LITMIR.BIZ

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had been a huge risk, but if she hadn’t, she would have gone under. Damon, against all odds, was her most lucrative client and had taken on a staggering number of personnel, most of them temps, which meant she continued to accrue fees.

      Her jaw firmed. Right now, she could not cope with another debt. It had taken her years to pay off her mother’s funeral expenses. However, not running meant she might have to face the press, and probably sooner rather than later.

      The way she saw it, her only viable option was damage control. Luckily, due to her current line of work, she had become quite skilled at it. Refolding the paper so she no longer had to look at the damaging article or the gleeful smile of the gossip columnist, and utterly relieved that the situation with Ben and Emily was Damon’s reason for seeking her out, she directed a brisk glance at him. “When did they leave?”

      “Last night, on a scheduled flight. Which is why the tabloids got hold of the story.”

      If it had been the firm’s private jet, the press wouldn’t have gotten a look in, but Damon would have been notified. Damon had been caught by surprise, which meant Ben had kept his plans secret. That being the case, it was entirely possible, given that Zara hadn’t known about the relationship, that Damon had not, either.

      Light glimmered at the end of a very long, very dark tunnel. Damon had clearly bought into the tabloid story, but there were other constructions that could apply to Ben and Emily leaving the country together—constructions that did not place the blame on either Emily or Westlake Employment.

      Mind working quickly, Zara examined and discarded a number of options, finally settling on attack as the best form of defense. “It’s highly irregular that Ben has taken Emily out of the country.” She lifted her chin, but even so, in her bare feet, her gaze was only just level with Damon’s throat. She tried not to be fascinated by a very interesting pulse along the side of his jaw. “When might I expect my temp to be returned?”

      Damon’s brows jerked together. “Emily was not kidnapped.”

      Surreptitiously, Zara felt around with her toes for her shoes. “I didn’t say kidnapped, exactly.”

      Damon crossed his arms over his chest, which only served to make him seem even larger and more ticked off. “You’re implying that she has been coerced in some way. Since Emily, at twenty-six, is older than Ben by a good six years, I doubt any coercion was involved.”

      The age twenty-six hit an unexpected nerve. It was the same age she had been when she’d had the wild, silly affair with Damon. Heat surged into her cheeks. It was hard to believe it had been little more than a year ago. So much had happened it felt like centuries had passed. “You’re right, at twenty-six, she should have known better.”

       Zara only wished she had.

      Damon’s gaze clashed with hers. Zara dragged her gaze free, but not before her fiery irritation was replaced by other, more disturbing sensations coiling low in the pit of her stomach.

      Upset and annoyed at the intense, too-familiar awareness that had hit her out of left field, as if they were still connected—still lovers—in desperation, Zara recommenced the search for her shoes. She finally located them in the shadowed recesses beneath her desk. Relieved to have a distraction, she bent down and snatched them up. Unlike her suit, which was black and neatly tailored, the shoes were a tad subversive, a gorgeous sea blue that unashamedly matched her eyes.

      On the subject of eyes, she thought grimly, note to self, never look into Damon’s eyes for too long. Apparently, despite dismissing him from her life and putting a great deal of effort into forgetting about him completely, even one second was too long.

      With an effort of will, Zara smoothed out her expression, but there was another tiny issue that was bugging her. “And Emily being older than Ben by several years would, of course, make her the predatory one.” She could not forget that the paparazzi had nicknamed Petra, who had been several years older than Tyler, “the Huntress.” As if Petra had been cold and calculating, and had deliberately set out to ensnare a rich lover, when Zara knew that it had been Tyler who had pursued Petra.

      Damon frowned. “I wasn’t trying to imply that Emily was predatory because she’s older—”

      “Good, because we both know Ben is something of a party animal.”

      Damon seemed briefly riveted by the shoes, and she realized she was brandishing them in front of her like a weapon. Taking a deep breath, she placed the shoes on the floor and methodically slipped them on. The heels gave her an extra inch and half, which wasn’t nearly enough.

      Damon’s gaze clashed with hers again, the hard edge tempered by something she had never seen before, something new, an intent curiosity, as if he was logging the changes in her and taking stock in a completely masculine way.

      She suppressed her automatic panic that Damon would somehow equate her extra curves with motherhood. She had to keep reminding herself that Damon’s focus was on rescuing Ben from Emily; he didn’t know Zara had had his child. In any case, the obvious explanation for her more rounded shape was a whole lot simpler, that she had just put on a little weight.

      Damon’s expression shuttered. “You know very well that I meant Ben couldn’t take a woman like Emily anywhere she didn’t want to go.”

      In the midst of what was for Zara a stressful encounter, Damon’s flat statement informed her that he knew exactly what she was trying to achieve with her line of reasoning. It was also a reminder of just why she had fallen for him in the first place. Most people, quite rightly, viewed him as cold and formidable, even dangerous. But that had not been Zara’s experience. As an employer she had found him to be demanding but utterly straightforward. Far from being intimidated, she had found that, on a purely feminine level, she had liked his air of command and the knowledge that, in a company full of alpha males, Damon was the scariest, most alpha of them all.

      Grudgingly, she conceded Damon’s point that Emily was not the type to be coerced. “Even so, this is out of character for her. If she had wanted to take time off, she would have emailed me or left a message.”

      Although the instant Zara said the words she remembered that she had seen an email from Emily but hadn’t opened it because she’d been so busy with Rosie and walk-in clients.

      Damon extracted his cell from his pocket, flicked the screen with his thumb, then placed the phone down on her desk so she could see Emily’s email. “Her resignation is there in black and white.”

      Shocked, Zara flipped her laptop open and scrolled down her inbox to confirm that she had received almost exactly the same message. Hers, however, was peppered with apologies and assurances that Emily would ring once they got to Medinos.

      Medinos. Zara tensed even further.

      The island was exotic and beautiful and was popularly styled as the Mediterranean isle of romance. It had also been Zara’s home as a child while her father, Angelo Atrides, the last conte of the once-aristocratic but now-impoverished Atrides line, had been alive. But in Zara’s experience, since Angelo’s death when she was barely seven years old, the only thing that had come out of Medinos was trouble. “I don’t know why Emily would run off with Ben. They’re total opposites.”

      Ben, though ridiculously handsome, was too young for Emily and a little spoiled. He hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in his mouth; it had been platinum.

      While Zara had been reading, Damon had been pacing around her office, examining her walls with their job-notice boards and career displays, reminding her of nothing so much as a large wolf on the prowl. “It would seem Emily’s decided to take a break from work with Ben—”

      “You think this is just a holiday?” Damon’s tone was laced with disbelief.

      Still upset at the physicality of her reaction to Damon, a reaction that should have been as dead as a doornail by now, Zara snatched up the newspaper and stared at the grainy photo. “What else could you call it? I don’t see an engagement ring, so they’re not eloping—”

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