dress she wore looked more like a coffee-coloured sheath, so hugging in the bodice that the tiny diamanté shoestring straps must be there purely for adornment, the floaty skirt constructed in separate panels wafting around her legs as she walked so that with every step the panels shifted slightly, revealing an ever changing and tantalising glimpse of flesh.
She’d put up her hair in a clasp but he could see the odd tendril floating free, bouncing as she moved towards him, and she’d done something with her face. Make-up? Whatever it was, her eyes looked bigger, her smile looked wider and her lips…
Red and lush, her lips looked like an invitation.
He swallowed. What had happened to his little brown mouse? Not that he didn’t approve—she’d obviously made the most of the allowance he’d supplied for just that purpose—it was just that he hadn’t been expecting such an amazing transformation.
Such an alluring transformation.
Dinner was fun. Stuart and Shayne Murchison, the directors of Palmcorp, were a dynamic pair in their late twenties, as attractive as they were successful. Both shared the same tanned good looks, with blue eyes and hair bleached by too much sun and surf from the regular iron-man competitions they took part in, competing as much against each other as the clock.
They were also very good hosts, treating their guests to a fabulous seafood dinner on a restaurant terrace overlooking the beach, entertaining them with anecdotes from their long history of competitions and all the while arguing incessantly as to who was the fastest swimmer or could catch the best waves.
‘So why aren’t either of you married?’ she asked, partly for fun, partly curious that neither of the men had been snapped up.
‘Ah, that’s easy,’ said Stuart.
‘No one’s ever been able to swim fast enough to catch us,’ finished Shayne, and the brothers laughed as if it was an all too well practised line.
‘But,’ Stuart offered, his eyes glinting wickedly at Philly’s, ‘that doesn’t mean we’re not still looking.’
As she laughed her way with them Philly felt the tension of the last few days slipping away. She hadn’t enjoyed herself so much for ages. Knowing her mother was being well taken care of, and in her new clothes under the sails of a sunny terrace just a stone’s throw from the sparkling blue ocean, she felt a new woman. Certainly to be the only woman at a table of such good-looking men was a novelty. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea coming on this trip after all.
All three men turned heads in the restaurant, making her the object of envy from the waitresses and plenty of the guests besides, but even though all were good-looking there was no argument in Philly’s mind as to just which man dominated the proceedings. The brothers were ultrafit and no weaklings, yet Damien, all dark brooding looks and latent power inherent in his every move, dwarfed them with his sheer presence.
Her eyes settled on him now as he quietly allowed the brothers full rein at being hosts. Only the scowl between his dark brows betrayed him. No doubt he’d be thinking about the meetings to come, wheels spinning as he developed plans and devised tactics to close the deal.
He turned suddenly and snagged her eyes with a look that sparked and flared and she jerked her head away sharply, feeling caught out, not understanding the sudden aggression in his eyes and trying to focus back on the conversation with a face that bore the heat from his gaze.
‘Tell me about your name.’ Stuart Murchison leaned closer, clearly oblivious to her discomfiture, one arm at the back of her chair, his body turned to hers, his other hand swirling what was left of his glass of premium Hunter Valley shiraz. ‘Philly. That’s so unusual. There must be a story behind it.’
Damien bristled as he glared at Stuart’s back. Okay, so the dinner had gone well, the whole day had gone well, and with a pinch of luck tomorrow Palmcorp would sign on the dotted line, but that didn’t mean his assistant was up for grabs. She wasn’t part of the deal. Sure, he’d wanted her to look presentable, had even supplied her with the funds to do so. But did she have to have done it quite so successfully?
He stirred his coffee longer than was absolutely necessary and discarded his spoon with a solid clink. The sooner this night ended the better.
Alongside him, Philly smiled in response to Stuart’s question and took a sip of her mineral water.
‘This is probably going to sound really silly…’
‘Of course it won’t,’ said Stuart, stroking her shoulder, ‘you can tell us.’
Damien resisted the urge to growl, instead focusing on Philly’s response.
She cradled the glass between her two hands on the table and smiled. ‘Okay then. My parents wanted to give their children names that were a bit different. They decided on the names of cities that they liked the sound of.’ She looked from the face of one brother to the other. ‘Oh, gosh, that does sound weird, doesn’t it, especially seeing no one but my mother calls me Philadelphia anyway. It always gets shortened to Philly.’
‘Not at all,’ Shayne said, shaking his head. Stuart put down his glass. ‘So they named you Philadelphia?’ He nodded. ‘Yeah, I like it. So what did your folks call the other kids—Melbourne—Paris—Constantinople?’
Even from where he was sitting Damien sensed the change in her as she ignored the light-hearted banter, her eyes focusing on the glass between her hands. ‘There was only one other. My kid brother. They named him Montreal.’
‘Montreal. That’s unusual,’ said Stuart.
‘I know.’ She smiled softly, letting her head fall to one side. ‘He hated it so we call him—’ She hesitated, suddenly biting down on her bottom lip. ‘We used to call him Monty instead.’
There was a quiet resonance in her words that went way beyond what was spoken.
‘What happened to him?’ Damien asked softly, before he’d realised he’d even put voice to his question.
Her eyes were fixed on the glass, her thumbs stroking away the condensation forming and reforming on the outside.
‘He was a pilot, flying home for the weekend with Annelise, his wife, to show off their new baby son. They’d named him after our father—he died ten years ago and mum was so proud that they’d named the baby after him. She couldn’t wait to meet her first grandchild.’ She took a breath, as if unwilling to give voice to what came next for fear it would be true.
‘There was a storm en route and something went wrong; they think a lightning strike took out the electrical system.’ She shrugged. ‘Whatever. The plane crashed and they all…every one of them. They all died.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Thomas was just ten days old.’
Forces shifted inside him as the silence that followed blanketed the table. The quiet emotion of her words betrayed a feeling he recognised, a feeling buried deep inside.
But it was a feeling he didn’t want to be reminded of. He didn’t want to pull it out and examine what it meant. It was better off left exactly where it was.
Philly looked up at the faces around the table. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, you didn’t want to hear all that. Please forgive me.’
Stuart was the first to react. His arm shifted from the chair back to around her shoulders and he gave her a squeeze, putting his wineglass down so he could cover her hands in his. ‘Don’t apologise,’ he said softly. ‘There’s absolutely no need.’
She smiled up at him, her lashes moist, eyes glistening. ‘Thank you, Stuart.’
‘Call me Stu,’ he said, his voice low and sympathetic. ‘All my friends do.’
Her smile widened. ‘Thank you, Stu.’
Damien pushed himself out of his chair. ‘Time to call it a night. Thank you, gentlemen. We’ll see ourselves back to the hotel.’
Philly looked up,