Claim Me: A Novel

interesting kitchen sex, it would also undoubtedly burn the omelettes.”
    “I am hungry,” I concede as I pour the OJ and hand him a glass. I take my own with me and go sit at the bar that is attached to the island. It gives me a nice view of Damien looking deliciously domestic. “I didn’t know you could cook.”
    “I’m a man of many mysteries,” he says.
    “I’m a terrible cook,” I admit. “There’s not much point in learning when your mother is convinced that all you really need to eat are carrots and iceberg lettuce.”
    “After my mother died, my father would drag us out to restaurants for every meal,” Damien says. “I couldn’t stand being that close to the man for that long, so I told him that if he expected me to be more competitive, I needed to eat better. Icooked, then took my plate to my room and he took his to the television. Worked out great.”
    “And you learned a valuable skill.” I’m smiling, but my heart is breaking. My childhood had been seriously less than stellar, but at least I’d had Ashley during the years when my mother doled out calories as stingily as free time. Damien had no one except a vile father and an abusive coach. “Did you have friends?” I ask. “When you were competing, I mean. Did you make friends with the other players?”
    “Other than Alaine and Sofia? Not really.” He spoons the cheese, avocado, and mystery food into the omelette, then expertly folds it onto a plate.
    “Tell me about Sofia.”
    His smile is sad. “We had a lot in common. Both our fathers were assholes.”
    “Are we talking friend or girlfriend?”
    “Friend, then girlfriend, then friend again.”
    I nod, greedily soaking up these bits of Damien’s past.
    “Was she your first?” I ask.
    His face darkens. “Yes. But it wasn’t a moment of joy and bliss for either one of us. We were young, and we definitely weren’t ready.”
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up a difficult subject.”
    “It’s okay,” he says with a flicker of a smile that takes the edge off the flatness of his words. “Really.” He takes a sip of champagne, adds some bacon to the plate, then slides it in front of me. “Well?”
    I take the fork he offers, sample a small bite, and moan with pleasure. “This is amazing. What’s in it?”
    “Lobster.”
    “You just happen to have lobster in your fridge?”
    “Sure,” he says, deadpan. “Don’t you?”
    “Not hardly. Apparently the cars, hotels, jets, and chocolate factories aren’t the only perks of being filthy rich.”
    He laughs and I dig into my breakfast while Damien stands at the stove keeping a close eye on his own meal. I’m surprised when my cell phone rings until I see that Damien has plugged it into a charger and left it on the breakfast bar. I consider letting it roll to voice mail, because I am not interested in having the real world intrude. But it’s Jamie, so I answer.
    “Holy fucking crap,” she says, not bothering with the traditional “hello.” “Douglas just came over to tell me that you’re all over the Internet,” she says. “Like I didn’t already know.
Douglas!
” she adds, as if that is the worst affront of all.
    I want to tell Jamie that if she’s so irritated by our one-night stand of a next-door neighbor, then she shouldn’t have slept with Douglas in the first place. But I stay silent. We’ve been over all that before.
    “So it’s really everywhere?” I ask. “I haven’t wanted to look.”
    “Sorry,” she says, her voice thick with sympathy. “Your mom even called me.”
    “You?”
    “Lucky me, huh? She said she was too upset to talk with you yet, but that she—oh, fuck, Nikki. What the hell do you care what she thinks?”
    “I know what she thinks,” I say. “That I’m a disappointment. That I’ve ruined the family name. That she didn’t raise a whore.”
    I can tell from Jamie’s silence that I’m right. Damien is watching me carefully. He doesn’t come to my side, though. I have a feeling he’s afraid I’ll shatter.
    I won’t. Just thinking about my mother—about the fact that she cares more about what the tabloid press says than about what really happened—pisses me off and makes me strong. Well,
stronger
, anyway.
    “So it’s all over everywhere?”
    “Yeah,” Jamie says. “They don’t waste any time. The tabloids, social media, even the legitimate news, too. You get a million dollars from a guy like Damien for posing nude and even CNN is going to be