Free Flirting With Intent by Kelly Hunter

agenda, for it’s nothing I don’t already know. You overplayed the light-hearted, carefree Damon on the phone, by the way, if you want to know what really tipped me off. It just wasn’t you. Still …’ she looked skywards and smiled ‘… it’s a nice day for a stroll and I wanted to get out of the apartment. You don’t mind if I use you as a distraction, do you?’
    Was yes even a
possible
answer after such a gracious and glossy dismissal of his concerns regarding her developing some kind of unwanted attachment to him? ‘No.’
    He tipped his hat and held out his arm, and he even managed a self-mocking smile as she slipped her hand in the crook of his arm, and without a word they began to stroll.
    ‘You excel at making things easy for others, don’t you, Ruby?’ he offered at last. ‘And somewhere in the process you get exactly what you want. It’s very impressive.’
    ‘It’s a gift,’ she said dulcetly.
    ‘Or a weapon,’ he countered dryly. ‘Where’d you hone that razor-sharp mind of yours, Ruby?’
    ‘Harvard.’
    It figured. ‘Where did
you
study?’ she asked.
    Damon hesitated, and Ruby sighed.
    ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘I forgot who I was talking to. Although may I point out that sticking entirely to the immediate present when conversing with
anyone
is a lot like talking to a brick. Nonetheless, I shall endeavour to oblige and make it easier for you to keep your secrets to yourself. See that building to the West, overlooking the park?’ She waved a slender hand in its direction. ‘That’s Hong Kong’s legislative council building. It’s one of the reasons there are so many political demonstrations and marches here in the park. As for the park’s history, did you know that these grounds once housed the most hallowed of colonial institutions, the Hong Kong Cricket Club?’
    ‘MIT,’ said Damon tightly, and stopped Ruby’s fact-spouting dead. ‘I studied mathematics and computer programming at MIT.’
    The hand resting in the crook of his arm tightened, and Ruby came to a standstill. Damon turned to find her regarding him with a mixture of frustration and puzzlement.
    ‘What?’ he said. ‘You asked, I answered. I was just …’
    ‘Filtering,’ she said wryly. Which he had been. ‘Trust me, Damon. I know this game. My father never talked much beyond the moment either. You’d have liked him, by the way. He could have certainly shown you a trick or two about sliding graciously past a question you’re not inclined to answer.’
    ‘How would he have slid past that one?’
    ‘Oh, I dare say he’d have started spouting rhetoric about the measurement of man,’ said Ruby with a smile. ‘From there you might have swung through a deeply philosophical discussion of the education system or if he gauged you differently perhaps he’d have offered you a champagne and piled on the flattery as he guessed which of the top twenty learning institutes in the world
you
graduated from.’
    ‘Have you heard from him today?’
    ‘Why do you ask?’
    Damon shrugged and realised he didn’t have any good answer other than Ruby drew him in, even when he didn’t want to be drawn, and got to him when he didn’t want to be got. ‘Maybe it’s because I know what it’s like to wait for word that never comes.’
    ‘He hasn’t been in touch.’
    And then she leaned into him, buttingup against his arm with her body as if she craved connection, and he knew that feeling and that shoulder shove because he’d used it on Poppy as a child. Remember me, it had been shorthand for. The one who cost us our mother by dint of being born. The one who never quite managed to shake his feeling of isolation, even within the arms of family.
    So he did what Poppy used to do, and put his arm around Ruby’s shoulder and hugged her to his side and kept her there. He could do that much for her. He did it without thinking.
    ‘I really hoped he’d call, you know?’ she said finally, with her arm around his waist and