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.’
THE words hung between them like lead weights in the still air of the climate-controlled office, the hum of his laptop the only sound.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, standing there awkwardly, unsure whether to stay or leave.
‘Don’t be,’ he said without looking up. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘No, I mean…’ Her hands found each other, together they wrestled for the right words. ‘I mean—’
‘Forget it,’ he said with a sweep of his hand, as if it meant nothing to him. ‘We’ve got a lot to get through today so I suggest you get yourself organised. I want you back here in half an hour so we can get started.’
Fine, she thought, whatever you say, her compassion evaporating at his dry tone. She nodded though she was sure he didn’t notice; his head was