Secrets to Hide 2: Naughty Little Christmas (5 page)

Harley ducked her chin in acquiescence. “And we might not see as big a jump there as I’d like, but I still want the chance to try.” Those brilliant green eyes held his, something at once fierce and reluctant shining out of them. Did she hate asking permission as much as he did? Judging by her personality so far, he bet she did. “Please.”

What was the worst that could happen? They already had a minimum number of seats sold, but he didn’t want to earn a reputation for half-assed shit, either. Damien did know the meaning of the word
compromise
, though. He straightened. “Okay, let’s do this: add the indie concert to LA along with a contest, something exclusive but small”—he emphasized the word—“and easy to organize. We can do the same in Denver but beef up the prize and do a signing with both bands at some point during the day. We’ll save the all-day idea for here at Thrice. That gives us more time to plan something solid and provides a natural buildup to the final event.” Seeing a satisfied grin start on Harley’s face, he couldn’t help adding, “This all assumes you can get the bands, of course. Can you?”

“Bet on it,” Harley said, her grin now full-blown.

Damien grunted. “I just won’t bet the house.” He gestured for her to precede him across the room. “Now, let’s talk about Thrice.”

Over the next three hours they covered policies and procedures in each area of the business. He was pleased to see Harley taking notes on her phone, though he knew Ryan had given her the P&P manual earlier. His current managers were in their midthirties like him, not nearly as flexible or tech-minded as Harley. They were perfect businesspeople, but Harley was teaching him that the way they, himself included, did things wasn’t necessarily the only way. When he introduced her to staff, she actually took pictures on her phone and added each to her contacts with a name, something he would never have considered, but with two supervisors, ten to twenty bar staffers, four bouncers, and Cruz and his tech crew for every shift, there were a lot of names and faces to keep straight. He started to wonder if Harley might just manage to teach him a thing or two while he was teaching her about his nightclub.

Things got noisy when the doors opened at five. For a Monday they were surprisingly busy. Harley worked behind the bar with the staff, snarkily reminding him of her need for hands-on training to adequately understand the club’s needs. The reference to his comments Saturday night brought a flush to his face. Yes, he’d been rude. He got that, regretted it, even. Still, she didn’t have to bring it up.

He had a feeling she would for a good long while.

He returned from his rounds at nine to send her home. Twelve hours would test the most enthusiastic employee, and they still had packing to do for a midmorning flight tomorrow. But as he walked toward the bar, he noticed his footsteps quickening and consciously forced his pace to slow. No use sharing his embarrassing eagerness with anyone lucky enough to catch sight of him. It was bad enough he knew about it, damn it.

When Harley came into view, the man leaning against the bar across from her, talking intently, broke down Damien’s determination to appear casual.

“Ian.”

Damien bit the word off in a way he hadn’t intended when he opened his mouth. He and Ian Walker had become partners in crime since Damien’s best friend, Alex Brannigan, abandoned the dating scene for marriage and monogamy. Knowing the big blond’s talent for charming women out of their panties by the dozens, however, suddenly seemed less handy and more teeth-grindingly annoying as Damien took the last few steps to stand beside his friend.

“Damien! Why didn’t you tell me you’d done some interior decorating over the weekend? I don’t think Thrice has ever looked better.” Ian threw a wink Harley’s way, earning him a smile. Damien felt one of his molars creak in protest as he ground his teeth harder together.

“I didn’t expect you back so soon,” Damien told Ian. “You were just here Saturday.”

If Ian heard the rebuke behind the words, he ignored it. “There are far too many beautiful women here to stay away for long. Especially this one.” He leaned closer to Harley and reached out to take one of her hands. “I was just asking her where she’d been hiding herself all my life.”

I will not punch him. I am not a slave to my testosterone
. But Damien wanted to. Instead he turned to Harley. “Get me a whiskey please. Neat.”

Harley’s eyes rounded at his tone, but she nodded. When she tried to slip away, however, Ian tightened his grip on her hand. “Don’t go so soon, darlin’. We just met.”

Harley giggled. Giggled. At Ian. The sound was soft, alluring, with a hint of smile. It made his blood shoot to instant boil. “Harley,” he snapped.

Ian frowned his way, but it was the temper rising in Harley’s eyes that started a slow burn low in his gut. It made him want to provoke her more, just so he could see that look flaring his way over and over again.

When she spoke, her words rumbled, low and firm and majorly pissed off. “I may work for you, Damien, but I’m no one’s dog. We need to get that straight from the beginning. I will get your damn whiskey, but I don’t play fetch unless I’m allowed to bite.”

“As long as it’s not a customer you’re playing with, I don’t care.”

Leaning forward, she allowed him a good look down the V of her shirt, enough to make him choke on his tongue. With a saucy quirk of her lips, she taunted, “What’s good for the goose…”

Letting her words trail behind her, she turned, heading for the other end of the bar, where the whiskey was stored. Damien eyed her ass as she went, and knew he was a two-faced jerk. He slept with customers off the clock, and Harley seemed well aware of that fact. She’d called him on it, and she was right, but that didn’t mean he could control himself if he came in here at night and saw her flirting with every Tom, Dick, and Harry.

Ian’s outright laugh broke Harley’s spell, helping Damien pull his reluctant gaze away.

“Damn, she’s a firecracker, isn’t she? I almost spit my drink across the room. Are you sure she’s new?”

His friend’s amusement grated on Damien’s nerves. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Ian laughed louder. “You. She’s got you pegged, doesn’t she?” He turned to watch Harley stand on tiptoe to grab the whiskey off a high shelf, and something wistful flashed across his face. “Too bad she works here. You need someone who won’t put up with your bullshit.”

Either too bad or a good thing, Damien wasn’t sure which. “She’s certainly got a mouth on her.”

Ian nodded. “Oh yes, she does. A talented one, it looks like.” Facing Damien, he wiggled his eyebrows. “I can’t wait to try it out. Think she’ll let me?”

Only Harley’s return with his drink kept Damien from decking the man.

Chapter Three

The heavy
thump
of a bass drummed in her head, cutting through the fog and dragging Harley out of a heavy sleep. It took a minute for her to realize she was hearing her phone’s ringtone. The small black rectangle pulsated across the sheet next to her head.

Blinking fuzzily, she picked up the offender that had ruined a perfectly good nap and brought it to her ear. “’Lo?”

“Are you in bed?”

Who the hell would ask a question like that? Even as she wondered, her hazy brain registered the fact that whoever it was, their tone wasn’t provocative. No, it was downright pissed.

“Yes,” she answered. “Why?”

A low snarl vibrated in her ear. “Because your ass should’ve been down in the lobby to meet me fifteen minutes ago, maybe?”

Everything finally clicked into focus at Damien’s words, and Harley silently cursed herself. “I’ll be right down.”

She hung up before he could respond. It wasn’t like she could give him her highly legitimate excuse, anyway.
By the way, Damien, the baby you don’t know I have seems to have a sixth sense about her mommy leaving and kept me up half the night. Oh, and I’ve never been away from her before, so I cried myself to sleep the minute I made it to my hotel room and apparently slept straight through my alarm. Forgive me?

His imagined
hell no!
rang in her ears as she dragged a brush through her tangled hair and freshened her makeup. By the time she’d dressed, ten minutes had passed, and she could only search desperately for some excuse as she ran for the elevator. Causing her boss to be late on her second day of work was not the best way to make a good impression, damn it.

Her phone dinged just as the elevator announced her arrival in the lobby. She tugged the cell out of her pocket, glancing down to see who it was, and sighed when Cassie’s name flashed across the screen. Replacing the phone, she looked up and met the caustic gaze of her very unhappy boss.

Damien didn’t deign to speak as she rushed across the lobby toward him. Instead he turned and walked through the revolving glass door, stopping beside a low-slung sports car that fit his image perfectly. It was the equivalent of fuck-me shoes, except for men: black, sleek, all
I can give you exactly what you want, all night long
. If not for the fact that Damien currently stared daggers her way, she might’ve stopped to admire, but she knew better. She slid past the door he was holding and into the seat, then thanked him for the mocking courtesy, head held high, though she knew she was in the wrong.

While she waited for him to round the car to the driver’s side, she yanked out her phone.

Sorry, fell asleep. Cuddle K for me. Gotta go—boss has his panties in a wad.

Cassie’s response, a grinning emoticon, popped up as Damien lowered his tall frame into the deep seat.

Harley cleared her throat, preparing to apologize. A sharp look her way stopped her words before they appeared.

Fine, sit over there and stew
. She wanted this job; she really did. And she wanted Damien to prove himself as a decent human being, but so far these little tiffs were stacking up against him, big-time.

Traffic was one long LA snarl, keeping Damien’s attention and gifting her with fifteen minutes of silence before he opened his sexy mouth. “Explain.”

Since her brain still hadn’t spit out a useful excuse, all she had was, “Rough night.” She winced even before Damien’s scoff rattled over her nerves.

“We’re almost an hour late for the preopening meeting. You better have more than ‘rough night’ to explain that.”

She bit down on her tongue, forcing herself not to respond until her control of that oh so dangerous body part firmed. “Well, I don’t. I’m sorry, okay? I slept through my alarm. It won’t happen again.”

“Damn right it won’t, not if you want to keep working for me.”

Her gaze snapped to his face, an angry
fuck you
on the tip of her tongue, but at the last second she managed to hold back the words. The long sweep of his eyelashes, the bold jut of his nose, while sexy, struck her as so very Klio. Even the curve of his ear looked like her daughter’s sensitive earlobe.
Klio’s father
. This man, whatever else he was—and she could think of a few choice names for him at the moment—was Klio’s father. Righteous indignation burned deep in her gut at his accusation, his threat, but letting her anger out risked Klio’s future. Her baby meant far more than the slight humiliation of eating crow.

Damien continued to fume through LA’s sucky evening traffic, whipping in and out of the tightest spaces almost as if daring her to complain, but Harley kept silent until they pulled up in front of Damien’s club, Once. She knew the bar’s story, how Damien had scraped his money together after business school and took a chance on an off-the-beaten-path location to begin his first venture into what some would term the “seedy” side of the entertainment business. With the slogan “You can never come just Once,” he’d exploded on the nightclub scene and never looked back. From the size of the crowd waiting to get inside the massive doors, he didn’t have to; his future was secure for a very long time. Unlike hers, if the anger still written clearly on his face gave her anything to go by.

Damien took the next side street to the employee parking lot behind the enormous building. After he shut off the car, he pulled out his phone, keyed in what looked like a quick text, put the phone back in his pocket, and turned to face Harley.

His mouth opened, then closed firmly. She got the impression he was now thinking before he spoke, at least. A good thing, if a little late. She’d had time to think too. She had to tread carefully. Convince, not confront. So how could she do that?

“Damien.” She waited out his bullheaded silence until finally he turned those clear brown eyes her way. “You watched me work all day yesterday. You were on the plane with me this morning, right beside me, watching me again. Did I impress you as the type to slack off?”

She hadn’t; she knew it. She also knew he didn’t want to admit the truth, not with that frown on his face. Despite patience not being her particular virtue, she possessed stubbornness out the wazoo. She stayed quiet, forcing him to think, forcing herself not to fidget. Her effort was rewarded when his shoulders loosened and the frown slowly faded. “You’re right,” he said. “Anyone can make a mistake.”

There, see? That wasn’t so hard to admit
. “Have you?”

Intensity darkened his eyes, creating shadowed depths that caused her breath to catch in her throat. The urge to touch him, to smooth the dark brows above those eyes, to stroke the stubbled skin of his cheeks, swamped her.
Speak!
she shouted silently at him.
Speak before I make a total idiot of myself!

“I’m beginning to wonder if I have.”

Anger resurged. This time she let the words loose. “Me too.”

“Harley—” His sigh filled the air between them.

“Don’t ‘Harley’ me, Damien. Either you want me to work for you, or you don’t. That choice should’ve been made last week.”

“I thought it was. I thought I could control this, but I’m not sure I can.”

This?
“What are you talking about?”

“You.” The word seemed torn from reluctant lips, only confusing her more. And then Damien raised one heavy, masculine hand. Harley watched, frozen, as that hand moved closer, closer, until his fingertips hooked the strand of her hair that had fallen over her forehead and tucked it back behind her ear, allowing him to stare deep into her eyes. A passion she didn’t understand lowered his tone when he finally spoke. “My work is my life. I have a clear philosophy: I work hard, and I play hard. But never the two together. I’m having a very difficult time remembering that with you. Do you understand?”