Unscripted Seduction - Chapter 15
Damian’s first instinct was outrage.
Not the useful clean outrage that clarified and steadied, unfortunately. The messier sort, sharpened by exposure, made volatile by the fact that Ama Osei had just looked straight at the wound under the work and asked him why the hell he’d chosen to cut into it in the first place.
He set his glass down with more precision than gentleness. ‘You’re presuming a great deal.’
She held his gaze from across the room, not backing down or softening the question. ‘Am I?’
Yes.
No.
He hated that he couldn’t decide which answer offended him more.
Outside, the rain was now a hard unceasing hiss broken now and then by the low growl of thunder moving further along the coast. The storm had stopped raging theatrically.
This endurance, pressure…persistence was worse.
Much like the woman currently dismantling what was left of his peace.
‘It’s late,’ he said, because hauteur was better than honesty and because if he didn’t put some distance back between them, he was going to do something catastrophically stupid. ‘Perhaps it’s time for you to go.’
He let the words sit for a beat, then looked towards the blackened glass and the water still battering the world beyond it. ‘If you want to take your chances with that, consider it your last chance to bail.’
Ama’s expression didn’t shift, but something in her eyes deepened. ‘I never bail on important things.’
The line should’ve irritated him. Instead, it lodged somewhere low and dangerous.
He leaned back in the armchair, one ankle over the opposite knee, every inch the indifferent bastard he’d perfected. ‘Are you one hundred percent sure about that?’
They both knew he was no longer talking solely about roads washed half to hell and a script spread open between whisky glasses and a storm-dark living room. He was talking about the kiss. About the way she kept looking at him like she wanted truth and trouble in equal measure. Knew if she stayed, this stopped being merely professional in any sense that mattered.
‘I’m sure.’
His pulse jumped as she reached slowly into her bag and pulled out her phone. A moment later she lifted it to her ear.
He was on his feet before she could get three words out.
She looked up in surprise as he crossed the room and took the phone cleanly from her hand.
‘This is Damian Sefa,’ he said into the line, his eyes on hers the whole time, ‘Ms Osei will not require collection tonight.’
Ama rose half out of her seat. ‘Damian—’
He lifted one brow and kept going, still watching her with that same infuriating, cool challenge. ‘In fact, come back for her after the weekend.’
Silence.
On the phone and off it.
Then a cautious male voice crackled faintly from the speaker. Damian gave the driver the details with maddening calm, ended the call and held the phone out.
Ama stared at him.
Outrage flickered first, then something else. Something far more destabilising.
Because she could absolutely refuse. All she had to do was to call the driver back, tell Damian not to presume or dictate or drag this one inch further into dangerous territory.
Instead, after one long suspended second, her throat moved. And she nodded. The approval of it went through him like neat liquor on an empty stomach.
‘Good,’ he said, and the word came out rougher than intended.
He handed her back the phone and turned away before he did something even less wise, crossing to the low table where the script still lay half-marked by her reading. When he sat again this time, it wasn’t in retreat. It was because if they were doing this, if she was staying and the storm had sealed the house around them like a pact neither of them had intended to make, then he needed
something clean to hold onto.
Work.