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What sort of former SAS soldier was he that the idea of talking to a woman could tie him up in knots? He’d never had any issues in the past, but there was an innocence about Margot that both drew him in and pushed him away. He was too jaded for her, and he didn’t want to taint her good soul.

Damon sighed and got up and walked over to the window, gazing out at the river as the sun glistened on its surface. He didn’t know how much time passed, as he watched the water.

The phone on his desk buzzed, and Margot’s sweet voice filled his office a second later. “Damon, I’ve got a woman here to see you. She won’t give me her name.” The last was spoken so quietly, he wasn’t sure that he heard her correctly.

He strode over to his desk and picked his phone up. “What?” his tone brusque, and he inwardly cringed at it. It wasn’t Margot’s fault. She was an exceptional and valuable employee who did her job well.

“I’ve got someone here to see you. She refuses to give me her name. Says you’ll know her when you see her.”

“Fine, I’ll be there in a minute. Put whoever she is in the small conference room.”

“Okay.”

There weren’t too many women in his life. His parents had died in a skiing accident when he’d been at basic training. Their trip of a lifetime had turned out to be life-ending. He didn’t have any siblings, and from what his parents had told him, both their families had shunned them when they’d gotten married straight out of high school.

He never asked them too much about it, because it hurt them to talk about that time. They’d made their own family unit, anyway. Damon figured, if his parents’ families didn’t want anything to do with them, he didn’t want to know them either. He hadn’t bothered looking for them after his parents’ deaths.

Shrugging his suit jacket on, he headed to Wilt’s desk, who was tapping away at his keyboard. “Got a minute?” he asked his friend and teammate.

Wilt pushed away from his desk. “Yep, what do you need?”

“I’ve got someone here to see me. She won’t give Margot her name.”

“You forget about a date recently?” Wilt smiled slyly. “You are the only single one left.”

Damon controlled the urge to roll his eyes, and wished he’d asked one of the other guys to come with him. “Very funny. I haven’t been on a date in months.”

Not something he’d planned on admitting out loud, but it was too late to haul the words back.

“Hmm, interesting,” Wilt murmured.

Ignoring that little comment, Damon headed toward the room he’d asked Margot to put the woman in. He trusted that Wilt would follow.

As he approached it, he paused, taking a second to center himself and block out all the noise around him. As he’d done when they’d been on missions and about to head into the hot zone, he turned his awareness inwards and listened to any instincts that might be screaming that he should hold off or change direction.

Everything in him was quiet, as he’d expected it to be. The woman was likely a prospective client, and hadn’t wanted to give her name for any number of reasons. Although this was the first time that had happened. If anything, they’d had many people give them false names before caving and giving their real ones and the real reasons why they were there.

“You good?” Wilt queried.

“Yep, just checking things out.”

“Gotcha.”

Damon reached out, turned the doorknob and entered the room. An older woman sat at the table. Her graying hair was styled in a fashionable bob. Her hands were clasped together on the shiny wooden surface, a large diamond ring glittering on her ring finger. She was dressed smartly in a navy-blue, long-sleeved dress.

Nothing about her seemed familiar to him as if he’d met her before, which was why her asking for him specifically seemed out of the ordinary.

“Good morning, I’m Damon Pallin, and this is my associate Wilt Thurston. And you are?” He left the question hanging.

“You’re like your father,” the woman murmured, and that pulled him up short.

“I’m sorry?” Damon gripped the back of his chair. His parents had been dead for nearly two decades. Was this person a former friend of theirs?

He knew his parents had moved from Queensland to Western Australia after they’d gotten married. Another reason why there’d been no contact with their families. Not that his parents had made an effort to try and mend the rift, and their respective families hadn’t either.

“I think you heard me,” the woman said haughtily.

Her tone was enough to make him want to walk out of the room and never return, but there was also a smidgeon of curiosity about why this woman had shown up now after so many years.