Lucy had called. So had her sister, Cassandra. But not as many as he’d made it seem. He’d played it up, teased them, and made sure Lucia had heard.
So she’d think what his father thought. So she’d cross him off as a hopeless womanizer.
And now?
Now there was a light tap and the door opened a crack. Lucia peeked in.
"Oh, you are awake? Good. Brian’s on the phone. He wants you to know that Anderson is pleased.’’ There was a hint of a smile on her face. “For the moment,’’ she added with an almost impish grin.
Seeing it, Damon permitted a hint of a smile to touch his lips. Something in him seemed to loosen, to lighten. Not only because he’d thought that was certainly worth celebrating.
Lucia knew about his long-time secret, and instead of being agitated by her telling on him, he was relieved.
He was out of her depth, out of her league, and over her head. It would have been better by far if he’d been the womanizing playboy he’d pretended to be.
It had made sense to fight her attraction to a man who had a woman in every port. It hadn’t been easy to resist Damon Walter's charm when she’d been sure he laid it on so freely, but it had been easier than it was now.
He did lay it on freely, she reminded herself. Even naval architects with clients and demands and a secretary named Lisa could be charming! Remember Amelia, and Lucy, and all those women in the magazines and newspapers?
But that wasn’t the real Damon Or certainly not the whole Damon. That was the public Damon, the one he had created to irritate his father.
That was the Damon who had kissed her the first day when she’d knocked on his door. She understood that. And she could resist him. She had been resisting him since she’d been here.
The question was, which Damon had kissed her beside the car the day they’d gone for a ride?
There hadn’t been any photographers there then. There hadn’t been any journalists. Not even any interested witnesses. It had happened just between the two of them.
She and... which Damon?
She tried to tell herself it didn’t really matter. Whichever Damon it was, she couldn’t handle him.
Didn’t want to handle him. It was her passion she needed to develop and control—not the man who'd inspired it. Passion was a transferrable commodity.
At least she told herself that. And hoped.
She should have run.
She didn’t have the chance.
She took the call from Brian and received his misplaced congratulations—as if she’d had anything to do with their success beyond reading the numbers on the screen.
Then she went to see if Damon could talk to him.
He had fallen asleep soon after they’d hung up the phone after talking to Brian in the middle of the night. She'd given him some pain relief then wordlessly rubbed his temples and the back of his neck, trying to ease what strain she could.
She hadn’t known if it would help, but when she’d quit before he fell asleep, he’d muttered, ‘‘Don’t stop.”
She was shocked but continued anyway.
When at last he had gone to sleep, she’d slipped out of the room on her own. But not before she’d stood and looked at him, traced his features softened only slightly by sleep, and remembered the feel of his lips on hers.
The feel—the passion—she would do her best to transfer to another man. A safer man.
The memory of Damon, well, she just wanted that for herself.
Now she waited until he finished talking to Brian, then she said, ‘‘I’ll quit my job."
He frowned. "What, why?’’
"You obviously don’t need ‘shaping up.’ And I...” She didn’t think there was any way she could tell him the rest.
In any case, he didn’t give her the chance. He said, "No.”
“What do you mean, no? That’s like what you’ve wanted all along, to get rid of me, to turn your back on your father…"
"I still don’t give a damn about my father,’’ he said. "But I don’t want you to go.”
Her foolish heart leaped for just a moment. Then she steeled herself against any such feelings. "Why?’’
‘‘Because I could use your help for one thing. Brian and I have been working on designs for a shipper. It’s a big contract. Not just in terms of money, but in terms of reputation. For the company, not me. I’m a pretty silent partner. Brian deals with the customers and does the on-site stuff, while I stay at home, take the specs he gives me, and work on the actual designs. Some people are easier to please than others. Some people let you do it your way as long as you give them what they want. The guy we're working with now has a mind of his own. And he changes it frequently as you’ve seen,’’ Damon added grimly.
"I’ve been trying to accommodate all his suggestions and all the things he says he needs. And every time I get them figured out, they change again."
"You want me to work for you?" She asked, trying not to feel sad. He just wanted her for his business and nothing more, which is good. Right?
“When I get my cast off, I’m leaving. I told you that. I'll go to Cornwall where Brian is. That’s where we build—in a shipyard in Falmouth. Then Brian will be able to get to me in a zone where it’s daytime for both of us.”
"A few days, in other words?’’ She couldn't believe it. Was she really getting attached to him?
Running his hands through his hair he replied to her.
‘‘As you say. A few days.”
"And you won’t... you won’t...’’ Instinctively and unintentionally she pressed her hand against her mouth again. She could remember the touch of his mouth as if it had just been there.
"Kiss you?’’ Damon finished for her. “Only if you want me to.’’ A hint of the wickedest grin in the world touched his mouth. Then, quite suddenly, it faded and the look on his face became serious. ‘‘Do you want me to?’’
She shook her head vehemently, then abruptly she stopped at the realization that there was one part of her that did want him doing it again.
Honesty, she always told the children she cared for, was the best policy. For the first time, she really doubted that. But the habit was deeply ingrained. ‘‘I liked it when you kissed me,’’ she admitted, not looking at him. ‘‘And I liked kissing you, but—’’
"But kissing for you has to do with love and marriage and commitment?’’ He said the words almost harshly.
Lucia nodded. She slanted a glance in his direction. The look on his face was unreadable. His dark eyes were hooded. One of his fists was white-knuckled as he
gripped a handful of the sheet. "It doesn’t mean that for me,” he told her.
“It could…’’ Oh, heavens! What was she saying?
He shook his head. ‘‘No. I won’t let it. I don’t want it!’
And she did.
A corner of Damon's mouth lifted in a disapproving scowl. Then he pressed his lips together. ‘‘I have, despite what the tabloids might say, a certain amount of self-control. And I really could use your help until I get this cast off. If you change your mind,’’ he added hopefully, ‘‘you feel free to tell me. But if that’s the way you want it, I won't kiss you again."
So She stayed.
And if her conscience bothered her whenever Mr. Walter rang up to demand a report, she took solace in the fact that she could tell him quite honestly that she and Damon were getting along, that he was talking to her, and that they seemed to be on the same wavelength.
These last few days might have been stretching it a bit. But over the next three days, she really did find herself getting attuned to Damon's work habits and thought patterns.
Maybe it was an instinctive rapport that grew up between them because she had grown up sailing boats too. She didn’t know the first thing about tankage and impact resistance, and some kind of density or other that seemed to be giving him headaches figuratively as well as literally, but these were boats he was talking about, figuring about, worrying about—even in the abstract—and as such she was interested.
Or maybe she was just interested in him.
She discounted that, of course. She didn’t want to think about the chemistry that existed between herself and Damon! If he could put it aside for the best interests of his business, probably she could do the same.
That’s what she told herself. For the most part, that’s what she did.
But the awareness was still there.
Sometimes, to get her mind away from the thoughts, she would leave him working and go up to the pool and swim or play with Alexander and talk to Julietta, who was seven months into a difficult pregnancy and was happy to have someone else to talk to and to chase Alexander around.
She did her best to avoid Mr. Walter. She was tired of his nagging and judgy attitude toward his son.
“I don’t see why you won’t tell him," she said to Damon more than once. ‘‘It would make all the difference.”
“Yes,’’ Damon agreed drily, ‘‘it would.’’
Which, she understood from the silence that followed, was exactly why he wasn’t. It was a matter of pride. Mr. Walter was a proud, stubborn man, and Damon had more pride than anyone she knew.
Lucia did not say anything about it. Even though she was working for Mr. Walter, her allegiance was to his son. It would have been that way even if Damon were really four years old.
Though the parent pays the bills, a nanny’s first commitment was to the child.
Even if the child was thirty-two!
They worked well together. That was the good news. The bad news, as far as Lucia was concerned, was that, now that he felt no need to hide his career from her, she liked him even more.
She saw the serious, dedicated side of Damon Walter that he kept well hidden from his father and the rest of the world. She saw the way he tackled the problems Brian brought, and spent hours, literally, working them out, trying first one thing, and then another. He was dedicated, tenacious, and determined.
Everything she admired in a man.
Except that he wanted nothing to do with commitment. And therefore, realistically, he wanted nothing to do with her. Sad truth.
That didn’t stop him from looking at her, though. It didn’t stop the leisurely wander of his gaze when they were working together. It didn’t stop him from licking his lips sometimes or sighing and shaking his head.
She knew what he was thinking!
If the truth was known, she was thinking about it too!
But she had to resist. Getting involved with Damon would be a one-way trip to misery. He didn’t want what she wanted. He wanted to make love, not really love.
And so sometimes, when the wanting got too obvious and her own good intentions got particularly feeble, she took herself off to the pool.
The breeze off the ocean kept things cool most of the day, and the water kept Alexander occupied when he didn’t have a friend over to play with.
Lucia thought Julietta could have used some help at this point in her pregnancy. But Julietta was as stubborn as the rest of the family.
"Damon's mother raised him all by herself." she’d told Lucia when they first met. ‘‘Mr. Walter thought it was a good thing.”
Lucia was surprised that Julietta, and Mr. Walter for that matter, measured the way to raise a child by the way Damon had been raised, but she had merely nodded and smiled. ‘‘Well, if you ever need a little rest, give me a call,’’ she’d said. ‘‘I’m sure Damon won’t mind sparing me for a while.’’
Exactly what Mr. Walter had told his wife about her living with Damon, Lucia was never sure. And Julietta never said. She seemed to take it for granted that Lucia was there to help Damon.
This afternoon Julietta was resting on a chaise lounge and Alexander was playing alone in the shallow end of the pool when Lucia walked up to join them.
“Is Damon taking another nap?” Julietta asked when Lucia got close enough to talk.
"He doesn’t need me right now.’’ Lucia didn’t want to lie and she wasn’t about to say that Damon was on the phone arguing with Brian.
The variable Mr. Anderson handed down some more modifications this morning after Damon had worked most of yesterday trying to accommodate the last set.
This time when Brian called, he had blown sky-high.
Lucia did her best to soothe him, but he wasn’t in the mood for soothing.
"There’s only one thing that would soothe me,” he told her sharply—and the way his gaze drifted down her body, she didn’t have to ask what it was.
"You said you wouldn’t even kiss—’’ she began.
"I know what I said,’’ Damon retorted between clenched teeth. ‘‘So if you don’t want me going back on my word, get out of here now and leave me to this."
Lucia left.