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“Who are you and what did you do with Damien Fox?”
“I told you—I’m his charming twin brother. I broke out of my cupboard under the stairs when he turned his back.”
“There’s a name for people who have voices in their heads, you know.”
“Yeah, they’re called authors. You have an entire bar based around them.”
Dahlia paused. Then, she laughed. She threw her head back and she freaking laughed—gently yet loudly. “Well played, Mr. Fox,” she managed to say through her giggles. “Apology accepted, by the way. I’m sorry for bailing on dinner.”
“Nothing came up, did it?”
“Maybe.”
I stared at her. She wasn’t going to budge. “All right, but now, you owe me.”
“I owe you?”
“You owe me. What are you doing right now?”
“Uhh.” She paused, but she met my eyes. “Trying to think of literally anything I could be doing that doesn’t involve you?”
Grinning, I said, “Come and have breakfast with me.”
“At your house?”
I shook my head. “But I do need to go and get changed. I can pick you up here or at the bar.”
She sighed. “I’ll be here. Just don’t take forever. I have to work.”
I held my hands up. “I have an interview at eleven-thirty. Give me half an hour. I’ll be right here.”
Thirteen
Dahlia
Apparently, my days were a string of bad decisions lately. The first? Agreeing to dinner with Damien. The second? Canceling that dinner. The third? Opening my front door to him this morning.
Well, maybe the last one wasn’t. It wasn’t like I didn’t know it was him at my door—hell, when Dustin called me with his name, I could have had him send Damien away. The only reason I didn’t was because I knew that I had to face him sooner or later, and the longer he was in my life, the more I realized that ‘sooner’ was the better option where he was concerned.
I had to be realistic. The more I put him off, the more persistent he’d become, and the more likely he ultimately was to drop into the bar, completely unannounced and on his own schedule.
Not to mention the fact I’d seen him on the camera as he’d approached the front door.
I’d watched as his car ambled up the driveway, as he’d slowly gotten out of it, as he’d grabbed the coffees and made his way to the door. The entire time, he’d had the saddest look on his face, made only more noticeable when he’d left his car. His lips had been turned down, his eyes hooded, his shoulders slumped…He was barely a shadow of the man who usually presented himself to me.
I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was just…something. Something about him and the way he held himself that was different. He’d tried to hide it, but he couldn’t hide it in his eyes.
I wanted to know what was hiding behind that fake smile and those sad eyes. I wanted to know why, for a few minutes, he’d been so different to the controlled, unemotional man he appeared to be.
What was the pain he was hiding? What was buried beneath the cold, apparently unfeeling exterior?
I was curious by nature.
Curiosity killed the cat.
I was face-to-face with a Fox.
Inquisitiveness wasn’t the best way to go about dealing with him, but hey. I was an idiot. That much was painfully obvious.
I snatched my purse up from the passenger seat and got out of my car. The place Damien had picked—and then asked my opinion on—was small and out of the way, tucked down a side road a thousand miles away from anywhere tourists would choose to go. I’d never been here, hell, I’d never heard of it, so I planned to step outside my comfort zone and defer to Damien on what to eat.
He was standing outside the door to the tiny bistro when I approached him. “You found it okay,” he greeted me, hitting a button on a key fob. The lights on a sleek, black BMW blinked twice as it locked.
I glanced at the car. “You’ve driven yourself twice in one morning. Is it your chauffeur’s day off?”
He laughed and opened the door. “I only use him when I need him. My morning run and breakfast with a beautiful woman aren’t any of those times.”
“But dinner is?”
“Of course. The back seat isn’t fun by yourself, is it?”
He was back to his normal, sexy self, it seemed.
We sat at a small table in the back corner. It was well lit by the large window that allowed just enough sunlight through, and we both settled in with the menus.
“What do you recommend?” I peered up over the top of the foldout, cardboard menu.
Damien raised an eyebrow, meeting my gaze. “You can’t decide?”
“I’ve never been here. I don’t know what’s good.” I gave my most innocent, one-shouldered shrug.
“The California omelet with the French toast.”
I waited for him to continue with another suggestion, but he didn’t. “Just that?”
