Complete Me(68)

He eyes me suspiciously. “The good kind of surprise where I get to slowly strip you naked? Or a bad kind of surprise?”

“Oh. My. God,” Jamie says from the backseat. “I’m going to just melt back here.”

I bite back a grin and focus on Damien. “Does any surprise that doesn’t end with me naked fall within your definition of bad?”

“Pretty much,” he says, and in the rearview mirror, I see Jamie clamp her hands over her ears.

I laugh. “Then I guess we’re deep in the land of horrible.”

He leans back in the seat at an angle so that he can stretch his legs out and examine me. He twines his fingers behind his head. He looks relaxed as sin and sexy as hell. “All right,” he says slowly. “Tell me.”

“You tell him,” I say to Jamie. “It was your idea.”

“We found a bar in Crestline that has a karaoke night,” she says.

“Did you?” he asks blandly.

Actually, Jamie found it, but I enthusiastically agreed to this night out. After the news he got on the plane, I am operating on the theory that the more fun the better. Or I was. Now, I’m not so sure. Because despite everything I have learned about Damien Stark, I cannot read his expression.

“Are you going to serenade me?” he asks.

“Nope.”

“Are you going to serenade Jamie?”

“Double nope.”

“I see,” he says.

My grin falters a bit. Jamie and Ollie and I used to get a huge kick out of karaoke bars, and they were always a cure for a bad week. But Damien is not Jamie or Ollie or me, and considering his current stony expression, it’s more than possible that I misjudged the appeal of this evening’s entertainment.

I meet Jamie’s eyes in the mirror and see her tiny shrug.

I am just about to announce that I was joking and that we are really on our way to a five-star restaurant where we’ll discuss business theory and stock prices, when his mouth twitches and his eyes begin to light with his slowly growing smile. “And here I thought you loved me,” he says.

I force myself not to sag with relief. “I do.”

“And you thought that singing bad seventies songs in public would be a good way to show it?”

I pause at a stop sign, and take the opportunity to glare at him. “Are you mocking me, Mr. Stark?”

“Never,” he says, but his eyes are dancing.

“Mmm. I was actually thinking along the lines of the Rat Pack oeuvre, but I’ll go with bad seventies if that’s what you want. I’m more than willing to compromise.”

His expression is pure sin. “I’m very glad to hear it, Ms. Fairchild.”

“There it is,” Jamie says from the backseat. She is pointing to a brightly lit building just up the block. “That’s it, and thank God. It’s getting just a little too warm in here.”

I bite back a retort. As far as I’m concerned, with Damien, it can never be too hot.

Whatever heat there might be in the Jeep, however, has nothing on the interior of the bar. It’s cramped and smoky and so warm it feels sticky. And, frankly, that’s part of its charm. I can see from Damien’s approving expression as we walk through the wooden double doors and into the dark interior that he agrees.

“It’s definitely got atmosphere,” he says, his hand pressed lightly to my back as he scans the room.

“What about that table?” Jamie asks, and Damien and I follow her across the room to a four top near the stage. “Order me something fun,” Jamie says, then disappears toward the ladies’ room.