Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Damien was kicking ass at beach bingo. Mandy watched him with growing amusement. She held her card in her lap, the beans they’d been given as markers rolling around, no longer on the numbers that had been called.
The first time she’d upset her whole card, she had asked Damien to read her the numbers he had. It had aggravated him, since he hadn’t been able to hear the new numbers as they were called with her distracting him.
So the second time she’d spilled her beans, she had just leaned over and shifted his markers around so she could see the numbers. Only in doing that, she had got in the way of him seeing his board, and he’d got bingo just seconds behind another hotel guest.
He’d been thoroughly ticked off. Mandy didn’t understand why, since he’d won twice already, but Damien was nothing if not competitive.
Now he had his card set on the ground, his feet pinning it so the wind wouldn’t take off with it.
His knee went up and down in agitation, and his hand hovered over the card with a bean at the ready.
Mandy sometimes wished she had an ounce of competitiveness in her, but it had never surfaced. She liked to do things she enjoyed and didn’t really care about the outcome as long as she had fun. Which probably explained why her toy shop had never turned a profit.
The games coordinator sat at a table calling the numbers. With a smile, he pulled the next ball out.
“Eight. Ocho. Huit.”
Before he was even finished with the French translation, Damien was on his feet. “Bingo!”
There was some good-natured grumbling from the half a dozen women in their seventies playing, while Damien strutted to the table to collect his latest prize pack.
Sitting at Mandy’s feet were already three bottles of rum, two T-shirts, a piece of Dominican artwork, a model of a sailboat, and a necklace made out of shells.
She couldn’t even begin to imagine why he needed any more swag.
At least the bingo caller had said that was the last game. Mandy was enjoying herself, but she was also getting hungry. The buffet should have opened for dinner, and since Damien already thought she had a pastries pouch, she might as well indulge herself.
Damien collected his prize, then to her surprise, turned and passed the two bottles of rum and the T-shirt out to the ladies who had been playing. He came back over to Mandy, retrieved the rest of the winnings, and finished doling them out, until everyone had received something.
The ladies laughed, beamed, gave him cheek kisses, and called him “blue eyes.”
He kept a bottle of rum and the shell necklace, which he undid the clasp on as he stood in front of her. “Lift your hair, Mandy.”
She did, and he put the necklace around her neck, hooked the clasp, and stood back, inspecting the way it lay on her chest. “Thank you, Damien,” she said, a little stunned, a little touched, and a little worried.
The way he looked right now, serious yet happy, good looking and generous, she had a feeling her dreams about him might not revolve around just sex anymore.
“Perfect,” he said. His eyes locked with hers. “Beautiful.”
She had wrapped a sarong around her waist, but hadn’t pulled on a shirt, and the necklace hovered above her cleavage, cool on her warm skin. Without meaning to, her fingers trailed across the shells as she stared deep into his ocean blue eyes, and she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
The bingo women didn’t suffer from the same problem. “Hold on to this one, honey. He’s a keeper.”
“That is one hot look he’s sending her.”
“If I were thirty years younger...”
“You’d still be old enough to be his mother.”
The speaker was eighty if she was a day, wearing a straw hat that probably weighed more than its owner, and Mandy and Damien both laughed, the moment broken.
But Mandy still knew that something was happening, something that shouldn’t.
Something that had no place in her life now that she was going to be a mother, with huge responsibilities.
She was falling for Damien.
Which meant she should beat a hasty retreat, eat dinner alone in her room, and pray for a dreamless night of sleep.
Then he smiled and held out his hand. “Ready for dinner?”
“Absolutely. Let’s do it.”
Now that was the way to hang tough.
Damien wished he could blame it on the rum, but the truth was he hadn’t swallowed a drop. He’d had ice water with his dinner and enough food for three people.
Which didn’t explain why he was feeling so incredibly relaxed, mellow, why he had kicked off his shoes, rolled his pants up, and was letting the sand fall over his feet.
“It’s such a gorgeous evening,” Mandy said, staring out at the waves hitting the beach.
She was gorgeous. After bingo, they’d separated to change for dinner, and Mandy had put her hair up into a little twist on top of her head, soft, wispy tendrils falling around her face. She wore a coral-colored sundress, and the silly little necklace he’d won was resting between the two straps.
New York seemed a million miles and a lifetime away. There was nothing but soft island music, the crash of the waves, a balmy breeze, and Mandy.
“I still can’t believe they brought the whole buffet down to the beach. It’s amazing.”
She was amazing. She had chatted with him throughout a long and leisurely dinner.
They had talked about her childhood, her distant father, and her overbearing mother, and he had realized from her stories that Mandy had been given lots of material things growing up, but she had craved her parents’ attention more than anything.
It made him want to put a call through to England and inform them they were idiots for neglecting their intelligent and compassionate daughter.
“My mother would be horrified at eating on the beach. ‘Think of the bugs!’ she’d say,” Mandy said with a laugh. “ ‘The germs! The sand. That soup probably has a tablespoon of sand instead of salt in it.’ ” She shook her head. “It’s not civilized enough for her.”
“She doesn’t like nature?”
“She likes nature when it’s been controlled. In a proper English garden.”
Damien sipped his water. “My mom would love it here. She hates Chicago winters. They’re hoping to move to Florida when my dad retires next year.”
He should call his own parents, see how they were. He hadn’t talked to them since Christmas. And they had never neglected him, far from it. Their house had been a happy one, with lots of love and laughter.
“You’re from Chicago?”
He nodded, suddenly shocked at the overwhelming sense of homesickness that swept over him.
He hadn’t been back since, well, since he’d left.
“Born and raised. Just a regular kid, in a middle class suburb, Dad’s an engineer, Mom was the domestic coordinator.
I had a brother, a dog, and a passion for baseball. ”
Mandy smiled at him, slow, relaxed, her finger wiping a stray bit of whipped cream off her dessert plate. “What happened to that regular kid? The brother, the dog, baseball?”
That boy had wanted to pitch for the White Sox, marry a pretty girl, move into a rambling house down the block from his parents in Beverly, and have a couple of boys of his own.
Damien remembered the dreams, but wasn’t sure he even knew how to relate to them anymore.
That’s not who he was at thirty-three. Life had taken him to New York, where he was very successful, lived in an apartment building with a doorman, and worked eighteen hours a day.
He had very few friends, never saw his family, and had long ago given up the idea of ever having children.
This was why he never got introspective. It was damn depressing.
“The brother lives in Seattle and I never see him. The dog’s long gone, and there’s no time in my schedule for baseball.”
Instead of looking at him in disgust and going to seek better company, Mandy licked the cream off her finger and shot him a wicked look. “I’m in charge of your schedule. Maybe next week you’ll find baseball penciled in for Saturday at one o’clock. The Yankees are playing.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?” His assistant was efficient, he’d give her that.
“Yep. And I have access to your credit card.”
He laughed in spite of himself. “Get two tickets then. You and me.”
“You got it.”
And at that moment, it occurred to him that he was sitting back in his chair, completely relaxed, and not one thought about his laptop lying idle in his room had crossed his mind.
He was on vacation and it didn’t hurt.
Wonders never cease.
“Walk with me.” He stood up and tossed his napkin on the table.
There were a hundred people around, dancing to the live band, eating their dinners at the dozens of candlelit tables set up on the sand.
Crowds didn’t bother him—he usually liked to get lost in an anonymous crowd—but here, tonight, he wanted to be alone with Mandy.
He had changed his mind about his assistant. He no longer wanted to avoid her. He wanted to kiss her.
To taste those full pink lips and draw her into his arms, hand in her soft wavy hair. To absorb her feeling, her scent, take her all into him and remember what it was like to know passion, pure tactile pleasure.
Damien stuck his feet back in his sandals, but Mandy shook the sand off hers and put them in her bag. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere. Just walking.” He gazed at the horizon. “I’ve forgotten how to do that.”
Every step he took had a purpose, every thought in his head task oriented. He didn’t walk for pleasure, he didn’t indulge in daydreaming.
But as the sun started to sink and the palm trees danced in the breeze, he wanted to walk and do nothing, be nothing, pretend that he was normal, a whole human being, who could have a beautiful woman at his side.
Mandy put her arm through his, leaning on him a little as they started to walk. He liked the feeling, like she trusted him. Like she wanted to touch him.
“Are you happy, Damien?”