We Are Meant To Be

Damian Garcia tipped his head up and tracked the winking light of a jet above him. That could, for all he knew, be Zach Harrison's Jet carrying Claire away from him. The image of Claire curled up in Zach's lap, him comforting her as she cried, because hell if anyone deserved to cry it was Claire Bridgewater. Flashed on his retina, and his grip tightened on the crystal tumbler in his hand. He heard a sharp palm under the wristband of his watch.

Damian opened his hand and looked at the cracked glass and its sharp shards. Surprisingly, there was no blood. Transferring the broken glass from his hand to the coffee table on the balcony, he shook the droplets of his Manhattan cocktail off his hand before reaching for his pocket square and wiping the liquid away.

Well, that was a waste of good booze. Damian looked back into the luxurious Presidential Suite of Mirage a hotel and saw his friend George Alan pacing the area between the designer sofas and the dining table. George was pissed and had a right to be. His gala evening was ruined and would be long remembered for all the wrong reasons.

And it was all Claire's fault. Well, not her fault exactly, she hadn't known her brother would show up and ruin months of work, but as the event planner, the buck stopped with her.

Would her company recover from this? He doubted it. Would she? Claire was tough but she'd had a couple of hard knocks lately. When George asked her to leave the retreat immediately, taking her brother with her, Claire knew that her reputation was about to take another beating, and Damian understood why she felt the need to run. Why would she want to stay and witness the pitying looks, the cruel smirks, hear the caustic comments?

She also wanted to run from him. And that, he understood most of all.

Seeing movement in the room behind him, Damian turned his head to watch Jane approach George, her eyes on her man. George was still on his phone but he held out his hand and Nadia tucked herself into the side, her arms encircling his waist. George dropped a kiss on her head before continuing his conversation. Damian's stomach was cramped with what he thought might be jealousy. He'd never believed in true love, hadn't been exposed to it growing up but maybe it did exist; maybe it was just as rare as hell. George has found his Holly Gail in Jane but Damian isn't naive enough to believe that everybody, most especially him, would be that lucky.

Love, he was convinced, wasn't for him.

George threw his phone into the sofa behind him and pulled his wife into his body, burying his face in the crook of her neck. Although Jane was a foot shorter than Goerge, Damian knew that he was sucking strength from her, that George was leaning in her. They were a unit, taking turns to lead and to follow, to give and receive strength. They were two trees growing together, sharing soil and water, their branches and roots intermingling.

It struck him that he and Claire were two separate line trees planted in a regimented row. They both stood tall, took the wind, and never bent. They'd been planted too far apart and too much had happened between them and to them–to bridge the gap to be able to even start to explore anything deeper than flashpoint sex.

Damian turned away and walked to the edge of the balcony, gripping the balustrade with tight fingers. Maybe Claire's leaving, her breaking it off for good, was as she'd said, what was best for her, him, Garcia Corporation. For everybody involved.

And if that was true then why did he feel like week-old crap?

Hearing George's footsteps he turned his head and saw George approaching him, a bottle of bourbon in his hand. George raised his eyebrows at the broken glass and, without words, handed Damian the bottle. Damian took a hefty sip before dropping the bottle to his side, holding it in a loose grip. By the time Dawn broke, he was going to be best buds with this bottle.

"Where's Jane?"

George leaned his butt against the railing and rolled his head from his side to release the knots in his neck. Damian didn't bother; his knots were now permanent residents. "She went to bed," George replied. He glanced at his watch. "It is almost three in the morning."

"It was a hell of a night." Damian took another hit from the bottle, ignoring his still-sticky hand. He glanced up, saw another jet, and forced himself to meet George's eyes. "I feel like I should apologize."

"For what?" George asked, his eyes and time weary. "You didn't cause Claire's brother to ruin my gala evening."

"Neither did Claire," Damian responded, needing to defend her.

"Tell me about her brother," George said, moving to the sofa and dropping down. He immediately tucked a pillow under his head and propped his feet up on the coffee table.

Ordinarily, Damian would never consider divulging someone else's secrets but this was George, his best friend, and he trusted him implicitly. He also needed George's sharp brain to help him make sense of what was, at this crazy hour, the senseless.

"It's a tangled mess but I'm going to tell you what I do know, from what Claire has told me, along with what my investigator dug up.

"So years ago, Alfred, her brother, liked drugs and alcohol a little too much and hit himself in debt with some unsavory characters. They offered him a job to pay off the money. He became a chauffeur-"

"And he, knowingly or unknowingly, ferried drugs," George finished for him.

George was by far, the sharpest tool in the shed. "Yep. He was busted and was jailed. Via Diego Manuel-Luis, Claire employed the talents of The Fixer-"

George whistled his astonishment. "I've heard of him. He's-"

Damian raised an eyebrow. "Effective?"

"I was going to say ruthless but that works, too."

"Anyway," Damian continued, "he got Alfred's charges, dropped him out of jail and across the country. The kid didn't learn and has raked up another huge gambling debt. A mafia-type organization has bought the debt from the original crew and it's rocked to an impossible sum."

"How much?"

"Seven million dollars," Damian replied. "Several weeks back Claire was told that he'd been kidnapped but that turned out to be BS. Claire's been informed that she needs to repay his loan, but she doesn't have that kind of cash, and they've never called her back, as far as I know."

"Pay it for her, offset it against the cost of the shares you are going to buy from her when she's completed her year-long mandatory stint on the board of Garcia's Corporation," George suggested. "As per the terms of your father's will."

"Claire is hoping that she can delay repaying them until she's sold her shares. She wants to keep me out of the equation. Hell, maybe she's shopping around for a better deal for the shares." The thought of Claire selling those shares to anyone else made his stomach whirl. If she did that, he would no longer have the thin silver of control over Garcia's Corporation as he did now.

"Nobody has given Claire, or Alfred, a firm deadline for the repayment of the debt."

"Weires," George agreed. "So it should be imperative that he keep his head down, even stay out of sight. Then why would Alfred crash a highly visible, live-streamed event?

"What doesn't Claire think?" George asked, after a moment of silence.

"I don't know since she blew me off and hightailed it back to Vegas in Zach's private plane," Damian muttered in his sour reply. He pulled his cell out of his pocket and his pocket and hit the speed dial number that would connect him to Claire. It didn't mean anything that he'd moved his personal assistant, Richard, to number two on his list and Claire to number one. It meant nothing. At all.

Damian listened to her phone ring and urged her to pick up. He needed to know that she was okay, that Alfred was okay, God, that kid hadn't looked, or sounded, good. And he wasn't talking about the bruise his fist made on his jaw. He wasn't quite sure why Zach helped Claire get away from the scene, but he sure was not comfortable about it. Her phone went to voicemail and he dropped a hard "Call me" order into her message system.

Damian placed the bourbon bottles on the coffee table, sat down in the chair opposite George, and rested his forearms on his knees. He released a series of low but intense f-bombs.

"That kind of sums up my feelings about the evening," George commented. "I've been damage control but there's not much spin you can generate when everything is caught on video and then live-streamed.

Damian winced. "How many views?"

"Far too many." George lifted his glass in a sarcastic salute. "I've got to admit, when Claire messes up, she does it properly."

Tossing, from side to side in the Presidential Suite, Damian was angry that Claire was being blamed for how the event ended.

"She didn't know her brother was in town, never had in mind that he was going to do that," Damian retorted.

"So defending her seems to be your default reaction tonight," George commented, hitting the nail on its head.

Damian sent his best friend a hard stare. "What's your point, George?"

"It's been one drama after another with her, starting with the fact that you thought she had an affair with your dad."

"She explained that. My father was her mentor and good friend."

George rolled his eyes. "They had to be very good friends do him to leave Claire a twenty-five-percent take in Garcia's Corporation worth millions.

When George put it like that, all his fears and insecurities about their relationship floated to the surface. Was he being conned? Could he believe Claire's version of what happened? In his final hours, Steven did confirm that there had been nothing between them but friendship and Damian wanted to believe him. But he'd been raised to believe that everyone lies so how the hell could he trust anything they said? Anything anybody said?

He thought he could, at least, trust his parents to some degree but their latest lie had been the biggest of his life. As his father lay dying, he realized that it was scientifically impossible that his parents, with their blood groups, could produce a child with his blood group. Ergo, only one of them was his biological parent or he was adopted. Hell of a thing to realize at the age of thirty-two.

Was it any wonder he was so messed up when it came to relationships?

It was late and Damian was done with talking. He wanted this conversation to end so he told George that Claire wanted nothing more to do with him. Damian caught the look of relief on George's face. "You're happy about that?"

George shook his head. "Happy is the wrong word..." He sat up, swinging his feet off the table. "It's just that relationships shouldn't be this hard, Bud. Over the last few months, you've bought that she's a liar, a gold digger, and an opportunist. You slept with her and then slept with other women."

No, he hadn't. I tried to sleep with someone else to get her out of my system."

George waved his explanation away. "Whatever. She hit the tabloids, dragging you along with her. Those scumsuckers informed the world that she had an affair with your father and that she only slept with Steven to get her hands on the company."

He knew this. He's goddamn lived it. "Do you have a point and are you going to get to it in the near future?"

"My point is that, while I actually like Claire-"

"You could've fooled me." Damian's interjection was bone-dry.

"I do like her," George said. "She's smart, super organized and she's an amazing event planner. Yeah, I'm mad as hell that tonight ended the way it did, but intellectually, I get that it wasn't her fault. But her career did not need this as if she was boycotted before, it's going to be nothing like what's going to happen to her now."

Damian gripped the bridge of his nose. God.

George's long sigh was audible. "But at the end of the day, my loyalty is to you. And, as your friend, I am telling you that I don't think she is good for you because, frankly, you look like crap."

Well, that wasn't news.

"Are you in love with her?"

Damian's head shot up and his eyes slammed into George's. His throat closed as panic crept up. In his snappier moments lately, he'd flirted with the idea of love, but that was just a result of hormones and stupendous sex. No, of course, he wasn't in love with Claire; he didn't believe in love. But he was attracted to her, stupidly so. He croaked a "No."

George stood up and gripped his shoulder. "Can I then just point out that this woman you profess not to live has the innate ability to mess with your head and your life? That's an enormous amount of power for someone you just like to sleep with."

Crap-hell-dammit.

"Go to bed, George."

George smiled for the first time that evening. "Yep, that's where I'm heading. Into the arms of the woman who, instead of messing with my head and life, actually makes my life better and brighter."

Damian glared at his friend as he walked back into the hotel room and thought about returning to his own suite, to the empty kindly-size bed waiting for him. But the night was mild, this sofa was quite comfortable and he had a bottle to keep him company. And really, he had too much in his mind to sleep.

Damian lay back tucked a pillow under his head and watched the light of airlines move between the stars.

Right, exactly what level of hell had she reached?

Claire Bridgewater had experienced hot. Damian Garcia believed that she'd had an affair with his father, and knew what blistering felt like when her face was plastered over the front pages of the tabloid press accusing her of stealing Damian's fortune.

But tonight she'd stood inside the flames, her skin melting.

Now, as Zach Harrison's jet cut through the dark night, Claire felt frozen, her heart encased in dry ice. Maybe true hell was this dead-on-the-inside, will-never-recover feeling.

Claire flopped down into the chair opposite Zach Harrison and eyed her brother through half-closed eyes. A bright blue bruise colored his jaw, and his lower lips were swollen. She loved Alfred, but right now she didn't like him even a little bit. The only man she felt remotely charitable toward was Zach Harrison, who'd offered her a ride out of the nightmare that was her latest professional disaster zone. He was also sitting across from her, ankle in his knee, deep in thought.

Claire swallowed down a groan and felt her stomach cramps. Her reputation, along with her company, had been dancing on the knife edge of ruin for weeks but her brother gate-crashing her most illustrious clients' gala evening and worse, grabbing the mic from singer Jesse Humphrey and placing himself front and center while ranting about rich losers and liars, had pushed her off that silver-thin edge.

And since she would be, if she wasn't already, a person very nongreat by morning, why had Zach Harrison, CEO of Harrison Airlines, rushed to her rescue? He was rich, successful, and gorgeous, so she had no idea why he'd offered them a lift on his plane heading back to Vegas. But she wasn't complaining; she needed to get Alfred back under the radar as soon as possible and Zach had offered her a way out.

Alfred was hunched over in his seat, mumbling to himself. Thank God he stopped ranting, his words and sentences not making any sense.

Claire couldn't pull her eyes off his face. Alfred had been a pain in her ass, especially these last few years, but he was her baby brother; she'd always looked after him. Initially, she'd blamed his actions on a combination of drugs and alcohol, but earlier she touched his left arm and he cried out. Teresa rolled back his sleeve shirt to see a small but distinctive puncture Mark on his forearm. In a place where it would be difficult for him to self-inject. Like so much else about this night, nothing made sense.

But hell, why was she surprised? This was her insane life; everything and anything was possible.

Claire looked from Alfred to Zach and found his eyes studying her. Claire waited for a kick of attraction, for a spark, and sighed when nothing happened. Maybe she wasn't responding to him because she was exhausted and overwrought because Zach was everything she normally found attractive in a man. At six or so, he was tall but perfectly proportioned with wide shoulders, narrow hips, and long, muscular legs. His voice carried the accent of expensive British education, was deep and luscious, and his face masculine and sexy, and his skin the color of old sepia photographs.

But he wasn't, dammit, Damian.

Gah!

As if she'd summoned him, Claire heard the discreet beep of her phone and there was his name, flashing on the screen. Her heart whimpered and her stomach clenched. Nope, she couldn't talk to him, not tonight, possibly never again. For the past few months, since she'd stumbled back into his orbit, she'd felt off-kilter and was constantly uncertain about what she'd face on any given day. She'd been a duck, serene on the outside but paddling like hell under the water. As a result, she was utterly drained on just about every level. Tonight she'd bled out every pint of energy she'd ever possessed.

Claire simply did not know if she'd be able to pick her head up and struggle on. Curling up in a ball and weeping sounded more fun than fighting another day.

She was done. Possibly for good.

Zach cleared his throat and Ckaire lifted her head to see him holding out a tumbler of whiskey. Taking the glass, she glanced at Alfred. He'd fallen asleep, his head between the edge of the sheet and wall of the plane. Tossing back her whiskey, she lowered the glass and met Zach's sympathetic eyes.

"Would you like another?" Zach asked, his words holding the snap of Eton and Oxford.

Claire shook her head. "If I do, I'll collapse in a heap and then you will have two Bridgewaters to deal with."

Claire blew out her breath and gestured to Alfred. "I am so sorry. I know I'm repeating myself, but I don't know how he found out where I was working or what prompted him to-" She hesitated, looking for words. Destroy my career? Embarrass the hell out of me? Bankrupt my business? "-do what he did."

Zach lifted his shoulder in a quick shrug. When he didn't respond, Claire took a deep breath and bit the bullet. "I will absolutely understand if you want to rescind your offer to have me plan your wedding."

Zach stared at her for a long time and Claire resisted the urge to squirm. She wouldn't blame him if he pulled his wedding; he'd floated the offer earlier in the evening, back at the gala, before her carefully planned event went to hell on horseback.

Unbidden, snapshots of the evening jumped into the big screen of her mind. Alfred rips the microphone from Jessie's hand, his incoherent screaming. Damian, bigger and stronger than her lanky brother, tackles him to the ground, his fist connecting to Alfred's face. And all of it is streaming live to Jessie's fans around the world.

Claire placed her hand on her heart and tried to rub the pain away. But nope, it wasn't going anywhere.

Zach tapped a long finger against the Waterford tumbler and shook his head. "Up until your brother's unfortunate interruption, the gala evening, and the weekend, were going well. I'm intelligent enough to see how much work you put into the preparations and how dedicated you are to your job. What he did wasn't your fault."

At the unexpected bite of support, Claire felt her eye sting. "Thank you."

"Let's discuss my wedding."

Claire frowned. It was close to three in the morning, she was exhausted, and, after a crackpot evening, Zach wanted her to talk about flowers and food? Claire slapped back her frustrations. He was offering her a lifeboat as she trod water in a stormy sea.

Okay, then. She'd talk about weddings. "Sure."

Then she realized that she had no idea who Zach was marrying and, come to think of it, was still surprised to hear of his engagement. She'd pegged him as a confirmed bachelor, someone who wasn't interested in settling down. She pulled a smile up onto her face. "Who's the lucky lady?"

Zach stared at her for a moment, his eyes not leaving hers. "You will be informed in due course."

Okay, then. That was a super-weird response. Claire worked hard not to show her shock, to react in any way other than polite acquiescence. Why the secrecy? Wasn't the bride supposed to be part of this discussion? What was going on here?

Her thoughts scrambling, Claire linked her hands around her knees and tried to corral her thoughts. Right, moving on. "Do you have a preference on where you would like to marry? When? How many guests? What's your budget?".

Zach held her eyes when he dropped what Claire hoped would be the last bombshell of the evening. "You have an unlimited budget and I'm offering to pay double your normal fee."

"What's the catch?" she asked, not sure she wanted to know.

Zach smiled. "I need you to organize the wedding of the year so that it can take place in the thirtieth."

"Of what month?" She needed at least six months to prepare; six months was tight but doable.

Zach held her eye and didn't flinch. "I am getting married on the last Saturday of this month, Claire."

Two weeks?

Frick.

Claire held out her glass and nodded to the whiskey bottle. "Can I have another? And, respectfully, are you insane? There is no way I can plan a wedding in two weeks."

Zach pulled out his phone and dialed. "She said she can't do it," he said to the phone on the other line. He then handed her the phone. "He wants to talk to you."