

‘How many times a week would you want to have sex?’

Damon blinked. Then he smiled. ‘A lot. Surely that’s a strike
against,’
he murmured silkily.

‘Depends on the woman,’ she offered in counter. ‘The timing. The mood. I’m going
to go out on a limb here and vouch for your expertise. How many times a week would you cook?’

‘Depends where we were.’

‘Good answer,’ she said with a nod. ‘Any health issues? Genetic peculiarities? Apart from the ADHD of course. That one’s already noted.’

‘No.’

‘So far, so good, wouldn’t you say?’ she said and speared him with a glance. ‘Alas, there is still your inability to let anyone ever get close to you to consider. That one’s proving problematic.’

‘Do tell.’

Oh, she intended to. But not right yet.

‘You know it was my father who taught me how to judge people,’ she said lightly. ‘He made an art form out of figuring out what makes people tick. Discovering their weaknesses, testing their strengths. His verdict would be that you undervalue yourself, by the way. He’d wonder what the hell happened to make you so insecure about being you. Then he’d play you to his advantage, but that’s a whole other story that I really don’t want to get into right now. Suffice to say that he taught me well and that I know a little
something about reading people. Judging them. Playing them, even, but that’s a whole other story that we probably don’t need to dwell on either.’

‘Maybe later,’ he said with a hint of his old smoothness.

‘Maybe never,’ she countered and his grin came quick and free.

‘What is it you’re trying to say to me, Ruby?’

‘What I’m
trying
to say is that I may be judging you, Damon, but I do not find you lacking. You have many fine qualities. You have plenty to offer. What I’d also like to get on record is that I don’t need any lavish promises from you. I don’t necessarily need a spouse. But if you
are
interested in exploring some kind of continuing relationship with me I do have one demand.’

‘You’d make a wonderful divorce lawyer,’ he murmured. ‘What is it?’

‘I want you to let down your defences and let me see you. The real you. No obfuscation. No distractions. No best behaviour. Just you.’

He didn’t seem to know how to take her words. What to do with them or say in
return. Wary man. Heartbreakingly vulnerable man underneath all the layers.

‘So … I’m about to get naked and wet in that gorgeous pool over there,’ she said and sidestepped him neatly. ‘Care to join me?’

Ruby didn’t wait for Damon’s reply, just headed poolside and started shedding clothes. She glanced back over her shoulder at him.

‘You did say that if I ever wanted to win an argument with you all I had to do was get naked, right?’

‘Right.’

Damon hardly recognised his own voice, it cracked and wavered like a pubescent boy’s.

‘You are so
hot
when you’re being cautious,’ she said with a siren’s smile. ‘Gives you a totally unfair advantage.’

‘Says the naked woman standing in water up to her waist.’

‘Just so,’ she said archly. ‘Why is your shirt still on?’

‘Beats me.’ He dragged it up and over his head. Let it drop to the ground.

‘Better,’ she murmured appreciatively. ‘Shirtless and brooding is a good look for you. Almost as good as naked and lost in the moment. Want to come and lose yourself in
the moment with me, Damon?’ No teasing in her now, just a longing directed straight at him.

‘I just did,’ he said and went to join her.

H
EADING
Sydneyside suited Damon. He and Ruby could—and did—play hard here. They had a suite overlooking Circular Quay but they didn’t spend much time there. Out and about was Ruby’s preferred state of being while in Sydney and, for all that Damon often accompanied her, she had no problem heading one way and waving Damon in the other direction if their interests diverged.

She had a confidence he envied. She knew how to be herself, and it was a contrary and fascinating self indeed.
Never
sloppy in appearance. Analytical when it came to the behaviours of others. He could see her as a lawyer. She had the shrewdness.

And the capacity to argue either way.

‘I mentioned you to my handler,’ he said over breakfast on their third morning in Sydney. They were down at the Quay, sitting
in a sidewalk café, with the sun shining brightly and another day of exploration in front of them, give or take a job interview for Ruby and a work appointment for him.

‘You what?’ said Ruby.

‘I figured it was time I told him I wanted to see a bit more of you.’

‘Much as I am bowled over by such a hugely romantic gesture, couldn’t you have told me first?’

‘I need to get back to work soon and I need to know how careful I’m going to have to be. I asked him if anyone had you under surveillance on account of your father and the chances that he might get in contact with you.’

‘And what was the answer?’

‘He said no. According to his sources—and they’re extensive—you’ve never been under surveillance. Not even in the days following your father’s disappearance.’

‘Maybe they’re understaffed,’ she muttered sourly.

‘Seems unlikely. He asked me if I wanted him to do some more digging about your father. I said I’d take care of it.’

‘You already have.’

‘I thought I might take another look. See if there’s something I missed.’ ‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know yet.’ But he was beginning to have his suspicions. ‘Could your father have worked in intelligence?’

Ruby’s surprise was instantaneous. ‘Where did
that
come from?’

‘The bank handed over an eight-hundred-and-seventy-two-million-dollar recovery investigation to the Feds, the Feds handballed it to British Intelligence and the British backed off. Maybe your father belongs to someone else. You’ve said more than once that he was a master at reading and manipulating people. A man who kept secrets. It’d fit.’

Ruby frowned and lifted her sunglasses to the top of her head. The better to see him or the better for him to see her. Wordlessly demanding a more secure connection between them and getting it too. She was full of tricks like that.

‘As far as I know, my father only ever worked in finance,’ she said cautiously.

‘Would your mother know if he’d ever been involved elsewhere?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Might have been why she bailed.’

‘No, that would be because of the infidelity and my father never being where he said he was going to be, or doing what he promised to do,’ countered Ruby dryly.

‘Must’ve been some childhood.’

‘My father did his best to be there for me,’ she said. ‘Usually he succeeded. But not always. Enough, Damon. You’re barking up the wrong tree. My father was a merchant banker not a spy.’ She dropped a kiss on his cheek and made to leave his company for an appointment with the senior partner of an Australian-based law firm. ‘I need to get to this appointment. I’ll tell you about my woefully overprivileged upbringing another time.’

She kissed his other cheek and drew back to stare at him searchingly before offering up another kiss, this time for his lips. ‘Be good. Don’t dig. Not on my behalf. I have enough trouble accepting that you dig on behalf of other people.’

He accepted the kiss she placed on his other cheek with a faint smile.

‘What happens if they offer you a job?’

‘There is no job. I’m just fishing and so are they.’

Damon watched her walk away, admiring
the sway of her hips and the curve of her slender calves. ‘Let me see you. The real you,’ she’d said to him only three days ago. Today she’d told him to be good and not dig. As far as he was concerned that was a bit like telling a shark not to swim.

Ruby would have a job offer within the hour, he predicted.

He’d have more information on her father within the hour too.

And then they would look at each other again and see what came of that.

Damon found another coffee shop and this one had everything he needed. He checked in with the home office, a routine ping and nothing more.

A different café next and another easy public access point and this time Damon turned his efforts to discovering somewhat more about Ruby’s father and the missing millions. FBI records turned up a referral of the case over to the British Intelligence Service. Their records turned up nothing but dross.

On a hunch, he wormed his way into yet another database. Deeper and deeper still, as his coffee sat untouched on the table beside
him, the painted wall at his back giving him all the privacy he needed. His senses stayed with the coffee crowd but he gave his mind over to the language in his head, and the pathways opening up for him on screen, no telling where they would lead.

The lure of the unknown, a siren song he’d never been able to resist. A failing, some would say, but he’d never been any different and if indeed it was a flaw, he’d done his damnedest to turn it into a useful one.

Two minutes in and no fixed destination in mind, just a name and a suspicion. A database to search through and eventually a hit. A record of employment, collated not by employer but by counterparts with a need to know. He sipped at his coffee as he waited for the download. Time enough to read it later.

This lot had a reputation for knowing when their security had been compromised. They wouldn’t know who, and they wouldn’t know what he’d been after once he’d had his way with the memory interface, but still …

Time to go.

He gave the waitress a smile, left a tip on the table …

He had an uneasy feeling about this one. A
notion that he should have left this particular stone unturned, and it mixed with the rush of the run and made him want to lengthen his stride in the way of a man in a hurry.

Easy now, no problem here.

Just a little light reading for later on.

Ruby was already back at the suite when Damon returned just on lunchtime, several forms of transport behind him, his computer sporting some brand-new motherboard components and his reading up-to-date.

Fascinating reading. King hit on his maiden run. Knowledge was power and power was useful. Provided you knew how to wield it.

Damon far preferred leaving the wielding part of the process to others.

Problem: Harry Maguire had been a key asset for the British Intelligence Service when it came to monitoring—and occasionally enabling—money laundering throughout South-East Asia. Why British and not American? No idea. Maybe they’d simply been the ones to get to him first. Regardless, he’d been on the payroll for over thirty years.