All He Wants For Christmas...: Flirting With Intent / Blame it on the Bikini / Restless

You are so utterly gone on this man. Accepting him for what he is. Defending his less-than-stellar decisions. Not even wanting to tweak him. Put your own life on hold just to be with him. What’s that if not love?

It’s not love. It’s just … exploration.

And you’re irrational. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.

But Ruby wasn’t listening any more, she was too busy walking towards Damon.

He stood well back from the crowd, with his back to a wall and his hands in the pockets of a pair of calf-length cargos. He looked more tanned than he had been at Christmas. His white T-shirt—like his cargos—had seen better days.

Beach wear, one supposed. Casual and comfortable.

Ruby’s wardrobe rarely ran to casual, comfortable beachwear. Tennis garb on Rhode Island was about as casual as she got. Mainly because, without fail, across all the years of her upbringing, she’d never not been on show. At her father’s side. As her mother’s daughter. Appearances mattered.

She had a feeling that appearances didn’t matter much to Damon.

‘I like your headband,’ he said when he reached her.

Or maybe they did.

‘It’s very restrained for you,’ he said next.

Which was true, because she’d gone for a plain white band to match her uncrushable white travelling shirt and jacket and her equally uncrushable lemon-coloured miniskirt. Sometimes synthetics were the only way to go.

‘I like your tie,’ she said in return, and his eyes warmed and he leaned down to greet her with a casual kiss, the kind that got bandied about between friends.

‘You came,’ he said next. ‘I wasn’t sure you would.’ And suddenly the air between them crackled with everything they weren’t saying.

‘I said I would.’

‘Still …’ Damon shrugged. ‘People change their minds.’

‘Have you?’ Best to get it over with, if Damon had indeed changed his mind about the wisdom of her visiting him here.

‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m in if you are.’

‘I’m here,’ she said simply. ‘And I’m not here under duress.’

Damon’s smile came slow and sweet. ‘Welcome to Australia, Ruby. How are you liking it so far?’

‘Sydney Harbour’s far more beautiful than in its pictures and the vibe so far is—’ she spared a glance for his superbly fitting T-shirt ‘—relaxed. I may not have packed the right clothes.’

‘Lucky for you we have shops. Or you can just borrow some of mine.’

‘You mean you have more than one set?’ she queried archly.

‘I have a few sets at the house. C’mon, let’s get you there. From there we’ll hit the beach. You’ll like the beach.’

Damon’s vehicle was some sort of utility four-wheel drive. Unprepossessing. New-car clean. Nothing to write home about.

His beach house, on the other hand, completely enchanted her. Split level, the rooms wrapped around a central Balinese-style pavilion area, and the ceilings soared, and windows were everywhere.

There were guest rooms and games rooms, sitting rooms and entertainment halls. An open-plan chef’s kitchen and a garden that offered lushness and privacy and invited exploration. A narrow path ran from the other side of the outdoor pool, over a smattering of sand dunes, and wound its way down to the beach. The beach stretched for miles on either side, waves crashed ebulliently on the sand, and the ocean beyond the waves stretched clear to the horizon.

Casual, comfortable living didn’t come any more luxurious than this.

‘It’s beautiful, Damon,’ she said as he set her luggage down and turned towards her.

‘It’s easy to kick back here,’ he said quietly. ‘Be as formal or as informal as you like. As elegant or whimsical as you like.’ He offered up a tiny smile. ‘Just be yourself. This house will hold you; enjoy whatever you bring to it, even. And so will I.’

Now there was a welcome to set a heart to fluttering. She’d forgotten just how easily he could charm her when he wanted to. ‘You speak as if this place is alive.’

‘It is. The minute I walked through its doors I knew I had to own it.’

‘Impulsive.’

‘Or maybe I just know what I want.’ ‘Well, there’s that too.’ And she couldn’t fault it.

‘If you find any girl stuff here, it’s Lena’s,’ he said. ‘She’s been staying with me up until a couple of days ago.’

‘Got it. Thanks for the heads up,’ said Ruby. ‘How is Lena?’

‘Frail. Not nearly as strong as she wants to be.’

‘She didn’t strike me as weak, Damon. Even in Hong Kong. Begs the question of what she used to be like.’

‘Amazing,’ he said simply. ‘She was amazing. She sends her regards, by the way, and she left you a basket full of bath stuff and creams for you to use during your stay. It’s in your room.’

‘I’ll have to thank her.’

‘There’s a housekeeper who comes in a couple of times a week. I had her prepare a bedroom for you.’

‘Oh,’ said Ruby, and eyed him uncertainly. ‘Thank you.’

‘Doesn’t mean I don’t want you in my bed, Ruby. Just that there’s a room you can call your own as well. I asked Lena if that was the sort of set-up you might prefer. She said yes.’

Lena said.

Thanks, Lena.

He headed towards a wide wooden bowl and dropped his keys in it and took something else out of it.

‘I’m screwing this up, aren’t I?’ he said and ran a hand through his hair for good measure. ‘It’s just … I’ve never brought a woman here before. I wanted to do it right. Lena warned me not to push you into anything you weren’t ready for. Apparently I can be a little too persuasive for my own good. I’ve also been ordered not to wear you out, get you sunburnt, drown you or take you hang-gliding.’

‘Oh,’ she said faintly. ‘Hang-gliding.’

‘You’ll love it. Seriously.’

‘Chances are I won’t,’ she murmured and Damon grinned. ‘I’m a guest, Damon. You’re meant to be indulging me, not trying to kill me.’

‘Yeah, Lena mentioned that too. She also mumbled something about best behaviour, picking up wet towels, keeping regular sleeping hours and not gaming on the computers half the night, and, oh, she said to tell you good luck. Sisters are wonderful, aren’t they?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t have any,’ she said smoothly. ‘Are we done with the household warnings yet? Any locked rooms I must never enter? Broom cupboard I should never open?’

‘By all means open the broom cupboard,’ he murmured. ‘Wouldn’t want to deprive you of the joy of household chores.’ His smile turned wry and his eyes grew serious. ‘It’s all right, Ruby. There’s nothing here you can stumble over when it comes to my work. I never bring it home and I never let it touch the people around me. That time in Kowloon with you was the exception, not the rule. It won’t happen again.’

‘Fine by me,’ she answered quietly, and turned her attention to her luggage and smiled up at him with a false sunshinery her mother would have been proud of. ‘I bought a gift for your household,’ she said, and withdrew from her hand luggage the duty-free Scotch and champagne she’d purchased at the airport. ‘There’s caviar somewhere in there too. I seem to have developed a taste for it. That would be your fault.’

Damon smiled and held something out towards her in return. ‘For you,’ he said.

It was a headband. A cluster of fresh frangipanis twined around a solid frame, only on closer inspection the frangipanis were made of porcelain.

‘Oh, yes.’ Ruby made no effort to hide her pleasure as she slipped off her old headband and replaced it with the new. ‘That’ll work.’

It was then that he kissed her. A meeting of lips that came fleeting at first, and then he returned for more and this time he savoured her.

He did that, she remembered belatedly.

He had a way of sliding into a moment and savouring whatever it might bring.

‘Well, hello,’ she murmured when their lips parted. And thank God. ‘I’ve been wondering where you were.’

‘I was giving you space.’

‘Little hint for when we next meet,’ she said, and punctuated her remark with the rasp of her tongue across his lower lip. ‘Presents are good, presents are wonderful, but as far as space is concerned … I don’t need it.’

Ruby smiled and wove her hands through his hair and let him drag her against his hard, rangy body. ‘Though I am very aware that I do need a shower,’ she protested as he slid her jacket from her shoulders. ‘I’m straight off the plane.’

‘Contrary, Ruby.’

‘Well, yes. Surely you hadn’t forgotten already?’

He had such busy hands. They slid beneath her skirt, and the next thing she knew he’d leaned back against the low-slung sofa and lifted her up, and her knees were finding purchase on it the better to plaster herself against him.

Damon’s thumb slipped between her panties and stroked.

Ruby gasped and he ate it straight from her mouth.

She pushed forward and they toppled over the back of the sofa and onto the cushions and it didn’t matter any more that she’d wanted to shower, she needed to feel Damon’s touch on her skin and his lips caressing hers.

‘I dreamed of you,’ she told him as he ran his hands over her thighs and positioned her exactly where she wanted to be. ‘You were lawless. Bad. And I wanted you even more because of it.’

He took her mouth again and this time his kiss held a hint of savagery in it. ‘I have ethics,’ he whispered. ‘Boundaries. I can even be hospitable when I really put my mind to it. You’ll see.’

His questing fingers slipped beneath the boundaries of her panties again and Ruby shuddered with need of less boundaries and more contact. He dipped a long finger inside her and Ruby gasped her pleasure and she held his hand in place and closed her eyes the better to concentrate on his touch.

‘I dreamed of you, Damon. Lord, how I dreamed of you.’

‘I dreamed of you too,’ he murmured as she dealt with the buttons and the zip at his waist and took him in hand.

‘What was I doing?’ she whispered as she slid her panties aside and positioned him for entry.

‘This.’ His voice guttural as he surged up inside her, his hands at her waist, vicelike as he held her in place. He slowly withdrew, and then rocked up into her again. ‘You were doing this.’

They swam in the surf much later in the day, and then showered together and she used the bubbles Lena had left for her on him, and after that he sat her down at the kitchen counter in her underwear and fed her a toasted BLT sandwich on sourdough with mayonnaise.

He was handy in the kitchen—not fussy about what he put together but competent nonetheless. He put things away when he was done with them. He knew where things lived.

Definitely a point of difference between Damon and the rest of the men in her life. Missing fathers and stepfathers and the like. Staff inhabited kitchens in their world—not them.

‘Have you ever surfed before?’ he asked her later that afternoon as they sat on the sand and watched the waves come crashing in.

‘I’ve skied before,’ she said lazily. ‘I have very fond memories of a winter in Switzerland where I was a fearless snowboard queen of the mountain.’

‘I’m very impressed,’ he said. ‘Then what happened?’

‘Then we went to live in Bahrain.’ A fond sigh escaped her. ‘I learned to drive in Bahrain.’

‘Please don’t tell me you learned to drive in a racing car unless you want to see me weeping with envy.’

‘Of course I didn’t.’ She stood up, brushed sand from her rear. ‘I learned to drive in a Hummer in the desert. My instructor’s name was Carl. Carl set my girlish heart aflutter with his commando impersonation but, alas, he wasn’t much of one for reckless endangerment. Even in a Hummer.’

‘Surfing could be a little sedate for you,’ said Damon in reply. ‘If the wind picks up this afternoon we’ll break out the kiteboards.’

Surfing was not sedate. Nor was the kite-surfing they attempted later that afternoon. The hang-gliding they did the following day didn’t qualify as sedate either. There was more swimming. More love-making. And for Ruby, plenty of naps and lazing about in between the next action-man adventure.

Damon didn’t nap. Not ever. He slept well through the night—when they slept—and needed no rest whatsoever during the day.

He wasn’t one for television unless it was as background to whatever else he happened to be doing at the time. He cooked. He charmed. He rarely sat still. Even when sitting in his computer room he did ten things at once and all of them at warp speed.

When he ate, he liked to do it standing at counters. He could do a restaurant meal—he’d managed it in Hong Kong and he managed it again when they went into Byron Bay for dinner one night—but it wasn’t his preference.

If there was a pool nearby he’d be in it. A pool table in the room and he’d be at it. The ocean and the toys he took to it could hold him for hours. Making love could also garner his undivided and sustained attention.

For now.

A suspicion formed in Ruby’s mind about the type of kid he’d been, based on the man he’d become. How hard it must have been to educate a boy who couldn’t sit still and whose mind worked that much faster than anyone else’s. How hacking would have been such a natural fit for him given he’d had to sit at a computer and cut a snail’s pace through all the schoolwork anyway.

Damon’s lifestyle choices made far more sense to her now. His work kept him focused, delivered up the adrenalin he craved and kept him on the move. New places, new people, a world’s worth of distraction—chances were he needed all those things in order to be content, and always would.

Not a man to plan a settled, predictable life around, but then, he’d never once suggested doing so.

‘You’re hyperactive, aren’t you?’ she asked him one night as he put together a late-night fruit platter that neither of them wanted, and tried—with limited success—to watch a movie with her.

Damon shot her a wary glance before deciding that the platter needed some biscuits.

‘That’s one label,’ he offered up finally. ‘There have been others.’

‘Like what?’ And when he didn’t reply, ‘Let me guess. Intellectually gifted, easily bored and distracted, physically reckless. How am I doing so far?’

‘You’re very astute.’

‘ADD?’

He wouldn’t look at her. Had to dump a load of mango peelings down the garbage disposal instead.

She took that as a yes, and gave up on ever getting to the end of the movie. Time to leave the sumptuously comfy lounge and take her bare feet and her stripey boyleg panties and vest over to the kitchen counter instead. His side of the counter, mind. They were way past having a bench in between them.

Mango slices had rapidly become a favourite snack of Ruby’s. She selected one, ate it, and smiled when a freshly wet hand cloth landed with a splat on the bench beside her. ‘Thank you.’

She’d need that later. It wouldn’t do to have sticky hands once she started running them all over Damon’s irresistible flesh.

‘So how do you feel about flying to Sydney tomorrow for a couple of days’ exploration?’ she said next. Change of subject, after a fashion. No change of craving for this man detected. ‘I hear there’s a bridge there to climb. The internet tells me there’s a racetrack on offer too. Maybe we can rustle up a car or two and a pair of willing instructors to ride shotgun and have ourselves a little wager on the outcome? I can’t let all that experience on Bahrain’s international circuit go to waste. Because I did get there eventually. I may not have mentioned that earlier. Memories of Carl weeping inconsolably over his Hummer’s split gearbox casing may have distracted me.’

‘You destroyed a man’s gearbox?’

‘Well, not on purpose. Good thing I was wearing my buzzy bee headband at the time, otherwise he may have taken one look at me and seen red.’ She picked up another mango slice and offered it to him. ‘Mango?’

‘You don’t have to scatter your conversation for me, Ruby. Or give me a hundred and one conversation threads to choose from. I can follow a one-track conversation just fine,’ he said quietly. ‘Labels and all. And, yes. Doctors diagnosed me ADHD as a kid.’

Ruby frowned. ‘Were you medicated?’

‘There was medication,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t easy, getting me to take it.’

‘Rebellious.’

‘I didn’t need it. I can control it. I can be still. You don’t need to indulge me by offering up adventure trips to Sydney whenever you think I’m getting bored.’

He sounded irritated and looked defensive. Apparently this was contagious.

‘Is indulging you such a sin?’ she argued mildly. ‘And here I thought it was part of being a good house guest. Sometimes I indulge you, sometimes you indulge me. And sometimes we leave each other alone. Given that you’ve been indulging my every whim for the past few days I figured it might be time to ante up.’

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?’

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