“Let’s go eat,” Damion says, walking around the desk and turning my chair to face him.
“I can’t. I just got the press packet for the charity event. It’s a disaster. I need to rewrite it and get a new angle on it.”
“I volunteer at the shelter on Saturday morning. You can come and write the release there. And we’ll deal with PR once and for all on Monday.” He pulls me to my feet, hard against his body. “We both need a night off.” His palm flattens on my back, molding me closer. “I’ve had a change of heart. Let’s go to my place and order Chinese food.”
“Yes, please,” I find myself saying for a second time today. There is nothing I’d like more tonight than to shut the rest of the world out. Maybe I’ll even convince myself we can do it forever. But that would be a fairy tale, and the past few years have taught me that fairy tales don’t exist. But, then, Damion didn’t exist, either, and now he does.
Part Eleven
Home is where the heart is…
Saturday morning I wake in Damion’s bed, with him wrapped around me as if he thinks I might escape, and I am at peace in a way I have not been in years. Safe. Warm. Right. Remarkably, as delicious as Damion is with a one-day shadow on his jaw and his thick, dark hair rumpled, I am not even slightly self-conscious about no makeup and my own wild mess of hair.
Still naked from the night before, we are in no hurry to abandon the bed, talking about everything from the casino, to my mother, to the politics of doing business in Vegas. But I don’t miss how he dodges the subject of his mother and his youth, and I wonder if this is the source of his bruises.
It’s nearly ten when we order room service. He tugs on pajama bottoms and a T-shirt and looks as gorgeously male as he does in a suit and tie. Clinging to the intimacy between us and without any clothes except my dress at his place, I grab his shirt from the night before and pull it on.
Despite Damion’s insistence that I throw on his robe and stay in the room when the food arrives, I hide in the massive, sparkling white-tiled bathroom of his fancy suite, which makes mine look like an economy spot. I just don’t understand how he seems to want to announce our relationship to the world at all costs. And there will be costs.
Once we’re alone again, we settle at the wooden table where our breakfast has been laid out, and I press him to understand. “Why aren’t you more worried about people finding out about us?”
He fills our cups with coffee. “I’ve found that what is hidden becomes gossip fodder and poison. We’re both professionals. We will still act like it at work, but we also both live here. We can’t hide all the time. And we will be caught if we do.”
“So you want to tell the world?”
“Yes. I’m not saying make an announcement, but if they ask, the answer is, yes, we are together.”
“What about our jobs?”
“I filed a report with the board with your letter.” My jaw drops. “You did what?”
He takes my hand. “I covered my ass and yours. I’m committed to finding out where this will go and what we can be. We can’t do that by hiding it while we try to work and live together.”
My heart skips a beat. “Live together?”
“We work too much and too long. I’m keeping you with me in our private time as much as you’ll let me have you.”
You aren’t alone, he’d said to me at one point. And for the first time in a very long time, I think he’s right. I lean forward and press my lips to his. He wraps his arm around me and stands up, taking me with him.
Back to bed.
* * *
An hour later, I have returned to my room to shower and change and pack some things to stay with Damion for the rest of the weekend. I escaped long enough to dress in black jeans, a red tank top, and red Keds tennis shoes. Inspecting myself in the mirror—my long blond hair flat-ironed and shiny, my makeup present but not evident—I am satisfied I look casual and comfortable, not too dressy and not too drab.
I return to Damion’s room and, using the key he’s given me, enter to find him in dark-blue jeans, a blue polo, and deck shoes. On Damion, this translates to one of those Ralph Lauren Polo ads that make you want to lick the paper. He is really too good-looking for my sanity.
A few minutes later we step onto the elevator, deep in conversation, both laughing about my mother’s efforts to turn me into a cook and my many horrible failed attempts to please her. “Good thing we both like room service,” he jokes, and pulls me close.
At the same moment another couple sneaks onto the car, just before the doors shut.