I’d been half turned in my chair, but I fully gave him my attention then. “You need me?”
“Professionally speaking. Yes.” Damon’s dark hair was neatly cut and pushed away from his forehead. As always, he looked like the picture of a man in his prime. He practically radiated health and sexuality, and I felt equal parts drawn to going anywhere he asked and compelled to run as fast as I could.
“Call me crazy,” I said. “But it feels like the only things you’ve asked me to do since I started here are meant to annoy me. So do you actually need me, or do you need an outlet for your endless supply of spite?”
“I don’t have time to babysit your ego. If you want to keep your job, you’ll be ready to board a plane with me at noon tomorrow. Just give me the name of whoever you need to watch Luna and I’ll make sure they’re compensated.”
Damon left me at my desk to glower at nothing in particular. What a dickbag.
I still didn’t buy it, though. Some degree of his personality was an act, and I was determined to prove it. I felt like I needed to know more about this woman who supposedly turned him so cold.
As far as I could tell, he’d sworn off sex, relationships, and compassion. What makes a guy do something like that?
Once I was sure he was back in his office—he was, because I could hear his deep voice through the door as he berated someone over the phone—I pulled up my internet browser.
I typed “Damon Rose breakup” into the search bar. Before I even finished typing the query, it auto filled with “Damon Rose breakup Trish Jameson.
Trish Jameson… I copy pasted her name into a new tab and pulled up an image search.
Beautiful. Of course she was beautiful. She had dark hair and looked flawless, even in candid paparazzi shots. She had an upturned nose, high cheekbones, full lips, and boobs that didn’t appear to have been introduced to gravity yet. I wanted to roll my eyes.
Very typical, Damon. Did you pick this one out of a magazine?
I switched over to looking the woman herself up. Apparently, she’d been one of the first agents he hired on. The article I was reading had an earlier picture of her, probably from around the time she started working for him. She looked beautiful before what must’ve been her recent hobby of plastic surgery visits. I decided to give Damon a little more of a pass for his taste.
She’d started working for Damon only a few months after he and I met five years ago. They dated, things got pretty serious, and then in some kind of blowup, she managed to leave Rose Athletic with most of his biggest clients. Surprisingly, it was just like Dick had said, but no matter how much I searched, I couldn’t seem to find out why they’d broken up or how she managed to walk away with his clients.
I leaned back in my chair and threaded my fingers behind my head.
Hmm. What happened, Damon? Whatever it was, I decided a weekend trip was probably going to be my best shot to dig the information out of him, one way or another.
I made an irritated sound and pressed on my ears, wishing the clogged feeling would pass. We’d just reached cruising altitude, and I had already played through about a thousand ways this airplane could end my existence. My favorite scenario was a castaway situation where Damon and I had to gradually strip off our clothes to create ropes and whatever else we needed. By day two, he’d be wearing shreds of fabric that barely concealed piles of rippling, angry muscles. Every time he looked at my sun-bronzed skin, he’d pop an aggressive erection that would burst through his torn pants.
By day three, he’d be overcome with lust at the sight of my aggressively average physique and he’d take me by the sand dunes.
And then I’d shake myself, because Damon was a bad idea. Sex with Damon, even casually, was a bad idea. The man seemed to have some sort of superhuman fertility powers, and chances were, if he got that baby stick near me again, I’d wind up with another muffin in the oven.
No, thank you, Lucifer. One baby without a father was enough.
“Would you stop fidgeting?” Damon snapped. He pressed his hand on my knee, which continued to shake up and down.
I decided to ignore the pleasant feeling his hand on my knee stirred up. Nope. Not happening, Chelsea.
“Do you think planes can fly with one engine?” I asked.
“What, are you afraid of flying?”
“No. I’m afraid of falling.”
He set down his phone and whatever he’d been looking at on it. “That’s stupid.”
I glared at him. “If you’re trying to be comforting, you’re failing at it about as much as I’d expect.”
“What I mean is you’re more likely to die from a car crash on the highway than up here.”
“Yeah, but at least I’d be behind the wheel. On a plane, I’m helpless. What if a murder of geese decides to take us out? Revenge for the car park that replaced their favorite lake?”
“A murder of geese? Are you serious? That’s crows.”
“Crows wouldn’t be this high.”
“Neither would geese!” Damon raised his voice, then took a breath and seemed to calm himself. “The term is a murder of crows. Geese would be a flock. And neither would be at this altitude. The air is too thin.”
I pondered this. “An asteroid then. One rogue asteroid and that’s it. We’re toast.”
“Do I need to give you busy work to take your mind off this?”
“Can I watch a movie on your phone?”
“Can you—” He stopped mid-sentence, blinked slowly, as if gathering strength, then shook his head. “No. You cannot touch my phone. Use your own.”
“Mine’s low on charge and I don’t want to use the last of it incase
