The Girl He Never Noticed

This time Cam Hillier did more than flash that crooked grin; he laughed.

‘What’s funny about that?’

‘I’m not sure,’ he returned, still looking amused. ‘Confirmation of what I suspected? That you can be outspoken to a fault. Or the fact that you regard great-aunts as somehow sacred?’

Liz grimaced. ‘I guess it did sound a bit odd, but you know what I mean. In general I don’t like to get personal.’

He looked sceptical, but chose not to explain why. He said, ‘Narelle can look after herself better than most. But how come you appear to handle a position that requires great diplomacy with ease when you have a problem with outspokenness?’

‘Yes, well, it’s been a bit of a mystery to me at times,’ she conceded. ‘Although I have been told it can be quite refreshing. But of course I do try to rein it in.’

‘Not with me, though?’ he suggested.

Liz studied her glass and took another sip. ‘To be honest, Mr Hillier, I’ve never before been told to pass on the message that my employer’s…um…date would rather consort with a two-timing snake than go to a party with him.’

Cam Hillier whistled softly. ‘She must have been steamed up about something!’

‘Yes—you. Then there was your own assertion that to go to a party alone would leave you open to being mobbed by women—I had a bit of difficulty with that—’

‘It’s my money,’ he broke in.

‘Uh-huh? Like your great-aunt, I won’t take that one as gospel and verse either,’ Liz said with considerable irony, and flinched as a flashlight went off. ‘Add to that the distinct possibility that we could be now tagged as an item, and throw into the mix that death-defying drive through the back streets of Sydney, is it any wonder I’m having trouble holding my tongue?’

‘Probably not,’ he conceded. ‘Would you like to leave the job forthwith?’

‘Ah,’ Liz said, and studied her glass, a little surprised to see that it was half empty, before raising her blue eyes to his. ‘Actually, no. I need the money. So if we could just get back to office hours, and the more usual kind of insanity that goes with a diary secretary’s position, I’d appreciate it.’

He considered for a moment. ‘How old are you, and how did you get this job—with the agency, I mean?’

‘I’m twenty-four, and I have a degree in Business Management. I topped the class, which you may find hard to believe—but it’s true.’

He narrowed his gaze. ‘I don’t. I realised you were as bright as a tack from the way you handled yourself in the first few hours of our relationship—our working relationship,’ he said as she looked set to take issue with him.

‘Oh?’ Liz looked surprised. ‘How so?’

‘Remember the Fortune proposal—the seafood marketing one? I virtually tossed it in your lap the first day, because it was incomplete, and told you to fix it?’

Liz nodded. ‘I do,’ she said dryly.

He smiled. ‘Throwing you in at the deep end and not what you were employed for anyway? Possibly. But I saw you study it, and then I happened to hear you on the phone to Fortune with your summation of it and what needed to be done to fix it. I was impressed.’

Liz took another sip of champagne. ‘Well, thanks.’

‘And Molly tells me you’re a bit of an IT whiz.’

‘Not really—but I do like computers and software,’ she responded.

‘It does lead me to wonder why you’re temping rather than carving out a career for yourself,’ he said meditatively.

Liz looked around.

A few couples had started to dance, and she was suddenly consumed by a desire to be free to do what she liked—which at this moment was to surrender herself to the African beat, the call of the drums and the wild. To be free of problems…To have a partner to dance with, to talk to, to share things with. Someone to help her lighten the load she was carrying.

Someone to help her live a bit. It was so long since she’d danced—so long since she’d let her hair down, so to speak—she’d forgotten what it was like…

As if drawn by a magnet her gaze came back to her escort, to find him looking down at her with a faint frown in his eyes and also an unspoken question. For one amazed moment she thought he was going to ask her to dance with him. That was followed by another amazed moment as she pictured herself moving into his arms and letting her body sway to the music.

Had he guessed which way her thoughts were heading? And if so, how? she wondered. Had there been a link forged between them now that he’d noticed her as a woman and not a robot—a mental link as well as a physical one?

She looked away as a tremor of alarm ran through her. She didn’t want to be linked to a man, did she? She didn’t want to go through that again. She was mad to have allowed Cam Hillier to taunt her into showing him she wasn’t just a stick of office furniture…

She said the first thing that came to mind to break any mental link…‘Who’s Archie?’

‘My nephew.’

‘He sounds like an animal lover.’

‘He is.’

Liz waited for a moment, but it became obvious Cam Hillier was not prepared to be more forthcoming on the subject of his nephew.

Liz lifted her shoulders and looked out over the crowd.

Then her gaze sharpened, and widened, as she focused on a tall figure across the terrace. A man—a man who had once meant the world to her.

She turned away abruptly and handed her glass to her boss. ‘Forgive me,’ she said hurriedly, ‘but I need—I need to find the powder room.’ And she turned on her heel and walked inside.

* * *

How she came to get lost in Narelle Hastings’ mansion she was never quite sure. She did find a powder room, and spent a useless ten minutes trying to calm herself down, but for the rest of it her inner turmoil must have been so great she’d been unable to think straight.

She came out of the powder room determined to make a discreet exit from the house, the party, Cam Hillier, the lot—only to see Narelle farewelling several guests. She did a quick about-turn and went through several doorways to find herself in the kitchen. Fortunately it was empty of staff, but she knew that could only be a very temporary state of affairs.

Never mind, she told herself. She’d leave by the back door!

The back door at first yielded a promising prospect—a service courtyard, a high wall with a gate in it.

Excellent! Except when she got to it, it was to find the gate locked.

She drew a frustrated, trembling breath as it occurred to her how acutely embarrassing this could turn out to be. How on earth would she explain it to Cameron Hillier—not to mention his great-aunt, whose house she appeared to be wandering through at will?

She gazed at the back door, and as she did so she heard voices coming from within. She doubted she had the nerve to brave the kitchen again. She turned away and studied her options. No good trying to get over the wall that fronted the street—she’d be bound to bump into someone. But the house next door, also behind the wall, was the one whose driveway Cam had parked in—the one whose owner was out, according to him. He must know them and know they were away to make that assertion, she reasoned. It certainly made that wall a better bet.

She dredged her memory and recalled that the driveway had gates that could possibly be locked too—and this adjacent wall was inside those gates. But hang on! Further along the pavement, hadn’t there been a pedestrian gate? No—just a gateway. Yes! So all she had to do was climb over the wall…How the hell was she going to do that, though?

She tensed as the back door opened, and slipped into some shadows as a kitchen hand emerged and deposited a load of garbage into a green wheelie bin and slammed it shut. He didn’t see her and went back inside, closing the door, but his use of the wheelie bin gave her an idea. She could push it against the wall, hoist herself onto it and slip over it to the house next door.

As with just about everything that had happened to her on this never-ending day, it wasn’t a perfect plan.

Firstly, just as she was about to emerge from the shadows and move the bin to the wall, more kitchen hands emerged with loads of garbage. This led her to reconsider things.

What if she did manage to get over the wall and someone came out to find the bin in a different position? But she couldn’t skulk around this service courtyard for much longer. A glance at her watch told her she’d already been there for twenty minutes.

She was biting her lip and clenching her fists in a bid to keep calm, almost certain she would have to go through the kitchen again, when something decided the matter for her.

She heard a male voice from the kitchen, calling out that he was locking the back door. She even heard the key turn.

She closed her eyes briefly, then sprinted to the bin, shoved it up against the wall, took her shoes off and threw them over. She looped her purse over her shoulder and, hitching up her dress, climbed onto the bin. Going over from Narelle’s side was easy, thanks to the height of the wheelie bin. Getting down the other side was not so easy. She had to hang onto the coping and try to guess what the shortfall was.

It was only about a foot, but she lost her balance as she dropped to the ground, and fell over. She was picking herself up and examining her torn tights and a graze on her knee when the driveway gates, with the sound of a car motor behind them, began to open inwards.

She straightened up and stared with fatal fascination at a pair of headlights as a long, low, sleek car nosed through the gates and stopped abreast of her.

The driver’s window was on her side, and it lowered soundlessly. She bent her head, and as her gaze clashed with the man behind the wheel things clicked into place for her.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said bitterly. ‘You own this place. That’s how you knew it was safe to park in the driveway!’

‘Got it in two, Liz,’ Cam Hillier agreed from inside his graphite-blue Aston Martin. ‘But what the devil you think you’re doing is a mystery to me.’

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