I Married My Enemy

Chapter Two — The Worst Night Gets Worse

DAMON COLE

Damon Cole did not do family dinners.

He especially did not do family dinners that arrived as a summons from his father’s personal assistant at four in the afternoon with the subject line: Family Dinner. Cole Estate. 7PM. Attendance Required. No Exceptions.

He told his driver to take him anyway.

“Sir.” Marcus glanced in the rear-view mirror as they pulled away from Cole Luxe. “Shall I wait outside or drive you home after?”

“I will not be long,” Damon said. He arrived at eight forty-five.

The housekeeper opened the door without a word. She had worked for Richard Cole long enough to know better than to comment on the time.

The moment Damon stepped into the dining room he knew it was a trap.

Adrian was already seated at the table, relaxed and smiling, with his food half-eaten and his jacket spotless. He looked like a man who had arrived an hour early and spent the time enjoying himself. He looked up when Damon walked in and his warm dimpled smile appeared immediately.

“Brother,” he said pleasantly. “We were starting to wonder.”

Damon pulled out his chair and sat without responding.

Sylvia reached across the table and touched his hand. “Damon.” Her voice was soft and full of the particular warmth she performed for Richard’s benefit. “You look tired. Are you eating properly? I keep telling your father you work too hard.” She glanced at Richard with concern arranged carefully on her face. “Don’t we always say that, darling?”

Richard looked at his eldest son from the head of the table.“You’re late,” he said.

“I was working father,” Damon said.

“You are always working.” Richard set down his fork. “That is precisely the problem.”

Sylvia made a small sound of gentle agreement and reached for her wine. Her eyes moved briefly to Adrian.

Adrian refilled his water glass and said nothing.

“Antonio Whitmore called me today,” Richard said. “His daughter waited at Nobu Restaurant for forty five minutes.”

“I was in a board meeting.”

“You were in a board meeting for the Hartley dinner too. And Senator Park’s daughter. Three women, Damon. Three families I have spent years cultivating. Antonio Whitmore alone controls eleven percent of our luxury retail distribution in the northeast.”

“If the distribution deal depends on who I take to dinner it is not a distribution deal. It is a hostage situation.”

Richard’s jaw tightened. “You are thirty-one years old. You run a company built by your late mother’s hands and you treat every responsibility outside that building like an inconvenience.” He straightened in his chair. “I have been patient. That patience is finished.”

Sylvia leaned forward slightly. “Richard, darling, perhaps—”

“No.” Richard’s voice was quiet but absolute. “I have made my decision.” He looked at Damon directly. “You will find a suitable woman. You will announce an engagement within thirty days. Or I will transfer fifty one percent of the company’s voting shares to Adrian.” He picked up his fork. “The board has already been advised.”

The table went very still.

Damon looked at his father. Then he looked at Adrian, who was cutting his food with the careful attention of a man trying to avoid saying anything.

Sylvia’s hand found Richard’s arm. “Your father only wants what is best for the company, Damon. For both of you.” Her eyes came to Damon’s and held with an expression of warm maternal concern that looked pretty convincing. “We all do.”

Damon placed his napkin on the table. “Thank you for dinner,” he said. He stood, buttoned his jacket, and walked out.

In the driveway, Marcus was waiting with the car running. “Home, sir?”

Damon looked at the lit windows of the house. At the shadow of his stepmother moving behind the glass. “No.” He held out his hand for the keys. “I’ll drive myself.”

He got in, pulled out of the driveway, and pointed the car toward the city with nothing but the road and thirty days and the particular cold fury of a man who knows he has just walked out of a room where everything was already decided before he arrived.

****

Jessica fell asleep before the bus reached the third stop. Three weeks of bad sleep and one catastrophic morning had caught up with her all at once, and the bus engine did the rest.

She woke up at the end of the line.Her bag was open. Her phone was gone. Her wallet was gone. The zip pocket where she kept her bus card was empty.

Jessica sat very still for one full second. “This day couldn’t get any worse.” She muttered. Then she got off the bus because there was nothing else to do. Maya’s apartment was four miles away. She had no money. No phone. No bus card.

She walked.

It was harder than it sounds. One box balanced under her right arm. The duffle bag strap cutting into her left shoulder. The second box tucked under her chin, tilting dangerously every time she had to adjust her grip. Her heels raised blisters by the second mile. By the third mile she had stopped feeling them.

When she reached Crestline Road her arms were shaking.

She set the boxes on the low wall beside the road and sat on the duffle bag and just breathed for a moment. It was cold. She reached into the top box and pulled out her blazer. Still damp from the rain outside her old building but it was the only jacket she had. She pulled it on and wrapped it around herself.

She would get up in a minute.

She did not notice the puddle beside her in the dark.

Then the headlights came around the corner.

Fast. Way too fast. The black car hit the puddle at full speed and the water came up like a wall and hit Jessica directly. All of her. Head to toe.

She sat there for one full second.

The boxes beside her caught it too.

The car did not stop.

Every single frustrating thing that had happened today lined up in her head at once. And now this. She grabbed a stick from beside the wall and threw it at the car.

It hit the back windshield with a sharp satisfying c***k.

Damon looked in his rear-view mirror, something had hit his car. He stopped and looked in the mirror again. Put the car in reverse and went back. He got out and looked at the mark on the glass. Then looked at the road.

A girl sat beside a puddle with two soggy boxes and a duffle bag at her feet. Completely soaked through. She was staring at him with the expression of someone who had completely run out of anything resembling patience.

“Do you have any idea how much this car costs?” His voice was laced with fury

“Do you have any idea how much this blazer means to me?”

He blinked.

She stepped forward into the headlights and he saw the full extent of it. The water running down her face looking like a drowned parrot.

“You splashed me,” she said. “You did not stop. I threw a stick. Now we are here.” She spread her arms. “Pardon me, Mr. Expensive Car.”

Damon reached into his jacket and held out his card. “Contact my secretary tomorrow. She will arrange replacement clothes.”

Jessica looked at the card, then at him.“I don’t need new clothes,” she said. “I need you to drop me off. My phone was stolen. I have no money. I have been walking for an hour, my leg hurts and I have had the single worst day of my entire f**king life and the only good thing that happened was a job offer and right now I cannot even call anyone to tell them I am not dead in a ditch.” She took a breath. “So. Drop me off. Please.”

Damon looked at her for a long moment.“I do not give strangers rides,” he said.

“I am not a stranger. You splashed me.”

“That does not make you less of a stranger.”

“It makes you responsible.”

“It makes me the person who owns a car.”

“It makes you the person whose car now has a c***k,” Jessica said, “because the stick I threw was bigger than I thought.”

Damon looked at the car, then back at her. “Get in.”

Jessica grabbed the duffle bag immediately before he could change his mind. She looked at the two boxes.“I also have these,” she said.

Damon looked at the boxes.

A long silence.

“Put it at the back.”

Jessica loaded the boxes in and got into the passenger seat before anything else could go wrong. She reached for the GPS with cold stiff fingers and typed in Maya’s address. He got in on the other side, reached for his seatbelt and stopped.

The white blouse under her blazer was completely soaked through he could see her black bra right through it. He looked away immediately, reached into the back seat, grabbed his spare jacket and tossed it. It landed directly on her chest. She grabbed it before it fell.

“Cover up,” he said coldly.

Jessica looked at him. “Thanks,” she said flatly.

The silence in the car was loud.

After two minutes Jessica shifted in the seat. The jacket smelled of warm sandalwood and amber, rich enough to scent up the whole car and it annoyed her.

“You could have at least apologized,” she said.

“I’m taking you home aren't I?”

“That is not an apology.”

“It is more than most people get.”

She turned to look at him. The side of his face was sharp and still and completely unmoved. His hands were loose on the wheel. The hands of a man who was never once uncomfortable anywhere he went.

“Do you treat everyone like this?” she asked.

“Like what.”

“Like they are an inconvenience you have generously decided to tolerate.”

The GPS announced two minutes to destination.

He said nothing for a full minute. Then:

“Yes.”Just the one word. No apology attached to it.

Jessica faced forward.

The car stopped outside Maya’s building. She got out and pulled the boxes from the backseat and lifted the duffle bag. She turned towards the building.

Maya came out first, then Debby right behind her, both of them spilling onto the pavement in their house clothes with their faces tight with a worry that had clearly been sitting on them for hours.

“Jess.” Maya grabbed both her arms. “Oh my God. We have been going crazy. You did not call. You did not show up. We did not know if something had happened to you—”

“My phone got stolen,” Jessica started.

“Your mom has been calling the apartment phone.” Debby stepped in close, her voice dropping. “For two hours straight, Jess. She would not stop. She said she could not reach you and she needed to reach you right now.”

Jessica went still.

“She said it is your dad.” Maya’s grip on her arms tightened. “She said something is wrong. She said you need to call her back immediately.”

The words landed one at a time like something heavy falling.

Jessica did not speak.

A few feet away the black car had not moved.

The engine was still running. The window was down. And the man behind the wheel had heard every single word.

Damon sat with both hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road ahead and did not move for a long moment. Then he reached into his jacket pocket, placed his phone on the passenger seat, and drove away into the dark without looking back.