Chapter Five
Heidi
I lay on the bed in my room, staring up at the ceiling, counting the little acoustic balls stuck to it. I kept losing count, though. The balls had no pattern to follow, so I was pretty sure I counted the same ones five or six times. What did it matter? Why was I staring at the ceiling?
Because of Damian Petrescu, that was why.
The man was trouble. I didn't care how sexy he was, or how surprisingly sweet he could be, I would never, never, never sleep with him. Six months of celibacy. I'd made that vow, and I refused to break it on my first day at the resort. I had willpower. Somewhere. Probably buried way down under a lot of hooey like all that silly stuff I used to love to do.
No more chasing butterflies. No more playing miniten in the nude with no sports bra. And absolutely no more flirting with every guy who walked past me. Time to dig out that willpower because Damian would push me to the limits of my self-control. I wasn't blaming him, not directly. After I told him I planned to be celibate, he hadn't pushed me at all. He'd barely flirted with me after that. But our time at the horse pasture had shown me a side of him that left me stunned and confused. Sweet, patient Damian didn't jibe with the Ludar prince who offered to "upgrade" me to dating if we had sex first. Or maybe he had said he'd upgrade me from dating to sex. Ugh, I couldn't remember. Didn't matter since I was never going to get naked with him.
Avoiding Damian seemed like the best solution to the problem of my MIA willpower.
Someone knocked on the door.
I moaned like a miserable coward. "Who is it?"
"Damian."
Oh shit. Why had he appeared two seconds after I thought about him? Maybe he did have Ludar lidar or whatever the hell it was. And what on earth did Ludar mean? He explained lidar, but that other word was a mystery to me, one I did not need to solve.
"Are you going to open the door?" he asked. "I brought you a surprise."
Great. He probably brought me lingerie.
I moaned again and heaved myself off the bed to trudge over to the door. Taking a deep breath, like that would quell my lust at all, I opened the door.
Damian stood there wearing his gypsy outfit. He held out his hand. "Give me your phone."
"Excuse me?"
"It's for your surprise. I promise I'm not trying to hack your phone. Ollie would know how to do that, but I haven't got a clue." He kept holding his hand out, and when I didn't move a muscle, he gave me an amused smile. "Trust me, Heidi. You'll like this."
Grumbling, I got my phone from the bedside table and gave it to him.
His thumbs flew over the screen, and his focus was zeroed in on whatever he was doing. After a minute, he handed the phone back to me. "There you go. Jams to lift your spirits, everything from Mozart to Miles to Minogue."
"Huh? I know who Mozart is, but the rest made no sense."
"Miles and Minogue." Damian chuckled. "That means Miles Davis, the jazz musician, and Kylie Minogue, the Australian pop singer."
"Oh, right, I get it."
"I was trying to be clever with my alliteration, but I guess my efforts tanked."
"No, it's not you. I'm still feeling kind of off-kilter." Why did I tell him that? Since I didn't want to date him, he didn't need to know. But he had suggested we could be friends. Maybe it was okay to blab that stupid confession to him.
"Being back at the resort is weird for you," Damian said. "I get that. After the stuff with Ollie the last time you were here, I'm sure it'll take time for you to get comfortable."
"Yeah, I think so."
"Don't hide in your room all day. Listen to the music I gave you, then take a chance and get out there with your friends."
I couldn't understand why he cared about making me feel better. We didn't know each other, not really. But he did care, and that gave me a strangely comforting sensation of warmth on my skin. "Thank you, Damian. It was so sweet of you to give me this music."
"No problem. I'll leave you alone, but I hope you'll come outside later."
He turned to walk away.