I am expecting to slide back into that magical fantasy where there really is nothing but the two of us.

But when he opens the door, I realize that the real world can follow us anywhere.

Because right there—sitting on the couch where Damien has fucked me so many times—is a woman I never thought that I would see again.

A woman who used to be in Damien’s bed.

Chapter Eight

Carmela D’Amato is tall and blonde and so stunningly beautiful that it is almost painful. I’ve hated her from the first moment I saw her six years ago when she took Damien away from me.

Granted, at the time I had no claim to Damien, but I’d wanted to lash out at her nonetheless. I’d been competing in Dallas at the Miss Tri-County Texas pageant, and tennis star Damien was the celebrity judge. I’d never met him before, but he’d come over to where I was staked out by the buffet table, wondering if I could get away with eating cheesecake without my mother finding out. At the time, I’d thought it was my imagination, but even then the connection between us had been electric. He’d taken my breath away. Hell, he still takes my breath away.

Just standing there talking to him had sparked decadent fantasies. If he’d suggested it, I would have taken his hand and run away and never once looked back. But he didn’t suggest it. And it wasn’t me he left with, but Carmela.

I’d never expected to see her again.

Then again, at the time I’d never expected to see Damien again, either. Apparently we’ve now come full circle.

Instinctively, I take a step closer to Damien. He reaches down, his fingers automatically twining through mine.

Carmela’s eyes flicker down to our joined hands, and I have to bite back a triumphant smile. Ha. Take that, bitch. The thought is petty. But it’s heartfelt.

“What are you doing here?” Damien’s voice is cold, his body tense. I can feel the irritation rolling off him in waves.

“Damie, darling, don’t be angry.” She stretches, cat-like, as she reaches for a glass of wine on the table beside her. She takes a sip, looking perfectly at home.

I want to go slap her face.

“How the hell did you get in here?” Damien demands.

Her eyes widen, then she glances at me. “After all the times I’ve shared this room with you, I’m like family. I just asked one of the room service boys to let me in.”

“It didn’t occur to you that you were costing the boy his job?”

She laughs. “Why would it? I thought we could celebrate your victory together. And when have you ever kicked me out of your room, Damie? When have you not been happy to see me?”

“Now,” he says.

I’m watching her face as he speaks, and am startled to see that there is no reaction. She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t blink. She is neither angry nor hurt.

In other words, Carmela came here knowing exactly how this would play out. What a goddamned bitch.

“Get up,” I say. “Get up and get the hell out of here.” That gets a reaction out of her. A tight, condescending smile that only pisses me off even more.

Beside me, Damien squeezes my hand, but he says nothing. Somehow he knows that this is my fight now.

“You’re Nichole, aren’t you?” she says, though there is no doubt in my mind that she knows exactly who I am. “You’re the little girl who caught his eye in Texas at that ridiculous pageant.”

“I caught more than his eye, Carlotta,” I say, deliberately getting her name wrong.

Her eyes narrow. “Are you sure? Reality so rarely lives up to expectations. I hope you’re prepared for the day he realizes that you are not the woman he wanted, after all.”

I flash my best pageant smile and conjure a honey-sweet Texas twang. “Sugar, I think you have us confused. I’m the one he’s taking to bed. It’s you he doesn’t want.” I imagine a stadium of people leaping to their feet and applauding. “Now get the hell out of here.”

I know my blow struck home from the way her eyes dart to Damien, as if he will soothe the wound. But Damien is not her salvation. “You heard the lady,” he says. “Go.”

For an unpleasant moment, I think she’s going to argue. Then she rises to her feet. She moves with deliberate slowness as she takes the last sip of her wine and then hooks her purse over her arm. It seems to take forever, but she finally steps over the threshold and out into the hallway, the weighted door slamming shut behind her.

I turn to Damien. I can see the rage in his eyes. The rising fury. But it’s tempered by something else. Regret. And apology. No, I think. No way in hell is he apologizing for that bitch.

“Nikki, I—”

“You what? You didn’t know she would be here?”

“You know I didn’t.” His voice is hard. Firm.

“Do you think I’m going to be jealous, knowing that there was a time when she had free run of this suite?” I ask, making my voice even harder. I have a point to make, and I’m damn well going to make it. I cock my head, considering. “Just how many hotels around Europe is she intimately familiar with?”

“Goddammit, Nikki.”

“One? Three? Five?”

He stalks toward me and I take a corresponding step back, then another until my back is against one of the pillars that divides the sitting area from the kitchen and dining area. “Did you take her here? Like this? Hard against a wall?”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Anger curls in his voice and I know that I’ve almost pushed him too far.

“What do you think I’m doing?”

“Pissing me off,” he says, then kisses me hard, the force of his lips upon mine knocking my head back. I open my mouth to draw him in even as I hook one leg around him and curl my arms around his neck. I want him hard against me. I want to feel him—to feel our connection. Because nothing—not Carmela, not anybody—can break that.

Roughly, he wrenches his mouth off mine. I hold him tight though, so that I feel his breath upon my face when he speaks. “You’re the only woman in my life now, Nikki.”

I am breathing hard, my eyes never leaving his. “Don’t you think I know that, too?”

I see the exact moment when he realizes that I have been playing him.

“Unless I find you in bed with one,” I say, “don’t you even think of apologizing for another woman. Believe it or not, Damien Stark, I was not under the impression that you’d taken a vow of chastity before sleeping with me.”