Incapable (Love Triumphs Book 3) (12 page)

She should’ve said no to this. Damon would have found someone else. He wasn’t without resources, but she’d muddled it all up. Though he’d been perfectly clear this was a professional arrangement, she’d spun it from want and loneliness into something else entirely.

She’d knitted a whole fantasy where he was interested in her, where his flirting meant something and he’d touch her with desire, instead of the plain-faced curiosity that led him to ask Lauren questions about her.

She stared at Fluffy for a while and tried to still her thinking, quiet the futile flutter of feeling that was spiking her temperature, making her wish she could call in sick. Fifteen minutes before he was due to collect her she put her shirt back on, refreshed her lipstick and locked up. She’d meet him out the front to save him trying to find her second-storey flat.

He was early. He was standing in her stairwell. “Damon.”

“Thank God. Taxi driver didn’t have a lot of English. I was hoping he’d put me in the right place.” He was dressed casually, a white buttoned shirt with jeans, the sleeves rolled up, the collar open, and a couple of buttons undone. She was infinitely glad he couldn’t tell she was checking him out top to toe.

“Do I look all right?”

Ah! How did he do that? “Why do you ask?”

“Because it’s quite possible there’s something off about how I’ve dressed. I used to share a house with Angus and Jamie, and Jamie used to rearrange my wardrobe so I’d sometimes end up looking like an op shop reject and no one would tell me.”

Georgia laughed before she thought to stop herself.

“Well might you laugh.” Which is what Damon was doing too. “I’ve never quite gotten over it.”

“You look.” What did you say to a man about how he looked? What did you say to this man, wonderful, delicious, dream inspiring?

“Oh God.” His hands came up to his chest, by way of brushing the fly of his jeans, to check it was closed, she guessed. “Is it that bad?”

“No. No. I was searching for a word.”

“That is bad.”

“You look fine.”

He grunted and tipped his head up to face at the ceiling. “You had me imagining all kinds of embarrassment.” He angled his face towards her. “Let’s get out of here.”

She moved for the stairs and then stopped. He didn’t have his cane. He’d come from the road, across the lawn and path, around the side of the building and up one of two staircases. Did the driver walk him to the stairs maybe? He was behind her, hand on the railing.

“Should I be helping you?”

“No. I’ve got this.”

She went down the stairs, glancing behind her to check on him. But he was so sure-footed she had no reason to be concerned.

She opened the stairwell door and it was much like opening the door for him at Avocado, except there was a step.

“Damon, there’s a small step.”

“Yeah, I worked that out on the way up. I tend to wear shoes out toe first.”

He put his hand to the door and stepped down to meet her, turning towards the street front. At Avocado he didn’t use his cane, but she’d seen him come in from the street with it, and if he wasn’t holding his cane, he’d been holding on to Taylor.

“I should be helping.”

“It’s twenty-two steps over a brick path, then there’s two steps over the pavement and a strip of grass, four steps. Assuming the taxi waited in the same place, I should be able to open the door for you.”

“Oh.”

“But if you want to give me your arm, it saves me counting.”

Did she want to? He had it all planned out. “How do I do this?”

“Put the back of your hand against the back of mine. That way I know you’re there and you’re okay about me touching you.”

She didn’t need to do this for him, but she wanted to, even if her reasons were less than pure. She stepped closer to him and touched the back her hand to his. He moved immediately to trail his hand up the back of her arm till he reached her elbow. It was such a gently intimate move. This is what she’d seen him do with Taylor and she’d stupidly thought it meant something more, but it was entirely practical.

“If you lead me, this is the best way. All you need to do is be slightly in front of me and warn me about any steps or obstacles.”

It begged to be said. “Like trapdoors.”

He gave her arm a light squeeze. “Particularly trapdoors.”

“Do I just start walking?”

“Yep, and I’ll come with you. If you have to stop suddenly, worth telling me so I don’t walk into you.”

She started forward and he was half a step behind. He had aftershave on, the perfume tantalising. How much better would it be if she could put her nose to his neck and drag that scent into her lungs? His hold on her arm was so light to be almost not there at all. Her body wanted to simply stop and lean back into him. She imagined his arms folding around her, settling her against his chest, tucking his face down against her cheek.

“Everything okay?”

Hell
. She’d come to a complete stop in the middle of the pavement. “Yes, fine. I’m sorry.” Her face burned.

“You don’t have to do this.”

She swallowed and focused. He’d dropped her arm. She could try the back of the hand thing again or she could walk a few steps and open the taxi door for him. Damon was the one who needed to worry about tripping, but she was the one doing it.

“I’ve got the door.” She took a few paces over the grass and opened the door, ducking her head to smile at the driver.

Damon stepped forward and reached his hand for the door, trailing it along the top edge to the car roof. “I’d say after you, but you’ve ended up before me.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not very good at this.”

“And you’re not Sam, so things could be a lot worse for me.” He ducked inside the taxi and she stepped around the door and slid in beside him.

He gave the driver the address and turned his head to her. “Sam got me locked on a rooftop in the rain for two hours after he forgot I wouldn’t be able to see the plaque with the security code to the fire stairs written on it. He left me in a supermarket queue that didn’t move anywhere because the cashier had gone on a break and I didn’t see the next aisle sign. He got off a train without me once and I ended up five suburbs from where I was supposed to be. And he set me up with his cousin.”

“His cousin?”

“Yeah, that was the worst. She was a
Star Wars
fan and wanted me to do Darth Vader all night.” Damon breathed a couple of Darth Vader breaths and the cabbie’s eyes came up in the rear-view.

Georgia laughed. “I don’t have any cousins so you’re safe with me.” His hand was on the seat close to her thigh. It would be easy to put hers over his and tell him she’d never leave him on a rooftop or waiting for help that didn’t come. But she shouldn’t be thinking like that. Not only did she not need that in her life, neither did he.

“He forgets.” Damon laughed, talking about Sam again. He looked towards the front of the taxi. “It’s like the fact I’m blind continually surprises him. He always feels bad when he screws up, but it’s safer for me if I avoid his help.”

“I could screw up tonight.”

“Yeah, so could I.”

“I mean, I’m not sure how to be your eyes.”

“You tell me what you see, what you think I need to know. Anything else I need I’ll ask.”

“There has to be a trick to it. What if I babble a whole lot of unimportant stuff?”

His head flicked around. “You babble. That’s funny. I had to threaten a stop work to get you to tell me your favourite colour.”

“I’m serious.” She was also several shades of pink from the heat in her cheeks to the ugly salmon colour spreading across her chest.

“The only trick is not being self-conscious about it.”

She sighed, and that was like vinegar on hot potato chips, a burst of flavour Damon knew how to interpret.

“Nothing you can say would be wrong, Georgia.”

She looked him dead in the eyes and her heart was thumping so hard it was a wonder he couldn’t interpret that too. It was one thing to watch him from another room with a slab of glass between them; it was a lot more affecting to be alone with him and able to see the ring of darker blue in his near sightless eyes and the heavy fan of his lashes.

He had a slim scar over one brow not quite covered by a fall of his hair and another nick of jagged mended skin on his jaw. They took nothing away from his masculine beauty. If there was still glass between them she could trace those scars, put her fingers to his inky hair. In the back of the taxi all she could do was stare.

He moved his fingers across the seat till they brushed her thigh, and she jumped, her hand going out to catch his. He flipped his palm and they clasped. “Where’ve you gone?” he said.

“I’m right here.”

“I don’t think so. Tell me what’s worrying you and don’t tell me it’s none of my business. I’m asking. I want to know.”

She slipped her hand from his. “I get self-conscious about a lot of things, a lot of the time.”

He turned his head away. “We’ll be in the dark, no one will see us.”

Oh no
,
stupid mouth
. She’d done it again. Made it sound like she was ashamed of being seen with him, rejecting him. She was self-conscious about being with him, and instead of making it easier, the fact he could barely see her made it harder. There was no logic for that, except from somewhere deep inside she wanted desperately for this man to see her and want to know her.

She put her hand down over his where it rested on the seat. “It’s not about you. I wasn’t always so awkward. I never used to be socially anxious. I want to be here with you.”

His eyes were down on their hands. He brought his head up. “You do?”

“I really do.”

He frowned. “Then I should level with you.”

Her first thought accompanying the way her stomach contracted was he’d tell her this was a joke; the equivalent of being locked on a rooftop in a raging storm. There was no experimental theatre performance, there was no need to help him out, it was all a trick, a put-up by the Avocado crew.

“I can’t pay you for tonight. It would be wrong.”

Her second thought was to stop the taxi and get out. She unclipped her seat belt and shifted forward to speak with the driver.

“I didn’t think you’d agree to come. I, ah. I. I was. Jesus, Georgia. I’m a shit. Please put your belt back on.”

This had to be bad, he’d stuttered. She stayed where she was, on the edge of the seat. She was a cliché so many times over: the brainless cheerleader, the clueless virgin, the babe in the woods, the deliberate martyr, the wronged wife, the new girl. “There really is a performance tonight?”

He dragged a hand through his hair, still wearing an expression that told her he felt guilty. “Yeah. But I’m doing it as a favour for an old friend. There is no money. I was going to pay you myself, but I can’t do that because it’s a poor excuse.”

She sat back and re-clipped her seatbelt. “For what?” She could still get out but it was worth hearing what he had to say.

“For asking you out. If I wasn’t such a dick, I’d have asked you to dinner or a movie or out dancing.”

“You wanted to ask me out?” Her mouse squeak voice was lost in the maze of how preposterous that was.

Damon rubbed his jaw. “Yeah. Is that so awful?”

“No, it’s. Um. I.”

He closed his eyes on a grunt and turned his head away.

“If I’d been sure this was a date I’d have dressed up.”

He turned back. “You’re not mad?” His voice was stretched thin too.

“I am mad. Lunatic, especially for singers, but you don’t know that yet so I need to take advantage of you before it becomes clear.” She was babbling and she didn’t care. “You said that’s what women do, well count me in. I’m lining up to take advantage of you tonight.”

His smile broke slowly. She got the sideways pull of his lips, then they flattened out and tipped up, spruiking that dimple, lifting his cheeks and crinkling the skin at the corners of his eyes. “Just tonight?”

“Are you flirting with me?”

“I’ve been trying to flirt with you since I met you.”

Under oath she’d say his eyes twinkled. But her head was shot full of wonder so she was an unreliable witness.

“How much advantage are you thinking of taking?”

Her breath shot out as an embarrassing groan.

He laughed. “And here I was worried you were shy.”

Georgia put her hands over her face. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

He laughed. He had to know what she’d just done because she’d sounded exactly like a little kid hiding behind her hands.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m not all that sure how this is supposed to go either.”

She looked across at him in horror. “That can’t be right.” One of them had to be in charge and it certainly wasn’t her.

He nodded. “You’re not a hook-up, Georgia. And that’s my recent history, and when I say that I’m talking more the history part than the recent part. It’s been a dry spell. I’ve been travelling so much and it’s not easy.” He shrugged.

“I’m not a hook-up?”

“Well, unless that’s all you want to be. I, ah. Shit. Is that all you want?”

A hook-up is what she should be. She wasn’t fit to consider anything more. And Damon was so wrong for her in ways she couldn’t begin to tell him. But she wasn’t ready to go from, “Can you run that line again, please”, to having Damon touch her more intimately than his hand to her arm. She might imagine more, but she was nowhere near as brave as her fantasy scenarios.

“I don’t want to be a hook-up. I don’t know what I want.” She was so pathetic he should stop the taxi and chuck her out.

“How about we start with friends?”

“Friends with Damon Donovan.”

He coughed out a breath.

“Oh God. I said that aloud.” She leaned forward and put her face to her knees.

“I’m pretty good with the aloud stuff.”

She sat hunched into herself while the taxi queued in traffic. The smart thing to do would be to laugh it off, pretend she was having a go at him, fall into easy banter with him like Lauren did. “I don’t think it’s possible for me to be any more too dumb to live.”

“Hey, you’re a big improvement on Sam’s cousin.”

“How?” she wailed, because there was really no way to make this worse.