set for two people to dine, the crystal glasses, the cutlery gleaming silver, a vase of red roses in the centre of the highly polished table.
Liam had telephoned the house earlier and spoken to Amy, as Laura and Bobby had gone out to buy Bobby a toy, asking Laura to meet him at his hotel at eight o’clock. Laura had assumed—mistakenly it now turned out!—that the two of them would be going on to a restaurant from there. One glance at that elegant set dinner table had shown her how wrong she was!
‘Don’t look so accusing, Laura,’ Liam responded impatiently. He was wearing a black dinner jacket, snowy white shirt and black bow tie, his hair still damp from the shower he had recently taken. ‘I don’t have an ulterior motive for deciding it was easier to eat here; I tried all the restaurants I thought fitted your description and they were all fully booked.’
She gave him a scathing glance, very aware that her glittering figure-hugging gold dress, with its short length that showed the long expanse of her slender legs—chosen as a boost to her own confidence rather than any sort of come-on!—seemed slightly out of place in the intimacy of this hotel suite. Liam’s hotel suite!
‘Didn’t you explain that you’re Liam O’Reilly?’ she threw back totally put out by the fact that she was expected to eat here alone with Liam in the intimacy of his hotel suite.
His expression darkened at her deliberate antagonism. ‘I’ve never worked that way,’ he rasped coldly. ‘Look,’ he sighed, ‘I know you aren’t happy with this arrangement—’
‘You have no idea how unhappy it makes me,’ she muttered grimly.
‘But the alternative was to cancel the whole thing—and to me that was no alternative at all!’
Her eyes sparkled angrily as she glared across at him. ‘Maybe you should have given me the benefit of choosing for myself!’
His mouth twisted furiously. ‘And we both know what choice you would have made!’
She was breathing hard in her agitation, not at all pleased at the thought of spending the evening here alone with Liam.
She was still uncertain as to the reason for this dinner invitation, had been uneasy about it all day, and feeling herself cornered like this, without even the distraction of other diners to alleviate some of the awkwardness, had not improved those feelings of unease.
‘This is impossible, Liam.’ She shook her head.
‘Why is it?’ he reasoned impatiently.
‘Don’t be deliberately obtuse,’ she returned. ‘Did you see the newspapers this morning?’
Liam sighed, picking up the opened bottle of chilled white wine to pour some of the fruity liquid into two glasses. ‘Of course I saw them,’ he said evenly, handing her one of the glasses before taking a sip from his own. ‘They would have been hard to miss.’
As Laura had guessed, photographs of Liam arriving at her home yesterday morning had appeared on the front page of several of the more sensational tabloids, and speculation about their relationship, both professional and personal, was continuing.
‘Then you must see,’ she said impatiently, ‘that the two of us having dinner together in your hotel suite will only add to the rumour that we’re—that we’re—’
‘We’re what, Laura?’ Liam interrupted, dropping down into one of the armchairs to look up at her with mocking blue eyes.
‘Involved!’ she spat the word out angrily.
He raised dark brows. ‘And…?’
‘We aren’t!’ Laura bit out through gritted teeth. Liam wasn’t just being obtuse now, he was being deliberately awkward!
He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Not through lack of trying on my part.’
She gasped, colour heating her cheeks. ‘You—I—’
‘Yes, you and I,’ Liam repeated softly, standing up to put his glass down on the coffee table before slowly walking towards her. ‘Is that such an awful idea?’ He came to a halt only inches away from her, his eyes navy blue now as he looked down at her.
‘Awful?’ she repeated incredulously. ‘It’s ludicrous!’ she told him heatedly.
Liam’s mouth tightened, his eyes narrowing. ‘Why?’ he prompted huskily.
‘Not again, Liam!’ She moved sharply away as he would have reached out and grasped her shoulders, moving to the other side of the room. ‘Yesterday morning was a—a mistake. With maturity I’ve come to try not to repeat my mistakes,’ she added challengingly.
‘Believe it or not, I’m trying, in my own way, to do the same thing.’
Laura gave him a sharp look. Exactly what did he mean by that remark?
‘Through my own stupidity I let you slip through my fingers eight years ago, Laura,’ he said quietly, answering her unasked question. ‘I don’t intend letting it happen a second time.’
Laura could feel her cheeks paling as she stared across at him with wide disbelieving eyes. She might have told him this was a business dinner, but she had really come here purely to discover what he might or might not have realised about Bobby’s parentage, and for no other reason.
Hadn’t she…?
As she looked at Liam, so handsome in his evening attire, the warmth in his eyes for her alone, she began to question her own self-honesty. Had part of her, the part of her that also remembered how good they had been together eight years ago, ached to know whether it would still be the same between them? If their response to each other yesterday morning was anything to go by, then she could have no doubts about that!
But had she been aware of that when she’d dressed to come out this evening? Had her motives in wearing this gold dress, a dress that she knew suited her dark colouring and the slenderness of her figure, been as self-orientated as she had told herself they were at the time?
As she looked up into Liam’s face, her own gaze locked with mesmerising blue eyes, she didn’t know any more!
She moistened dry lips. ‘Liam—’
‘Laura, won’t you give me a chance to make up for the past?’ he cut in. ‘I was an idiot; I freely admit that. But don’t even idiots deserve a second chance?’
A second chance to do what? Ruin her life once again? To just disappear when it suited him, never to be heard from again?
She shuddered just at the thought of going through that again. Not again.
Never again!
‘Laura!’ Liam reached her side in two long strides, having watched the emotions flickering across her face, reaching out to grasp her shoulders, shaking her slightly as she refused to look up at him. ‘Won’t you at least give me a chance to try to make amends for—?’
‘No!’ she finally gasped, shaking her head in firm denial as she glared up at him. ‘I like my life just the way it is, Liam. I do not want you around, with your egotistical arrogance, cluttering it
