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?’