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‘My father was from Ojai. When he was alive we visited often. But I went to live there full-time after he died, with my father’s sister, my aunt Bree, and her family.’
‘Why didn’t you stay with your mother?’ Carrie probed, peering at him more closely and noting the way his jaw was clenched, as though his memories were hard to contend with.
‘She remarried very quickly and relocated to Europe,’ he replied. She saw a nerve beginning to pulse in that solid jaw. ‘She felt that, given everything that had happened with my father, it would be better for me to stay here, with his family. That it would be too much upheaval for me to leave.’
He was trying to paint a civilised picture of what had transpired, but Carrie was not fooled. She could see the ugly truth of it.
‘She sent you away from her?’ she gasped disbelievingly.
Judging others was not something Carrie liked to do—not after the way she had been scrutinised and judged just for being her father’s daughter, over and over again, and goodness knew Damon and his mother’s lives had been turned upside down with the sudden death of Jacob. But to willingly separate from her child at a time when he’d needed her most...
Carrie knew there was no universe in which her mother would fail to be there for her. Prue Miller had always put Carrie first, uprooting her whole life to safeguard her daughter. And, although she did not know her baby yet, Carrie could not foresee any hardship being so great that she would part from her precious child.
‘It wasn’t quite that stark or simple,’ Damon expressed with a bite of irritation, his darkening gaze still fixed resolutely ahead. ‘My father had lived to make her happy. He’d handled everything. She was cherished and insulated. But everything surrounding his death was so ugly that it was too much for her. She wanted to still be insulated, and she found someone who could give her that.’
‘But you needed to be protected and insulated too,’ insisted Carrie. ‘You were just a boy.’
His admission the previous night that he had no desire for a long-term relationship had left her stunned, but it was little wonder after he’d learned at a young age that relationships offered no guarantee of for ever. How could he trust in any woman to stay by his side when his mother had so easily left him behind? How could she have treated him that way?
He glanced across at her and, expecting some kind of rebuke, Carrie was startled when those spectacular planes of his face that were always so hard in his regard of her softened, smoothing into something that edged towards tenderness.
‘You’re going to be a good mom, Carrie.’
Amazed, she could only stare back at him, trying to fathom what had prompted the high compliment and wishing he had not issued it. Because it had caused feelings she didn’t want to feel for him to fizz in her stomach and at the apex of her thighs. Feelings which only intensified as his eyes turned molten with a sensual golden gleam.
Her bones shook. Heat swelled between them, surrounding them, and at once Carrie was aware of a tingling in her breasts, and the way her nipples were hardening into tight and begging buds.
Furious with how quickly she had fallen under his spell, she pulled her gaze away.
‘I’m tired... I may just close my eyes for a little while,’ she said, staring straight ahead but seeing nothing as waves of traitorous heat continued to crash through her.
‘That’s a good idea,’ Damon agreed, clearing his throat. ‘We’ll be on the road for another hour or so.’
She turned her face away, bewildered that the glitter of his eyes had been enough of an invitation to send her body spinning out of control. It was exactly what she had instructed herselfnotto let happen!
Refusing to dwell on it any longer, Carrie slammed her eyes shut, determined to put him out of her head. But in the dreamscape of her mind Damon was waiting, and in his eyes was that intoxicating golden shimmer, and when he reached out to touch her she did absolutely nothing to resist him...
As he slowed the car to a stop at a red light, Damon took his eyes off the road to glance beside him at Carrie’s sleeping form. Her chest moved gently up and down, her feathery lashes brushed the skin beneath her eyes and her deep pink lips were pressed firmly together.
She was so achingly beautiful that once it was on her he could not tear his gaze away. Nor did he want to look away. He was happy to simply stare at her, remembering how it had felt to be seated deep inside her, how she had come to life in his arms when he’d crushed those velvet-soft lips beneath his own. Each time he looked at her, feeling that all-over tug of urgent desire, he felt the will to resist doing so again eroded a little more.
He’d never known anything like it. He was used to liking a woman, pursuing her or responding to her pursuit of him, enjoying a brief, fun-filled affair and then walking away. Never had he been tempted to prolong any of those interactions. Never had he craved more. He’d never felt aneedfor a woman, as if she was critical to his survival. He’d never been physically incapable of drawing his eyes away.
With her it was different.
But everything was different with her.
She made him consider a different life...the pursuit of other priorities. Like family. Partnership. Love.
All the things that he had closed himself off from after his father had been killed and his mother had turned away.
All the things he’d decided he didn’t want because they posed too great a risk.
But for reasons he didn’t understand around her they felt...possible.
The sharp blast of a horn at his rear prodded him back to his senses and, seeing the light had turned to green, he slammed his foot down on the accelerator and zoomed forward, now less than ten miles from the last place he had expected to find himself.
Damon retained his home in Ojai because the house was a connection to his father, a piece of his inheritance, but it was a bittersweet place for him. A place with a thousand happy memories of lifebeforeand a thousand bleak memories of lifeafter.
