Читать книгу Affairs Of The Heart - Rebecca Winters, Jessica Steele - Страница 11

SHE was a mess of nerves.

On Monday morning Philly sat at her desk, responding to emails and organising herself for the day and the week ahead. Walking into the office had been hairy—everyone had been talking about the ball, laughing about the costumes and the night’s revelries.

She’d purposely avoided talk of the ball, hinting at a quiet night at home with her mother—and had waited with breath frozen in her lungs for someone to out her. If anyone had recognised her, this was it. But her colleagues just expressed their sympathies that she’d missed the event of the year and drifted away to talk amongst themselves. Even Sam just grunted and headed off for a meeting with Damien.

Thank heavens Sam had recovered from the flu—she didn’t fancy running into Damien DeLuca right now. She wasn’t at all sure how she would ever face him again.

At least now Sam was back from sick leave and holding the reins again and she could keep a low profile. Sam would certainly make sure of it.

She was mid-sentence in a response to a lengthy email when the phone rang. She propped the phone up to her ear, still typing, with her train of thought still focused on her detailed reply.

‘Ms Summers?’ Damien’s voice belted down the line faster than she could make her own greeting. Her body tensed on a shiver and the phone dropped from her shoulder, landing on the desk with a loud thunk. The noise snapped her out of her temporary paralysis and she grappled for the receiver. Why was Damien calling her?

Did he know? Had Sam recognised her after all and informed Damien of her identity?

‘What the— Ms Summers, is that you?’

‘S-sorry,’ she stammered. ‘The phone slipped.’

She heard something like an exasperated sigh and could imagine the rolling of eyes going on at the other end of the line.

‘Ms Summers, I need you in my office. Now.’

Philly clutched the phone. She wasn’t ready for this. How was she going to explain what had happened? How could she look him in the eye after what they’d done together, the intimacy they’d shared?

She was bound to get the sack over this. She didn’t deserve anything less. How was she going to explain that to her next prospective employer?

‘Are you still there?’

She swallowed. ‘I’ll be right up,’ she croaked.

He slapped the phone down, regarding it critically. What was her problem? He hoped he wasn’t making a big mistake over this.

He turned back to Sam, who was waiting anxiously in the chair opposite, scraping at his fingertips with his thumbnail and looking every inch a man insecure about his position in the world.

Right now Damien knew the feeling. He’d had it ever since the woman dressed as Cleopatra had abandoned him on Saturday night. No one had ever walked out on Damien DeLuca before—that was bad enough. But right now there was a woman out there who’d done even more than that—she’d run out on him and he didn’t even have a clue who she was.

It had only taken him a few seconds to throw his costume back on but by the time he’d done that and raced downstairs there’d been no sign of her anywhere. She’d been swallowed up by the night.

What was her game?

Why had she run away like that? Why had she panicked? She’d had plenty of opportunity to change her mind if she’d so wanted—and she hadn’t wanted—that much was patently clear. On the contrary, she’d been perfectly willing all the way—perfectly accommodating—perfectly inviting.

A perfect fit.

He’d been cheated of exploring that knowledge further. He’d been cheated of seeing how far they could take each other. He’d been cheated of seeing her eyes…

Could it be that she’d recognised him? Was that what had scared her off? Suddenly afraid of being with the company founder and CEO she’d fled? But she hadn’t seemed that obtuse—surely she would have realised when he’d been called away suddenly by Enid, if not before, of his true identity? So why would she suddenly panic later on?

He didn’t like it one bit—the prospect of her knowing his identity when he had no idea who she was or where to start looking for her. He studied the man sitting nervously opposite him.

But Sam might.

When the masks had come off he was sure he’d seen Sam dressed up as a nun. There’d been a nun in the group where he’d first seen the woman standing. He might know. And if Sam didn’t someone else had to. She’d been there for hours waiting for him to return. Someone had to have spoken to her, someone had to know who she was.

‘Sam,’ he said, adding a smile for good measure. ‘Did you have a good time on Saturday night?’

Sam chortled and sat up, eager to please. ‘A great time. Wonderful party. Just wonderful. The staff are very grateful to you—’

Damien held up one hand. ‘Good, that’s fine. But I wonder if you can help me with something.’

‘Anything—name it.’

‘Only there’s someone there I meant to catch up with before the end but I missed her. She was dressed up as Cleopatra. Dark hair, white gown—sound familiar at all?’

‘Too right, she does,’ said Sam enthusiastically before he suddenly frowned. ‘Not sure where she got to, actually—one moment she was there and the next—poof—she was gone.’

Damien felt his pulse kick up. He was on the trail. Hot on the trail. She wouldn’t stay out of his clutches for long. ‘And her name,’ he prompted. ‘Can you tell me her name?’

Sam thought for a moment. ‘She did tell me.’ He looked ceilingwards and scratched his chin while Damien resisted the urge to slam his fist into it. If he thought it would jog his memory the fist would have won hands down.

‘Oh, that’s it. I remember now.’ Sam looked triumphant. Damien tried to remain seated.

‘And?’

‘Marie, from the Sydney office I think she said. Didn’t catch a surname. She was a little bit wary of going in—must have been off-putting, not knowing anybody at one of those things. Awkward when you hardly know a soul. She came in with us but then we lost contact with her.’ He frowned, contemplating his nails. ‘Wonder where she got to?’

Damien knew something of where she’d disappeared to. He’d asked her to dance and at first she’d seemed reluctant but then something had changed and she’d moved like warm chocolate in his arms—soft, luscious and ready to be consumed.

Very ready as it later turned out when he’d returned from his calls. She’d waited for him for way longer than what he’d promised. But she’d waited for him as if she could no sooner forsake the hope he’d return than he could abandon the absolute necessity to get back to her.

Then she’d fallen into his arms and the tension had built between them again. The trek to the boardroom had been an exercise in restraint but he’d made it and she was every bit a willing partner when they’d got there. More than willing, he recalled, as she’d practically invited him to enter her. And he had.

It had been like a dream. The sex had been everything he’d anticipated with the promise of more, even more mind-blowing. And then she’d gone and his evening had turned into a nightmare.

Sam continued to prattle on, openly contemplating where Marie might have gone. Damien ignored him, diving instead for his internal phone directory, scouring the lists. The Sydney office wasn’t large and the name didn’t ring any bells but the way this company was growing there was no way he could keep up with all the new staff.

He made one unsuccessful pass through. No luck. Too fast, he decided, and set his eyes to something less than warp speed as he scanned the lists.

No Marie!

He picked up the phone, oblivious to the stream of consciousness coming from Sam’s direction. ‘Enid,’ he snapped as soon as she answered, ‘have we taken on anyone recently in the Sydney office called Marie? There’s no one on the phone lists.’

He waited the few seconds while Enid responded in the negative before then throwing the phone down in disgust.

‘Are you sure it was Marie?’

‘What? Oh, er…’ Sam thought for a moment before nodding his head. ‘Pretty sure. I tend to take more notice of what people say when they’re such stunners, if you get my drift.’

Damien sent him a look that would curdle milk and watched Sam shrink down in his chair with some satisfaction. He wasn’t entirely comfortable with the thought that every other man in the room had felt the same powerful attraction to his mystery woman. ‘No, I’m not sure I do.’

But what Sam had said bothered him. His mystery woman had chosen a fake name to go with her fake outfit. Now how was he going to find her?

It had to be someone who worked in the company. One of maybe three hundred women. Half of them he could write off as being too old, a good percentage of those left didn’t have the same kind of head turning figure. There couldn’t be more than one hundred who’d qualify. He’d find her, whatever it took. And when he found her…

A tap at the door shifted his attention from Sam.

‘You wanted to see me?’

Miss Brown Mouse stood at the door, looking even more timid than her creature companion as her eyes scampered around the room, settling finally somewhere near Sam.

‘Ms Summers,’ Damien said, turning his mind back to business. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. Come in.’

She took tentative mouse steps across the room, finally lowering herself into a vacant chair alongside Sam. She was wearing the same brown jacket as the first time he’d met her, but this time with matching trousers. They fitted her better than the skirt; at least they gave some sense that she had legs, decent ones by the look, under all that tweed.

For just a second his gaze narrowed, his thoughts scrambling for sense. Surely she couldn’t be one of the one hundred most likely? He looked to her face, pink and shy, her lips tight and her eyes skittering from side to side.

No, no chance. But she might know who his Cleopatra was. ‘Were you at the ball on the weekend?’

She jumped as if she’d been shot but it was Sam who responded. ‘Philly wasn’t there.’

Damien looked from Sam to Philly. ‘Why was that?’

‘Well, you see,’ she said, licking her lips, not wanting to add lying to her list of transgressions, ‘my mother isn’t well…’

He seemed to think about it for a while and then he nodded.

Philly couldn’t wait to get out of there. She wasn’t sure what had just happened here, but it looked as if she’d managed to survive, her secret identity intact.

‘So,’ she said. ‘If that’s all?’ Her hands were already pushing her up out of the chair.

‘No, that’s not all. Sit down.’

She obeyed him, not because she wanted to, but more to do with the fact that her knees had turned to jelly, the exhilaration at her near escape evaporating.

‘I asked you in here because I need someone to work closely on a new project with me. After that presentation you delivered the other week, I figure you’re just the person for the job so I asked Sam if he could do without you for a few days.’

She looked desperately at the man next to her. Surely he wouldn’t let anyone else get an opportunity this good? ‘And Sam said?’

‘Sam said he couldn’t spare you.’

She let go of a breath she’d been holding. Good old gatekeeper Sam—never let someone else get an opportunity you might want yourself. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad supervisor after all.

‘But I told him he had no choice.’

His words were like a punch to her lungs and she scrambled for air in the wake of his announcement.

‘So it’s all settled.’ He turned to Sam and gave him a brief nod and a look that had him dismissed and heading for the door before Damien turned his focus back on her. ‘Enid will arrange to have your work station things moved up here—there’s a spare office just down the hall. We’ve got three days before we have to be in Queensland for meetings at the Gold Coast. We have to move fast on this. It’s an opportunity too good to miss. Palmcorp is a rapidly growing business whose needs have outstripped their current systems. If we get on the ground floor with this company, it will be worth millions to us.’

‘The Gold Coast,’ she muttered. With Damien. She gulped. No, that was the last thing she needed. ‘But I can’t…’

He looked up sharply. ‘Can’t what?’

‘I can’t go with you.’

‘What do you mean?’

I don’t want to go with you!

‘Well, for one thing I can’t just up and leave my mother. I told you. She’s ill.’

‘So who looks after her now, while you’re at work?’

‘No one.’ She noticed the victorious look in his eyes, as if he’d just scored a winning goal in the dying minutes of the Aussie Rules football grand final, and she longed to vanquish it, longed to have the umpire declare it a no goal. ‘But I don’t like to leave her alone at night, just the same.’

‘I don’t want anyone else for this presentation. I want you.’

‘Well, you’re just going to have to find someone else. I can’t go. I won’t go.’

‘I see.’

The grinding of his teeth told her he didn’t see at all.

‘And what’s the other reason?’

She looked up, confused. ‘Other reason?’

‘You said before, for one thing you had to look after your mother. What’s the other reason you don’t want to come to Brisbane with me?’

‘Oh.’ She shrugged as she felt the colour and heat flood back to her face. ‘It’s just a… a figure of speech.’

His piercing eyes continued to assess her, as if weighing up her words, stripping right through the layers of her deceit. But he couldn’t see that far. He didn’t know. He couldn’t know.

She shrugged. ‘What other reason could there be?’

‘Are you worried I might seduce you? Is that what this is about?’

Her lungs sucked in air like a drowning woman coming up for oxygen.

‘Because, let me assure you, there is no chance of that. Absolutely no chance. This is a business deal. I need your professional help, so if that’s what’s worrying you, forget it. Right now.’

Philly battled to regain her mental balance. There he was trying to put her mind at rest. If only he knew! She could ignore the implication that she wasn’t worth seducing if she didn’t have to explain her real reasons for not wanting to go with him.

‘Of course. That’s what I’d expect.’

‘Good. Now that we’ve established that, once I arrange for round-the-clock nursing for your mother, I take it you’ll have no objections to accompanying me?’

His words were framed as a question but the tone he used made them more like a challenge. She opened her mouth to talk but nothing came out.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘That looks like it’s settled then.’

He picked up the phone and started issuing instructions to Enid regarding moving Philly’s office upstairs, arranging their flight bookings and organising a round-the-clock nursing service. She sat there, looking across at him, her blood heating at his complete disrespect of her wishes, not to mention her desires.

She still hadn’t agreed to go with him. How was her mother going to react to having a stranger in the house, even if there was the bonus that she’d have someone to look after her twenty-four hours a day? He hadn’t even given Philly the chance to ask her.

‘How dare you?’ she said, rising to her feet as finally he returned the phone to the cradle. ‘How dare you make arrangements for my family to suit yourself? How would you like it if I went around organising your family, so you could fall in with whatever my plans were?’

He looked up at her, his eyes for once strangely empty.

‘If that pleases you, go right ahead. But you might have some trouble. My whole family was wiped out when I was nine years old.’