All He Wants For Christmas...: Flirting With Intent / Blame it on the Bikini / Restless

She put her hair up in a ponytail, left it ornament-free and returned to the lounge room in search of Damon, the man with the vagabond lifestyle, the secrets she didn’t want to know, and a moral fluidity she couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Don’t judge.

Why did she always have to judge?

Damon had his Christmas jeans on and a grey T-shirt and the battered black backpack slung across his shoulder now looked half-empty. She’d never seen him looking quite so downmarket before. Or so dangerous.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked tentatively.

‘Out for some fast food.’ He looked her over, frowned when he got to her shoes. ‘Lose the shoes, Ruby. Or at least lose the bows.’

Fortunately for him, the bows came off without a great deal of persuasion and would go on again under the influence of superglue. ‘Do I have to eat the fast food?’ she said.

‘It’s tastier than it looks.’

‘Only if you have the palate of a two-year-old.’

He smiled at that and some of the tension between them dissipated. ‘It’s my show, Ruby,’ he said softly. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Wait!’ she said hastily. ‘You don’t want to talk about it first? Run me through what it is we’ll be doing?’

‘I’ll talk you through it as we’re doing it,’ he offered calmly.

Ruby opened her mouth to protest, took one look at him, and shut it again without saying a word.

They walked from her apartment to the nearest train station. Just another young couple getting from one place to the next, foreigners but not strangers to Hong Kong or the mass transit railway service it provided.

Comfortable, as they found two free seats and Damon slung his backpack between his feet and laced her hand in his and smiled, before turning to look out of the train window into subway darkness, his thoughts his own.

‘I should have bought a book,’ she said lightly, and he fished his phone out of his pack and handed it to her.

‘Take your pick.’ And she took it because she was curious and scrolled though his offerings.

‘No romance,’ she said after a time and handed the phone back to him and earned herself a very level gaze. ‘You said you’d explain what we were doing along the way. Why are we going to Kowloon?’

‘To find an internet access point. One that tracks back to a public place.’

‘Like a fast-food outlet?’

‘Often they have internet access. Not that it’ll do us any good. Too much surveillance. Not enough privacy.’

‘So why are we doing the fast food thing at all?’

‘I just like their coffee.’

He was deliberately messing with her head and from the glint in his eye he knew it.

‘Once we get to Kowloon, we’re looking for a combination of things within a short distance of each other,’ he said quietly. ‘A luxury hotel. A less than savoury hotel. And caffeine.’

‘And then what?’

‘And then we go to work.’

He found what he was looking for within five minutes of exiting the train station. Coffee stop at the fast-food place first, while Damon fiddled with his phone and largely ignored her. Normal behaviour for this part of the world, Ruby noted. Around here, mobile phones and miniature computers ruled supreme.

‘All set?’ he said, in less time than it took her to take two cautious sips of her surprisingly decent coffee. ‘Bring it with you,’ he said of her coffee. ‘We’re going to need a room.’

Not a room at the five-star hotel, however. No, Damon escorted her to a high rise nearby that boasted a bar on the ground floor, a hotel on the next, and several different categories of businesses after that, a brothel being one of them, given the nature of the girls lounging idly in the bar.

‘One room, one night, a window facing the street, no company, no room service and no questions,’ murmured Damon and handed a wad of Hong Kong dollars to the bruiser manning the reception desk.

‘You got it,’ said the bruiser and gave Damon a hotel swipe card and nodded towards the stairs.

‘And another innkeepers’ law bites the dust,’ she murmured as they started up the stairs. Damon glanced at her, his gaze faintly mocking.

‘Time to put the lawyer away, Ruby.’

‘You don’t say,’ she countered grimly and stepped over a pile of what looked like discarded clothing on the stairs. ‘Please tell me we’re not staying here the night.’

‘We’re not staying here the night.’

Good news, because room 203 was charmless, airless and decidedly unclean. Ruby stood in the centre of the room sipping her suddenly mighty fine coffee and watched as Damon slung his backpack off his shoulder and withdrew a small laptop from within it. He set it on the bedside table beside the window and set its innards whirring.

‘Pull up a chair,’ he said, but Ruby didn’t feel like sitting.

‘Mind if I pace instead?’

‘No pacing allowed,’ he said. ‘Sit.’

So she pulled up a chair and sat and stared at the computer screen, her heart beating too fast for comfort, and her eyes noticing the speed with which Damon’s big hands flew over the keyboard. Logging into the internet somehow, without logging in.

‘How do you know where to—? Oh, boy,’ she whispered as all of a sudden they were somewhere within FBI-land and screen after screen of information was opening up in new windows, with Damon chasing them down, one by one, and entering string after string of code.

‘Easy, Ruby,’ he whispered, his eyes on the screen in front of him, his focus absolute.

‘Relax.’

She wanted to ask him what he was doing and how he was doing it but she didn’t have the breath for it.

‘There’s a rhythm to hacking, to navigating the information flow and pitting your wits against a security system built by another,’ he said softly. ‘For some, reaching their destination without detection is thrill enough. Others, they only want to destroy. For some of us, the destination is just a portal to a bigger game and it’s a game based on power and knowledge and balance on the grandest of scales. That’s my game, and it’s more dangerous than you know. I need your silence on the issue, Ruby.’

‘Believe me, you have it.’

‘Not yet I don’t.’

A blur of information. So fast; all of it too fast for comprehension. A download option.

Damon’s hands falling away from the computer keys.

Ruby’s breath coming rapid and strained, adrenalin coursing fiercely through her body as she stared at the little arrow on the screen that Damon had placed atop the download link.

‘Your turn.’

Damon’s voice low and husky as he transferred that intense focus to her face.

‘It’s the FBI’s file on your father.’

Time slowed down to crawling as Ruby stared first at Damon and then at the screen. ‘I, ah—I’m not—sure. Oh, hell,’ she whispered, because she wanted that information and Damon had made it so easy for her to just reach out and take it.

‘Or we leave the information where it is, I tell my handler I’ve blown my cover with you and we see how that unfolds.’

‘No.’ Not with her father’s file sitting there just begging to be taken. ‘My father’s whereabouts in return for my silence. I get it, Damon. And I agree to your terms.’ Her hand moved. The download began. Her choice, and she wore that knowledge like a stain.

‘Guess I’m not as principled as I thought,’ she said faintly.

‘Who is?’ muttered Damon, his focus back on the screen.

The file took an agonisingly slow ten seconds to download, and then Damon was back at the keyboard, fingers flying.

‘You’re getting out of the FBI pages now, right?’ she said.

‘Right.’

And straight into the British intelligence system, and Ruby’s stomach lurched and her pulse rate soared all over again. ‘Hell of a ride,’ she said but he was gone again, skimming through supposedly secure cyberspace with an ease that made her gasp.

Another download link, but no agony of hesitation this time for Ruby. They were done and gone, with a swiftness she found hard to comprehend. All the way out this time. Two files stored on a USB the size of a thumbnail. Laptop off and opened up with a tiny screwdriver. One of the motherboard components replaced.

Fifteen minutes from start to finish, and they were walking back down those shabby hotel stairs and handing the door card over to Reception.

‘Any decent cheap yum cha restaurants around here?’ he asked the man, and got directions and nodded, while Ruby sweated and smiled and tried to resist the urge to flee.

‘Please tell me we’re not going back there,’ she said when they were two shopfronts away and Ruby was walking faster than she’d ever walked before, every nerve ending buzzing and every neon sign a thousand times brighter than it had been fifteen minutes ago. She ran her hands up and down her arms, mildly surprised she didn’t give off sparks.

‘We’re not, right?’

‘Right.’

Damon’s pace had quickened too. Ruby was practically skipping. ‘So … where are we going?’

‘Yum cha?’

‘Are you serious?’ He couldn’t possibly be serious. He was.

‘Not yum cha,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t be able to sit still. I’m feeling …’ ‘Wired.’ ‘Exactly.’

‘It’ll pass.’

‘Yes, but when?’

‘Soon,’ he said with a kick to his mouth that warned her she was amusing him.

‘Look!’ She pointed to a shopfront across the road. ‘Chinese massage. They’re very relaxing. We could have one of those.’

‘It’s a brothel, Ruby.’

‘Oh.’ Ruby took a closer look. ‘Brothel. Good pick-up. Maybe I just need to go back to the apartment and go for a swim. Soothing. Tactile. Potential to expend energy.

Plenty of energy happening here at the moment, Damon. Possibly a little too much.’ ‘Breathe, Ruby.’

‘I am. It’s not helping. I really need to get rid of some of this energy now. You are so hot when you’re hacking, by the way. Who knew?’

‘The things I do for you,’ he murmured, and swung her into an alleyway and pinned her against the wall, his mouth mere millimetres from her own. ‘Settle down, Ruby.’

‘Or what?’ she whispered, just before she snaked her hand around his neck and drew him down for a hot, open exploration of his mouth. Plenty of energy happening between them at the moment. Enough tactile stimulation to make her forget her own name.

Damon groaned and the kiss turned incendiary. Energy released only now the concern was that they’d both go up in flames.

‘You’ll get us arrested,’ he murmured, with a nip for her mouth as he wrapped his hand around her wrist, dragged it away from his neck and set them walking again. ‘Time to get you home, Ruby. Now.’

‘Authority has always really worked for me,’ she said breathlessly and meant every word. ‘Seriously, who doesn’t love a man who knows how to take charge? An expert in his chosen field. How did you get into this field, by the way? I’m assuming it wasn’t part of any school study curriculum.’

‘It was something of a calling.’

‘Ah. Junior hacker, were you?’

‘Not now, Ruby.’

‘I’m thinking school database, assessment marks in need of rearranging …’

‘I was doing them a service. Pointing out the holes in the system.’

‘Of course you were. How old were you at the time? Fourteen? Fifteen?’

‘Twelve.’

‘What a brat.’ Two more steps and Ruby stopped dead. ‘Damon, I think I’ve found a solution to the energy crisis. See that clothes shop on the other side of the road? It’s open.’

‘I see it,’ he said. ‘But isn’t it a little Hello Kitty for you?’

‘You mean it’s a shop for teens? I can do teen wear.’ Ruby nodded vigorously. ‘I’m a felon. I can do anything.’

‘Technically, you’re only an accessory.’

‘Wrong. The skills were yours but I think you’ll find I’m a first-degree principal, which is what you intended all along. You had to draw me in. Make me part of it so that I wouldn’t talk about it. Which I won’t. Ever. When do I get the files?’

‘You don’t. You get to read through them when you’re ready, take from them what you can and then I destroy them.’

‘I’m ready,’ she said, and the glance he cut her told her more plainly than words his thoughts on her readiness for anything.

‘No, really. I am. I am fully aware that these are not the sort of files you want to have hanging around. I should look at them soon.’

‘When you’re ready,’ he said, quietly inflexible. ‘You’re not ready.’

‘It’s this heady life of crime. It’s frying my brain.’

‘It’ll pass.’

‘The pertinent question still being when?’ ‘Soon.’

‘You have no idea how alive I feel at the moment,’ she said. ‘Do you feel alive too?’

‘Yes.’ With more than a hint of amusement about him.

‘Does it ever get old for you? The ha—your work?’

‘No,’ he said and finally his smile came wide and unguarded. ‘No, this never gets old.’

They made it back to Ruby’s apartment eventually. Damon insisting they only take a short train hop and then a taxi the rest of the way home. Perhaps he wanted to make sure no one was following them and a tail was easier to spot in a taxi, but Ruby didn’t ask and Damon didn’t say. She asked him if he wanted a drink once they reached the kitchen—manners, Ruby—and when he said yes she asked what would he like and he said Scotch if she had it.

‘Good choice,’ she murmured and poured one for herself too, before setting a bowl of peanuts on the counter, and eyeing the backpack he’d placed on the stool next to him with a mixture of apprehension and longing.

‘I may not be ready, Damon, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to settle until I know what those files say about my father,’ she told him, and he nodded and unzipped the pack and pulled out the computer and set it up to go before turning the computer around to face Ruby.

‘Have at it.’

‘Okay, Ruby,’ she said more to herself than anyone else. ‘You can do this.’ And opened the first file.

Fifteen minutes later she was none the wiser as to where her father was or what had happened to him.

‘The bank’s investigation team got called off by the FBI. The Feds referred it to the British, and as far as British Intelligence is concerned they’re not pursuing it at all. And what the hell is an A48?’

‘Road map co-ordinates?’ Damon offered. ‘The AK 47’s second cousin? A road in Britain?’

‘Is it really?’ ‘I think so.’

‘Maybe he’s there,’ she said glumly and handed him the computer. ‘Read them or delete them. There’s precious little there that I didn’t already know.’

‘We can search again.’

‘No,’ said Ruby emphatically. ‘I don’t think I could stand it. I did what you asked of me, Damon, and I don’t regret it but I certainly don’t ever want to do it again. I’m a felon but I’m free. I haven’t found my father but at least no one’s found him dead. That’s good news. I’m willing to embrace the no-news-is-good-news policy today. As for you and me …’ Ruby’s whiskey-coloured eyes reflected a guardedness he’d never seen in them before. ‘I overheard something I shouldn’t have about you, Damon, and I paid the price and now we’re square. Aren’t we?’

‘Yes.’ They were square.

‘And as much as I’ve enjoyed getting to know you, the work you do scares me, Damon, and the life you lead you lead alone. I will think of you with pleasure and I will think of you with hunger but it’s time for you to leave.’

‘Hunger?’ he queried softly.

‘Don’t dwell on it,’ she told him wryly. ‘Hunger’s manageable. You’re not.’

He knew it. ‘Mind if I get changed? My suit’s in your bathroom.’

‘Chameleon.’ But she said it with a smile. ‘Go. Get changed. Break my heart all over again when you come back out wearing a Savile Row suit and a gotta-be-going smile. I’m a felon. Tough. Worldly. Brave. I can handle it.’

She was making it easy for him again. Easy for him to do what he knew he should do. Walk away.

Just him and a hatful of regrets.

‘I’m heading to Australia in three days’ time,’ he said.

‘Enjoy.’ She didn’t know why he was telling her this and it showed. Time to enlighten her.

‘Come with me.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Come with me.’ Nothing but impulsiveness on his part and astonishment on hers. ‘I have a house on the beach and a few weeks free. You could stay there while you figure out what it is you want to do next. We could just … swim.’ Or sink.

Probably the latter.

Ruby eyed him narrowly. ‘You just want to keep an eye on me. Make sure I don’t go spilling your secrets where I shouldn’t. You’re obsessing about me knowing what it is you do.’

‘Only a little.’ Only a lot.

‘Well, stop it or you’ll go blind,’ she told him heatedly. ‘You. Can. Trust. Me. Which is more than I can say for you.’

He took a step towards her and watched her scramble off her barstool fast and put out a hand as if to ward him off. ‘Damon,’ she began warningly. ‘We are so close to finishing this. Don’t mess with the plan.’

‘There’s a plan?’ Damon reached out and touched her hair, wove silken strands of it around his fingertips, and finally, as if she would break beneath his touch, set his lips to the edge of her mouth. ‘Come with me,’ he whispered. ‘Forget the plan.’

‘You scare me, Damon.’ But she kissed him as if she was starving for him and he kissed her and knew he was insatiable for her in return.

‘I’ll try not to.’

‘And you’ll fool me into thinking that you care.’

‘Maybe I do,’ he whispered and slid his hands to her buttocks and picked her up, and she wrapped her legs around him and made him groan. ‘Come with me.’

Fifteen minutes later, as she climaxed round him for the second time, he said, ‘Ruby, please.’

And she said, ‘Yes.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

DAMON tried to slip back into his father’s apartment unnoticed. No chance of that with two older sisters sitting in wait for him as they watched whatever they were watching on the TV. That was the problem with sisters who’d done double duty as substitute mothers over the years—they saw everything. Especially those things he didn’t want them to see.

Poppy spotted him first as Lena was sitting with her back to the door, but Lena turned around and called him over and offered him a glass of wine.

No point trying to avoid them for they’d only follow him, so he anteed up and he sat his butt down.

Lena would take point, she always did, but only a fool would discount the effectiveness of Poppy when it came to stripping him bare.

Lena waited until he had his wineglass in hand and his thoughts in order before starting in on him, which meant she was either very tired or going soft.

‘So,’ she said, and fixed him with the mother stare. ‘You and Ruby Maguire?’

‘So?’ he said in turn. ‘Neither of us are in another relationship. Why shouldn’t we?’

‘You’ve known her for all of two days.’

‘Five.’

‘Does she know what you do?’ asked Lena caustically.

‘Well, she does now,’ he replied in kind. ‘Which part of later did you not understand?’

‘Which part of stop being so bloody secretive do you not understand?’

‘It’s just habit.’

‘No, it’s a convenient way of keeping people at a distance, is what it is. Your whole way of life is designed to keep people away. Even family. Even me. I won’t have it.’

‘I’m getting that.’

And all of a sudden Lena looked close to tears.

‘We failed you, didn’t we?’ she murmured. ‘Jared and Poppy, and me. We let you pull away, and stay away, for far too long and now you can hardly find your way home.’

‘I’m home,’ he said desperately. ‘I’m right here.’

But she shook her head and the smile she sent him was strained. ‘No more lies, Damon. Not when it comes to Jared and whatever you might find out about him. Promise me.’

He did not want to promise that. ‘Lena, I—’

‘Promise.’

‘All right.’ He shook his head. ‘All right, I promise. Satisfied?’

‘Not quite,’ she said as if moving on to the next insurmountable object. ‘What happened with Ruby?’

‘Nothing much.’ Give or take a momentous decision or two.

‘Can you trust her?’

‘Put it this way, if I can’t, I’m f—’

‘Got it,’ said Poppy primly and he and Lena shared a smile of amusement.

‘Good,’ he said blandly and set his wine down on the coffee table. ‘Is that it for the interrogation?’

‘Not quite,’ said Poppy and Damon sighed. Poppy’s turn.

‘How much do you like her, Damon? Maybe this unanticipated openness with Ruby can be a good thing. Room—if you want it—for a relationship to grow.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘What would I do with a relationship? Besides destroy it. Drag Ruby around the world with me? Pull her into the life? No.’ He stared broodingly at his wineglass. ‘Ruby started out as a distraction, nothing more. Now she’s even more of a distraction, but as for anything permanent? No.’

‘That’s three nos in a row,’ murmured Lena. ‘That’s a lot of nos.’

‘She’s coming to the beach house with me,’ he offered reluctantly. No point trying to hide it. They’d find out soon enough.

‘That’s interesting,’ said Lena. ‘Has Damon ever taken a woman to the beach house to your knowledge, Poppy?’

‘No.’

‘No. That’s two more nos, just in case anyone’s counting.’

‘I have to be able to trust her,’ he said grimly.

‘So how does that work?’ asked Lena. ‘You’re just going to keep her there until you do? Could take a lifetime, Damon. Knowing you.’

‘I think it’s a good idea,’ said Poppy. ‘Give them more time to adjust to Ruby knowing that little bit more about Damon than she should. Besides, the trust will come. I’m sure of it.’

Poppy was a sweetheart and an optimist. Damned if Damon knew how she’d come to be part of this family.

‘And maybe we can help. Maybe if we sat down with Ruby over a drink or two and some girl talk we could make it seem more … normal. Nothing to concern her. You never bring your work home. You never let us near it. You’re really very noble and protective where that’s concerned.’

‘I took her hacking with me,’ he said curtly.

‘You what?’ said Poppy incredulously. ‘You idiot,’ said Lena. And the conversation was mostly downhill from there.

A week and a half later Ruby made her way to Sydney and from there to Ballina near Damon’s house on the coast. Her work for Russell was done. She’d left the little cat in the care of her next-door neighbour’s six-year-old daughter in exchange for letting her neighbour’s parents use her apartment during their two-week holiday stay in Hong Kong. It was an arrangement that seemed to suit everyone, including one tiny standoffish cat.

Nothing to hold her in Hong Kong now and nothing planned except for a week or two of sand, sea and Damon, and she didn’t know what to expect from him, other than surprises. She didn’t know why she was here except that somewhere between meeting him and agreeing to this, she’d lost her brain.

What kind of woman flew halfway around the world to visit a man who’d enchanted her and then warned her not to expect anything from him? A man for whom secrets and hacking and blackmail were everyday events? Or at least regular events.

Why had she ever said yes to this?

You’re in love with him, said a little voice but Ruby rejected the notion outright.

I am not!

Then you’re besotted by him, said the little voice, and this much she had to concede.

The sex is very good, yes.

You’re going to try and change him. Turn him into a good boy.

Not sure that’s possible. Anyway, he’s not entirely bad. Espionage is a time-honoured profession. Heroic even. He’s a thief, Ruby.

He works to preserve the power balance between nations. He aims to protect. He was trying to protect me from the consequences of knowing too much. That’s very honourable.