Читать книгу In the Boss's Arms - Barbara Hannay - Страница 11

HE’D almost killed them. If the nose of the plane had tipped a fraction lower…

He’d almost killed Alice. He’d forced her, against her will, to come on this trip to the outback and then he’d almost killed her.

A blind, suffocating horror hit Liam almost as soon as his feet touched the ground. He felt his knees give way, but somehow he managed to shove the horror aside and stay upright.

It was later that the enormity of their near-death experience really took him by the throat, after the flying doctor left with the sick pilot, en route for Mount Isa Hospital.

Bob and Noreen King plied them with hot, sweet tea and thick corned-beef and tomato sandwiches and showed them to their guest accommodation—cute log cabins, separate as requested, down by a billabong.

It was there, once Liam was alone in his cabin—and he thanked God that he was alone—that he broke down, shaking violently, almost weeping with the shock of knowing how close they’d come. So close to death.

Again.

He knew from guilty experience how very fragile life was, had learned first-hand the heartless ease with which a life could be lost in one moment of recklessness.

All the images he’d tried to suppress came flooding back—the lifeless body and twisted metal. One careless split-second. That was all it took to measure the distance between existence and death. He’d learned that dreadful lesson years ago, when he was twenty-one, but still the guilt lived on.

So close. Today they’d come so terribly close.

The black horror of it crowded in, dragging him down, as it had so many times before.

Hauling off his clothes, he stumbled into the shower and let the warm water pour over him, let the familiar pinprick of fine needles heat his skin. He wasn’t sure how long he was there, sagging against the tiled wall of the recess, but at some point the voice of reason finally began to make itself heard.

The thought gradually sank in that on this occasion no lives had been lost. Today he’d actually saved lives.

He clung to that knowledge. But it still wasn’t enough to reassure him.

A knock sounded on the door of his cabin.

‘Be with you in a moment,’ he called as he shut off the water and reached for a towel. Hastily he thrust his legs into jeans and roughly towelled his damp hair as he crossed the room.

Alice stood on his doorstep, showered and changed into khaki shorts and a cute white top. Her eyes were huge in her pale face, and he realised with a slam of guilt that he’d been too self-absorbed to check how she was coping with the after-shock of their ordeal.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, eyeing his state of undress, his ruffled, damp hair. ‘I’ve interrupted you.’

‘Nothing important’s happening here.’ He flipped the towel over one shoulder.

Just the same, she looked uncomfortable. She lowered her gaze, as if his bare chest bothered her, and he tried to ignore the way the tiny shoestring straps on her top revealed the exquisite perfection of her collar-bones, the way the stretch material hugged her breasts.

She waved a vague hand at the billabong. Their cabins were set on its banks, giving them a pretty view of silky, tea-coloured water almost completely covered by pink water lilies. It was encircled by towering, shady paperbark trees and lush pandanus palms.

‘So what do you think of the guest accommodation on Redhead Downs?’ she asked him.

‘Fabulous setting.’ He watched a solitary white heron fish the opposite bank, its long beak probing beneath the lily pads. Then he stepped back, pushing his door wider open. ‘And the cabins are adequate. Why don’t you come in?’

She looked uncertain. ‘I just wanted to make sure you’re OK.’

‘I’m fine. Come on, come on in.’

It was only when she hesitated again that he remembered. ‘Whoa! Almost forgot. All the drama must have fused my brain. We’re keeping our distance, aren’t we?’

Whose idea had that been? His?

She looked up at him again and this time her gorgeous grey eyes were shiny with tears. ‘I haven’t thanked you properly,’ she said. ‘You were so amazing. I—I don’t know how you landed that plane. It was a very brave thing to do.’

‘That wasn’t bravery. I was working on pure adrenaline. Anyway, what about your first aid? You saved the pilot’s life. The flying doctor said as much.’

She shrugged. ‘My contribution wouldn’t have been much use if the plane had crashed.’ A tear trembled on the end of an eyelash, slipped down her cheek.

Liam reached over and caught it with the tip of his forefinger.

‘Sorry,’ she said, blinking hard and releasing more tears.

‘Don’t be. It’s natural to be upset after a shock like that.’ What a hypocrite he was, pretending to be the cool, nerveless hero.

Alice wiped her cheeks with her fingers and gave a little shiver, and then she hugged herself, rubbing her hands over her bare arms.

Watching her hands, he couldn’t resist asking, ‘You want me to do that?’

She stared at him, her mouth parted, her eyes damp, her lashes spiky and wet. ‘What?’ But then she looked down at her arms wrapped across her front. ‘Yes,’ she whispered so softly he only just caught it. ‘I—I need a hug.’

His breathing snagged.

Once more her eyes lifted, met his and signalled a silent message. Blood throbbed in his veins, pounded in his ears. There it was; the insane chemistry they’d felt on the night they met. The urge he’d been fighting ever since. Now it triggered a violent wanting in him, an echoing tremble in her.

‘Alice, come here.’

She needed no further invitation. She floated through the doorway and into his arms. With his foot he closed the cabin door behind them.

Her body seemed to merge into his, her arms linked around him and her mouth, her sweet, sweet mouth opened to him in a kiss that was one hundred per cent distilled passion.

Liam was already lost. Lost in the need to touch and to taste and to hold her.

‘I’m so glad we’re alive,’ she whispered as she pressed eager kisses over his face.

He knew their emotions were sweeping common sense aside. Alice was overwhelmed by relief and gratitude, he by his desire and his need to blank out dark memories. But as he framed her face with his hands, as her lips parted beneath his, inviting him into her, he knew that he was a mere man, and he’d wanted this woman, had craved her ever since the night they’d met and made love.

Today they’d come face to face with the cruel mystery of chance. They’d been courted by death and had escaped its claws. And now they needed to embrace life. They needed this assurance, this coming together of warm bodies, of wildly beating hearts.

The touch of Alice’s hands on his body made his heart jolt so fiercely it practically wedged in his throat. And her hands were merciless as they explored his shoulders, as her fingers made circles on his chest.

Then the flats of her palms slid down his sides to his hips, to the waistband of his jeans, and he gave up all attempts to justify this pleasure. This was OK. Very OK.

But just as he slipped his hands beneath her top, he remembered.

God help him, he remembered the one thing that couldn’t be overlooked.

‘Wait, Alice. Alice, wait.’ With an anguished groan he closed his hands around hers just as she reached the snap fastener on his jeans.

‘Wait?’ She sounded breathless and embarrassed and she buried her face into his chest.

‘I didn’t bring anything with me.’

Her head shot up. ‘I don’t understand. What are you talking about?’

‘Protection.’ He let out a deep, ragged sigh. ‘We weren’t going to do this. I gave you my word and I deliberately didn’t pack anything, so there’d be no chance of weakening.’

‘Oh.’ She wriggled her hands out of his grasp and pressed them to her bright pink cheeks.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Actually, it doesn’t matter.’

‘Don’t be silly. Of course it does.’

Alice smiled at him. ‘Don’t look so worried, Liam. I’m safe as houses. We don’t need protection.’

What was she implying? That she was on the Pill?

‘I’m not going to get pregnant,’ she said and she forced a careless little laugh.

The brittle, offhand way she said this made her look and sound tough, but Liam could sense vulnerability lying just below the surface. He stepped towards her and reached for her hand.

Watching the way their fingers linked, she said softly, ‘I know pregnancy isn’t the only reason couples use protection.’

‘I’ve—I’ve never taken risks. I would never put you at risk, Alice.’

‘Well, you’re the only man I’ve slept with apart from my husband.’

Was she telling him as clearly as she could that she wanted to take up where they’d left off? The thought robbed him of breath. ‘So you think—’

‘Yes,’ she said, looking up at him with a sweet, shy smile. ‘I think. I very definitely think.’

This time when they kissed it was different. Not just because the kiss was slow and long and lush and warm, but because now they were no longer swept away by dangerously high emotions. They’d taken a step back; they’d had a chance for second thoughts, to think of the consequences. They’d given each other the space to say no.

And they’d both chosen yes.

This time as Liam’s fingertips roamed the silky smooth skin at Alice’s waist his desire was buoyed by a surge of relief. To hell with office politics. He was mad about this woman. He wanted her, and he didn’t care who knew it.

It was late afternoon. The sun was a red ball, hanging hot and low in the west, reaching beneath the branches of the paperbark outside Liam’s cabin and spreading a warm pool of light over the bed where they’d fallen asleep.

Alice woke first. For a while she lay still, thinking about how precious life was, how amazing and unpredictable. And the man whose limbs were entwined with hers was precious, amazing and unpredictable, too.

She suspected that she was in love.

She knew that most people would tell her it was impossible to really love someone on such a short acquaintance. Surely after her experience with Todd she should be more cautious? But she’d never felt like this about Todd. Even before he’d started cheating on her, he’d never really fired her admiration, or her passion.

Liam had. And if what she felt for him wasn’t love it was so close to the real thing she couldn’t tell the difference.

Carefully she lifted his arm and slipped out of bed, pulled on her top and pants and switched on the electric kettle. The sound of the water bubbling to the boil woke Liam and he rolled onto his side and squinted against the shaft of sunlight as he watched her.

‘There are tea bags or instant coffee,’ she said. ‘Which would you like?’

‘I’ll go for coffee, thanks.’

Yawning, he stood, stretched and rummaged in his pack for boxer shorts, while Alice brought their mugs back to the bed and set them on a side-table, then piled the pillows into a comfortable mound and settled herself just so.

Liam sat on the edge of the bed with one leg bent, resting on the mattress.

She handed him his mug, and for a minute or two they sipped their drinks in silence.

‘Why the worried frown?’ Liam asked her suddenly.

‘Was I frowning?’ Alice deliberately relaxed her face. ‘I was thinking about us,’ she admitted.

‘And that makes you frown?’

‘Not really. I was just wondering—’

‘If we should have sex again now or after our coffee?’ Liam supplied with a grin.

Smiling, Alice shook her head. ‘Actually, I was wondering if we’re better at physical intimacy than we are at every-day conversation.’

Liam grinned again. ‘We haven’t had much chance for every-day conversation.’

‘No, we’ve gone about this backwards.’

‘You think so?’

‘Well, normally when a man meets a woman…’ She hesitated. ‘Mind you, I’m out of touch when it comes to dating. Maybe it was only in the Dark Ages that people went out for some time and got to know each other before they—’

‘Leapt into bed?’

‘Yes.’

Liam set his mug back on the little table beside the bed. Her foot was near his knee and he casually wrapped his hand around it. ‘We can always back up a step or two and try the getting-to-know-you part. Although I already know a lot of important things about you.’

‘You think so?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘What kinds of things?’

His long brown fingers played with her big toe. ‘You like green.’

Alice rolled her eyes. ‘And how relevant is that to a relationship?’

‘It’s vital. I might hate green.’

‘But you don’t, do you?’ She regretted the hopeful note that crept into her voice.

‘Green’s fine with me, but that’s only because I have a very liberal attitude to colour.’

‘Does this liberal attitude allow you to have a favourite colour?’

He thought about this and smiled. ‘I’m quite partial to white.’

‘White?’ She grinned. ‘Is that because you’re a Virgo?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps…’

She was about to tease him, but changed her mind when she realised that his smile had turned cheeky and he was paying rather obvious attention to her white top and white silk and lace pants.

‘Now,’ said Liam, playing with her next toe, creating ripples of warmth that swam up her leg. ‘I know you’re only recently divorced.’

‘Yes…well…that’s not my favourite topic. If you like we can skip over that one.’

Liam watched her thoughtfully for a moment.

She didn’t want to think about Todd now, when she’d been feeling so peaceful and happy.

‘You started this, remember?’

‘You’re worlds apart from him, Liam. In every way. In all the best ways.’

He accepted this without comment, although she was sure she saw his neck redden. He moved on to her next toe, circling the ball of it with his finger tip. ‘You spend far too much time reading in bed.’

‘You know that because you saw the pile of books in my bedroom. Not fair. You have an advantage; you’ve been to my house.’

She wriggled her foot in his hand and he tightened his grasp. ‘I didn’t realise this was a competition.’

‘It’s not a competition. It’s just that…’ She sat up, chewing her bottom lip as she struggled to find the right words for the niggle of disquiet inside her.

‘I still feel as if there’s too much I don’t know about you.’

‘Ask away. What do you want to know? You want me to start with my blood group?’

Letting out a noisy sigh, she slumped back on the pile of pillows. ‘Don’t make a joke of this, please.’

He let her foot go. ‘OK. I can see there’s something bothering you, so why don’t you get it off your chest?’

The cabin and the surrounding bush seemed incredibly quiet as he waited for her.

‘Can I trust you?’ she asked.

She could see immediately that her question upset him.

‘I would hope so, Alice. What makes you doubt it?’

‘Well…’

There seemed to be a shadow in Liam’s past that bothered her, but the feeling was so tenuous she couldn’t be sure and it would be nosy to push him when they’d only just met, so she took a more obvious route. ‘There’s the business about Shana.’

His mouth pulled into a guilty grimace and then he reached for her foot again and with his thumb he rubbed her instep. ‘OK, confession time.’ He stroked her skin ever so slowly.

Did he have any idea what that did to her?

‘You’re dead right. I wasn’t completely honest. But you see, when I first asked Shana to come on this trip and she said she couldn’t I was really pleased. It meant I had a genuine excuse to ask you.’ He lifted her foot and dropped a warm kiss in the curve of her arch. ‘You were the right person for the job.’

There was a sound of knocking on the cabin next door, the cabin assigned to Alice. She stiffened and tried to pull her foot from his grasp. Was someone looking for her?

Liam ignored the knock. ‘All along it was you I really wanted,’ he said.

‘I—I see.’ She supposed she should still be angry with him. Problem was, she knew now that she liked being wanted by Liam Conway. She liked it very much, thank you.

There was another knock, on Liam’s door this time.

‘Coming,’ he called, and he dropped one last kiss on her foot before crossing the room to answer it.

He didn’t open the door very wide, but Alice caught a quick glimpse of Noreen King holding a cane hamper.

‘I’ve brought your meals,’ she said.

‘Oh. Wonderful. Thanks very much.’

‘I knocked on Alice’s door, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around, so is it all right if I leave her meal here with you?’ There was no mistaking the curiosity in her voice.

‘Yes,’ said Liam. ‘Yes, that’s fine. I’ll pass it on to her.’ Then he remembered to ask, ‘Do you have any news from the flying doctor?’

‘Oh, yes. They said Joe’s making a good recovery. And he’s been singing your praises to anyone who’ll listen.’

‘He should be singing Alice’s praises. She’s the one who attended to him.’

After Liam had thanked her again for the food, he closed the door and came back into the room. ‘I’d say we’ve been sprung.’ His tell-tale smile suggested that he didn’t mind at all. ‘Now, let’s see what we have to eat. I’m starving.’

Alice wanted to keep their conversation going. Liam had only just started to open up. She wanted to know so much more about him. And at some point she knew she should probably tell him about her problems with infertility.

But Liam was already opening the hamper and she realised that she was hungry.

‘Smells fantastic,’ she said.

They fell on the hamper with the eagerness of children scrambling for cookies after a long day at school. They found a bottle of red wine, a selection of cheeses, freshly baked bread rolls, a crisp green salad and a wonderfully aromatic country-style casserole.

‘Now, this is service,’ beamed Liam. ‘We’ve got to get this property back on our books.’

Alice pulled on shorts and hurried about the cabin’s tiny kitchenette, finding plates and wine glasses and cutlery. ‘There’s a little table and chairs outside. We could eat out there and watch the sunset,’ she suggested.

‘Sounds terrific.’

It was. The setting was perfect. The sky to the west was a riot of red and orange, gilding the surface of the billabong while purple shadows crept across it from the trees at its edge. The food was delicious and the wine mellow. And, to Alice’s surprise and delight, Liam opened up. She wondered why she’d ever worried that they might not find things to talk about.

They talked easily. They talked about Liam’s vision for the company, about the places they’d travelled to and their favourite animals, music, food. They delved more deeply into things they had in common, too, like a fondness for the outback. They discovered that they shared an impatience with having to line up in queues, and, of course, there was their shared birthday.

When Alice raised that topic she fancied she saw a flash of pain in Liam’s eyes and she tried to remember if it was the same emotion she’d glimpsed briefly at the Hippo Bar when they’d first discovered that their birthdays were on the same day.

But like that other time the fleeting sadness came and went so quickly she might have been imagining things, especially when Liam seemed as keen to talk about their birthday as she was.

‘It blows me away,’ she said. ‘Just think. When we were kids, whenever I woke up, all excited on my birthday morning, you were waking up, too. You were looking forward to your presents the same as I was.’ She shook her head, smiling. ‘Back then I was always so proud of being another year older, but I’m afraid that’s going to change from now on.’

‘Now you’ve turned oops,’ he said, remembering.

‘Yes.’ They shared a smile. ‘So, tell me…’ she said. ‘Which was your happiest birthday?’

His eyes held hers. ‘This year’s would take some beating.’

‘Apart from that.’

Hooking an elbow over the back of his chair, he looked out at the thin slice of red-gold sun that glowed like the embers of a fire above the dark hills on the horizon. ‘I’d have to say my eighteenth was the best. I was on holiday at Kirra on the Gold Coast.’

‘Your eighteenth,’ said Alice. ‘I would have been twelve.’ Her eyes widened. ‘Hey! That’s amazing. I was at Kirra then, too. My family went down to the Gold Coast for the September holidays and we rented a beach house at Kirra.’

They stared at each other for a long moment, smiling as they thought about the possibilities.

‘We might have both been on the beach at the same time,’ she said. ‘We might have seen each other.’

She was totally caught up with the romance of it. She could picture Liam on the beach—a tall, dark, bronzed and handsome surfer boy. If he’d seen her then, would he have fallen for her?

Get real. She was twelve. She sighed. ‘You wouldn’t have noticed me, of course.’

‘I’m sure I would have. I bet you were an exceptionally cute twelve-year-old.’

She shook her head. ‘You would have been too busy chasing after the older girls in their bikinis.’

‘I’m noticing you now.’ His blue eyes gently teased her.

Oh, man. Her intense response to the way Liam looked at her knocked the questions she still wanted to ask clear out of her head. Minutes earlier she’d been wondering how the son of a struggling orchard farmer had become the owner of a huge multimilliondollar business, and why, at the age of thirty-six, such a charming, attractive man was still unmarried. And suddenly none of that mattered.

What mattered was the way Liam was looking at her. Todd had never, ever looked at her with that hungry heat, had never made her feel like the most desirable woman in the world.

And Liam’s touch really mattered. Just thinking about the magic of his hands on her body made her skin flame and tingle all over. Liam turned her into a love goddess with his very first caress. Right now, all that mattered was that tonight, all night, she would be sharing his bed.

The sound of Bob King calling to his dogs woke Liam next morning. This was followed by unnecessarily loud banging sounds and then stomping footsteps approaching the cabins.

‘I think our host wants to let us know we have company,’ Liam told Alice as he swung out of bed.

He was dressed and at the door by the time Bob knocked.

Bob grinned at him. ‘I came down to warn you that a pack of journalists are on their way to interview the big hero.’

Liam groaned. ‘They’re not trying to make out I’m a hero, are they?’

‘Of course they are, mate. A charter plane and a helicopter left Cairns five minutes ago, so there must be a mob of them coming. Looks like you’re going to be splashed all over the papers and the telly.’ Bob rubbed his hands as if he couldn’t believe his luck that he was hosting a celebrity.

Liam let out his breath on a noisy sigh. He’d been planning for him and Alice to continue their tour of the outback today but it sounded as if they were going to be delayed. ‘All I did was follow a few instructions over the radio.’

‘You can tell them that, but I reckon they’ll still want to make something special out of you.’ Bob chuckled. ‘Crikey, mate, it’s the truth. You are a hero. It’s not every day that someone lands a plane without even a few basic lessons.’

When Liam came back into the cabin he wagged a finger at Alice. ‘This is your fault,’ he said. ‘Whenever I’m with you I become a media magnet. First the Cairns Post, now national coverage.’

‘Oh, no, you’ve caught me out.’ Alice pouted in mock-dismay. ‘I’ll come quietly, officer. Yes, I poisoned poor Joe the pilot’s food simply so Liam Conway could pull a hero stunt and wind up on the seven o’clock news.’

Liam grinned and then ploughed a hand through his hair as he considered his options. ‘I suppose I could always turn this to the company’s advantage.’

‘Why not?’ Alice nodded as she considered this. ‘You may as well get some free publicity.’

‘During the interviews I could mention the company name whenever possible and I can talk about our plans to revive Kanga Tours’ services in this region.’

‘Why don’t you get them to do the interviews down here by the billabong? That setting would make a great backdrop.’

‘Good idea.’ He crossed the room to look again at the view and the wide expanse of bright morning sky. The lake wore the pink water lilies like a decorative shawl and the encircling trees with their tapering blue-green leaves and characteristic peeling papery bark were stunning.

It was a classic Australian bush setting. The kind of scene that tugged at the heartstrings of city-bound Australians, reminding them of their nostalgia for the outback, luring them away from their theatres and coffee shops to reconnect with this unique, almost primal landscape. The perfect tourism poster backdrop.

‘You’ll have to be prepared for the journalists to beat up the dangers of flying in small aeroplanes,’ Alice reminded him.

Liam turned back from the window. She was sitting in the middle of the bed and she looked adorably, sensationally sexy with her dark curls tumbling about her shoulders while wearing nothing but a sheet. For a crazy moment, he wondered if there was time for him to climb back in there with her before the journalists arrived.

Get your brain into gear. Concentrate on the business at hand.

‘I’ll try to steer the talk away from the emergency and on to why we were flying in this amazing part of the country,’ he said.

‘But you won’t be able to get out of being a hero, Liam.’

The special, dancing light in her eyes pulled at a cord deep within him. For one fantastic moment he could almost believe that he was a hero, her hero. But then, just as quickly, he remembered the grim truth. Liam Conway was anything but heroic.

How would Alice look at him when she discovered that?