Melt Into You (14 page)

Wes peered at the clock. “It’s
already
lunchtime.”

“I’m going to conquer it by sundown!”

“Okay.” Wes pointed at him with his whiskey bottle. “You might want to put on some pants first.”

Damon glanced down at his black boxer briefs. Still undaunted, he said, “If I have to, I’ll conquer it naked!”

When it came to Natasha, he wished he could ... .

“Right.” Wes nodded toward the back door, where a rack of key rings hung. “Take my car. Keep it as long as you need to.”

“Hey, that’s decent of you, Wes.”

A shrug. “I’ve got six more parked out there.”

“Still, I appreciate it.” Damon squared his shoulders, then gave his friend a confident look. “I’m going to do this.”

“I hope so, because you can’t come back here.” Wes flashed a regretful glance in the direction of the topless, miniskirt-wearing woman across the room. Now she’d draped herself across the sofa. “Destiny says you crush her groove by not partying with us. She wants you to leave. I told her I’d make it happen.”

Openmouthed, Damon gawked at him. “You’re kicking me out?”

“’Fraid so, dude.” Wes gave another genial, man-to-man shrug. “I’m sort of a pushover when it comes to women.”

That explained Wes’s multiple divorces, Damon thought.

“Besides,” Wes added, “I’m kind of a dick. You know that.”

Agreeably, Damon nodded. “I think we both are.”

But maybe not for long
, Damon told himself with a new burst of optimism. If all went well today, he could get back Natasha
and
reclaim his good luck in the process ... and maybe reboot his messed-up life at the same time. Stranger things had happened.

Not to him. But they’d happened. Probably.

“You can always sleep in my car,” Wes suggested. With a leer, he added, “The backseat is pretty roomy. I can attest to that fact personally.” He pulled out a wad of cash from his suit pocket, then riffled off a few bills. He raised his eyebrows. “And I can front you some walking-around money. How much—”

“No, thanks.” Damon held up his hand. “I’m already indebted to you enough. Besides, I’ll be fine.”

Wes gave him a dubious eyebrow raise.

“Seriously,” Damon assured him. “I’ll have this mess straightened out by happy hour. It’s Natasha. I know her.”

He
did
know her. He could do this. Feeling invigorated and self-assured, Damon headed upstairs.

Halfway there, he turned back.

“But I
don’t
know where she lives,” Damon admitted to Wes. No wonder he’d failed all those quizzes on Natasha’s personal life. He was clueless about the important stuff. “Any ideas?”

Chapter 11

When Natasha first heard her doorbell ring, she thought it was probably a UPS delivery arriving. Or maybe her next-door neighbor, Kurt, wanting to borrow her gardening shears. Or maybe someone looking for Carol and ringing the wrong doorbell.

Most of Natasha’s friends knew to bypass the weird clang of the 1960s-era doorbell at her front door; they mostly knocked instead. That meant that the only people who actually rang the front doorbell were door-to-door salespeople and well-meaning missionaries offering Bible tracts—and
that
meant Natasha knew she could safely ignore its ding.

Then it came again.
Ding
.
Ding
.
Ding
!

Reluctantly, she made her way to the door, careful not to smudge her fresh pedicure as she went. Given her copious spare time these days, Natasha had taken to experimenting with her “look.” It was a suggestion Amy Huerta had helpfully made—partly because Amy, at eight months pregnant, could no longer reach her own toes very agilely. She needed help to paint them.

Ordinarily, Amy had giddily confided, Jason helped with that task. But today, she and Natasha were enjoying a spa day at home while Jason used his employee flextime (a longtime perk at Torrance Chocolates) to take the children to the park at Mission Beach.

“Sorry. I’ll be right back,” Natasha promised Amy.

She trundled awkwardly toward the front door, balanced on her bare heels, mindful of keeping her foam toe separators safely in the air. Her pedicure—based on a new toluene-, DBP-, and formaldehyde-free “green” nail enamel that Amy had insisted on using—flashed its pretty pink shade all the way across her living room. If she made it to the front door and back without a noticeable smear, Natasha knew, it would be a miracle.

As it turned out, the real miracle was waiting at her door.

Because when she opened it, Natasha, wearing a pleasantly neutral expression and expecting to see a delivery person with a clipboard or maybe a hopeful Girl Scout selling delicious cookies, instead gazed across her sunny threshold and saw ...

“
Damon
?” Boggling, she stared at him. “Is that you?”

He looked
great
, Natasha couldn’t help thinking. He looked tall and muscular and handsome and ... contrite? And, in a charcoal-colored suit and open-collared shirt, Damon looked ... out of place. He looked incredibly out of place in her modest neighborhood.

Maybe she was imagining him, Natasha thought for one crazy instant. Maybe she’d missed Damon so much that her imagination had conjured him out of thin air—incongruously fancy suit and all. But then Damon smiled, thrust forward a vivid bouquet of cellophane-wrapped yellow daffodils, and spoke to her.

“These are for you,” he said. “They’re a peace offering.”

“Peace offering?” Natasha angled her head in confusion. In further bafflement, she frowned. “How did you find me, anyway? I know you don’t know my address or even my street, so—”

“Will you please take them?” Damon offered them again. “Please? I have a whole speech planned. It starts with flowers.”

“Oh. Okay.” Stiltedly, Natasha accepted the daffodils.

At least they weren’t the same patented, super-expensive, “sorry I broke your heart” bouquet that Natasha had routinely sent to Damon’s exes. That wouldn’t have been welcome at all.

Even if Natasha’s heart really
was
a little broken. At the sight of Damon, in fact, her heart ached with a bittersweet longing that surprised her. She’d thought she was getting over him. She’d thought she was learning
not
to miss him anymore.

Apparently, there really was some truth to that “out of sight, out of mind” adage, at least when it came to her.

Feeling self-conscious and all too aware that she
did
miss Damon—and didn’t know how to stop, short of keeping him distinctly “out of sight”—Natasha stuck her nose in the flowers.

That was what people did with flowers, right? But of course, she didn’t smell a thing. These days, most flowers only looked nice; they lasted a long time but had no fragrance. They were bred for showy looks, not subtlety. As a peace offering from Damon, that probably made them particularly appropriate.

When Natasha finally raised her head, Damon was watching her. He appeared crestfallen. “You don’t like them?”

She nodded. “Of course I do! I love them.”

But of course he’d spied the disenchantment on her face, no matter how brief it had been. As usual, Damon Torrance was one step ahead of her.

Feeling foolish for not having remembered the truth about flowers—for having been characteristically naïve and hopeful, even when experience told her not to be—Natasha looked right at him. “I hear you have a speech prepared. Let’s have it.”

Damon shifted his gaze away from hers. He swallowed hard.

“All right. The thing is, Natasha ... I’m sorry.” His gaze met hers again, suddenly, with an intensity that shook her. “I’m
so
sorry. I treated you badly, and I took advantage of you. I let you down, and I hurt your feelings, and Las Vegas just brought all that home to me. I never meant to do any of that. I’ve been torn up about it ever since you left—”

“Shouldn’t you be at the office right now?” She didn’t want to interrupt, but she also didn’t want Damon to drive Torrance Chocolates off a cliff just because he felt guilty. “It’s the middle of the afternoon on a Friday. You’re missing your weekly staff meeting.”
And the test varieties of chocolates that are always served during it
, she remembered.
Yum, yum
.

“—and if you would just say you forgive me,” Damon forged on doggedly, “it would mean the world to me. I’m really sorry.”

Still thinking it was strange that he’d blow off work to visit her—because while Damon
had
been a chronic playboy, he’d never been truly irresponsible when it came to taking care of his family’s company—Natasha frowned at him. “Did you
forget
your meeting?” she asked. “Because without me there to remind you—”

“I didn’t forget.” For an instant, he seemed torn. It was almost as if Damon was considering confiding in her about something—something to do with work. Then, “This is more important. Making sure you know I’m sorry is more important.”

“Oh.” Natasha looked at him more closely. Same brown wavy hair. Same hard jaw. Same dark, melty eyes that invited a woman to lose herself in them. Same Damon. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but ... “You seem ... different. Is everything all right?”

Again, Damon appeared conflicted. He opened his mouth as if to speak, inhaled, then shut it again. “Everything
will
be all right, after you say you forgive me.” He took her hand. He smiled, and the Damon she remembered—the teasing, confident, super-sexy Damon—returned. “Come on. You know you want to,” he coaxed. “It’ll feel
great
to have all this settled between us. Don’t you remember what it was like during the good times? When we were laughing and traveling and testing new truffles? Nobody ever meant more to me than you, Natasha. Nobody. Remember—”

“I remember,” Natasha interrupted before he could go on—before he could stir up any more nostalgia or longing or memories of closeness between them. She pulled her hand from his grasp, then straightened her spine. “Okay. I forgive you.”

Damon raised his eyebrows. “Just like that?”

“Sure.” Natasha nodded. “Just like that.”

The relief in his face was palpable. Had her forgiveness really meant that much to him? Touched by that, Natasha smiled.

Damon did, too. For a long moment, their eyes met ... and every single bit of connection and yearning she’d ever experienced came flooding right back to her.

So did a few of her more risqué fantasies about him.

Shaking them off, Natasha examined Damon more closely. How many times had she imagined him coming to her this way? Since Las Vegas ...
several times
. There was no denying that hearing her former boss beg her forgiveness was pretty darn satisfying.

“Thank you,” Damon said in an earnest tone. “Really. You don’t know what I went through just to get here, and I—”

“Tasha?” Amy called loudly from the other room. “Is everything all right?”

Startled by her friend’s voice, Natasha jumped. Hearing Amy reminded her that whatever else happened, Natasha didn’t want to let Damon hurt her ever again. She deserved better. Much better.

“Everything’s fine, Amy!” she called. Then she turned to Damon again. Still holding her daffodils, she said, “I’ve really got to get back. As you can hear, I have company. But of course I forgive you, Damon! You’re
you
. I can hardly hold it against you when you screw up. That would be like”—Natasha cranked her arm, searching for an appropriate analogy—“like expecting the sun to feel cold or the ocean to stop making waves.”

“That’s what you think of me?” Damon appeared stricken. His jaw tightened. He looked away. “After all our years together,
that’s
your summation of me? That I’m a hopeless screwup?”

“It’s not your fault,” she assured him kindly. “It’s part of your charm. I just don’t want to be part of it anymore.”

He frowned. “Hell, Natasha. That kind of takes the fun out of your accepting my apology, don’t you think so?”

Natasha shrugged. “But I did it. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Sure. We could do that.” Damon’s gaze swiveled back to hers. “But I have to confess, I was kind of hoping ...”

That we could have something more
, she imagined him saying next.
That you’d invite me in and we could start again
...

“Never mind.” Damon thrust his hand through his hair. He aimed a brief, fraught look at her. “All I really need is your forgiveness, and I’ve got that. So ... bye, Tasha. Take care.”

Then, without waiting for her to reply, Damon left.

It had been a lot more fun to be the one walking away than the one left behind, Natasha couldn’t help thinking as she watched him leave. Not even the delectable view of Damon’s cute, suit-clad backside could entirely sweeten the experience.

Exactly what, she wondered, had Damon been going through on his own over these past few days? Whatever it was, it probably explained those meaningful pauses he’d thrown into their conversation. If she knew Damon—and she did, pretty well by now—he had a secret. He had a big secret. A secret that
she
didn’t care about in the least, Natasha told herself firmly. Then she picked up her toes, swiveled around, and went to rejoin Amy. Her pedicure had survived. This time, so had she.

It took everything Damon had not to look back as he left Natasha’s front porch. Keeping his shoulders steady, he strode past the green grass, past the blooming geraniums, and down the sidewalk toward Wes’s car. Without the daffodils he’d brought for Natasha (which he’d purchased after selling his six-hundred-dollar necktie to a Gaslamp street peddler at a ninety percent loss), his hands felt empty. So did his heart. Weirdly enough, seeing Natasha had made him feel
more
alone, not less. He hadn’t expected that.

When Damon got into Wes’s car, the uniformed Torrance Chocolates security guard who’d accompanied him on his mission gave him a skeptical look. Damon guessed he deserved that skepticism—and the supervision that came along with it. After all, he’d decided to get Natasha’s address in the most direct way he could think of—by brazening his way into the La Jolla headquarters and raiding the personnel files to find it.