AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Damon took a sip, warm like Georgia’s fingertips, crisp like her scent, a touch bitter like her lack of interest. He should tell Angus about his vision. He owed it to him. But denial was kicking up its heels in warm sand with a sea breeze at its back.
He put the glass down and cleared his throat. “I met a woman today. I want to see her again.”
6: Disturbed
Not in the shelf life of canned beans did Georgia think she’d ever come face to face with Damon Donovan again. And now he was sitting in Avocado’s reception, joking with Lauren while he waited for her to pull her big girl pants on and get over herself.
Trent could have done this job, or Naveen, or Franca, but not only had Captain Vox agreed to voice a new navigation application for Avocado’s biggest client, he’d requested Georgia as his engineer.
There had to be hundreds of voices that would be appropriate for scripting the tourism nav app, thousands, and why a male voice not a female one, so why Damon Donovan? And why would he want to do this job anyway? He could be in LA or New York or Tokyo doing something much more interesting than narrating travel adventure software.
Surely there was a cartoon character going begging for a distinguishing voice or a documentary that needed a commentary. Why did he have to be here, booked to work in Studio B for the next six days?
On top of all that, he was a player who took advantage of his disability to make a move on her while she was trying to help him out. She didn’t want any further contact with him because he was going to wreck her fragile new-found peace. If she’d had time up her sleeve she’d have faked being sick to get out of doing this.
She was so unbalanced about him she was ashamed, but
he pushed every single one of her hot buttons, activated all of her primary carer instincts and triggered that panicked feeling of being closed in she thought she’d left behind. And she couldn’t allow that to happen again, so soon, so never.
Damon and Lauren were trading favourite lines from movies. He didn’t know she was standing there and a house could’ve fallen on her and Lauren wouldn’t have noticed.
If she closed her eyes she could remember what it felt like to have him touch her hair, just that quick brush of his palm. More curious, more affectionate than anything that’d happened to her in a long time.
Georgia didn’t want anything to do with Damon, but she wanted him to wrap one of her curls around his finger and not let go, she wanted him to kiss her again, but on the mouth, and that made her feel tense and stomach sick.
She was so starved for affection she was ready to fall in lust with the first person who took an interest in her, even when that person was the worst possible idea.
She was never going to get through this without setting some rules. He wasn’t to touch her again and she certainly wouldn’t be touching him. There’d have to be a horde of Nazis in reception bearing the Ark of the Covenant before she did Morse code moves again. If he needed help moving around, Lauren could do it. It was bad enough she was going to have to listen to his damn voice and watch him through the studio window for six days, and that didn’t include post-production, but at least she’d be alone then and there’d be no danger of wanting to know him.
Because that was the real problem. He fascinated her, but in a different way to the stardust he sprinkled on Lauren. He had a kooky sense of humour. He’d fooled them into thinking he had no disability at all and he’d asked for help only grudgingly. That wasn’t how it worked. Not in her experience. How it worked was you got angry and nasty and you lashed out at people who had greater advantages than you did and you blamed the person closest to you.
There would have to be rules for dealing with a man who busted all those expectations, because he was fearsome and he shook her up.
“Tell me what you know about Georgia.”
She should speak, cough, both hard to do when you were holding your breath. What was he up to? And who had the advantage now?
“She’s new. Not much to know. Keeps to herself.” Lauren lowered her voice. “A bit of a snob. Not exactly up herself, but you know, standoffish.”
“Shy?”
Lauren shrugged a suntanned shoulder. “Maybe, but this is not an industry that attracts shy people. She’s kind of dull, you know. She’s a bring leftovers for lunch, go straight home after work kind of person. Boring.”
The she in question was wishing that imaginary house would fall on her. Didn’t need to be a McMansion, a modest weatherboard would do the same amount of damage as this conversation.
Damon laughed. “Last time I tried that, I had cat food instead of tuna in my bag.”
“Oh no, what did you do?”
He shook his head. “Gullible much.”
Lauren made an exasperated gasp and Georgia took that as her entry point. “Damon.” She’d be a professional. Do her job. Keep to herself, bring her lunch from home, and she’d get though the next six days.
He stood. Looked in her direction and smiled. He had very pale, very steady blue eyes and though she knew he could barely see anything arm’s distance from his face, he seemed to look right through her to all the scars and tics, fears and phobias she was made of.
“Hey, Georgia. Good to see you again.”
“Why would you say that?” Lauren said, her words firing out in an explosion of disbelief.
