Tamping down her alarm, Lizzie accepted that they’d both changed. She was more savvy, and better able to handle Damon.
‘Why don’t we get out of here?’ he suggested.
‘I beg your pardon?’ She looked at him in surprise, thinking she must have misheard him.
‘I’m not keen on holding our reunion here, are you?’
His stare seared through her, and for a moment she didn’t know what to say. The thought of going anywhere with Damon Gavros was alarming.
* * *
Damon could understand Lizzie’s surprise at seeing him. Seeing her had been a shock for him too—especially finding her so changed. He was keen to know what had been happening to Lizzie over the past eleven years, and why on earth she was working here.
‘I’m sure Stavros can spare you for an hour or so,’ he insisted.
Confident that Lizzie would follow him, he was already halfway to the door.
‘I can’t,’ she said flatly, bringing him to a halt. ‘As you can see...’ She spread her hands wide in the ugly rubber gloves when he turned around. ‘I’m working.’
It had never occurred to him that she might say no. ‘Stavros?’ he queried, turning his attention to her boss, who was hovering at the back of the kitchen.
‘Of course,’ Stavros insisted with enthusiasm. ‘Lizzie deserves a break. She can join you at your table. My chefs will prepare a feast—’
‘I’d rather not,’ Lizzie interrupted.
Damon had caught a glimpse of shabby jeans and a faded top beneath Lizzie’s overall and could understand her reservations. Stavros’s restaurant was seriously high-end, but now they’d met again he was determined to find out everything about her, and bury the hatchet so many years after her father’s trial.
‘We don’t have to eat here—somewhere casual?’ he suggested. ‘Another time, Stavros,’ he was quick to add, with a reassuring smile for his hovering host. ‘I’d like the chance to fill in the past eleven years, wouldn’t you?’ he said, turning to Lizzie.
She gave a nervous laugh. This was so unlike the Lizzie he’d known that he felt instantly suspicious. ‘Unless your eleven years includes a husband or a fiancé?’
‘No,’ she said, lifting her chin to regard him steadily. ‘It doesn’t.’
‘Then, do you have a coat?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘An hour or so of your time?’ He shrugged. ‘What harm can that do?’
Stavros intervened before she could reply. ‘How can you refuse?’ Stavros asked Lizzie, with a warm smile and an expansive gesture so typical of the genial restaurateur. ‘I’ll get someone to take over your work. Go now,’ he chivvied, ‘Lizzie never takes time off,’ he confided to Damon. ‘Half an hour for old times’ sake?’ he urged Lizzie, doing Damon’s work for him.
Short of being rude to both of them, there was only one thing Lizzie could do.
‘I’ll get my coat,’ she said.
* * *
She went to the staff bathroom and sluiced her face in cold water. Staring at herself in the mirror above the sink, she wondered where eleven years had gone. Did it matter? Damon Gavros was back. She had to handle it.
At least Stavros was delighted. He was always trying to fix her up with a man. Billionaire and pot-washer? Even Stavros couldn’t make that one fly, though Damon seemed happy enough. That had better not have been a smile of triumph on his lips. Lips that had kissed her into oblivion, Lizzie remembered, trying not to think back to the most significant night of her life.
Her heart jumped when she walked out of the restroom to find Damon relaxed back against the wall. Had he always been so hot?
Yes, she thought, smiling politely as he insisted on helping her with her coat.
To his credit, his expression didn’t falter, though her coat, with its plucked threads and plastic buttons, and a collar that had already been bald when she’d bought it in the thrift shop, was miles too big for her. She’d just needed something warm, while Damon’s coat had probably been custom-made. It was a soft alpaca overcoat, in a blue so dark it was almost black.
With a cashmere scarf slung casually around his neck, he looked like the master of the sexual universe. He had to be thinking, What the hell has happened to Lizzie Montgomery?
Life. Life had happened to Lizzie Montgomery, Lizzie reflected as Damon held the door. And life changed people. For the better, she could only hope, in both their cases.
‘I’m driving myself tonight,’ Damon explained as he stopped by the passenger door of a fabulous brand-new black Bentley with a personalised number plate: DG1.
‘Of course you are,’ she teased in a pale imitation of her old self. ‘Chauffeur’s night off?’ she suggested.
Damon chose not to answer as he opened the passenger door. The scent of money and leather assailed her the moment she sank into, rather than perched on, the most incredibly comfortable pale cream kidskin seat.
‘This is lovely,’ she observed, looking around as Damon slid in beside her.
She didn’t want him to think she was so downtrodden and disadvantaged that she was overwhelmed by his obvious wealth. She’d been bold when they’d first met, and now, in spite of how she must appear to Damon, she had everything she could possibly need. He might have made millions, and she might be poor, but there were more ways than one to feel a deep sense of satisfaction with life and she’d got that.
When Damon started the engine it purred—in contrast to the jangling conflict inside Lizzie. Pulling smoothly away from the kerb, he joined the sluggish London evening traffic. This was how the rich travelled, she concluded. They didn’t bounce along, crushed on every side in an over-full rush hour bus. They glided in their opulent private space, enjoying classical music playing softly in the background.
‘Do you enjoy your job?’
The blunt question jolted Lizzie back to the unlikely reality of being cocooned inside the most luxurious vehicle in London with the world’s most eligible bachelor.
‘Yes,’ she confirmed, lifting her chin. ‘I have great friends at the restaurant—especially Stavros. I’m exactly where I want to be, working alongside genuine people who care for me as I care for them.’
Damon seemed taken aback for a moment, and then he said, ‘Hungry?’
She was—and for more than food, she realised as Damon flashed a glance her way. She hadn’t felt like this in eleven years, but he only had to look at her for her to remember how it had felt to be in his arms. Which was a complete waste of good thinking time, she accepted, drawing her shabby coat closer around her trembling body.
‘Surprising even myself, I’m hungry too,’ he admitted.
‘You can take me back.’
‘Now, why would I do that?’
She stared down in shock as his hand covered hers. He’d better not be feeling sorry for her.
He drew the Bentley to a halt on the Embankment running alongside the river Thames. By the time she had released her seat belt he was opening her door. It was such a romantic view it took her attention for a moment.
‘Burger or hot dog?’ he said.
She almost laughed. Perhaps it was just as well he’d shaken her away from the romantic sight of the Palace of Westminster and stately Big Ben. It wouldn’t do to lose focus around Damon. ‘Hot dog, please.’
‘Ketchup and mustard?’
‘Why not be lavish?’ she said.
He gave her a look and turned away, allowing her to take in the powerful spread of his shoulders as he started chatting easily to the guy behind the food stand not far from where they had parked. Damon had always got on well with everyone—but how would he handle what she had to tell him?
Not yet, she decided. She would have to know this older, shrewder Damon better before she could tell him everything. She had to know what made
him tick and how he lived his life.
As he handed the hot dog over their fingers touched and a quiver of awareness ran through her. It seemed that however hard she tried to remain detached, so she could think straight, her body insisted on going its own way. And her body wanted Damon as much as it ever had.
‘Thinking back?’ he said, reading her mind.
Thinking back to when she had been an eighteen-year-old virgin with nothing certain in her future except that it would change? Yes—unfortunately. ‘I’m thinking maybe I have too much sauce?’ she suggested.
‘You always had too much sauce,’ Damon observed.
She decided to ignore the jibe. Damon was standing under a street lamp, leaning back against it, and the spotlight suited him. He was so dark and swarthy—so compelling in every way. The shadowed light only enhanced his sculpted features.
‘I didn’t realise how hungry I was,’ she said, biting down hard on the delicious snack in an attempt to distract herself from Damon’s brazen physicality. And, truthfully, it was a treat to have someone other than Stavros buy her a meal and to care a damn if she enjoyed it.
‘Where did you disappear to after the trial?’ he asked with a frown.
‘Where did I “disappear to”?’ she repeated thoughtfully.
Good question. Not to a loving home—that was for sure.