The Girl he Never Noticed

by Lindsay Armstrong

  ‘That’s all right.’

  The lift slid to a stop and the doors opened, revealing the Hillier foyer, but for some strange reason neither of them made a move immediately. Not so strange, though, Liz thought suddenly. In the sense that it had happened to her before, in his car last evening, when she’d been trapped in a bubble of acute awareness of Cameron Hillier.

  His suit was different today—slate-grey, worn with a pale blue shirt and a navy and silver tie—but it was just as beautifully tailored and moulded his broad shoulders just as effectively. There was a narrow black leather belt around his lean waist, and his black shoes shone and looked to be handmade.

  But it wasn’t a case of clothes making the man, Liz thought. It was the other way around. Add to that the tingling fresh aura of a man who’d showered and shaved recently, the comb lines in his thick hair, those intriguing blue eyes and his long-fingered hands… Her eyes widened as she realised even his hands impressed her. All of him stirred her senses in a way that made her long to have some physical contact with him—a touch, a mingling of their breath as they kissed…

  Then their gazes lifted to each other’s and she could see a nerve flickering in his jaw—a nerve that told her he was battling a similar compulsion. She’d known from the way he’d looked at her last night that he was no longer seeing her as a stick of furniture, but to think that he wanted her as she seemed to want him was electrifying.

  It was as the lift doors started to close that they came out of their long moment of immobility. He pressed a button and the doors reversed their motion. He gestured for her to step out ahead of him.

  She did so with a murmured thank-you, and headed for her small office. They both greeted Molly Swanson.

  ‘Uh—give me ten minutes, then bring the diary in, Liz. And coffee, please, Molly.’ He strode through into his office.

  ‘How did it go? Last night?’ Molly enquired. ‘By the way, I’ve already had three calls from Miss Pengelly!’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Liz grimaced. ‘I’m afraid it might be over.’

  ‘Probably just as well,’ Molly said with a wise little look in her eyes. ‘What he needs is a proper wife, not these film star types—I never thought she could act her way out of a paper bag, anyway!’

  Liz blinked, but fortunately Molly was diverted by the discreet buzzing of her phone.

  Eight minutes later, Liz gathered herself in readiness to present herself to her employer with the diary.

  She’d poured herself a cup of cold water from the cooler, but instead of drinking it she’d dipped her hanky into it and splashed her wrists and patted her forehead.

  I must be mad, she’d thought. He must be mad even to contemplate getting involved with me. Or is all he has in mind a replacement for Portia? Someone to deflect all the women he attracts—and I refuse to believe it’s only because of his money.

  Things were back to thoroughly businesslike as they went through his engagements for the day one by one, and he sipped strong black aromatic coffee from a Lalique glass in a silver holder.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Have you got the briefs for the Fortune conference?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’ll want you there. There’s quite a bit of paperwork to be passed around and collected, et cetera. And I’ll need you to drive me to and pick me up from the Bromwich lunch. There’s no damn parking to be found for miles.’

  ‘Fine,’ she murmured, then hesitated.

  He looked up. ‘A problem?’

  ‘You want me to drive your car?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘To be honest—’ Liz bit her lip ‘—I’d be petrified of putting a scratch on it.’

  He sat back. ‘Hadn’t thought of that. So would I—to be honest.’ He looked wry. ‘Uh—get a car from the car pool.’

  Liz relaxed. ‘I think that’s a much better idea.’

  His lips twitched, and she thought he was going to say something humorous, but the moment passed and he looked at her in the completely deadpan way he had that had a built-in annoyance factor for anyone on the receiving end of it.

  Liz was not immune to the annoyance as she found herself reduced to the status of a slightly troublesome employee. Then, if anything, she got more annoyed—but with herself. She had been distinctly frosty in the lift before they’d found themselves trapped in that curious moment of physical awareness, hadn’t she?

  She had told herself they would both be mad even to contemplate anything like a relationship—and she believed that. But some little part of her was obviously hankering to be treated… How? As a friend?

  If I were out on a beach I’d believe I’d got a touch of the sun, she thought grimly. This man doesn’t work that way, and there’s no reason why he should.

  She cleared her throat and said politely, ‘What time would you like to leave?’

  ‘Twelve-thirty.’ He turned away.

  The Fortune conference was scheduled for nine-thirty, and Liz and Molly worked together to prepare the conference room.

  It got underway on time and went relatively smoothly. Liz did her bit, distributing and retrieving documents, providing water and coffee—and coping with the over-effusive thanks she got from the short, dumpy, middle-aged vice-President of the Fortune Seafood Group.

  She only smiled coolly in return, but something—some prickling of her nervous system—caused her to look in Cam Hillier’s direction, to find his gaze on her, steadfast and disapproving. Until a faint tide of colour rose in her cheeks, and he looked away at last.

  Surely he couldn’t think she was courting masculine approval or something stupid like that?

  On the other hand, she reminded herself, she might find it stupid, but it could be an occupational hazard of being a single mother—men wondering if you were promiscuous…

  It became further apparent that her boss was not in a good mood when she drove him to the Bromwich lunch in a company Mercedes. The reasons for this were two-fold.

  ‘Hmm…’ he said. ‘You’re a very cautious driver, Ms Montrose.’

  Liz looked left and right and left again, and drove across an intersection. ‘It’s not my car, your life is in my hands, Mr Hillier, and I have a certain respect for my own.’

  ‘Undue caution can be its own hazard,’ he commented. ‘Roger is a better driver.’

  Liz could feel her temper rising, but she held on to it. She said nothing.

  He went on, ‘Come to think of it, I don’t have to worry about Roger receiving indecent proposals from visiting old-enough-to-know-better seafood purveyors either. Uh—you could have driven a bus through that gap, Liz.’

  She lost it without any outward sign. She nosed the Mercedes carefully into the kerb, reversed it to a better angle, then switched off and handed him the keys.

  She didn’t shout, she didn’t bang anything, but she did say, ‘If you want to get to the Bromwich lunch in one piece, you drive. And don’t ever ask me to drive you anywhere again. Furthermore, I can handle indecent proposals—any kind of proposals!—so you don’t have a thing to worry about. As for the aspersions you cast on my driving, I happen to think you’re a menace on the road.’

  ‘Liz—’

  But she ignored him as she opened her door and stepped out of the car.

  CHAPTER THREE

  TWO MINUTES LATER he was in the driver’s seat, she was in the passenger seat, and she had no idea if he was fighting mad or laughing at her—although she suspected the latter.

  ‘Right,’ he said as he eased the car back into the traffic. ‘Get onto Bromwich and tell them I’m not coming.’

  Liz gasped. ‘Why not? You can’t—’

  ‘I can. I never did want to go to their damn lunch anyway.’

  ‘But you agreed!’ she reminded him.

  ‘All the same, they’ll be fine without me. It is a lunch for two hundred people. I could quite easily have got lost in the crowd,’ he said broodingly.

  Liz thought, with irony, that it was highly unlikely, but she said tau
tly, ‘And what will I tell them?’

  ‘Tell them…’ he paused, ‘I’ve had a row with my diary secretary, during which she not only threatened to take me apart but I got told I was a menace, and that I’m feeling somewhat diminished and unable to contemplate socialising on a large scale as a result.’

  Liz looked at him with extreme frustration. ‘Apart from anything else, that has got to be so untrue!’ she said through her teeth.

  He grimaced. ‘You could also tell them,’ he added, ‘that since it’s a nice day I’ve decided the beach is a better place for lunch. We’ll go and have some fish and chips. Like fish and chips?’

  She lifted her hands in a gesture of despair. ‘I suppose nothing will persuade you this is a very bad idea?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he agreed, then grinned that lightning crooked grin. ‘Maybe you should have thought of that before you had a hissy fit and handed over the car.’

  ‘You were being enough to—you were impossible!’

  ‘Mmm…’ He said it meditatively, and with a faint frown. ‘I seem to be slightly off-key today. Do you have the same problem? After what happened in the lift?’ he added softly.

  Liz studied the road ahead, and wondered what would happen if she admitted to him that she had no idea how to cope with the attraction that had sprung up between them. Yes, it might have happened to her for the first time in a long time, but did that mean she wasn’t scared stiff of it? Of course she was. She knew it. She clenched her hands briefly in her lap. Besides, what could come of it?

  An affair at the most, she reasoned. Cameron Hillier was not going to marry a single mother who sometimes struggled to pay her bills. Marry! Dear heaven, what was she thinking? Even with the best intentions and no impediments they had to be a long way from that.

  And, having thought of her bills, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking of them again—that and the fact that she had no other job lined up yet.

  Just get yourself out of this without losing your job if you can, Liz, she recommended to herself.

  ‘I apologise for losing my temper,’ she said at last. ‘I—I’m probably not a very good driver. I haven’t had a lot of experience, but I was doing my best.’ She looked ruefully heavenwards.

  Cam Hillier cast her a swift glance that was laced with mockery. ‘That’s all?’

  She swallowed, fully understanding the mockery—she was dodging the issue of what had happened between them in the lift and he knew it.

  She twisted her hands together, but said quite evenly, ‘I’m afraid so.’

  There was silence in the car until he said, ‘That has a ring of finality to it. In other words we’re never destined to be more than we are, Ms Montrose?’

  Liz pushed her hair behind her ears. ‘We’re not,’ she agreed barely audibly. ‘Oh.’ She reached for her purse—anything to break the tension of the moment. ‘I’ll ring Bromwich—although I may not get anyone at this late stage.’

  ‘So be it,’ he said, and she knew he wasn’t talking about the lunch he was going to miss.

  She hesitated, but decided she might as well cement her stance on the matter—in a manner of speaking… ‘You don’t have to take me to lunch, Mr Hillier. I’d quite understand.’

  ‘Not at all, Ms Montrose,’ he drawled. ‘For one thing, I’m starving. And, since Roger and I often have lunch when we’re on the road together, you don’t need to view it with any suspicion.’

  ‘Suspicion?’

  This time he looked at her with satirical amusement glinting in his blue eyes. ‘Suspicion that I might try to chat you up or—break down your icy ramparts.’

  Liz knew—she could feel what was happening to her—and this time nothing in the world could have stopped her from blushing brightly. She took refuge from the embarrassment of it by contacting the Bromwich lunch venue.

  The restaurant he took her to had an open area on a boardwalk above the beach. They found a table shaded by a canvas umbrella, ordered, and looked out over the sparkling waters of Sydney Harbour. They could see the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge.

  And he was as good as his word. He didn’t try to chat her up or break her down, but somehow made it possible for them to be companionable as they ate their fish and chips.

  He was so different, Liz thought, from how he could be at other times. Not only had he left the arrogant multi-millionaire of the office behind, but also the moody persona he’d been in the car. He even looked younger, and she found herself catching her breath once or twice—once when an errant breeze lifted his dark hair, and once when he played absently with the salt cellar in his long fingers.

  ‘Well…’ He consulted his watch finally. ‘Let’s get back to work.’

  ‘Thanks for that.’ She stood up.

  He followed suit, and for one brief moment they looked into each other’s eyes—a searching, perfectly sober exchange—before they both looked away again, and started to walk to the car.

  Liz knew she was to suffer the consequences of that pleasant lunch in the form of a yet another restless night.

  Not so Scout, though. She was still bubbling with excitement at what she’d seen at the zoo, and she fell asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow.

  Liz dropped a kiss on her curls and tiptoed out. But when she went to bed she tossed and turned for ages as flashes of what had been an extraordinary day came back to haunt her.

  Such as when that light breeze had ruffled his hair and it had affected her so curiously—given her goosebumps, to be precise. Such as when he’d played absently with the salt cellar and she’d suffered a mental flash of having his hands on her naked body.

  I’ve got to deal with this, she told herself, going hot and cold again. I don’t think I can get out of this job without affecting my rating with the agency, and without having to take less money—which would play havoc with my budget. I’ve got to think of Scout and what’s best for her. A brief affair with a man who, if you go on his present track record, doesn’t appear to be able to commit? Not to Portia Pengelly, anyway, and that means he was using her—he more or less admitted that.

  I’ve got to remember what it felt like to find out I’d been used, and to be told an abortion was the only course of action in the circumstances…

  She stared into the darkness, then closed her eyes on the tears that came.

  She resumed her monologue when her tears subsided. So, Liz, even if you are no longer the Ice Queen you were, you’ve got to get through this. Don’t let another man bring you down.

  She was helped by the fact that Cam Hillier was away for the next couple of days, but when he came back she still had two weeks left to work for him.

  He seemed to be in a different mood, though. Less abrasive—with her, anyway—and there were no double entendres, no signs that they’d ever stood in a lift absolutely mesmerised by each other.

  Had he made it up with Portia? she wondered. Did that account for his better mood? Or had he found a replacement for Portia?

  Whatever it was, Liz relaxed a bit, and she did not take exception when they got caught in a traffic jam on the way to a meeting, and to kill the time he asked her about her earlier life.

  It was a dull day and had rained overnight. There was an accident up ahead and the traffic was hopelessly gridlocked. There was a helicopter flying overhead.

  ‘It must be a serious accident,’ Liz murmured. ‘We could be late.’

  He switched off the motor and shrugged. ‘Nothing we can do,’ he said, with uncharacteristic patience. ‘Tell me how you grew up?’

  Liz pleated the skirt of the red dress she wore with a light black jacket, and thought, Why not?

  ‘Uh…let’s see,’ she said reflectively. ‘My father was a teacher and very academic, whilst my mother…’ She paused, because sometimes it was hard to sum up her mother. ‘She’s this intensely creative person—so good with her hands but not terribly practical.’

  She smiled. ‘You wouldn’t have thought it could work between them, but it d
id. She could always liven him up, and he could always deflect her from her madder schemes. As a teacher, of course, he was really keen on education, and he coached me a lot. That’s how I came to go to a private school on a scholarship. I also went to uni on scholarships. He—’ She stopped.

  ‘Go on,’ Cam murmured after a few moments.

  She cast him an oblique little glance, wondering at the same time why he was interested in this—why she was even humouring him…

  ‘I used to think I took more after him—we read together and studied things together—but lately some of Mum has started to shine through. She’s an inspired cook, and I’m interested in it now—although I’ll never be the seamstress she is.’

  ‘So how did you cope with getting your degree and being a single mum?’ he queried. ‘Simple arithmetic suggests Scout must have intervened somewhere along the line.’

  Liz looked at his hands on the steering wheel and switched her gaze away immediately. Was this just plain curiosity, or…? But was there any reason not to give him the bare bones of it anyway?

  ‘It was hard work, but in some ways it kept me sane. It was a goal I could still achieve, I guess—although I had to work part-time.’ She paused and looked rueful. ‘At all sorts of crazy jobs at the same time.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I was a receptionist in a tattoo parlour once.’ She looked nostalgic for a moment. ‘I actually got a bunch of flowers from a group of bikies I came to know there when Scout was born. Uh—I worked in a bottle shop, a supermarket. I did some nanny work, house cleaning.’

  She stopped and gestured. ‘My father had died by then—he never knew Scout—but I was determined to get my degree because I knew how disappointed he would have been if I hadn’t.’

  ‘How did you get into this kind of work?’

  Liz smiled. ‘I had a lucky break. One of my lecturers had contacts with the agency, and a good idea of the kind of replacement staff they supplied. She schooled me on most aspects of a diary secretary’s duties, my mother set me up with a suitable wardrobe, and voilà!—as they say.’