The Italian Boss's Secret Child(9)

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?'