Sarah took a deep breath and pushed her annoyance as far down as she could, until she could feel the familiar knot in her stomach tighten. Why did things have to be so difficult? She had spent seven hours on a flight that she could not afford, to a country hotter than the surface of the sun. The clothes that were perfect for the Baltic Scottish summer she had just left were drenched in sweat and clinging to her, her feet hurt, and now she had to deal with Officious Barbie.
Ten minutes, all she needed was ten minutes to speak to Liam. She glanced at the door. He was thirty feet away.
Screw it. She had nothing to lose. She grabbed her hand luggage and made a dash towards his door. Too late she considered the possibility of security, but of course he would have security—he was worth more than the GDP of a small country. As she reached the door the office was filled with the shrieking of a high-pitched alarm. It blared out in long piercing notes.
“Fantastic,” Sarah muttered under her breath.
Bureaucratic Barbie was two paces behind and closing in quickly. Sarah was definitely going to be hitting the gym when she got back to Scotland; being outrun by a scrawny girl in stilettos was completely unacceptable.
She pushed open the door with the same vigour as a sprinter crossing the finish line of a hundred-metre dash, but without the grace, and more laboured breathing.
She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him. All the air in her lungs left her body with a painful whoosh. It was Liam, only different. She didn’t know what she’d expected but this wasn’t it. She had been so focused on getting a meeting with Liam she had not thought of what it would mean to come face to face with him again after over a decade.
Liam pushed his chair away from his desk and stood. He had changed so much.
Gone was the tall skinny kid, replaced by six feet three of hard muscle. Even through his crisp white shirt she could make out the lines of pecs over a flat stomach. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing tan flesh. His face had changed too. Once upon a time he was never without a cheeky smile, but now his full lips were tightened in a humourless expression. His sandy hair had gone lighter in the desert sun. Soft lines fanned out around his eyes, but they did nothing to soften the sharp angles of his face. Everything about him was encased in a raw masculinity that was as threatening as it was alluring.
“Sarah,” he said. His eyes widened and then quickly narrowed again. If he was shocked to see her again, he was covering it well. But he always had been good at keeping his feelings guarded.
“Mr. McPherson, I am so sorry. Security will be here any minute. I can’t believe she just barged past me,” the secretary shouted as she pulled at Sarah’s arm.
With some effort, Sarah twisted her arm away; the scrawny girl was stronger than she looked.
“I can,” Liam said. If she was not wrong, there was a hint of sadness in his tone. “It’s fine. I knew Ms. Campbell in a previous life. She never did let anything get in the way once she had a notion.” This time the only thing his tone betrayed was antipathy. His voice had become so much deeper and his accent had become so faint, it was almost impossible to place it as Scottish, while hers had become broader and her vernacular more common. It was an occupational hazard of being a drugs counsellor on Salamander Street. No one was going to trust her if she sounded like a private school twit—not that she was. She grew up on the same council estate as Liam, though no one would ever guess that the man in front of her had ever laid eyes on a scheme. He was perfectly polished and in control. For the first time Sarah felt self-conscious about the way she looked and sounded. But why should she be ashamed? It was Liam that changed and turned his back on everyone he knew.
“By that previous life, do you mean the one before you sounded like a toffee-nosed Yah?”
The taut muscles in his jaw clenched and then relaxed again; a smooth smile took shape on his full lips. His gaze darted to the secretary. “Thank you, Gemma. That will be all.”
The woman opened her mouth to speak, presumably to ask who the lunatic he had allowed into his office was, but then snapped it shut and spun on her heel.
“Liam, I need to—”
He cut her off by indicating the alarm that was still blaring. When the ringing stopped he gestured to her to sit down and asked, “What brings you to Dubai, Ms. Campbell?”
Her back stiffened. Ms. Campbell. He could pretend she was nothing to him in front of his staff, but she would be damned if she let him pretend they were nothing to each other when they were alone. A shared history meant something, even if he wanted to pretend it didn’t. “Just wanted to see if Niddrie Nae Socks had got too big for his britches. But I can’t even find him.” She sat down on the leather couch.
“Still the same Sarah, I see. Nice to know life has not softened you any. But it is a long way to come just to take the piss.”
She had to shake her head. She had changed a lot but he wouldn’t know anything about that because he had left her and never looked back. “You never responded to any of my calls or emails.”
“Did you email me? I didn’t get it,” he said, the annoyance written plainly on his tanned features.
“No, it has been a few years.” She was perplexed by his sudden change in emotion. Why would he care if he had missed an email from her? It wasn’t as if he had responded to any.
“And phones have stopped working in Scotland?” he asked dryly. Gone was any hint of emotion. He was all business again, his gaze hard and calculating. She could see how the man in front of her had become one of Britain’s wealthiest exports. She could not imagine it of the Liam she knew, but this wasn’t him. This was a stranger who bore a striking resemblance to the boy she once loved.
“Would you have answered?” she asked.
He stared through her. “Why are you here, Sarah? Is it your granny? Is she unwell?”
She shook her head. “No, Granny is fine. Well, as fine as any whisky-drinking eighty-five-year-old can be. Still smokes twenty a day. I have given up trying to get her to stop. What’s the point at this stage?”
“Indeed.” For the first time, a smile tugged at Liam’s mouth. His whole face softened. He looked younger when he smiled, softer somehow, more like her Liam. “So why are you here?”
Her pulse quickened. In an instant she remembered feelings she had spent years learning to forget. She shook her head. It wasn’t the same person and the sooner she remembered that, the better. He had fooled her once but he would not be getting the opportunity to fool her again. “It is nice to see you too, Liam. Interesting to see your new accent didn’t come with manners.”
“Is it nice to see me?” he asked. His knuckles brushed against her cheek as he pushed back a strand of hair from her face.
Her breath caught in her throat. Her mouth was suddenly dry and it was hard to concentrate on anything past the heat radiating from her core. How could he still do that to her? With a simple touch her body forgot all the hurt and betrayal. It would be so easy to lean into him and see if he tasted the same.
Lucky her heart still remembered.
She pulled her hand away as if she had just grabbed hold of a stinging nettle. “It is always nice to see someone from home that has done well.” She shifted away from him. She needed to put some distance between them. She didn’t need the task of trying to get over him again; once was enough for any woman.
“I don’t suppose you see many of them,” he said simply.
She opened her mouth to protest but he was right—she did not know anyone else from their council estate in Niddrie who had even managed to get off the dole, let alone make something of themselves. She looked past Liam, to the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the sparking cerulean waters of the Persian Gulf. Past the marina, luxury yachts dotted blue horizon. There was no denying Liam had accomplished more than anyone could have ever dreamed. “You’re the only one,” she admitted.
“Why are you here, Sarah?” he asked again.
“I need your help, Liam. I don’t know if I
have the right to ask for anything from you after everything, but you are my only hope.”
A look of terror washed over his face; for a second there was a pained expression that she knew too well, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. He pushed his sleeves up further on his arms and sat down beside her on the leather sofa. “What do you need, Sarah?”
She didn’t know where to start. A decade was a lot of time to cover. She took a breath. “After you left—” No, that wasn’t important. This wasn’t about her; it was about helping Sam. “After uni, I became a social worker.” She stopped for a moment to reflect on the irony of the situation. The last conversation they’d had, they had been planning their future together, and now she was catching him up on the life she had lived without him. “I am a drugs counsellor now at a place called Fresh Start. We are based in Leith but we have clients from all over Edinburgh. It is a small rehabilitation unit...but thriving. We are doing really well... I still don’t know how we managed to get enough funding to open our doors, but we did.” She was rambling now but it was hard to summarise everything that had happened since she had last seen him, since he had left. She clenched her hands together in her lap and pressed her short, ragged nails into her skirt.
Liam nodded and encouraged her to continue.
“My service users mostly have problems with heroin. Not much has changed on that front—still lots of working lassies trying to support their habit on the game,” she said. He flinched at her words and she realised too late what she had said. “Sorry, what I meant to say is—”
He cut her off. “I know what you meant to say. Nothing has changed, nothing ever will. That is exactly why I left.”
“Liam, I am sorry.” It was too late; his demeanour had changed, grown unfathomably harder. His blue eyes were cold as his stare bore down on her, pinning her in place.
“Don’t. That part of my life is over. I made a choice not to wallow in the shit of my childhood. Shame you could not move on from it.” His words were clipped, his tone caustic.
Sarah took a sharp intake of breath; his words stung like a slap. Now it was clear she was not dealing with the same boy she had grown up with. Her Liam would never speak to her like that. Her Liam was sweet and kind.
And gone.
“Look, I am sorry—”
“Just tell me what you need.” He cut her off again.
She took another deep breath. This was where it was difficult. She had to be economical with the facts without lying. Even after everything, she would never lie to Liam. “One of my service users has been arrested here on suspicion of drugs trafficking. No, that’s not right...” She shook her head and started again. “There is no suspicion—he did it. He had just under a kilo on him when he was caught trying to sell to an undercover police officer.” She held her breath as she waited for Liam to speak. But he didn’t. He just stared at her as if he was scrutinising every word, every movement. His gaze fell from her face to her clenched hands.
“You still bite your nails when you are stressed,” he said.
She shrugged. “Sometimes.”
He reached for her hands. His long fingers gently coaxed her palms to flatten against his. Heat radiated through her. Her pulse quickened. He was inches from her. It had been over ten years since he had been this close to her, but the effect was the same. Why did he have to be so handsome? Why did he have to have a mouth she never tired of kissing and hands that felt perfect against her body? No, it wasn’t just that; it was something else, something more primal that drew her to him. They were like magnets drawn to each other, pushing aside everything in their path.
“You are stressed a lot, it seems,” he commented as he lifted her hand and examined her nails.
“I am going to stop once I get this sorted,” she said. She pulled her hands away and pushed them to her sides, away from his reach.
“No, you won’t. You will move on to another cause, another victim. There will always be someone you need to rescue.”
Her back stiffened. Those were the same words he had said when he left. God, she was so stupid. Nothing had changed. He was still the same man who ran when things got tough, just like her dad, and her granddad, just like every other man in her life. “Some of us see a problem and try to fix it. Others run.”
“No, some of us are smart enough to get out.”
She sighed. The trip down memory lane was getting her nowhere. “I just need your help and then I will go back to—what was it you said?—wallowing in the shit of my childhood.”
“If he was involved in drugs trafficking, he should be punished. There are consequences to every decision,” he said pointedly.
She didn’t have time for this. They would never see eye to eye on this or anything else that mattered. Liam always thought addicts should be punished and she saw addiction as a disease. “He doesn’t deserve to die. He could be executed. The punishment doesn’t fit the crime.”
“Perhaps he should have considered that before he started dealing drugs in the UAE.”
“Honestly, Liam, you should know better than anyone—”
He put his hand up to stop her. “Let’s get one thing straight. Don’t ever tell me what I should know or not know. Unlike you, I do not live in my past. If you mention it again, I will have you on the next flight to London. Do you understand?” A chill ran down her spine. His voice was so low she would have struggled to hear him if she were not sitting beside him, yet he made the threat clear.
She nodded. He had changed so much. Liam was impossibly hard now. Once upon a time she could read his face, feel every emotion he felt. There was never a need for words; she just knew. But now everything about him was granite and impenetrable: his body, his face, his feelings. The realisation pulled at her, reminded her how much she had missed him. Even now, after all his betrayal, there were few things she wanted more than to spend another day with the Liam she knew before. She tried for years to forget him but seeing him now made her miss the boy she had known even more because he had not just left her life; he didn’t exist any more.
“Do you understand me?” he asked again.
“Yes.”
“Good. Give me his name and I will make a few phone calls. I can’t promise anything but I will see what I can do to save your latest stray.”
She took a deep breath; relief washed over her. He had agreed to help. She had managed to get him onside without needing to lie to him. But now she needed to tell him. A nagging sense of guilt pulled at her. She should have told him who it was before, but she couldn’t. He would not have agreed if he had known who he was helping, but once Liam made a promise, he honoured it. “It’s Sam.”
“Sam Ashton?” he asked incredulously, the anger etched in his tan features.
She ignored the consuming desire to run, mostly because there was no place to go. She forced herself to look him square in the eyes. “Yes, Sam Ashton.”
“Christ, Sarah.” He ran a hand through his hair and swore. He was silent for a long time, just scrutinising her, and then he asked, “Are you screwing him?”
Her jaw dropped. She was sideswiped by the question. Why would he ask that? It took her a moment for her brain to engage again.
“Are you?” he demanded. His accent had slipped, gone broader.
“Careful—your Scottish is showing.”
“No, if I wanted to sound Scottish I would have said, ‘Right, hen, dinnae tell me you shagged him.’”
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Dirty Little Secrets
Copyright © Kierney Scott 2013
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