Flirting With Intent (18 page)

‘That’s not true. You did know him, Ruby. Just not that part. Everybody keeps secrets.’

But Ruby just stared at him and shook her head. ‘Not like he did. Not like you.’

‘But I didn’t goddamn
keep
your father’s secret,’ he roared. ‘I told you! Not immediately. Not without a hell of a lot of soul-searching,
but I told you, and I knew you’d hang me for it and I
still
told you. Because I thought it would
help
you deal with your father’s death. Because I love you. What the hell else do you want from me?’

‘I want you to leave.’ There was no give in her. Just a blistering fury focused directly at him.

‘Ruby—’ Damon shook his head. ‘No. You’re in shock.’

‘I want you to leave.’ Tears had joined the fury and they lashed at him and stripped him bare.

‘Ruby, please.’ Surely she would see reason soon, wouldn’t she? She could
always
argue both sides of a debate. ‘You don’t want to do this.’

‘No, I think I do. Get out. Getoutgetout
get-out!’

Damon stalked to the room they shared, shoved a handful of clothes and his notebook in his backpack. Time to go, only this time he didn’t want to go.

One more. He’d give it one more try.

Back out to the open-plan area to find Ruby with her elbows on the kitchen counter and both hands in her hair. She looked up
as he approached and her eyes were wet and haunted but her mouth was tight and grim.

‘Ruby, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘For the way this played out and my part in it—I’m sorry.’

‘I know,’ she replied and nodded and tried to smile through her tears. ‘I know you are, but it’s not enough. Of all the things I’ve lost today, what hurts the most is losing my faith in you.’

I
T TOOK
Ruby three days to find any sort of equilibrium at all. Three days’ worth of misery and sleeplessness, exhaustion and tears. Self-realisation was a painful thing.

Word got out that her father was dead and then came the requests for media inter-views—which she refused—and the curiosity of just about everyone she came into contact with—which she couldn’t do anything about.

She notified the family, including her mother, made preparations for her father’s body to be sent to New York. It had been Ruby’s mother who’d argued most strongly for Harry to be buried in the family crypt. The answer had been a vehement no in the beginning and then Ruby’s mother had got on the phone to every single one of them and two hours later the answer had been yes.

Maybe her mother had known that her husband had worked for a secret intelligence service all along, but Ruby never asked and her mother didn’t say.

People kept a secret for a reason. Chose to share it only when that reason no longer existed or the benefit of exposing the secret outweighed the cost.

Something Damon had been trying to tell her, thought Ruby guiltily. Only she hadn’t had the heart to listen.

Hadn’t had the brain to sift through the incoming information and separate gold from dross.

You’re in shock,
he’d said, and she’d known even then that he’d been being generous in his estimation of her.

Irrational.

Mean-spirited.

Scared.

Those were the words he could have used.

Lashing out because life wasn’t how she wanted it to be. How old was she? Four?

Where was a sensible, sewing-basket-toting nanny when you needed one?

Ruby had walked and walked some more and the mad had finally worn off. All she had left was sorrow and a growing fear that
she couldn’t make things right with Damon. That he’d seen her in all her insecure glory and had finally had enough.

It was time to go and find him but he wasn’t in Hong Kong. Not staying with Russell, not gettable by mobile. Gone, because she’d screamed at him to leave. There’d been no reasoning with her and Damon had known it.

He could be anywhere.

So who would know? Lena? Worth a try. A phone call.

A difficult one, and Ruby knew it was mad but she found an old polka-dot headband and brushed her hair and put it on, and make-up too, and then surveyed herself in the mirror.

‘There’s my considerate girl,’ she murmured and blinked back sudden tears. ‘Now go and apologise.’

‘Damon’s at the beach house,’ said Lena when Ruby asked her. ‘What the
hell
did you do?’

‘I watched Damon put his heart, his career and then our relationship on the line because he thought it would help me to deal with my father’s death,’ she said quietly. ‘And I called it betrayal.’

Lena said nothing for quite some time
and then sighed. ‘Damon doesn’t know the meaning of the word
self-preservation
when it comes to protecting the people he loves. I did warn you.’

‘I know,’ said Ruby, and closed her eyes. ‘And I get it now.’

‘Do you love my brother, Ruby?’

‘I do,’ she said, altogether terrified that it was too little too late. ‘And I need to tell it to him straight.’

‘Then I suggest you get on a plane and get yourself over here. There’s a front-door key stuck in a crack between the laundry door window frame and the wall,’ said Lena. ‘And, Ruby? Don’t take too long. My brother’s hurting. Makes me want to hurt you.’

It only took Ruby a day to get to Byron. She hired a car at the airport, got out the map and tried to remember the way to the beach house and eventually found it, still as beautiful as ever.

She knocked on the door and waited. Rang the doorbell and knocked and waited again.

Nothing.

Eventually she found the key and stepped inside, feeling like a trespasser and a thief,
and no gorgeous soft furnishings or open pavilion could take that feeling away from her. And then she saw Damon out on the kite-board and her heart rate tripled again.

How long would she have before he came in? Time enough to get her props in place?

Sliding the house key in the bowl by the door, Ruby chocked the front door open and started bringing things in.

The sea had always been a favourite playground of Damon’s. It swallowed up all the energy a person could throw at it and then sat there, mouth wide open, and dared a man to offer up just that little bit more.

Poppy hated it with a fear she couldn’t shake but Damon embraced it. Soar or dive, his body rejoiced and his soul got fed and the bleakness that dogged him these days went away.

But he had to come back in eventually, and when his arms were aching and his legs close to breaking he skidded back in over the sand and brought the parachute down and kitted out and started the walk back up to the house, gear in hand.

The first thing he saw was the headband. It hung off the tap he always used to wash
the gear. Misty pink and moss green, a timid gumnut baby peeking out from between the folds, and Damon instantly forgot all about the hosing down of toys. Instead he slid the headband from the tap and, clutching it tightly in his hand, hightailed it through the garden towards the house. ‘Ruby?’

She wasn’t in the pool and she wasn’t in the pavilion.

‘Ruby?’

Damon tossed the headband on the low coffee table that stood in the centre of the pavilion and that was when he noticed the envelope. He backed up. Picked it up. It had his name on it. He didn’t open it. Maybe she was in the kitchen.

Nope. Now he opened it.

‘I’m sorry,’ it said. Only it did it in a hundred different languages, some of them numerical, and filled the entire page.

She wasn’t in his bedroom either.

Or any of the other bedrooms or bathrooms and she wasn’t in the games room.

He found her in the computer room, with her back to him as she sat at his main console, and every last one of his monitors showing the blue screen of death. She wore a pale
pink halter dress, and her black work satchel leaned haphazardly against her chair.

Damon leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms, mainly to stop them from reaching for her. He cleared his throat.

She didn’t turn round, just leaned sideways to read from some sort of textbook that she’d propped open with the edge of his keyboard. She kept her fingers poised over the keys.

‘Ruby, what are you doing?’

Ruby straightened slender shoulders but she didn’t turn round. She’d put her hair up in some sort of elaborate bun and the clip that held it in place had little pale pink hearts all over it. He had no objection to the hearts but he wanted to see her face.

‘I’m hacking your computer,’ she said and raised a hand towards the back of her neck to capture a stray strand of hair and give it a twirl.

‘Right.’

Damon felt his lips begin to curve.

‘How’s that working out for you?’

‘Not good.’ She leaned sideways to study the book again. ‘I may need lessons.’

He moved closer until he stood behind her. He breathed her in deep but he still didn’t dare touch. Instead, he curled his hands over
the back of her chair and peered over her shoulder. ‘What is it you want to do?’

‘Apologise,’ she said. ‘And leave a message. A really big one. Full screen. Unerasable.’

‘Which would you rather use?’ he said. ‘Polymorphic or metamorphic code?’

‘Can I have both?’

‘How long have you got?’

‘Hopefully a lifetime,’ she said. ‘But the message has to go up now. Good thing I brought backup.’

Ruby shut the book with a snap and reached down into her satchel, withdrawing a heart-shaped piece of glossy red contact paper. She leaned back in the chair, her skin brushing against the backs of his fingers and her hair bare millimetres from his chin. She put French-manicured nails to the pointy end, peeled the backing away from the contact and then slapped that big fat red heart up right in the middle of his state-of-the-art computer screen.

‘That’s cheating,’ he said.

‘Sue me.’

She pulled a felt-tipped pen out of her satchel next and tugged the lid off with a snap. Damon saw the size of that square-tipped
sucker, and wondered if she had any intention whatsoever of staying within the lines. ‘Ah, Ruby?’

‘What?’ She leaned forward and started writing across his heart. Big bold capitals that filled it to the brim.

RUBY LOVES DAMON. (permanently)

‘Never mind,’ he murmured, and waited, and this time she turned around and the silent entreaty in her eyes cut a path straight to his heart, no code required.

‘Damon, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘My father’s secrecy … His whole secret life felt like a betrayal of my life and the relationship I thought I had with him. I couldn’t distinguish between his secrets and yours. All I could see was lies and betrayal. I was too blind to see that everything you’d done you’d done for me. To protect me.’

‘I shouldn’t have gone after the info on your father,’ he offered gruffly. ‘I knew you didn’t want me to. I did it anyway. If I hadn’t, none of this would have happened.’

‘And I would never have truly known my father.’

Ruby took a deep breath and her chest rose and fell. She tilted her head, not quite a nod but a tiny twitch of resolve.

‘What I did to you, and said to you, and screamed at you, was wrong. I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again. I won’t let it. Can you forgive me?’

‘You had a bad day, Ruby. I can’t see there being any others like it. And, yes, if you need my forgiveness you have it.’

‘I need it,’ she said. ‘Almost as much as I need to tell you I love you. Because I do love you, Damon, and if you give me the chance I will spend the rest of my life telling you I love you, and showing you that I do, and jumping off tall cliffs with you.’ Ruby’s eyes began to shimmer. ‘If you still want me to.’

‘I want you to,’ he said quietly. ‘And I promise you this. I will never lie to you, Ruby. I will always love you. And as for secrets—’

She put her fingers to his lips and shushed him. ‘Keep your secrets, Damon. I trust you.’

He kissed her fingertips and began again doggedly. ‘As for secrets, I promise you—’

‘Shh,’ she whispered, softer still, and replaced fingertips with teasing lips that brushed his briefly and then drew back just a fraction. ‘I don’t need your promises either, Damon. I only need you.’

‘—that I will always tell you and share with you—’

‘Shh.’ Ruby punctuated her demand with a lingering kiss. ‘I love you.’

‘—everything—’

‘Shh!’ Another kiss and this time the stroke of her tongue.

‘—I can!’ he finished, and drew his head back, even as he drew her into his arms. ‘Are we arguing?’

‘What? No! I was just trying to—’

‘I’m pretty sure we are,’ he murmured silkily. ‘Arguing, that is.’

‘No, we’re not,’ she said, eyeing him uncertainly.

‘And
we seem to be at something of an impasse,’ he continued, and then he slid his hand up her arm and tugged gently on her halter tie and comprehension finally dawned.

‘You’re right,’ she said with a sultry, knowing smile. ‘We’re arguing. It’s terrible. Dear me, what
shall
I do?’

‘I have an idea,’ he murmured, and picked her up and whirled her round as she peppered his face with kisses. ‘How would you like to win it?’