Harlequin E New Adult Romance Box Set Volume 1: Burning Moon\Girls' Guide to Getting It Together\Rookie in Love (7 page)

And then I realized we were totally, I mean
totally,
alone.

Alone.

In the most romantic place in the world.

I shuffled in my seat a bit. We exchanged a few awkward smiles, drank a bit of champagne and moved our serviettes around on the table lot. At one stage I picked up a flower and smelled it…

And then something terrible happened…

A warm gust of wind suddenly came out of nowhere, knocking several candles over. One went flying into my lap, instantly burning a little hole in the fabric of the white, vintage, knee-length dress I was wearing. But that wasn’t the problem. The real problem was that the beautiful cream ribbons around the neckline caught fire. Who knew ribbons were so damn flammable?

I was on fire!

I jumped up and started swatting myself frantically. The look on Damian’s face was pure horror, and I’ve never seen anyone get out of his seat so quickly.

“Oh my God, Lilly, you’re on fire!” Damian rushed at me with a napkin and started slapping.

“Ow!” I shrieked. “That hurts!”

“Would you rather I left you to burn?” Damian shouted back at me. The whole scene was very dramatic.

The little flames were getting higher and higher and heading directly for my face.

“Take it off! Take it off!” Damian shouted.

“What? My dress? Are you kidding?”

“Jesus, Lilly, this is no time to be prudish, just take it off. It’s not like I haven’t seen it before.”

I flushed hotter than the creeping flames.

“I knew it. You watched me get undressed at the airport, didn’t you?”

“It was an accident, I didn’t mean to.”

I was mortified and put my face in my hands, temporarily forgetting about the impending incineration. “I’m so embarrassed.”

“It’s getting worse.” He pointed at the dress as the other ribbon went up in flames. I could feel the heat now. It wasn’t burning me yet, because the ribbons weren’t attached directly to the dress, but it was only a matter of time.

And then I felt two strong hands on my back and…

Splash.

Everything went wet.

Wet and sandy.

Damian had pushed me face-first into the water.

I emerged spluttering, my face and mouth full of sand.

“What the hell?” The initial shock at being thrown into the water quickly turned to anger. “I can’t believe you did that. I can’t believe you did that!” I was seething at the nerve of it!

“Hey, I might have just saved your life, Lilly, and this is the thanks I get?”

I paused and thought about it. What would I have done if I’d been in his shoes?

Yup, I would have done the same thing.

“Look, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll do it, too.”

And then there was another huge splash as Damian threw himself face-first into the water right next to me.

“You’re crazy, you know that?”

“I’ve heard that one before,” he said, flashing me yet another one of those wicked smiles that gave him his dangerous-looking edge. I looked straight back at him this time, and got that same strange feeling I’d had before.

What the hell was it?

It’s not like I liked this guy, or was even attracted to him.

So why on Earth did I suddenly have butterflies?

It was my turn to break eye contact.

Chapter Six

The warm, shallow water felt amazing, and neither of us got up; instead, we just sat there together in the moonlight, looking up at the night sky, our shoulders almost touching.

“You see that bright light over there?” Damian pointed and my eyes followed his finger.

“Yes.”

“It’s a galaxy called Andromeda, and there are one trillion stars in it. Can you imagine that? The sheer scale of it? Kind of makes you feel insignificant, really.”

I turned and looked at Damian, he was engrossed in the night sky, with a look on his face that can only be described as awe, and for the first time ever, he looked vulnerable. Every time I thought I had this guy figured out, he threw me a curve ball. In fact, all of his actions seemed to contradict this hard exterior he projected to the world—not that I’m some kind of Sigmund Freud—but it seemed pretty obvious to me.

The moonlight was illuminating his face, and I took the opportunity to study him through this new lens. Strands of dark wet hair fell into his face. His features definitely didn’t belong to that of a pretty boy, but they worked. He had a certain intensity to him; it was present in the way he spoke, the way he moved around with such confidence and in the way his smile lit up his dark black eyes.

“How do you know so much about this stuff? Space?” I asked.

“I studied astrophysics at university,” he said, without the slightest hint of playfulness in his voice. He sounded serious.

“No! You’re kidding, right?” He had to be joking—only mathematical geniuses like Stephen Hawking studied astrophysics.

“Nope,” he said casually. “I have my master’s in it. I wrote my thesis on dark matter and dark energy. I’m a big old nerd that way.”

I looked at the tattoos running up and down his arms, at the faded T-shirt with a biohazard symbol on it and his old, dirty sneakers. Damian was definitely a complicated puzzle that I was nowhere near solving. And if I ever did solve it, there would probably be a missing piece, anyway.

“So, astrophysicist, with really rich parents, backpacking the world with no bank card. How did that happen?”

He shrugged, “I decided I couldn’t work in a career studying what lies beyond our planet when I knew so little about it.”

“That’s so deep!” I said in my best stoned-hippie accent.

He smiled his sideways smile at me, “I can be deep from time to time.”

A silence settled in; only the sounds of the tiny waves gently lapping around us could be heard.

“And you, what’s your story?”

Oh God, I hate questions like this, they’re so open-ended that I never know where to start.

“Ask me something. What do you want to know?” I said, secretly hoping he wouldn’t.

“Okeydokey”, Damian said, folding his legs and turning to face me. The movement caught me off guard, and apart from that taxi ride, this was the closest we’d ever been. I suddenly felt very awkward and quickly busied myself by running my hand through the warm waters, picking up the sand and letting it gently fall through my fingers.

“So I know you’re a lawyer. Everyone in the airport heard you shout that out. So why law?”

I was relieved he’d chosen an easy question, and not something existential and profound about the meaning of life or something. “I love it,” I replied. “It’s so black and white. Simple. Everything has a place. It’s either right or wrong. No grey areas.”

Damian looked at me curiously. “You really believe that? No grey areas? Don’t you think the world is a little more complex than that, Lilly?” he said in a voice that seemed to challenge me.

“No, I think that everything can be boiled down to one or the other. Black or white. Right or wrong. Left or right,” I replied, confident that I was right.

Damian turned away. His eyes glazed over and he suddenly looked very distant.

“My sister died when she was five,” he said in a hushed tone that was almost inaudible. “She was beautiful. She had this pitch-black hair, with pale skin and the bluest eyes you ever saw. We all called her Snow White. She was so curious and full of energy; she never stopped, like a little Energizer bunny. One day, ten years ago, she was riding her bike on the street. We lived in a quiet suburban road at the time, so it wasn’t dangerous; we used to do it all the time. This guy, Brian, was driving down the street, driving under the speed limit, even, when his car hit a jagged rock and his tire burst. He lost control momentarily and hit her. And even though he was going slowly, she died instantly. The doctors said that had she been older, she would’ve survived. But she was so tiny.” Damian’s voice quivered, and I could feel his pain.

“Brian jumped out of the car and tried to resuscitate her. Eventually he picked her up in his arms and started running to the hospital. He must have run a mile before someone helped. He took her to the emergency room but…like I said, she was already dead.” He paused and looked down at the heart-shaped tattoo on his wrist. “It was a freak accident. The wrong place, at the wrong time. There’s no one to blame, no right or wrong, no justice. And I’ve wanted to blame someone so badly, but the fact is, I feel sorry for Brian. I feel sorry for the guy who killed my sister. Talk about a grey area. He still sends us a card and flowers every year on the anniversary. He’s a good guy, and it was a terrible thing that happened, for him, too. He struggled with the guilt, he still does, and eventually fell into a deep depression and his girlfriend left him. So you tell me…Right? Wrong? Simple? Life is far,
far
from simple and sometimes things are very grey.”

I was stunned. At a loss for words. It felt like I’d had the wind knocked out of my sails. What could I say in response to that? He’d been so honest and open with me that I couldn’t imagine any reply in the world would do it justice. And in that moment, I felt so close to him.

We sat in silence for a few moments again before I finally spoke. “My parents got divorced when I was very young and I lived with my mother. She’s a theater actress.” I rolled my eyes and saw Damian give a faint smile. “She’s an alcoholic and an addict, too, and we moved around constantly. I think we lived in about twenty different places in the space of four years. She didn’t even care if I went to school or not, all she cared about was getting drunk or high. She once disappeared for seven days when I was eight. My dad fought for custody for years, and every time it looked like he was going to win, she swore blindly she’d clean up, and the courts would give her another chance. She would be fine for a couple of months, but then something would happen and she’d drink or use again. But when I was twelve, she had a car accident with me in it. I broke my arm and my wrist. She was obviously drunk and that was the last straw, my dad got custody. But…”

I felt sad just thinking about it. “Those first twelve years of my life were pretty tough and I was pretty messed up when I finally moved in with my dad. I guess that’s why my family is so protective over me.” I could feel the tears building, but I took a deep breath and fought them back down.

And then I flinched as a tiny fish swam into my foot and past me. Soon, another fish went by and another and another until a small school of brightly colored fish swam between us. Damian put his hand into the water and we both watched as the tiny fish darted through his open fingers.

“Try it!” But without waiting for a reply he took my hand and plunged it into the water next to his. I watched in wonder as the silver-and-blue fish weaved their way through our fingers. They tickled, and we both laughed out loud.

“So, I guess we’re both damaged souls then, Lilly.” Damian looked at me and I could see that his mood had lifted, and so had mine.

“I guess we are,” I said, as I watched the last of the fish disappear. I heard a loud swishing sound and turned to see that Damian was standing up out of the water.

“How ‘bout we get out and find out where those hamburgers are?” he said, trying to shake some of the water off.

“Sounds like a plan. I’m actually starved.”

I’d just started getting up onto my knees when a hand reached down to help me up, and without thinking, I took it. In one swift movement Damian pulled me up out of the water and we came face-to-face. The two of us stood dead still, inches away from each other, holding hands, and for some bizarre reason I don’t understand, neither of us let go.

We just stood there.

Staring.

Holding.

I could hear him breathing.

I could feel my heart beating in my ears.

He smiled at me.

I smiled at him.

And then he reached up and touched my cheek. It was so gentle and soft, my whole body responded with a shiver. I felt his finger trace the surface of my cheek and then he held up a single eyelash in front of my face.

He took a small step toward me, “Make a wish, Lilly.”

And so I blew.

And blew.

But the lash clung on for dear life.

And so I blew some more.

Harder.

Maybe a bit too hard.

I winced, as I caught the glimmer of a tiny fleck of spittle tumbling through the air with a trajectory that put it on a collision course with his finger.

But no matter how hard…

Or how much….

That lash wasn’t going anywhere.

So much for my wish.

“Oh my God
, I can’t believe this!”
I jumped up and flung my arms in the air.

“What?” Damian was clearly taken aback by my sudden and rather dramatic outburst.

“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or scream or shoot myself.”

He looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing is going right, and I keep making a complete idiot of myself. And now I can’t even blow an eyelash off a finger, and…and…and…”

Damian’s eyes followed me as I started to pace up and down the embankment waving my arms in the air like a rag doll in a tumble dryer. “This has got to be some kind of elaborate plot against me!”

“Lilly…” His tone was soft and soothing, which made me want to slap him, “…that could’ve happened to anyone.”

“Name one person that it’s happened to. One person.”

Damian rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. “This girl at university once wore mismatching shoes to class,” he offered.

I swung around and looked him directly in the eye. “That’s hardly the same. Besides, did her fiancé leave her at the altar the day before?
No!”

I kicked some sand into the water, hoping it would serve as a good exclamation point for the end of that sentence. “You know what these past few days have felt like? They’ve felt like someone, or something, has been conspiring against me, turning my whole life into some kind of sick cosmic, karmic joke. I’m almost expecting Ashton—whatever his name is—to rise up out of the water disguised as a merman and shout, ‘Surprise. You’ve been
Punk’d’
.” I kicked some more sand into the water, trying to make the mother of all exclamation marks. It was all very dramatic. But I didn’t care, because that eyelash was the straw that broke this camel’s back. It wasn’t about the lash. This was about the fact that I felt victimized by the world. That I felt like somewhere, out there, was a cinema full of people with popcorn and Coke laughing at me.