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As he arrived at her side, Damon held out a glass of champagne. ‘For you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I ordered us some food. It shouldn’t take long to be delivered.’
Silken heat kissed her skin as he settled himself beside her and he, too, fixed his attention on the illuminated cityscape spread out before them.
‘I always forget how incredible it is looking out over this city at night. Living here, I take it for granted, I suppose.’
‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Not long.’
He set down his champagne glass and shrugged out of his jacket, pulling apart the top few buttons of his shirt with an easy flick of his fingers before doing the same to the cuffs, and then pushing them up his forearms in a mesmerising motion that captivated her attention.
‘I bought it when I was hired to work on the chateau. I didn’t want to be living in hotels. But I wouldn’t say I’velivedhere. More like crashed when I wasn’t working.’
An image of him tumbling into bed exploded in her mind, sending waves of heat crashing through her and she had to avert her eyes.
‘You mentioned that you lived in Paris too?’ he said.
‘Yes. A couple of years ago. I came here for cookery school and stayed about eight months.’
‘You weren’t tempted to stay longer?’ he asked with an easy smile. ‘Open a little patisserie on the Left Bank? Enjoy this view every day?’
‘I was tempted—although where I lived, I did not have a view like this.’
Her father had not supported her ambition to cook, but he had offered up a penthouse for her to live in—an offer that Carrie had refused. After witnessing his chilling ruthlessness for herself, and having her eyes yanked open to see how little she actually mattered to him, she hadn’t wanted to takeanythingfrom him.
‘But I’m not sure I could really imagine being so far away from my family, unable to see them whenever I wanted. Plus...’
‘Plus...?’ he probed when she stalled.
‘Plus, one of the reasons I came to Paris in the first place was to get away,’ she continued with care, not wanting to say too much and yet wanting him to understand. ‘To start over and be someone else. But I learned it’s not that easy to do.’
She was staring straight ahead, but Carrie felt his gaze closing around her. Surveying. Deducing and then understanding.
‘Someone hurt you?’
‘Yes.’
But Carrie still didn’t know who had hurt her more—Nate or her father—and which one she had been running from.
All she’d known at the time was that she hadn’t wanted to be Carrie Randolph any more. The thought of spending one more day walking around with that target on her back had been unbearable. But she had been naïve, thinking she could leave her identity behind. That she could jet off to Paris, change her name, live in a tiny attic apartment and simply stop being a Randolph.
Her mother had tried to warn her, but she had been too desperate to hear her, and she’d had to learn the hard way that she couldn’t change anything by trying to outrun it. All she’d ended up doing was inviting more hurt.
But she did not want to think about any of that with Damon. She didn’t want her father or the past intruding on the happiness she felt with him. She just wanted to be simple Carrie Miller from Santa Barbara. And yet once again the complication and deceit had her insides twisting, as if poison was slithering through her bloodstream.
‘All I will say is that he was obviously exceedingly stupid. And I suggest we don’t waste a second talking about him,’ he proposed, with a sinfully quick quirk of his lips.
Whether it was his words or the tantalising flash of his sexy smile, Carrie didn’t know, but emotion pulsed in the air between them and she could have sworn she felt the ground beneath her feet actually shift. She could see that Damon felt it, too, but before she was even sure how to respond to the sudden flare of sensation Damon already was, extracting her glass from her suddenly limp hand and placing it on the table behind him.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t waste a second talking at all.’
He moved in even closer and slid his strong hands around her waist, lowering his mouth to hers slowly...slowly enough for her to stop him if she wanted. But Carrie didn’t want to.
The languid kiss delivered a wicked kind of pleasure. It was thorough and purposeful, each slide of his lips telling her how much he wanted her, and knowing that it was just abouther, the woman, and not the name or the opportunity, sent its effect spiralling even deeper into her core.
