The kid nodded, smiled, and took the plate.
When Damon sat back down, I waited.
“What?” he demanded.
“Were you being polite?”
“I had to wait tables before all this. You can be the biggest ass on the planet and get a pass from me, but people who are rude to customer service workers deserve a special place in hell.”
I grinned. “Wait, so first I find out you hired a homeless man to help him. Now I learn you’re some sort of saint patron of the customer service industry?”
“I tried to tell you. The way I am serves a purpose at work.”
“And what about the fact that you seem to have no interest in women? Does that serve a purpose?”
He paused. “No interest in women?”
I shrugged. “It’s just something I’ve noticed. And there’s a little workplace gossip, too. People say you haven’t really dated or anything in years.”
“People should mind their own business.”
“So what is it?” I knew Damon was trying to get me to stop prying, but I also knew I was going to drive myself crazy if I didn’t get answers soon. “Someone broke your heart and now you are locking it away as a precaution?”
He just stared at me, his sharp jaw ticking as he clenched his teeth and relaxed them. Clench. Relax. Clench.
“Is that it?” I asked. I felt angry. He’d slept with me five years ago. Maybe it didn’t mean anything to him, but it had been damn near impossible for me to forget. He’d given me a daughter, and even if he didn’t know it, the man was a bastard for being so cold and callous. “You’re too scared to get hurt again? Well guess what, people’s feelings get hurt. That’s life. You won’t ever know if someone is right for you if you never put your heart on the line. You’ve got to risk it to make it happy.”
Damon’s calm finally evaporated. “You don’t know the first thing about me. And don’t pretend to lecture me on the finer points of love when you’ve clearly only experienced the failing side of it.”
My stomach went icy. “Excuse me?”
“You have a daughter. The father is gone. Who are you exactly to lecture me on the merits of relationships?”
I briefly considered flipping my plate in his face. Maybe it would’ve been more satisfying to frisbee a half-eaten, sticky pancake at his forehead. Both options would mean wasting my food, so I angrily pulled out a thick stack of napkins from the dispenser. I lifted my pancakes with my bare hands, set them on the napkins, and stood. I almost walked out without saying anything, but I stopped long enough to wave my pancakes at him and glare. “You know? You think this asshole thing is an act or something you use to run your business better. But I think you’ve been pretending so long that it became real.” I took two steps toward the door, then walked back to the table. “And what kind of grown ass man orders chocolate chip waffles? You’re a child, Damon. A child in a confusingly big package, but a child.”
I walked out while reflecting on how I probably didn’t need to say that last part.
I didn’t care though. I hated the man.
It wasn’t his rudeness that made me hate him, either. I hated him because he’d put a baby in me five years ago, and now I knew I was going to go through hell and everything in between to find out who he really was. I hated him because I had to keep trying. I especially hated him because my body had decided to go rogue when Damon Rose was involved.
I could want to punch him in his stupidly perfect nose one minute and wish he’d bend me over the nearest table and take me from behind the next.
Damon Rose could go screw himself for all I cared. I’d only be a little tempted to watch him try.
17
Damon
I stared out the window of the conference room. Manhattan sprawled out as far as I could see, cutting clear, geometric shapes against blue skies.
And there was a young guy in his mid-twenties washing the window on a scaffold attached to pulleys. Most of my senior administration staff was sitting around the long conference table and debating about how we should handle a contract dispute between one of our athletes and their biggest sponsor.
I was uncharacteristically distracted, though, because the window washer was making a heart shaped pattern every time he wiped his cleaning fluid off the window. When I followed his stupid gaze and equally stupid grin, it appeared to be aimed at none other than fucking Tinkerbell, who was sitting to my right and facing the window.
I tapped her leg under the table and shot her a look.
She frowned down at the table, then up at me. “Footsie? Really, Damon?” she whispered. “You’re lucky I wore clean socks today.” She added with a wiggle of her eyebrows.
“Try paying attention, Tinkerbell.”
“You first.”
I sat back in my chair. Why did her attitude always seem to stir up the wrong emotions in me? I should’ve wanted to fire her on the spot, but instead I found myself wondering which hand I’d fist her hair with while she bobbed her head up and down on my cock.
Pathetic. Apparently, this was what staying celibate for too long caused. I could barely keep it in my pants around her, and I had no idea what about her drove me so wild.
I found myself studying her, from the pixie-like features to the curvy shape I could remember having to myself five years ago. I thought about the way she’d felt so damn tight and warm around me, and how good it had felt to hear the way she hadn’t been able to stop the moans from slipping free when she came on my cock.
Chelsea raised an eyebrow. I realized then she was watching me watch her. “Are you that jealous
