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I said nothing. I didn’t even move when he brushed his fingers through the end of my ponytail that hung over my shoulder.
“I’d give them the phone or shorten my shower. I’d delete a show from the DVR or not hide the TV remote in my laundry basket. Actually, no. I’d never not do that last one because that was too evil to not ever be fun.”
Laughter bubbled out of me. “That’s such a guy thing to do. And the grossest thing ever.”
“Depends if you’re the one getting the remote or not.”
“Didn’t you have to take it out?”
“No. My mom learned pretty quick to empty my basket without stuffing the clothes in the washer first.” He laughed quietly, if a little sadly. “Then she stopped washing my clothes until I learned my lesson.”
“Did you?”
“Of course. I put the controller in their laundry baskets instead.”
Resting my foot on the edge of the seat and hugging my knee to my chest, I looked over at him with a smile. “I feel like young Damien was really fun.”
“He was.” His laugh was louder, brighter, more infectious than normal. The laugh of a man who, just for a moment, had been able to let go of just enough pain to let it go free. “I was. I guess I grew up and amongst all the bullshit, forgot how to be him.”
What bullshit?
What happened to change him this way?
I wanted to know.
I had to know.
Just…not today.
“So, take a day off,” I said, resting my cheek on my knee as I looked at him. “Take a day off and do something totally stupid. Wake up at ten in the morning, shout at the TV, eat junk food, screw around… do anything but work. It’ll be good for you. You’re pretty uptight.”
His eyebrows shot up. “I’m uptight,” he said flatly.
“You’re more uptight than a nunnery full of rejected virgins.”
“Sounds like my kinda place.”
I shoved him in the arm, laughing. “Do it. Take a day off.”
Damien stared at me. Dark eyes flitted across my face, shining with skepticism. His jaw clenched in a random way, probably aligning with the same thoughts that clouded his expression with conflicting darkness.
He looked at me as though the idea was foreign.
Ridiculous.
Unthinkable.
Yet, he wanted to. I could see it. It was hanging in his silence, dancing in his stillness, screaming in his hesitation. He wanted to do it, to breathe, to separate himself from the business that controlled his life so staunchly. Could he do it, though? He was a workaholic. I didn’t know if the way he worked was healthy. Then again, I was still settling into it fully myself.
“All right,” he said after a minute or two of silence. “I’ll take a day off. Tomorrow. If you take one with me.”
I knew there’d be a catch.
Lie. I didn’t. But it makes perfect sense.
“And do what?” I asked, hugging my leg a little tighter.
“Wake up at ten in the morning, shout at stupid TV, eat junk food, screw around…with each other.”
“You always have to make sex part of the equation, don’t you?”
“Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”
I sighed and dropped my foot back to the floor. “Fine. I’ll take tomorrow off, but you will, too.”
“Tomorrow?”
“No, let’s plan this in six months time,” I scoffed. “Tomorrow, Damien. You have…” I glanced at my watch. “Enough hours left today to let all your minions know.”
He twirled a lock of my hair around his finger. “You underestimate how angry my father is going to be.”
“And you’re a thirty-year-old man without the dramatic flair of Fergus,” I replied dryly. “Perhaps you should not be worried about your father because he doesn’t run the business anymore, you do.”
“He still owns it.”
“So do you.”
“Stop making so much sense.”
I grinned. “It’s a female thing. I can’t help it.”
He met my eyes, then turned, rolling his. He stretched his hands far above his head and said, “Tomorrow, then. We’ll both take a day off and you’ll show me how to relax.”
“In a way that isn’t sex.”
“I’m not agreeing to that.”
Of course, he wasn’t. “Well, if you’re good, I’ll drop you on the Strip and you can pick up a friend.”
He shook his head, briefly closing his eyes. When he opened them again, he stood, stopped, then turned to lean over me. His hands gripped the back of the bench on either side of me. The tightness of his grip radiated up his arms, exaggerating the veins that trailed up his forearms and the muscles that bulged on his biceps. “No need,” he said in a low voice, face inches from mine. He reached for my jaw and cupped it, tilting my face up toward it. “The only picking up I’ll be doing will be when I pick you up to fuck you against the wall.”
“You sound pretty certain of that.”
His fingers dug into my jaw and—
