Charles had only been with him a couple of months but surely Damian had told him he was capable of opening a car door himself a hundred times.
A thousand times, he thought, as his temper superheated.
Then he saw the way Charles was looking at him.
“My apologies, Your Highness. I keep forgetting. It’s just that you are the first employer I’ve had who doesn’t want me getting out to open or close the door. I promise, it won’t—”
“No, that’s all right,” Damian said. “Don’t worry about it.” He paused beside the car. He had a meeting later in the day. There was just time for him to go to his office and do some work.
But work wasn’t what he needed right now. What he needed was a drink.
“I won’t be needing the car,” he said briskly, and slapped the top of the Mercedes.
“Very well, sir. I’ll wait until you—”
“I won’t need the car at all.” He forced a smile. After all, none of this was his driver’s fault. “Take it back to the garage and call it a day.”
Charles looked surprised but he was too well-trained to ask questions. A good thing, Damian thought as he walked away, because he sure as hell didn’t have any answers. Not logical ones, anyway.
Logic had nothing to do with the mess he was in.
At the corner, he took out his cell phone, called his assistant and told her to cancel his appointment. Then he called Lucas.
“Are you busy?”
He tried to make the question sound casual but his old friend’s response told him he hadn’t succeeded.
“What’s wrong?” Lucas said sharply.
“Nothing. Why should anything be…” Damian cleared his throat. “I don’t want to discuss it over the phone, but if you’re busy—”
“I am not busy,” Lucas said.
A lie, Damian was certain, but one he readily accepted.
Forty minutes later, the two men were pounding along the running track at the Eastside Club. At this hour of the day, they pretty much had the place to themselves.
Despite the privacy, they hadn’t exchanged more than a dozen words. Damian knew Lucas was giving him the chance to start the conversation but he’d been content just to work up a sweat, first with the weights, then on the track.
There was nothing like a hard workout for getting rid of anger.
He’d learned that in the days when he’d been rebuilding Aristedes Shipping. There’d been times back then he’d deliberately gone from a meeting with the money men who held his destiny in their greedy hands to unloading cargo from a barge on the Aristedes docks.
Right now, he thought grimly, right now, he could use a ton of cargo.
“Damian.”
More than that. Two tons of—
“Damian! Man, what’re we doing? Working out, or trying for heart attacks?”
Damian blinked, slowed, looked around and saw Lucas standing in the middle of the track, head bent, hands on his thighs, dripping with sweat and panting.
And, Thee mou, so was he. How many miles had they run? How fast? Neither of them got like this doing their usual six-minute mile.
He stepped off the track, grabbed a couple of towels from a cart and tossed one to Lucas.
“Sorry, man.”