Chapter 4
Chapter Four
“Mother, I’m trying to pack for this trip for work, can I call you later?” Mandy tossed a pair of pants aside. She’d never get the button closed on those.
“What trip for work? What is this all about?”
“I thought I told you...my boss is going to Punta Cana and needs me to accompany him.” Linen skirts were a good choice, comfortable and cool. She stuck two in her open suitcase.
“Punta Cana? Isn’t that in the Caribbean? Flying doesn’t sound safe in your condition. What will you eat? They won’t have any of your favorites. And rough roads. I’ve heard that, I’m certain of it.”
Mandy rolled her eyes, glad her mother couldn’t see her. Her mum always found a way to be elitist and offensive. “Mother, I will have gobs of food to eat. It’s a resort, catering to Americans and Canadians.”
“Just as bad. Think of all those French-Canadians in thongs, dear.”
Now she did laugh, tossing her blow-dryer into her bag. “There’s nothing wrong with wearing a thong. It means they’re comfortable with their bodies. It’s probably very liberating. Maybe we should try it—I’ll get Daddy a thong for Christmas, and he can wear it to the lake.”
Mandy knew she shouldn’t tease her very proper mother like that, but she was feeling so much better, she was almost giddy.
It was as though the minute her pregnancy hit the sixteen-week mark, the curtain on her fatigue had lifted.
And her stomach had decidedly popped. She rubbed her waist, the jeans she was wearing digging into her flesh.
“Mandy, you’ve lost your mind.”
“Possibly. Do you think I should go topless on the beach? I finally have a chest worthy of baring.” Not that she would, ever in a million years, but shocking her mother brought a sick sort of glee.
“On a business trip! Good God, you really have gone off the deep end. It’s the result of being left pregnant and alone by that old man you were dating.
You never should have gone out with a man so much older than you.
They’re all having their midlife crises in their late forties.
..it doesn’t surprise me he didn’t want a thing to do with real responsibility. ”
The conversation was no longer amusing.
But before she could tell her mother to mind her own business, she followed up with a dig about Mandy’s toy shop.
“At least you finally have a real job. I know you’ve always enjoyed your hobbies, dear, but now is time to settle down and do what’s best.”
What made her feel the lousiest was that she really couldn’t argue with her mother.
The shop had never felt like a hobby, but after diddling around with it for three years, it hadn’t turned a profit, and she couldn’t say that she had ever really aggressively sought its success.
She hadn’t even written a business plan, she’d just opened a shop. So yes, it had been a hobby.
“I still wish you’d come home and let your father and I help you out.”
About as appealing a prospect as a return to morning sickness. Thanks, she’d pass.
“I’m fine, Mother. And while I miss you both”—pre-pregnancy when she got in the wine and was feeling nostalgic, but otherwise never—“I need to stand on my own two feet.”
Her mother sniffed. “Well, I’m proud of you for working so hard. But I can’t help but worry.”
“You don’t need to worry.”
“Promise me you won’t eat anything raw while you’re there.”
She was supposed to go five days without eating a fresh vegetable?
Mandy clamped her lips shut so she wouldn’t giggle at the sheer absurdity of that. “All right, I won’t eat anything raw.”
“Where are you staying? I should know how to reach you.”
Against her better judgment, Mandy lifted the folder off her nightstand and recited the hotel contact information. If her mother showed up in the Caribbean when she was on a trip with her boss, Mandy would disown her.
If parents could disown their children, surely she could do the same.
“And be careful your boss doesn’t try anything funny with you. Businessmen view these kind of resorts as sexual buffets.”
What her mother knew about businessmen and their sexual habits was a mystery to Mandy.
“Sexual buffets? Have you been watching those crime programs again?”
But at any rate, Mandy wasn’t the one who had to worry.
It was Damien Sharpton who should be nervous. Because Mandy’s dreams had intensified, if that were possible, and the thought of a sexual buffet, with Damien as the main course, had her body tingling and her breath racing.
And if she had her way, that buffet would be all you can eat.
Damien had his suitcase in the corner of his office and was clearing out the last of his emails before he caught a cab to LaGuardia when Rob Turner stuck his head in the open door.
“Hey, Damien, what’s up?”
“I’m just about to head out. What can I do for you?”
Damien stood up, hitting the button to shut down his laptop. He was much more eager to take this trip than he ever would have thought when he won the thing.
The last two years he’d taken these incentive trips and spent the whole time wishing he were back in New York. But this time, it was different. He wanted to go.
And it didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out why.
“So you’re really taking your assistant with you on this trip?” Rob came into the room and sat down in the leather chair in front of Damien’s desk, like he planned to stay awhile.
“Yes. Why?” Damien was suspicious of the casual tone Rob had employed. He leaned on his desk and crossed his arms, alert to any antagonism.
Rob shrugged. He was one of those guys who always had a grin, a charming compliment, an easy-going confidence. He looked comfortable in an expensive suit or a T-shirt to go jogging in and could switch from beer to expensive wine and back again depending on the crowd.
“This is a prize trip. Most guys take their wives or their girlfriends, or if neither of those are available, their brother or something. No one ever takes their assistant, unless she falls in the girlfriend category.”
“She doesn’t.” Damien’s answer sounded sharp even to him and he felt a hot rush of angry embarrassment. It did look odd that he was taking Mandy, and he knew it. But he hadn’t been able to resist the impulse to spend time with her, assure himself that she didn’t think he was the boss from hell.
It had never bothered him before, what anyone thought. Yet it did now, with Mandy. But he would toss his laptop into the East River before he would ever admit that. “You know me. I can’t stand being out of touch. We’re going to get a jump on some of next month’s projects.”
“You really mean that. You’re not hooking up with your assistant.” Rob looked at him in total disbelief.
“I really mean that.” He didn’t hook up with anyone, not anymore. And Rob was probably the only one who knew that, since he was the only person who had known Damien from before, when he’d lived in Chicago with Jessica.
But that wasn’t to say that part of Damien hadn’t been much more, well, alert, since Mandy Keeling had been hired. He wouldn’t go so far as to say he wanted to have sex with her, but he was attracted to her.
Okay, he wanted to have sex with her.
That alone was something of a miracle given that he had thought himself incapable of any emotional or physical interest in another human being.
“Maybe you should.”
“Should what?” Damien had lost the thread of their conversation.
“Have sex with your assistant. A little island fling. Sex on the beach.”
“That wouldn’t be professional.”
Rob crossed his feet on Damien’s desk, making him itch to shove them off. His sense of neatness and order was offended by Rob’s shoes nudging his stack of papers a little to the left.
“She’s hot.”
“Excuse me?” Damien stared at Rob, not sure he was following him again. His foot tapped impatiently on the carpet while his hand rattled the change in his pocket. He needed to get to the airport.
“Mandy. Your assistant. She’s hot.”
“Is she? I hadn’t noticed.” He remembered finding her pretty in that initial meeting, but now he couldn’t even dredge up a memory of what she looked like, not in any detail anyway. The niggling attraction he felt had more to do with her wit, her intelligence, her sharp sense of humor.
“If you haven’t noticed, I’m worried about you.” Rob dropped his feet to the floor, relieving Damien’s blood pressure. “She’s got that simple rich-girl look going on, like she went to a girls’ school during the day, then snuck out at night to go skinny-dipping.”
“You’ve given my assistant a lot of thought.” Which somehow infuriated him. A feeling he had no right to claim. Rob was probably more Mandy’s type anyway.
“Just scoping chicks for you, man, since you won’t do it for yourself.”
“Maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe I’m not interested.”
“Damien.” Rob’s voice was soft, serious. “This isn’t healthy for you... You’ve got to move on, do something besides work twenty-four/seven. She died, not you.”
As if he didn’t know that. He fucking felt that guilt every day. And it had eaten a piece out of his soul that could never be replaced.
Damien just stared at Rob, coolly, eyebrow raised. He didn’t say anything, didn’t blink. Until Rob squirmed and straightened his tie.
“I just think you work too much. There has to be more to life than that.”
Picking up his suitcase, Damien nearly told Rob to fuck right off. But there was genuine concern on his friend’s face, one of his only friends. Most had abandoned him during the investigation, and since he’d lived in New York, he hadn’t bothered to make any new friends.
“I’m fine. My life is the way I want it.”
But if it was, why was anticipation coursing through his veins for the first time in over three years?