“I’m so sorry,” she wailed, sobbing into his shirt.
“I’m just glad you’re not hurt.” His voice shook. Damien Larson’s voice shook for her.
“But your car—”
“For fuck’s sake, Emma, that’s why I have insurance. The car can be replaced. You can’t. Are you sure you’re not hurt?” He breathed into her hair and she tightened her grip on him. The EMT was probably wondering what the hell was going on here, if this was her boss.
“I think. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? I should make them take you to the hospital.”
“No! I just want to go home. Please? Please just take me home.” Home. Home meant his house. Not her own.
She stayed under the protection of his arm around her shoulders as he walked over to finish up with the police officers on the scene in their bright yellow rain slickers. The intersection was completely blocked off with the smashed cars still sitting where they’d stopped, and Emma saw the distraught teenager being led away from the second ambulance by what looked like worried parents. Thank God she was okay. Emma remembered having her first fender bender at seventeen and how terrified she’d been, and it damn sure hadn’t been a Bentley she’d run into. Everywhere, lights flashed, bystanders looked on, horns honked, and Damien’s arm remained firm around her, holding her up, giving her strength.
Eventually they were given the all-clear, and he helped her find her purse in the wreckage, then led her over to the Jaguar, parked several streets over. The club wasn’t far from here, but it wasn’t within walking distance. Enough time had passed for them to call him and for him to drive over, apparently.
“Jesus Christ, do you know how that scared the shit out of me?” he asked once they were in the dry confines of his car. She was still trembling.
“I’m so sorry. If I’d been paying attention I might have—”
“Stop right now. Nothing you did was your fault. There were witnesses all over the place who said that kid ran a red light because it looked like she was texting.”
“But I might have been able to stop if I’d seen her approaching so fast. I should have stayed home. If I hadn’t left—”
His hand caught hers and he brought it to his lips for a brief kiss. “Not another word, Emma. Let’s go over to the club; I need to wrap up a couple of things and then we’ll go home. Do you feel up to that? I can take you back first if you want, but I hate to leave you there alone.”
“That’s fine.” She kept a firm hold on his hand as he drove through the wet streets, watching all the pedestrians on the sidewalks under their colorful umbrellas with their uncomplicated lives. They might have worse problems than she did, but she bet none of them had just wrecked their boss’s car.
“Stacia heard it on the police scanner,” he said, breaking the silence. “She usually has it on. She knows my plate numbers better than I do and came to get me even before the name came back.”
“And now she knows I was driving your car. How do you explain that?”
Damien drove silently for a moment. “Emma, she already knows. She’s my right hand. There was no way I’d get it by her.”
He dropped the bomb casually, but the explosion was muted given her current trauma. She wanted to be angry, wanted to be absolutely livid—but she couldn’t very well be mad at him about anything when she’d just demolished his Bentley. Rain pattered against the windshield before every swish of the wipers. The radio played softly. A patch of fog was spreading on her window. She made note of every tiny detail, trying to rein in her emotions. It was all too much; she was about to shatter. “Okay.”
Damien braked at a red light and looked at her, his expression open for once. “I hope you understand. She won’t tell anyone. And she will never even mention it to you, I promise. If she does, come to me and I’ll handle it.”
“Then the clothes . . .” She left the thought hanging.
“I gave final approval, but yes.”
Well, the two of them had good taste when they put their heads together; she could give them that. And now they were going to the club, and Emma would have to face Stacia with the added humiliation of knowing she’d wrecked his car on top of being his live-in sex toy. Even if it hadn’t been her fault . . . she’d wrecked his fucking car.
“Thank you for being nice about this,” she said, more tears leaking out when they wouldn’t listen to her and go back where they belonged.
“There’s no other way I would be about this. I don’t care if it had been the other way around and you had run the light. I’m only glad you’re safe. I would never have fucking forgiven myself if something had happened to you.”
She turned to him, taking in the hard set of his clean-shaven jaw, the grip of his hand on the wheel, the grip of the other still on hers. God, he was so beautiful, a sheer miracle of perfection. “What? Why would you blame yourself?”
“If you’d been at work like you would’ve been if your goddamned brother had never set foot in Players, then this wouldn’t have happened.”
“You just told me it wasn’t my fault, so it can’t be yours either.”
“Let’s blame him, then.” He gave her a slight crooked grin, and she was happy to return it.
“That sounds good to me.”
* * *
To Emma’s profound astonishment, Stacia greeted her with a hug. She must have looked like a drowned rat with her stringy wet hair and sopping clothes, but that didn’t deter the buxom blonde one bit from crushing her to her chest. They all went up to Damien’s office, and Stacia put coffee on for them while he got on the phone with his insurance company.
Emma’s hands were still shaking even as Stacia handed her the warm mug. “Careful,” she cautioned. “It’s really hot.”
It was the usual jet fuel, but it was just what she needed, washing through and warming the places that had been chilled by the rain and the shock of the accident. She gave Stacia a nod. “Thank you. This hits the spot.”
“Be careful, she’ll spike it,” Damien warned from behind his desk, and the girls both laughed.
“I might need it right now,” Emma said. While he picked up his conversation on the phone again—she loved it when he sounded all professional and important, but then she loved every way he sounded—Emma glanced at Stacia.
“He said you knew.”
Stacia made the motion of zipping her lips, locking, and tossing away the key. Keeping secrets was probably part of the girl’s job description.
“Thank you,” Emma mouthed. She doubted she would ever fully trust her as much as Damien did; Stacia’s loyalty was to him, not to whomever he was banging. But it was a step in the right direction.
While the two of them took care of club business, Emma went downstairs and flipped on the light in her office. God, it felt like ten years since she’d been here. Like she’d been a different person. One who was sure of herself and her position, one who had everything figured out even if it hadn’t seemed so. If she could turn back time . . .
Well, no sense in going there. She couldn’t.
She sat at her desk and wondered if she was going to be able to readjust to this world once the month ran out. Sitting here crunching her mundane numbers, knowing he was upstairs. Or knowing that he wasn’t, that he might be at home with a gorgeous woman tied to his bedposts, begging him to fuck her.
What would be the worst scenario? Knowing what that woman was feeling because she’d been there herself? Or wondering about it until her dying day, because she didn’t have the courage to go there herself?
She could have very well died today. If that girl had been coming from the opposite direction and hit the driver’s side, or if she had pushed her into oncoming traffic just right . . . it might have been disastrous. Picking up her cell phone, Emma dialed her mother, needing to hear her voice. No sense in telling her parents about the accident; it would just upset them, and she was fine. Plus, she wasn’t exactly clear on how she could explain she wasn’t in her car, but a fr
igging Bentley.
No answer. Her mom was probably sleeping, so she left a voice mail and put her phone down, staring at nothing until she heard knuckles rapping on her door. She looked up to see Damien in the doorway, one eyebrow raised in what could possibly be concern. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just spaced out a little.”
He stepped farther in, full alarm flashing across his face. “I’m going to take you to the hospital if—”
“Damien, I’m fine. The airbag smacked me pretty good, but I don’t have a freaking head injury.” She stood up and grabbed her purse. “Are you ready to go?”
He glanced around her space and sent her a grin. “Do you miss it yet?”
“I do, actually. I go a little crazy sitting at the house all day. I might start coming in with you.”
“That’s fine, but as soon as you feel up to it, I’ll spend the day with you and we’ll go do something. I imagine you’ll be pretty sore for a few days, though.”
She’d often heard the day after an accident was the worst, but she’d never had a blow like that one to test the truth of it, not even her fender bender. “I’d like that.”
He closed the door and walked over to her, drawing her into his arms. She sank into his solid warmth, letting all her cares melt away in the tight circle of his embrace. “That was my worst nightmare coming true,” she murmured into his chest.
“That shouldn’t be your worst nightmare. It could’ve been far worse.”
“I know, but God, that’s just my luck. If you’d been driving, it wouldn’t have happened. You lead a charmed life.”
“Now you’re talking crazy and I really do think I need to have your head examined.”
Chuckling, she pulled back to smack his arm lightly, but he caught her wrist in that perfect grip of his that made everything else fade away. His dark eyes were unusually light as he brought her hand to his lips to give her palm a kiss. She swallowed thickly. How many fantasies had she had about him that played out right here in this very office? But now certainly wasn’t the time.
“I thought you were going to kill me,” she told him.
“Well, I do have plenty of acreage to hide your body, and not many people know where you are, so I bet I could get away with it.” He had to keep her from smacking him again, laughing as he caught her other wrist. “It’s only a car, Em.”
Yeah, she thought wryly, he has another one. If she’d been in her own vehicle and it had been totaled, she would be up shit creek without a paddle for a while. It wasn’t only a car to her, it represented her independence. It was freedom. But someone like him didn’t have to see it that way. It was a toy, something shiny for him to take out and play with whenever he felt like it, and then return it to its shelf.
Much like her.
Thoughts like that were getting her nowhere. He could have raged at her and made her feel more like shit than she already did. Maybe inside he was, and he just wasn’t showing it, but for once she didn’t think so. She didn’t think he could fake the kind of concern he was showing for her. It felt so genuine.
He drove her home while she stared out the window at every nearby vehicle like it was a monster about to pounce on them. But he held her hand, his thumb stroking along her skin, as if he knew her jitters. Before they could get to his house, she was sound asleep.
She woke later in his bed, and the only explanation as to how she’d gotten there was that he’d carried her. For her not to wake up during that, she must have been dead to the world. Bentley was even curled up beside her. She pulled him a little closer and buried her nose in his fur.
And . . . oh God. Everything was beginning to hurt. She winced against the stiffness in her shoulders as she lifted her head to see the clock: only six-thirty in the evening, which could explain why she was in bed alone except for her little dog. But she couldn’t be alone right now. Tossing back the covers, she gathered Bentley to her chest and tried sitting up, gritting her teeth against the soreness.
Almost as if he’d known she was awake, the door opened and Damien peeked inside at her, then walked quickly to her side when he saw her sitting up andbreathing deeply. “Easy. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, just sore.”
“You should stay in bed. I’ll bring you some Advil. Are you hungry?”
His fussing over her like a mother hen made her smile, but she was undaunted. “I don’t want to stay in bed.” I want to be with you. “I honestly think I’ll feel better if I move around a little.”
She let him help her to her feet though she didn’t need any assistance. He didn’t look happy about it whatsoever, and to placate him lest he push her back in bed, she leaned heavily on him as they went downstairs. He led her to the couch, where she curled up in the corner, and covered her with a throw he pulled from the closet under the staircase. Then he brought her water and Advil and even the remote control.
“Oh my God,” she said, staring at it in her hand. “A man who shares the remote.”
“What do you want to eat? You must be starving.”
She thought longingly about her cheesecake, which had been sitting in the passenger seat of the car. Damn. “Cheesecake Factory,” she said, watching him just to see what he would do.
The man actually walked into the kitchen and grabbed his keys while she stared in astonishment. “Damien, no! I’m kidding! I lost a piece of mango key lime in the wreck. Liz and I had eaten lunch there. But I’m only joking.”
“I’ll go get you anything you want.”
“I’d rather you stay here. I would be fine with sandwiches.”
“Then I’ll stay here, but I’ll have someone bring you anything you want.”
“You live too far out for delivery.”
“I’m not talking about delivery. I’ll get Stacia to do it.”
The thought of Stacia going to get food for her and bringing it all the way out here was almost too delicious to pass up. If the girl hadn’t been so nice to her today, Emma might have gone for it. But she shook her head. “Don’t bother anyone. I’m perfectly capable of making something here or going with you to get something. It’s not a big deal.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. It was so weird to have someone taking care of her. She’d always felt like the one taking care of others. He couldn’t know what it meant to her, how needed it was. Hell, even she hadn’t known how needed it was. “Will you just sit down and watch TV with me or something?”
The simplest of requests, and he looked for a split second as if he didn’t know how to do it. When had she ever really seen him relaxed? Maybe when he was sleeping, but when he was awake, he was always guarded but always going, always calculating, always taking care of business, and now taking care of her. “That’s all I want,” she told him. “You. Here. Sitting still with me.”
He sat and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him. Bentley went from her arms into his lap, the little traitor, but that was fine because he then had both of them petting him. Rain came down the floor-to-ceiling windows, and it was almost a perfect re-creation of one of her fantasies upon first walking in this house . . . except, of course, she hadn’t just smashed his car to smithereens five hours earlier.
It was nice. So, so nice. She’d needed this more than anything, even if it couldn’t mean a thing, even if it only confused things further. That’s probably what he would say about her need to cuddle him: Keep your distance, Emma. And she knew it, too; she simply couldn’t help herself. Today had shown her how quickly everything could be taken away if she didn’t snatch the opportunity to have it.
Lifting her eyes to him, she put her hand on his jaw to turn him to look at her. It was something he might have done to her, and she saw the darkness flare in his eyes when they met hers. Instead of frightening her, though, it dared her to explore it. The exquisite care he’d shown her today had assured her of her safety in his hands.
“Yes,” she told him, and she didn’t have to be able to read him to see he knew w
hat she meant. His sudden hungry kiss told her everything she needed to know.
Chapter Seventeen
She’d scared him absolutely shitless in more ways than one, and Damien wasn’t one who liked to be scared. He doubted anyone did, but when the fragility of life was thrown in his face as it had been on that sweltering day his mother had died with a needle still in her arm more than twelve years ago, it left him shaking inside.
No great loss, he’d told Emma. Actually—and he knew he was cold to think this way—it was probably the best thing that could have happened to him and his brothers. Mike had killed one of her boyfriends to defend her once. The next one might have killed one of them.
Emma . . . she would have been a great loss. She was going to be a great loss when she left. He knew that now, and if he could have distanced himself even more from her, he would have. But when she looked at him with her innocent, auburn-lashed eyes and said that one magical little word, he knew he was fucking gone over her.
But he wouldn’t touch her until she felt better. That was one promise he made himself, and her.
She felt so fragile against him. How easily these delicate bones could have shattered in that crash. When he’d first seen the passenger side of the car, smashed in as if by a gigantic fist, he’d lost his breath thinking of her, small and alone in that wreckage. He’d thought surely she was injured. He still couldn’t quite convince himself she wasn’t.
“Are you sure?” he asked. She nodded.
“Do you have any questions?”
“What would be my safe word?”
“That’s something I want you to decide. A lot of people go with ‘red,’ but I’d rather you pick a word that has meaning for you. Something close to your heart that’s easy for you to remember. It also needs to be a word you wouldn’t ordinarily say during sex so there are no mixed signals.”
“Chocolate?”
He chuckled. “If you like. Of course, if ever I’m in the mood to pour chocolate syrup all over your body, it might be something we would say.”
“Oh. Think you might ever be in the mood to smear cheesecake all over my body?”