are due in on flights tomorrow afternoon. I’m afraid there’s no word from your brother.’
Ruby watched a shadow steal across Damon West’s well-cut face. She was an only child with a raft of step-siblings she tended to avoid. Family politics was not her forte and she had no intention of getting involved in the West family’s woes. ‘I gather you’ve made yourself at home?’ There were half a dozen bedrooms in the marble delight, each with en-suite. ‘You’ve been here before, right? You don’t need the grand tour?’
‘Right.’
‘Coffee?’ Ruby headed for the wondrous stainless-steel-and-glass kitchen and set to washing her hands in the sink there. ‘Tea? Cold drink? I’m hoping it’s too early for gin but you never know in the tropics.’
‘It’s too early for gin,’ Damon said and padded over to the other side of the counter.
‘Coffee would be good. Espresso if it’s an option.’
‘It’s an option.’
‘So … Ruby. You live here?’ he asked just a little too casually as she set up the coffee machine and took a cup from the cupboard.
‘Hardly. No one lives here, unless you count your father sleeping here on occasion and entertaining here every so often. I feed the fish and the birds, water the plants, pick up your father’s dry-cleaning, stock the fridge, organise housekeeping and gardening and prepare for house guests.’
‘Has this always been your lot in life?’
‘No. In another life I was a law graduate working my way through the corporate law system but that all fell through when my father the investment banker decided to go to the Caymans rather than to prison. It was a good call on his part. The prisons here aren’t very nice.’ Ruby opened the fridge and reached for the sugar bowl. ‘Sweetener?’
‘You’re Harry Maguire’s daughter?’
‘Guilty.’ She set the sugar down in front of him and leaned forward, elbows on the counter, wondering just what it was about this man that made her want to poke at him.
‘I’d never have taken you for someone who reads the finance pages?’
‘Sweetheart, your daddy skimming eight hundred and seventy-two million dollars in point-one-cent increments and then disappearing into the ether didn’t only make the finance pages. He’s quite the crime star.’ Damon crooked his head in what Ruby decided was reluctant admiration. ‘So, where is he now?’
‘That’s the eight-hundred-and-seventy-two-million-dollar question, Damon. And truthfully, I have no idea.’
‘You weren’t close?’
‘We were very close.’ Ruby dropped her gaze to the glossy countertop and gave him the truth. ‘I grew up in a family of two. Me and my father and a never-ending raft of nannies, butlers, cooks and tutors. I worshipped the ground he walked on. Now I don’t.’
‘Because he broke the law? Or because he left you behind?’ asked Damon West gently and Ruby looked at him, really looked at him, and she didn’t see a charming wastrel any more. She saw a man who knew his way around the dark places of a person’s psyche. One who seemed entirely comfortable dealing in shades of grey.
‘The law’s a slippery thing, Damon.’
‘So it is.’ Damon leaned across the counter as if to meet her halfway.
Hard not to let her gaze linger on his mouth but she managed. Hard not to enjoy the potent mix of lazy intensity in his eyes and wonder whether or not it would carry through into the bedroom. A betting woman would have to go with yes.
‘Do you have any plans for the day?’ she asked, for it was definitely time to change the subject.
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. You. Me.’ She had his absolute attention. ‘Christmas gift shopping for your sisters.’
He drew back abruptly and Ruby smiled, wide and warm. ‘Gotcha,’ she whispered, rocking forward ever so slightly before turning back to the coffee maker to retrieve his espresso and set the machine up for a long black for herself. ‘Do you really think I can afford to proposition the adored son of the only man in Hong Kong who’ll employ me? Trust me, I’m not that reckless.’
‘I’m not that adored.’
‘Yes, you are, Damon. You’d only have to listen to the way your father talks about you to realise that. He speaks of you with a mixture of love, frustration, pride and respect, and I have to confess: the first couple are what I’d expect of most fathers, but that last one … the fact that one of the most influential money movers in the world respects you … Makes me wonder what you’ve done to earn it.’
‘Keep wondering,’ he murmured. ‘I’m all in favour of keeping a fine mind exercised. As for going Christmas shopping with you, the answer is a reluctant yes. Give me five minutes to put some clothes on.’
‘Good idea. Take your time. I’ll need about fifteen to finish up here anyway.’ Ruby pushed the tiny cup of super-strong coffee across the counter towards him and Damon West’s fingers brushed hers as he took it. This time his touch sent desire skittering along her skin, and Ruby frowned as she whipped her fingers away from his. What the hell was that?
Apart from a rhetorical question for she knew desire when she felt it, knew the bite of it and the chaos it could bring. The question now became how could she have let this happen? Between one touch of hands and the next?
To her of all people. Ruby Maguire, who’d been outplaying players her entire life.
‘What’s wrong?’ Lazy smile on a dangerous man. ‘Coffee too hot?’
‘That’s one interpretation.’ Ruby sighed. ‘Regretfully, I’m going to have to ban the touching from now on in. And the teasing. Probably the question time as well. Sorry, Damon. I can’t afford to play with you.’
‘Because you work for my father? Would he really have to know?’
‘Damon, please. I’m insulted that you even tried that line on me. Your father may not keep up with the social lives of all his business acquaintances—that’s my job—but when it comes to the romantic liaisons of his children? Men like your father?’ Ruby slanted him a quelling glance as she topped up her long black with cold water before lifting it to her lips. ‘They always know.’
Ruby Maguire was a babe, decided Damon as he took his coffee back to his bedroom. A high-maintenance glossily gift-wrapped bundle of temptation and contradiction, and what was more she knew it.
Damon couldn’t have asked for a better distraction.
Something to take his mind off a missing brother and a wounded sister and a Christmas that was shaping up to be anything but festive.
He slung his towel on the bed and rummaged through the meagre collection of clothes he kept at his father’s house. A collared cotton shirt in white and a charcoal pinstriped suit. Bespoke, not made to measure. The expensive sports watch that his sisters had given him last Christmas. Clothes to suit his father’s house and reflect his father’s status—a Christmas tradition whereby Damon would look to be the type of son his father expected to see and in return his father would ask no questions as to what Damon had been up to the rest of the year.
What kind of man had Ruby Maguire’s father been before his fall from grace? wondered Damon as he tossed the suit on the bed. Already a wealthy one, if he remembered correctly. Manhattan banking family. Influential. Chances were that Harry Maguire hadn’t stolen the money because he’d needed it.
Maybe he’d been bored.
And colour Damon perceptive but the delectable Ruby Maguire also seemed somewhat overqualified for her current gofer position.
Ruby Maguire was used to dealing with the corporate