He Wants Her Back: The Billionaire's Leading Lady novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Malibu

Damon got in on the other side and the door shut us in.

The car pulled away from his mother's house.

I didn't look at him.

"I got in," I said, "because you're going to tell me why you were in that room. Now. Before we're out of Bel Air."

"Juno."

"Not tomorrow. Not like this. No more not here."

He was quiet so long I thought he'd refuse again.

Then he pressed the button and the glass went up between us and the driver.

"She called me five weeks ago," he said. "From that hospital. First time in eight years."

"And?"

"She said she'd been in a crash on the coast highway. She said they didn't think she'd make it. She wanted to apologize before she died."

"And you went."

"I went."

"Why?"

He looked out the window at the big white houses going by.

"Because eight years ago she left me a week before our engagement party, and sold it to a magazine, and I never got to say one word to her face," he said. "I wanted the last word. I went to get it."

"You held her hand."

"She'd just had the bandages off." His jaw moved. "I walked in, and it was your face on the pillow."

The car went around a curve.

I held on to the door handle.

"She told me the surgeons rebuilt it from what was left," he said. "She cried. I didn't push a woman in a hospital bed."

"So you sat down and held her hand."

"I sat down because my legs went," he said. "And I held it because I couldn't stop looking."

That went into me.

"At her."

"At you. Trying to find you in it." He turned and looked at me. "You weren't there. Not once. I sat there for three hours and you weren't anywhere in that face."

"And when I walked in?"

"You walked in, and there were two of you, and a nurse, and a man outside with a camera she'd paid for. And I did what I always do."

"Which is what?"

"I put you somewhere nobody could see you." He said it flat, like reading out a charge. "Go home, Juno. Not here."

I looked out my own window so he wouldn't see my face.

"That's ugly," I said.

"Yes."

"It's the truth?"

"It's the truth."

"I hate it."

"I know."

We didn't speak again until the car stopped at the top of his drive, at the front steps.

He didn't get out.

"You can go back to Bea's," he said. "He'll take you anywhere you want."

I looked at the front door.

Then at him.

"You said you were done asking."

"I am."

"Then why are you asking?"

His eyes went dark.

I got out of the car and walked up the steps, and I heard his door open and shut behind me.

Inside, the house was cool and full of evening light off the water.

He took his grandmother's ring out of his pocket and set it on the hall table.

He didn't offer it to me.

I was glad, and I hated that I noticed.

"I'm not back," I said.

"I know."

"I'm still angry."

"Good." He came toward me slowly. "Stay angry. Stay here."

He backed me through the long room and out through the open glass doors onto the terrace.

The pool glowed blue at the edge of the cliff and the ocean was going dark below it.

He didn't touch me.

He just stood behind me at the edge of the pool, close enough that I felt him there.

The ocean went dark below the cliff.

The water glowed blue against the stone.

"Turn around," he said.

I didn't.

"You got in the car," he said. "You walked up my steps. You came through my house. Now turn around."

I turned.

His face was hard in the blue light.

The cut on his lip was still pink where I'd bitten him.

"Take the dress off," he said.

"No."

He unbuttoned his jacket and let it fall onto a lounger.

Then he stepped in and undid the first button at my throat.

His knuckles brushed my skin.

"You stood on my mother's terrace in front of forty people," he said.

The second button.

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