The Girl he Never Noticed (12 page)

‘Yep. But I only have two houses.’

‘And a boat?’

‘And a boat. Actually…’ He assembled cream, sugar and spoons on a tray with the mugs and pot, and brought it over to the table. ‘I wasn’t prevaricating about the real estate aspect of this trip. I’m looking at a house on Hamilton.’

‘Oh, so you’re combining pleasure with a bit of business?’ she teased. ‘Or maybe a bit of pleasure with a lot of business?’

‘Not at all,’ he denied. ‘I’m relying on your judgement in the matter.’

Liz sobered. ‘Really? I mean—do you
need
another house?’

‘Really?’ He sat down and plunged the coffee, and a lovely aroma rose from the pot. He poured it and moved her mug towards her. ‘Help yourself. Do I need another house? No. But at least it’s not another company.’

Liz digested this with a frown. ‘Are you—do you—are you happy? With your life, I mean?’

He studied his coffee, then stirred some sugar in. ‘I have a few regrets. Apart from Archie and Narelle I have no close relatives left. No one to benefit from the fruits of my labours, you might say.’ He shrugged. ‘No one to wish me happy birthday.’ He looked humorous and held up a hand. ‘I don’t really care about that. But
I do sometimes care—greatly—that my parents didn’t live to see all this.’ He looked around. ‘And Amelia, my sister.’

‘So…’ Liz hazarded. ‘Are you saying…?’ She paused to gather her thoughts better.

‘Do I sometimes feel like saying stop the world I want to get off? Substitute the Hillier Corporation for the world? Yes.’ He shrugged.

‘Why—why don’t you?’ she breathed.

‘Liz.’ He looked across at her. ‘It’s not that easy. I employ a lot of people. And I don’t know what I’d do with my time, anyway.’

He looked across at her and she could suddenly see something different about him. She could see the stamp of inner tension on the lines of his face and in his eyes.

Then he shrugged and added, ‘Perhaps there’s a side of me that could never sit and twiddle its thumbs? Perhaps it’s the way I’m made?’

‘Perhaps not,’ she said huskily at length. ‘Maybe it’s the way things have happened for you.’ She grimaced. ‘Like me.’

He opened his mouth to say something, but there was a whir as an unseen machine in the wheelhouse came alive.

She looked a question at him.

‘It’s the weather fax,’ he said with a faint frown. ‘Any change in the forecast comes through automatically.’

A smile curved Liz’s lips. ‘Go and have a look. I know you won’t rest easy until you do.’

He raked a hand through his hair and got up. ‘I will.
Contrary to what you may believe about me in a car, I’m a very cautious seaman. I’ll only be a moment.’

But he was a bit longer than that, and Liz leant back in a corner and curled her legs up beside her. She fell asleep without even realising it.

Cam came back with a piece of paper in his hands and the news that they’d need to change their anchorage tomorrow because of a strong wind warning.

He stopped as he realised she was asleep, and let the sheet of paper flutter to the table as he stared down at her.

He looked at the grace of her body beneath the long dress, her hand beneath her cheek, and thought that she must be really tired. Perhaps two Mai Tais and a couple of glasses of wine had contributed? Perhaps the trauma of it all…?

His lips twisted as he pulled the table away and bent to pick her up in his arms. She made a tiny murmur, but didn’t wake as he carried her to her stateroom.

He put her down carefully on one side of the double bed and rolled a light-as-air eiderdown over her.

He stood looking down at her for a minute or so. Then he said, ‘Goodnight, Cinderella.’

Liz slept for a few hours, then a nightmare gripped her and she woke with no idea where she was. There were different unaccountable sounds to be heard, and the terrifying conviction that she’d lost Scout.

She thrashed around on a bed she didn’t know, grappling with an eiderdown she didn’t remember, and
was drenched in ice-cold sweat as she called Scout’s name…

‘Liz? Liz!’ A lamp flicked on and Cam stood over her, wearing only sleep shorts. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’ve lost Scout,’ she gasped. ‘Where am I?’

He sat down on the bed and pulled her up into his arms. ‘You haven’t lost Scout, and you’re safe and sound on my boat. Remember?
Leilani
and Whitehaven Beach? Remember the sunset?’

Shudders racked her and her mouth worked.

‘Scout is safe at home with Daisy and Archie and your mother at Yewarra.’

Very slowly the look of terror left her eyes and she closed them. ‘Oh, thank heavens,’ she breathed. Her lashes flew up. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’ He said it into her hair. ‘Quite sure.’

‘Hold me—please hold me,’ she whispered. ‘I couldn’t bear it if I lost Scout.’

‘You’re not going to lose her,’ he promised. ‘Hang on.’ He unwound the eiderdown and lay down with her in his arms, pulling it over them. ‘There. How’s that?’

Liz moved against him and found the last remnants of the nightmare and her sense of dislocation leave against the security of the warmth and bulk of his body, the strength of his arms around her.

‘That’s wonderful.’ She laid her cheek on his shoulder. ‘Do you still want to marry me?’

‘Liz…?’ He lifted his head to look into her eyes. ‘Yes. But—’

‘Then do it—please. Don’t take any nonsense from
me. I can be stubborn for stubborn’s sake sometimes. Don’t let me go—oh! I’m still dressed!’

‘Liz, stop.’

He held her close, staring into her eyes with his mouth set firmly until she subsided somewhat, although she was still shivering every now and then.

‘Yes, you
are
still dressed,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t take advantage of sleeping girls. And I don’t think we should make any earth-shattering decisions right now, either. You were over-tired, overwrought, and you got a fright. So let’s just take things slowly,’ he said dryly, and moved away slightly.

She flinched inwardly, because whatever she might have been one thing had become crystal-clear to her through it all. Cam Hillier was her answer. Not for Scout’s sake—for her sake. He not only made her feel safe, he attracted her like no other man ever had…

‘Do you mean share this bed chastely?’ she said huskily. ‘I don’t think I can. I think I’ve gone beyond that. You can always claim I seduced you if—if it’s not what you want, too.’

He took a ragged breath. ‘Not what I
want?’
he repeated through his teeth. ‘If you had any idea, Cinderella…’

‘Cinderella?’ Her eyes widened.

He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t so far from midnight when I put you to bed.’

‘Damn,’ she said.

He lifted a surprised eyebrow at her.

‘I was planning—well, I was thinking along the lines of being a birthday surprise for you. If things fell out
that way. I mean, it wasn’t a set-in-concrete kind of plan—more just a thought.’ She trailed off, thinking that—heaven help her!—it was true.

He was silent for so long she looked away and bit her lip.

Then he said, ‘Liz, I’m not made of steel.’

She looked back. ‘Neither am I,’ she said, barely audibly, and laid her hand on his cheek. ‘I want to be held and kissed. I want to be wanted. I want to be able to show you how much I want you. Do you know when you first brought me out in goosebumps? A few days after I started working for you, when I tripped on the pavement and you caught me. Remember?’

She waited as his eyes narrowed and she saw recognition come to them.

‘So I’ve actually been battling this thing between us longer than you have. Think of that.’

He groaned and pulled her very close. ‘Don’t say I didn’t put up a fight,’ he warned, and buried his face in her hair.

‘I knew it would be like this,’ Cam said.

‘Like what?’

They were lying facing each other. The eiderdown had hit the carpet, along with Liz’s maxi-dress and her bikini briefs—all she’d worn under it.

Her hair was spread on the pillow and looked almost ethereally fair in the lamplight.

He drew his fingers down between her breasts. ‘That you’d be pale and satiny, as well as slim and elegant and achingly beautiful.’

She caught his hand and raised it to her lips. ‘I sort of suspected you’d be the stuff a girl’s dreams are made of. As for these—’ she kissed his hand again ‘—I love them. They’ve played havoc with my equilibrium at times. They are now.’

‘Like this?’ He took his hand back and traced the outline of her flank down to the curve of her hip.

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth as his hand strayed to her thigh. ‘Yes, like that,’ she said, as those exploring fingers slid to an even more intimate position on her body. She gasped and wound her arms round his neck as all sorts of lovely sensations ran through her.

‘Cam…’ she said on a breath, and all playfulness left her—because she was body and soul in thrall to what he was doing to her, and because she knew he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

She could feel them moving to the same drumbeat as their bodies blended together. She could feel the powerful chemistry between them. She could glory in all the fineness of Cam’s sleek powerful body, and she did. She traced the line of that dark springy hair down his torso, as she’d pictured herself doing not many days ago. She pressed her breasts against the wall of his chest and slid her leg between his.

She was overtaken by a feeling of joy as they touched, tasted and held each other. She felt like a flame in his arms—hot and desirable, then light as quicksilver. She felt wanton in one breath and irresistible to him in the next—incandescent, and totally abandoned to the pleasure he was bringing her.

Their final union brought her close to tears as the pleasure mounted to a star-shot pitch, but he held her and guided her with all the finesse and strength and control she’d probably always known Cameron Hillier would bring to this act. So that even while she was helpless with pleasure she knew she wasn’t alone. She felt cherished at the same time…

‘Mmmm,’ he said when they were still at last. ‘That was worth the wait.’

Liz put her hand on his shoulder and kissed the long, strong column of his throat. ‘That was… I can’t tell you… It was too wonderful to put into words.’

He traced the outline of her mouth with one long finger and looked consideringly into her eyes. ‘I could try. You, my sweet, prickly, gorgeous-all-rolled-into-one Liz, created a bit of heaven on earth for me.’

She smiled and smoothed her palm on his shoulder. ‘Thank you.’ A tiny glint of laughter lurked in her eyes. ‘But I couldn’t have done it without you.’

She felt the jolt of laughter that shook him. ‘No?’

‘No. And you do know I’m teasing you, don’t you? Because I was utterly at your mercy, Mr Hillier.’

‘Not so, Miss Montrose. Well,’ he amended, ‘let’s split the credit.’

‘Sounds fair enough,’ she said gravely, but all of a sudden she sobered as it came back to her—what she’d said about marrying him.

‘Liz?’

She looked up into his eyes to see that he too had sobered, and that there was a question mark in their
blue depths. For a moment it trembled on her lips to tell him that she’d fallen deeply in love with him—that she probably had way back, despite everything to the contrary she’d told herself.

But a remnant of fear generated from her past held her silent. Just take it slowly, she thought. Yes, she’d done it again—given herself to a man. And it was so much more than sex for her, but—for the time being anyway—should she protect herself by being the sole possessor of that knowledge?

‘Nothing,’ she breathed, and buried her face in his shoulder.

They had two more days on
Leilani.

They moved the next morning to an anchorage protected from the strong winds predicted—this time to a rocky bay with turquoise waters and its own reef.

They swam and fished. They went ashore in the rubber dinghy and climbed to a saddle between the hills, from where they could see a panoramic view of the Whitsundays. They snorkelled over the coral. They paddled the light portable canoes
Leilani
carried.

Liz almost lived in her ice-blue bikini. She wore a borrowed baseball cap when they streaked across the water in the dinghy. She donned a long-sleeved white blouse as protection against the sun, and wore her sunhat on the boat. She reserved her maxi-dress for the evening.

The one thing they didn’t do was discuss marriage again.

It puzzled Liz—from both their points of view. Her
unwitting reluctance to bring the subject up, and whatever reason Cam had for not doing so either. In fact a couple of times she caught him watching her with a faint frown in his eyes, as if he couldn’t quite make her out. On both occasions she felt a little tremor of unease. But then he’d be such a charismatic companion she’d forget the unease and simply enjoy being with him on his beautiful boat.

One thing she particularly enjoyed was seeing him relax, and the feeling that had already occurred to her came alive in her again—Cam Hillier needed rescuing from himself. Could she do it on a permanent basis? Could she find the key to making a life with him that would be satisfying enough to ease him from the stratosphere he inhabited and which she had the strong feeling he was growing to hate?

She had to smile dryly at the thought, however. Who was to say her demons would ever let her go enough to be able to share
any
kind of a life with him?

And then it all came apart at the seams…

He said to her, apropos of nothing, ‘There’s no one else anchored here today.’

They were lying on loungers on the back deck. Liz looked around. ‘So there isn’t.’ Then she sat up with a faint frown. ‘You said that with a peculiar sort of significance.’

He moved his sunglasses to the top of his head. ‘I have this fantasy.’ He shrugged. ‘I suppose you could say it involves mermaids.’

Liz studied him, but he was looking out over the
water. ‘Go on. What has that to do with no one else being here?’

‘We could skinny-dip.’

She took a breath. ‘But we’re not mermaids—or mermen,’ she pointed out.

‘All the better, really.’