She laughed a soft, rich, tinkling sound. Her head tilted toward him, the blanket slipping down to the swell of her breasts. “Oh, come on, Damien, you have to know that they call you Demon Sharpton because you’re tough, yes, but also because you don’t pay attention to any of the women. It frustrates them.”
He liked the way she said his name, her accent giving it a sophistication it had never had before. “Actually I think they call me Demon because asshole doesn’t rhyme with Damien.”
A startled laugh flew out of her mouth, her lips splitting in a wide, genuine grin. “I don’t think that’s it at all.” Then she studied him, curious, fingers gripping the fuzzy blue edge of the polyester blanket. “Why do you let them think that about you? I don’t think you really deserve either appellation.”
How could he tell this woman, with her honest and direct eyes, that it was easier to let people think he was an asshole? That it kept people away from him, who would infringe on his time, his friendship, his emotions, drawing him back into entanglements that he no longer had the strength to deal with. There was no way to describe how he’d crawled back out of a raw agony, and the only means to keep the crushing fear at bay, toprotect his sanity, was to prevent anyone from getting close to him.
When Jessica had been murdered, he had retreated into a carefully constructed house of cards. If he let people start flicking their fingers at the shaky walls, it was possible it would all fall around him.
So he shrugged. “I don’t care what people think.”
Two months ago he would have said that and meant it.
But now it felt like he was skirting the edge of truth. He definitely cared what the woman next to him thought.
“Well, bully for you,” Mandy said softly with a smile, resting her head on the back of the seat. “If we should all be so mature.”
He shifted, turned more fully toward her, disturbing her blanket in the process. Damien twitched it back into place, careful not to touch Mandy’s bare arm. “Maybe it’s not maturity. Maybe it’s arrogance. I’m just a jerk, like everyone says.”
If she believed it, she would retreat, leave him alone, stay outside the bitter bubble he lived in. Because if Mandy started to look at him with softness in her eyes, he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to resist.
And he had nothing of value inside his soul to offer a woman like her.
But she already was gracing him with a lazy smile and a sweet understanding shining in her eyes. “I don’t believe that, Damien Sharpton. I think there’s much more to you than meets the eye.”
Then hers drifted closed, and in a minute, her breath evened out as she dozed.
His attraction, that interest in her, grew exponentially.
Damien bent over and got out his laptop, careful not to disturb her. Determined to work and push her out of his mind, he reread a report he was working on, proofreading it for errors.
But every few minutes, his gaze scuttled over to Mandy, sleeping peacefully, her pink lips parted on a sigh, her bangs tumbling down over her eyebrows.
Damn it. Damien slammed the lid closed on his computer. It was impossible to type when the thing was rocking back and forth, destabilized by his massive erection.
He let down his tray table and set the laptop on it, but he didn’t accomplish a whole lot.
Except give himself whiplash checking Mandy out every five seconds.
This trip had been a huge ass mistake, and if he had to see her in a bikini he was screwed.
The thought sent his tray table bouncing up enthusiastically as his cock swelled.
Chapter Six
Mandy lay in a chaise lounge and flipped through the parenting magazine she had subscribed to eight weeks earlier when she had thought educating herself about pregnancy would actually alleviate stress.
The weightierEverything Guide to Pregnancywas collecting dust in her beach bag. She had brought it, knowing she had to read the thing sooner or later so she didn’t miss the early signs of labor, or make an ill-informed circumcision decision. But she had discovered something about herself—she got easily overwhelmed. She just wanted to sit back and enjoy anticipating her baby—not memorize terms like VBAC and effacement, or create her Delivery Advocacy Plan to take to the hospital like Jamie kept insisting she needed to do.
There was just too much information flooding her brain cells, and she had decided to take a month-by-month approach to things. She would read up to the point she had reached in the baby’s gestation and no farther so she didn’t collapse under information overload. But she had thought glancing through the magazine wouldn’t hurt, since it had cute pictures of chubby babies and funny little essays on
parenting.
Besides, she was bored.
Punta Cana was beautiful, a breezy eighty-five degrees and blue sunny skies, not a raindrop in sight. But Damien had been avoiding her, or at least it seemed that way to her. She hadn’t seen him since they’d arrived at the hotel forty-eight hours earlier. On her own, she had taken all her meals with total strangers, having been adopted by a nice British couple in their sixties who clearly felt sorry for her.
While they were a couple of dears, and she had gluttoned herself at the amazing buffets the hotel offered—not the least bit worried about encountering unwashed fruit—it wasn’t the same as being on holiday with family or friends.
