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his feet, pul ing her up with him. Her heart started gal oping. He dropped her hand and she thought he meant to draw her into an embrace. The yearning for it inside her swamped any cautious thought she might have had.
    She heard his sharply indrawn breath, saw his broad chest lift, expand, and looked up to find his head bent towards hers. His hands clamped around her upper arms.
    His gaze fastened on her mouth. Her own pent-up breath parted her lips. Anticipation kicked through her mind, scattering al her wits. He was going to kiss her. Johnny El is was going to kiss her.
    But he spoke instead.

    ‘I always used to think of you as my little sister, Megan.’
    No-o-o-o… The silent scream reverberated around her head.
    ‘If you could think of me…as your big brother…standing by you…’
    No…no…no!
    ‘…I think your father would like that.’
    Rebel ion cried this had nothing to do with her father.
    Nothing!
    ‘You should go to bed and try to rest now,’ he said, his smile a twist of brotherly caring. And he dropped a kiss on her forehead. ‘Goodnight, Megan.’
    He released her arms, backed off, turned, and headed across the lawn to the guest wing which housed his room.
    She clenched her hands, the urge to fight, to hurl herself after him and beat out every shred of brotherly feeling, was barely containable. Pride forced her to hold stil . Common sense directed her to go to her own room, shut the door and wait until tomorrow.
    Tomorrow she would show him she was a woman, not a little girl. Her femininity would not be neutered by men’s clothes. As for her hair…
    She would show him.
    No way was she going to let him pigeonhole her as his little sister!

CHAPTER SIX
    JOHNNY was total y stunned by Megan’s appearance the next morning. Not only was she wearing a curve-hugging black suit with a flirty little fril at the bottom of her skirt—drawing attention to the feminine shapeliness of her calves, fine ankles, and feet shod in sexy black high heels—but her hair was…positively mesmerising.
    Al throughout breakfast he could not stop looking at it.
    Usual y she wore it in pigtails or scaped into a knot, tightly confined, with a hat crammed over it more often than not.
    He could not remember ever seeing it like this—lustrous red-gold waves springing softly from her head, cascading into curls that bounced al uringly around her shoulders. It looked so vivid against the paleness of her skin, and formed an amazingly rich, sensual contrast to her sombre attire.
    Her face seemed different, too. Maybe it was the startling beauty of her hair framing it, or the subtle touches of make-up—brows pencil ed a shade darker, a smoky shadow applied to her eyelids, enhancing the shape and size of her eyes, lending a more feminine mystique to their sharp directness, and the red-brown lipstick certainly added an enticing lushness to her mouth. He had imagined she could look quite striking if she tried. He simply wasn’t prepared for…stunning!
    She wore a double strand of pearls around her throat.

    They looked like the pearls he’d chosen for her twenty-first birthday. A grown-up necklace he’d thought at the time, something real y good to commemorate her coming of age, Patrick’s youngest daughter. He’d bought them in Broome, Picard pearls, the best in the world. He’d meant to present them himself at Megan’s birthday party, but Liesel—leaving her had been impossible just then.
    Seven years since Megan had turned twenty-one.
    He’d sent the pearls and forgotten about them.
    There had been Liesel’s death…and al the promise of her talent lost.
    Now Patrick’s death.
    He should be thinking of the man, not his daughter.
    Johnny tried to keep his mind focussed on paying his last respects to Patrick Maguire. Yet even at the funeral service his attention was split. Megan sat beside him and every time she bent her head he was distracted by the rippling flow of her hair, the scent of it reminding him of fresh