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Lizzy moistened her lips surreptitiously. ‘That was just because I wanted an interview,’ she said, raising her voice above the bumping and thumping of her heart.
She wished he would let her hand go, but when she tried to pull it away Tye’s grip tightened. ‘It worked,’ he said, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes as he drew her inexorably towards him, ‘but this time let’s kiss because we’re pleased to see each other.’
It was just like the wedding, only this time it was Tye who made the first move, Tye whose lips brushed the edge of her mouth and lingered against her cheek.
To anyone watching it must have seemed the coolest of kisses, but Lizzy’s senses were drumming beneath her skin, preternaturally alert to the smell of his hair, to the touch of his lips, to the feel of his cool, masculine skin, and she was suddenly overwhelmed by an inexplicable urge to lean into him, to turn her head and let their mouths meet, so that they could kiss just as they had kissed before.
For one dizzying moment she was sure that Tye was going to do just that, and she closed her eyes, bracing herself against the terrifying jolt of response, but after the tiniest of hesitations Tye lifted his head and let her go.
A polite kiss, a mere grazing of cheeks; that was all it had been. Lizzy’s eyes snapped open and her cheeks burned with a mixture of disappointment and fury at her own foolishness in thinking it might have been anything else.
Had Tye guessed how close she had come to making a complete idiot of herself? Lizzy slid a glance at him from under her lashes, but his expression was impossible to read. He looked as sardonic and indifferent as ever, she thought with a spurt of resentment. If the touch of their cheeks had set his senses spinning, he was giving absolutely no sign of it.
‘Come,’ said Tye, taking her arm. ‘We’ll have a drink before we go.’
He steered her towards a bar that was discreetly hidden behind lush potted palms, and Lizzy, burningly aware of the touch of his hand against her bare arm, let herself be led. Her legs felt ridiculously unsteady and she was glad to sink down into one of the plush armchairs.
A barman materialised in response to Tye’s barely lifted finger. ‘Champagne,’ ordered Tye without even looking at him.
‘Certainly, sir.’
‘Champagne?’ Lizzy made an enormous effort to pull herself together. Cool and professional, right?
Right.
‘What are we celebrating?’ she asked, hoping that she sounded like the kind of person who was only ever interviewed over a glass of champagne.
‘The fact that you came.’
Lizzy stared at him. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting him to say. Perhaps a billion-dollar deal closed, or a rival company crushed. Anything except what he had said.
Belatedly aware that her jaw was hanging open, Lizzy snapped her mouth shut. ‘Did you think that I wouldn’t?’ she asked cautiously.
Tye seemed to consider the matter. ‘I wasn’t sure,’ he said eventually.
‘I wouldn’t have kissed you if I hadn’t really wanted you to consider me for the job,’ Lizzy pointed out, and was then afraid that it might seem as if she was protesting just a little too much.
‘True.’ Tye was unperturbed by her unflattering motives. ‘But I did wonder if you might have changed your mind once I’d left. There must have been plenty of people there trying to persuade you that it would be a terrible mistake to have anything to do with me. Or are you going to tell me that nobody noticed the affectionate farewell you gave me?’
‘They noticed all right,’ said Lizzy with feeling, remembering the moment when she had turned from the woolshed doors to face the avid or outraged stares. ‘Mum wasn’t very pleased.’
That was understatement of the year. Her mother hadn’t actually seen the kiss, but she had heard plenty about it and she had been appalled.
‘It was bad enough him turning up at the wedding at all, without you kissing him! What on earth possessed you to make such an exhibition of yourself?’
‘I felt sorry for him,’ Lizzy had said.
She had been strangely reluctant to admit the truth about that kiss. If she’d told her mother that she had had to kiss Tye to get him to consider her for a job, it would only have added to his reputation, and that was bad enough as it was. Lizzy couldn’t think of any good reason why Tye’s reputation should matter to her; she just knew that she didn’t want to be responsible for blackening it any further.
‘Sorry for Tye Gibson? You must be the first person ever to feel that!’
That was probably true, Lizzy had thought wryly. It wasn’t easy to pity a man like Tye. He was too tough, too competent, too indifferent to what people thought of him.
‘He wasn’t exactly made to feel welcome,’ she’d tried to explain to her mother. ‘I felt as if I ought to make an effort to talk to him. We did invite him, after all.’
‘That was your father’s fault,’ her mother had grumbled. ‘Why did he come, anyway? He didn’t talk to anyone except you.’
‘Maybe that’s because nobody except me bothered to talk to him,’ Lizzy had said with a shade of defiance, even as she’d wondered what on earth she was doing defending Tye Gibson.
‘Nobody except you would have thought they had to fling themselves into his arms just to be polite!’ her mother had retorted, clearly baffled by Lizzy’s behaviour. ‘It’s absolutely typical of you, Lizzy! You always go too far!’
Lizzy had given up then. She did feel a little guilty about having caused a scene at Ellie’s wedding, but it wasn’t as if she had hurt anyone’s feelings. And she certainly didn’t feel guilty enough to give up her best chance yet of a real job.
Muttering vaguely about the possibility of a job in Sydney as she’d left, Lizzy had prudently kept Tye Gibson’s name out of it. Her mother would have a fit when she heard, but Lizzy would deal with that when—if—she got the job.
‘She doesn’t approve of me?’ Tye broke into her thoughts. It was more of a statement than a question.
Her mother’s words rang in Lizzy’s ears: ‘That Tye Gibson is no good! He never was and he never will be! He broke his poor father’s heart, Lizzy, and he’ll break a lot more hearts before he’s finished, you mark my words. Don’t you have anything to do with him!’
‘Well…not really,’ she said cautiously.
‘Good,’ he said coolly. ‘I have to confess when I met you at your sister’s wedding I thought you would be too nice. I had you down as the kind of person who has to be liked, but if you’re prepared to meet me again in the face of family disapproval, that means you’ve got what it takes after all.’
Lizzy couldn’t imagine anyone else being pleased to hear that they were thoroughly disliked. ‘It means I need a job,’ she told him honestly.
‘I know.’ Tye leant forward and looked straight into her puzzled blue eyes. ‘I’ve got a feeling that it also means you could be just the girl I’m looking for!’
CHAPTER THREE
THE look in his eyes was making Lizzy’s heart pound, and she could feel herself blushing. Don’t be an idiot, she told herself fiercely. He’s talking about a job. He’s not interested in you.
‘Great,’ she said with an unconvincing smile.
To her relief, the barman arrived just then with an ice bucket. He set it down on the table between Tye and Lizzy, and her eyes widened at the label on the bottle as he drew it from the ice and eased out the cork with a subtle, extremely expensive pop. If this was the champagne Tye was used to drinking, it was no wonder he had turned up his nose at what had been served at Ellie’s wedding!
Tye waited until the barman had poured two glasses, settled the bottle back on the ice and disappeared as noiselessly as he had arrived. He leant forward and picked up his glass, chinking it against Lizzy’s.
‘Here’s to a successful partnership!’ he said.
Partnership? Did he say partnership? Lizzy stared at him. ‘You mean I’ve got the job?’ she asked incredulously.
‘If you want it,’ said Tye carefully.
Did she want it? Did a drowning man want a lifebelt? Lizzy laughed.
‘I want it,’ she assured him gaily. ‘Oh, this is fantastic! Thank you!’ She beamed at him as they chinked glasses again, her blue eyes sparkling with delight. ‘I can’t tell you what a relief it is,’ she babbled on, all smiles as she settled back into her chair, able to relax at last. ‘I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever find another job!’
To think that she had been contemplating that advert for a waitress in the local café, and now here she was being offered a job with GCS! Lizzy’s mind raced ahead to the future. Working for such an international company, there were bound to be opportunities for travel, weren’t there? Lizzy pictured herself armed with a battery of mobile phones and an electronic organiser, jumping on and off planes, dashing around New York and…And what?
Her careering fantasy screeched to a halt as she realised that she still had no idea at all of what the job entailed. ‘Er…what exactly is this special project you want me for?’ she asked Tye.
He hesitated. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said at last. ‘And very sensitive. I don’t want to say any more until I’m sure that I can trust you.’
Lizzy’s rocketing spirits collapsed. ‘You mean, you might not want me after all?’ she said, unable to keep the disappointment from her voice. Surely he had said that the job was hers if she wanted it?
Tye looked at her, the corners of his mouth lifting in a slight smile. ‘Oh, no, I want you all right,’ he said. ‘But you might change your mind when you know what’s involved, and I don’t want to explain that just yet. Do you mind?’
Lizzy didn’t think that she was in any position to mind. ‘Well, no, of course not,’ she said, completely mystified.
What on earth was he going to ask her to do? The obvious suspicion flickered across her mind, only to be dismissed. A man like Tye didn’t need to pay women to sleep with him, and anyway, judging by those whose names had been linked with his in the gossip columns, she wasn’t exactly his type. He seemed to like his women dark and exotic, and she could hardly be described as either. She was too blonde, too normal.
Too nice.
Lizzy looked at the tiny bubbles drifting lazily upwards in her glass and sighed.
‘I’m sorry if it seems unreasonable,’ said Tye, misinterpreting her expression, ‘but you’ll understand later why I don’t want to put all my cards on the table right now.’
‘Can’t you say anything about it?’ Lizzy pleaded. ‘At least tell me if it’s a PR job!’
‘I think you could say that,’ he conceded.
‘Doesn’t GCS have a PR department already?’
Tye frowned down into his champagne. ‘This isn’t to do with GCS,’ he said, and then lifted his eyes to meet Lizzy’s confused blue gaze. ‘It’s to do with me.’
‘I see,’ she said, although she didn’t.
‘Look,’ he said, raking a hand through his dark hair in a gesture of frustration, ‘let’s start again, shall we? We’ll treat this as an ordinary interview, and I’ll explain everything later.’
‘All right,’ said Lizzy in some relief. She knew where she was with an interview. ‘Not that most ordinary interviews are conducted over champagne like this!’ she couldn’t resist adding with a glance at the bottle.
Tye shrugged. It was clearly your common-or-garden everyday champagne as far as he was concerned. ‘I thought if we had a drink together, and dinner, it would be a good way to find out more about you,’ he said with an edge of impatience. ‘We can go back to the office and sit on either side of a desk if you’d prefer.’
‘No, no, this is fine!’ said Lizzy hastily. She put her glass on the table, sat upright, smoothed her dress down over her knees and looked expectantly at Tye. ‘Where do you want me to begin? With my last job?’
‘No.’ Tye waved her precious work experience aside. ‘I’m more interested in your personal background.’
‘But you know all that,’ she objected.
‘Do I? I know you grew up in the outback but live in the city. I know that you’re very sociable, and that you have a very…’ He paused, searching for the right word. ‘A very individual taste in shoes,’ he decided. ‘But that’s about it. There must be more to you than that.’
God, yes, there must, thought Lizzy, racking her brains to think of something else to convince him that she was really a complex and interesting personality. A sociable, city-dwelling shoe-lover. All true, but it did make her sound a bit superficial.
‘I like reading,’ she said lamely, although she really preferred a good movie, or an afternoon’s shopping.
She could see from Tye’s face that he was not impressed. ‘Well, what else do you want to know?’ she asked crossly.
‘How about why a woman with your personality and apparent ability is so desperate for a job that she’s prepared to take on an assignment without even knowing what it is or what she’ll have to do?’ Tye suggested in a dry voice.
‘It was my own fault,’ Lizzy admitted after a long pause. She might as well tell him. ‘It took me ages to decide what I wanted to do. I tried all sorts of jobs, but eventually I ended up in PR, and it was perfect for me. I loved the parties and the organisation and the…the buzz.’
She waved her hands to try and illustrate the excitement of those heady days. ‘I managed to get a job with one of the top agencies in Perth, and for a while everything was fine. It was more than fine, actually. I had a great job, a fantastic social life, a wonderful boyfriend. We got engaged, had a wild party.’ She smiled a little sadly. ‘I thought I had it all.’
‘So what happened?’ asked Tye, a faint sneer in his voice. ‘Did your wonderful boyfriend turn out to be not so wonderful after all?’
‘No, nothing like that.’ Lizzy shook her head. The light gleamed on her blonde hair as she leant forward to pick up her glass and sipped her champagne as she tried to think how to explain to someone as cynical as Tye what had prompted her to do what she had done.
‘An old friend of mine got married,’ she said at last. ‘I went up for the wedding, and seeing Gray and Clare together…well, I guess it made me realise what I was missing. I don’t really know how to explain it,’ she went on, looking at Tye’s sceptical expression. ‘I enjoy my life, but theirs was somehow more intense, more vivid.
‘I realised that I was in a rut, not just professionally but emotionally. Stephen was—is—wonderful, but we didn’t have what Clare and Gray have. We’d been living together for about a year, and we’d sort of drifted into the idea of getting married. We were good friends, comfortable together, and there wasn’t anyone else for either of us. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but when I compared our relationship to Gray and Clare’s, I knew that it wasn’t enough.’
Lizzy’s head was bent as she told her story, apparently absorbed in the invisible patterns she was tracing on the arm of the chair, but she looked up then to see if Tye was listening. ‘When I went home, I told Stephen I wouldn’t marry him.’
‘It was a bit hard on him, wasn’t it?’ Tye had been listening all right, but he obviously wasn’t impressed. His grey eyes were alert and very cool.
‘Stephen didn’t mind.’ Lizzy went back to her patterns, remembering how they had talked that night. An angry scene would have been awful, but at least it would have meant that Stephen had cared enough about her to try and make her change her mind. Instead it had all been very civilised. He had listened and agreed that breaking their engagement would be for the best.
‘I think he was quite relieved really,’ she went on. It had been just the same with Gray all those years ago. ‘I seem to be the kind of woman men just want to be friends with,’ she sighed.
Tye looked at her across the table. She might sound despondent, but it was hard for her to look glum. There was an irrepressibly merry curve to her mouth, and the laughter lines starring the corners of her deep blue eyes with their tilting lashes gave her expression a warmth and a humour that was much more appealing than mere beauty.
His gaze dropped to her bare shoulders. Her creamy skin was dusted with a golden summer glow. It shadowed invitingly into her cleavage and in the hollow at the base of her throat. Aware of his eyes, Lizzy lifted her hand and pushed the silky mass of hair away from her face in an unconsciously nervous gesture, but it wouldn’t stay behind her ears and fell forward again, swinging softly against her cheek.
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ he said, and he smiled a wickedly attractive smile that sent the colour surging into Lizzy’s cheeks.
How old did you have to be before you stopped blushing when a man looked at you? Lizzy wondered in despair. Avoiding his gaze, she took a defiant gulp of champagne and set her glass back on the table with a sharp click.
‘Yes, well, anyway,’ she said with a tiny cough to clear her throat. ‘Once I’d sorted things out with Stephen I felt much better, but I knew I had to do the same with work. I’d been at the agency too long and I was getting stale. I went in the next day and handed in my resignation in a grand gesture. I told them I needed a new challenge and that I was going to set up on my own as a freelance consultant.’
‘And did you?’
‘I tried, but it was hopeless. There wasn’t enough work to go round as it was, and I couldn’t compete with the agencies. I must have trudged round every office in Perth looking for a client, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. I was about to give in when I met you and you mentioned this job. It’s my last chance to make it on my own.’
‘I’m beginning to see why you were so keen to be considered,’ said Tye.
Lizzy’s colour deepened. He hadn’t said anything, but she knew that he was thinking about the way she had kissed him at the wedding, and she tilted her chin. It wouldn’t do any harm for him to realise that she had only kissed him like that because she had been desperate.
‘It’s been months now since I had a regular income,’ she told him. ‘I know I should be able to manage, but I’m not very good at economising, and I’m up to my ears in debt.’ She sighed. ‘I went about things all wrong; I know that now. I should have waited until I’d decided exactly what I was going to do and had my financial situation sorted out instead of just chucking in a really good job and then wondering how I was going to get by.’
‘I don’t agree,’ said Tye to her surprise.
Lizzy had been prepared for him to pour scorn on her, and his unexpected support took her aback. She eyed him a little warily, wondering if he was being sarcastic.
‘I bet you’d never do anything that stupid!’
‘I believe in going all out for what you want,’ he said coolly, ‘and you don’t get what you want without taking risks. Do you think I’d have got where I am today if I’d played safe? Twenty years ago I left home with nothing. I worked my way to Sydney and found myself a job and somewhere to live. Those aren’t things you take for granted when you’ve had to survive without either, but when I had an idea I took a chance and gambled everything on it.’
He didn’t sound triumphant about it, merely matter-of-fact, and Lizzy looked at him curiously, trying to imagine him as a young man, finding his way in the city, alone and homeless. From that unpromising beginning, he had built up an empire, a vast conglomerate that stretched around the world and had become a watchword for quality and innovation. It made her own idea of a challenge seem pretty pathetic.
‘All you need is ambition,’ said Tye, ‘and if you want it badly enough you can get there. You must have an ambition, don’t you?’
Did she? Lizzy considered the matter. ‘I’d like to do well at my job, of course, but I don’t have any burning desire to succeed. As long as it’s interesting and I’ve got enough to live on, I don’t mind. My ambitions aren’t that focused. What I’d really like is marriage, a family of my own, the usual. I just want to be happy.’
Tye didn’t quite sneer, but there was something very scornful about the way he reached for the champagne bottle and topped up Lizzy’s glass.
‘What about you?’ she asked abruptly.
‘Me?’
‘What are your ambitions, or have you achieved them all?’
‘No,’ said Tye, replacing the bottle carefully in the ice, so that Lizzy couldn’t read his expression. ‘I’ve still got one.’
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