Unscripted Seduction - Chapter 20
A month later, New York was bright with early autumn light and absolutely no mercy.
Life had resumed its polished rhythm of meetings, calls and strategy decisions.
Her mother was healing steadily, her arm now in a sleek brace, and over coffee three days ago Renee had finally looked up and said, with rare blunt softness, ‘You were extraordinary in Ghana. They were all impressed. So was I.’
Ama had smiled, murmured something about just doing her job, and let that be that. What else was there to do? Explain what it had cost her to be extraordinary?
Enough that some part of her still felt stranded in that storm-lashed house on the coast, listening to rain on glass and a man’s voice roughening when he wanted her too much to stay civil. Enough that she had discovered success could sit in one hand while loss occupied the other.
Because rain was not the only thing that had fallen that fateful weekend.
It was absurd, really. To fall in love over a couple of exquisite meals, a few hours of brilliant conversation, one glimpse into the wounded soul of a formidable man, and a sizzling tumble into bed that had changed far too much far too fast.
Yet here she was, moving through Manhattan in expensive heels and immaculate tailoring, doing the job of her life with a smile that passed inspection, while privately wondering whether she would ever manage to pick up what had fallen apart in Ghana and make it resemble something whole again.
Her office door opened just after six.
Ama looked up from her laptop with a distracted, ‘I thought everyone had—’
And stopped breathing.
Damian stood in the doorway.
For one surreal second he didn’t look real. Too vivid. Too arresting. Too exactly like the sort of thing loneliness would hallucinate after a month of doing battle with memory.
Dark coat, open collar, the same beautiful, difficult face that had haunted her more efficiently than any ghost. But there was something different in him too. Less shield. More edge. As though he’d come here having already decided that whatever happened next would hurt and intending to do it anyway.
Ama rose too quickly. Her chair rolled back behind her.
‘What are you doing here?’
His gaze moved over her once, and even that nearly undid her.
‘Trying,’ he said, voice low, ‘to correct something before I lose what little remains of my sanity.’
Her pulse stumbled. ‘Damian—’
‘No.’ He stepped inside and shut the door behind him. ‘You asked me in that kitchen whether I used you, and I answered badly. Truthfully, but badly.’
Ama stayed very still.
He came closer, not enough to touch, enough to alter the air.
‘You were not a tool,’ he said. ‘You were not some convenient means to an end. You were the woman who walked into my house and refused to let me lie to myself any longer. You saw what the script was doing to me, yes. But more than that, you forced me to confront what I had made into a habit for years. Distance. Performance. Control. You didn’t merely help me through the work, Ama. You made me face myself.’
Her throat tightened.
He looked as though the words cost him, as though each one had to be dragged past pride and old reflex.
‘You are more than brilliant at your job,’ he went on, rougher now. ‘God knows that should’ve been enough reason to keep thinking about you. But it isn’t why I haven’t slept properly in a month. It isn’t why food has tasted of nothing, or why every page I finished made me think of the woman who had the nerve to call it a masterpiece and then tell me to stop standing in my own way.’
Ama’s breath shook on the way out.
Damian’s eyes held hers with terrible, unguarded intensity.
‘One story-soaked weekend changed my life,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried, with what remains of my dignity, to pretend otherwise. It hasn’t worked. I can’t eat, sleep or fucking function for thinking about you. About your mouth. Your mind. Your impossible, infuriating courage. About the fact that when I finally wrote something honest, the first person I wanted to hear read it again was you.’
Sweet heaven.
The rawness of it was a blaze to her chilled heart.
She didn’t remember crossing the space between them. One second she was behind her desk with her heart trying to break itself open inside her ribs, and the next she was in his arms with a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.
He caught her hard, as her hands slid up into his coat, then around his neck, holding on without dignity because dignity had had a month and had done absolutely nothing useful with it.
‘I hated you,’ she whispered against his mouth, tears hot behind her eyes. ‘I was so happy for you and I hated you.’
A broken, breathless sound left him. ‘That seems fair.’
‘I thought I was just the spark. The thing that got you where you needed to go and then got left behind.’
He leaned his forehead against hers. ‘No.’
The single word shook.
‘You were the breakthrough, yes,’ he said. ‘But not because you were expendable. Because you mattered enough to undo me.’
That wrecked the last of her.
Ama kissed him first this time, with all the ache and hunger and relief she’d been carrying for weeks. He answered instantly, his hands flattening against her back, dragging her close until there was no room left for doubt between them. The kiss was hot and deep and a month’s worth of want breaking open at once.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, he touched her face with a tenderness so at odds with his usual arrogance that she nearly cried again.
‘I love you,’ he said, like the words surprised him even now. ‘Which is deeply inconvenient, considering you are very likely to make a habit of challenging me for the rest of my life.’
Ama leto ut a watery laugh. ‘I probably will.’
‘Good.’ His mouth brushed hers once more. ‘I would’ve had to chase you otherwise.’
She searched his face, still half-afraid this was some beautiful reprieve she would wake from. ‘You mean it?’
The look he gave her was almost offended. ‘I crossed an ocean. I need it. I need you.’
That did it.
Ama laughed properly this time and threw herself back into his arms, and when he held her as if choosing it consciously, fiercely, with no shadow of retreat left in him, something inside her finally settled.
‘I love you, too. So much.’
A month of heartache did not vanish in a second. Neither did old wounds or private fears.
But this was real.
This man. This choice. This beginning.
Outside her office windows, New York glittered into evening.
Inside, Damian kissed her again with all the heat and arrogance and hunger she remembered, but with something steadier underneath now.
And this time, when things fell, they fell into place.