Rule's Obsession (2 page)

"We'll see. I know we can think of something. At the very least I'm damn good at squeezing a dime out of a nickel." The two women hugged again, and after they parted, Angie went to the back room and slowly counted to ten as she took a few stabilizing breaths before going back out to face what she knew she must. Looking at herself in the mirror, she inhaled deeply and tried to calm her shaking hands before turning toward the door with determination.

****

Damian looked passed his reflection in the mirror and watched, entranced, as
Goth girl
walked up behind him and immediately began babbling, "So Janice had to leave because her kiddo is sick. I'm Angie and I'm going to cut your hair today if that's okay?"

Her voice was feminine and husky, and his brain temporarily short-circuited as all the blood in his body seemed to pool to his groin at the mere thought of her even touching his hair. He gritted his teeth, fisted his hands around the arms of the seat to keep from grabbing her and locking her to him.
Could he sit still while she touched him without reaching out and picking her up and carrying her out of here?
He tightened his abs and nodded once in answer to her question and watched in fascination as she lifted a black comb to his scalp.

Her hands looked delicate and soft, with beautiful slender fingers that ended in tapered fingernails.
Fingernails painted black.
His insides clenched with arousal, but his brain fought the involuntary reaction to the inappropriate sight.

Her black-tipped fingers were trembling subtly and without thinking about his actions, he lifted a hand and wrapped it around a blue-veined wrist. "You okay?" he bit out.

She raised her eyes to his in the mirror, licked her lips and sucked in a deep breath. He could see the pulse beating visibly in her throat but she didn't answer him. He'd bet his last dollar she
couldn't
answer him, and he knew in that second that he affected her the same way that she affected him.

Well, shit
.

Good fucking luck trying to stay away from her now, Rule.

****

The guy was hot, no question about it. And he was even hotter up close like this. But
Jesus,
that didn't mean she had
to tremble
, did it? She glanced at him in the mirror and was able to clear her throat and get her vocal chords working enough to answer his question. "Yeah, I'm fine. You just want a trim, right?" At her words, his grip tightened on her wrist, sending a heated rush to the juncture of her thighs, but then he dropped his hand back to the arm of the chair.

"Just a trim." His voice was low and brusque, and Angie felt the deep cadence reverberate down her body in a current of sensation.

Unable to stop the movement, she ran her fingers through his hair, as if to gauge the length. As she slowly started the cut, she studied him. Probably early thirties, he always wore a bespoke suit and he kept his hair severely short. He was conservative, no mistaking that. She'd bet he absolutely
hated
the fact that he was attracted to her. And it was obvious that he was. She'd caught him watching her more times than she could count.

But she didn't care to be noticed by a guy like this; he seemed just like her father. Angie knew that deep down, she loved her dad, but she admitted they didn't have a close relationship, even though he'd been a decent enough father. He'd taught her more about money and finances than she could ever possibly need to know and he'd made sure she could stand on her own two feet before he'd moved across the country. But her father had an addiction that she didn't care for.
Women
. Her mother had died when she was young and since then, Angie had known more stepmothers than she cared to think about, because her father became bored very easily.

And
Damian the Devil
had that same look about him. Was she judging him, probably unfairly? Yeah, she was, but she didn't care.

Janice had told her weeks ago that he had asked about the way she dressed and there had been disapproval in his tone. He didn't care for her clothes. And that suited Angie perfectly. And it was true that she didn't care what anyone thought of her; she damn sure never wanted to be noticed by a control freak like she was sure this guy was. She didn't care how freaking good-looking he was, she didn't care how fast he made her heart race, it didn't matter how quickly she thought she could drown in his bedroom eyes if she wasn't careful.

Did he look like he knew what to do in bed? Absolutely. But Angie had no time for a guy like this one. No time and no desire to be tempted. So it didn't bother her that too-conservative men like him usually stared a little too long before looking away. Being left alone by businessmen of his ilk was a fringe benefit of the gothic style she'd created for herself.

It wasn't as if she was truly gothic; she admitted she was just a poser. She'd started dressing in black because she'd found a couple of adorable outfits at the mall, and the reaction of her male customers at the salon had been more than positive. Her tips had almost tripled every time she'd worn black. She was a fairly quick study, and after the unexpected influx of cash, she'd taken on the persona with relish, buying tons of accessories and developing a heavy hand with her make-up. Dyeing her hair black had given her pause, but it didn't have to be permanent, and she knew any damage caused by the chemicals would eventually grow out.

Now, as Angie cut his hair, she didn't try to make conversation with him, and she refused to look at him in the mirror again after finding his eyes glued once to her face, and then frowningly, to her breasts. Her tiny, barely-there breasts, hidden beneath a flimsy bra and her favorite tight, black
Nine Inch Nails
t-shirt.

His brows were furrowed as he studied her shirt, and the harsh look on his features sent shivers of heat through her system. After intercepting that look, she avoided meeting his eyes again. Instead, she concentrated on giving him the perfect cut, and she soon became lost in the feel of his damp hair beneath her fingers. When had giving a haircut ever seemed so intimate? It was insane really, because she gave cuts all day long, mostly to men and boys, who were the type of clientele the salon attracted. So why did she now have to become aware of exactly how close she stood to this particular man, what his hair felt like sliding between her fingers, and the way his eyes stayed fastened to her as if he wanted to strip her naked?

She was lost in uncomfortable thought when his deep voice intruded. "You're very pretty," he announced in a low, gravelly tone that sounded as if the words were ripped from his vocal chords against his will.

The words sent a libidinous heat down her spine that she tried to ignore. She found his eyes in the mirror and quickly looked away before answering curtly, "Thanks."

Without looking at him directly, she noticed that his attention became even more scrutinizing. "How old are you?"

Unable to help herself, her eyes landed on his in the mirror again. "How old are you?" she fired back, without answering his question.

"Thirty-four." His lips flattened. "And you?" he demanded, his dark brown eyes holding hers hostage.

"Twenty-seven," she managed shortly, wishing he'd mind his own business.

Silence permeated the air between them after her answer, and it was all Angie could do to keep her hands from shaking.

Finally, the cut was finished and she handed him a mirror to inspect her work. He took it and held it up with a grunt of semi-approval. She pulled the protective covering from his shoulders and shook it out as he stood to his feet.

With little to no fanfare, he pulled a bill from his wallet. As she stared down at the large denomination note, attempting to get her frazzled brain to function, he murmured, "Keep it," and turned and strode out the door.

****

A couple of weeks later, Damian stood mixing a drink at the sideboard in his mother's living room when her statement finally penetrated his brain.

"You want me to do what?" he asked in a booming voice, freezing in place.

His mother set her coffee cup down and nervously stood up and shut the door so they couldn't be overheard. She made her way over to him before quietly answering, "I want you to consider pushing forward with your relationship with Courtney, and I think that my dinner party on Saturday night would be a good time to start."

Damian closed his eyes for a moment in pure frustration before opening them again and looking straight at her with determination. "You have got to be kidding me. There is
no
relationship between us and furthermore, you're very aware of that fact." How in the hell could she think that he felt anything but a familial type of love for Courtney? When his mother had brought the girl home after the death of her parents, Damian had already been out on his own and she'd become almost like a second little sister to him. He hated to admit it, but he'd mostly ignored her, slotting her in with Erin, the youngest of his siblings, and now when he thought of them, they were almost one unit, 'the girls.'

"She's a perfect girl, Damian. You've been playing the field for far too long and you owe it to your father's memory and the company that he left to you and your brothers--"

Damian gritted his teeth and cut her off. He loved his mother but she'd gone too far this time. "Mother, I need you to listen to what I'm about to say, okay? I don't want to hurt you, but you need to start understanding how it is.
How it was."

His mother stared at him with a sheen of tears in her eyes. "Okay."

"I love you; I loved Dad. You know that." He cleared his throat. This was damn hard for him, he did love his mother and he and his siblings had always tried to protect her from pain of any kind. At her nod, he continued, "I know you love Courtney like a daughter and she's a sweet girl, but I don't feel the way you want me to feel about her and you've got to quit trying to control me through guilt." He watched for a sign that she was registering his words. "Even if the company had been in the black and worth millions, you shouldn't keep reminding me of the fact." His eyes narrowed. "But Mother, the company was in the red, in a big way, and you know that it was. The only thing that Nick and Garrett and I inherited was a truckload of debt. There were
no
assets. Zero freakin' assets, Mother. The company was on the verge of bankruptcy. You have no clue how much easier it would have been if we'd just walked away from it all." He studied his mother, who was listening to him in silence. "But we didn't do that. We honored our father's debts, we kept you in the same house you'd been living in since you married him, we put Erin and Courtney through college without a quibble and if we've done anything wrong, it was protecting you and the girls too much from the real world."

He took a deep breath and watched closely to see if she would accept the truth this time. It was a fact that his mother lived in her own little fairytale world, and if there were two truths he knew about her, the first was that she loved her children more than anything else, and the second was that she always had her head in the clouds.

She reached up and touched his cheek gently, the gesture full of so much love and tenderness that he almost groaned.
How was he supposed to stick to his guns when she was the kindest, most compassionate person he knew?
She watched him a little sadly. "I know, sweetheart, I couldn't have survived without you boys and I'm so sorry there weren't more liquid assets when your father died." But then she tilted her head and looked at him as if
he
was the one who didn't quite understand. "But there was that life insurance policy, and the company itself was still intact and doing business. You boys inherited the business, and just look where it's at now." She smiled and patted his hand as if the world and everything in it was perfect.

Damian shut his eyes for a moment in temporary defeat. The life insurance she spoke of had only been enough to pay off the loans that had been called in the day after his father's death. It hadn't put a dent in the rest of the debt. They'd barely had enough to pay for the funeral, and the amount of business debt that had been left after the insurance had dried up had been staggering to him and his brothers. It would have been so much easier for them to walk away from it all, to start a new business from scratch. But they'd manned up, and together had decided to take on the debt and to rebuild the family business from the ground up.

But his mother would
never
understand. She continued to believe that they'd been left a fortune, and she probably would until the day she died.
And it was their fault.
They'd worked their asses off, and in the beginning, put everything they had into making sure their mother and the girls never had any hardships.

It was time to try a new approach with her. If telling her that he wasn't interested in Courtney in a romantic way wasn't enough to convince her, then he'd have to bring out the big guns and prove it to her another way.

He'd have to show her.

****

Putting a long and stressful day behind her, Angie walked out of the salon and made her way across the parking lot toward her car. There was one thing she craved more than anything: a hot bubble bath. Her muscles were sore and her feet were screaming at her to
sit.