by the end of the week the flowers were wilted and so were Alice’s spirits. She still hadn’t heard anything from Liam.
He left a brief message with Sally, to say that he hoped to be back the following Monday. But that was all.
Of course, everyone in the office expected Alice to be able to supply them with details about what the boss was doing in Sydney. And it was anything but pleasant to admit that she was more or less as clueless as they were.
It was all very difficult—embarrassing—and confusing.
One minute she was angry. Why was it so darned hard for Liam to call her? And then the next she would wonder if she was expecting too much of him. If only she wasn’t so unsure of her role in his life.
She was unsure of everything. Todd had made her so insecure. And his legacy was that she didn’t really know what she wanted now: she didn’t want a new relationship, and yet she wanted Liam.
Dennis had a field-day in the boss’s absence. ‘What’s with this fellow?’ he cried. ‘He flies up here, insists on having hands-on involvement, goes through our entire operation with a fine-tooth comb to the point where we’re virtually having fingernail inspections, and then he rushes off again.’ He shot a suspicious glance Alice’s way. ‘Is this some kind of test?’
‘No, of course not, it’s a family emergency.’ Oh, dear. How unfortunately vague that sounded.
‘A family emergency?’ Shana repeated, never missing the chance to gossip. ‘So his wife’s found out that Liam’s straying, has she?’
She smiled too sweetly at Alice, who had no answer other than to shoot her a drop-dead look.
Liam stared at the famous Sydney skyline.
Once upon a time this office, with its stunning views, had been the pinnacle of his ambition. Now, as he surveyed the glorious harbour, the spectacular opera house and the unique coat-hanger bridge, he found little in this high-status vista to comfort him.
What a dreadful week it had been!
Emotionally he was exhausted. He’d been to hell and back during his long vigil at the hospital. But at last Julia was out of the woods. In a few days she would be going home again. In another week she would be more or less back to normal, or as normal as she could ever be.
Not that Julia considered her life to be anything less than normal. Her endurance of hardship was amazing. She never complained and was always smiling.
It was Liam who had never come to terms with seeing her in a wheelchair. She managed beautifully, but he could never forget how lovely and lithe and full of life she had been before the accident.
He hadn’t allowed himself to think about Alice this week. The contrast between her passionate vitality and Julia’s weakness was too cruel, his sense of guilt too sharply painful.
‘Liam.’
He turned at the sound of his PA’s voice.
‘Mr Toh is here.’
‘Already?’ Liam glanced at his wrist-watch and sighed. ‘Very well. Tell him I’ll be with him in a minute.’
Time to snap his brain back into corporate mode.
Kenny Toh, a Singaporean businessman, headed Asia-Pacific Investments and potentially he was a major financial partner in Kanga Tours. API was proposing to fund vital expansion of their business and when Kenny had heard that Liam was in Sydney he flew in from Singapore to meet Liam, to talk to him face to face, to view his product, and to generally size him up.
He would expect to be taken on a tour of the city, wined and dined, introduced around. The process couldn’t be hurried or dismissed lightly and would probably take several days.
Liam knew he shouldn’t feel trapped by the fellow. In the past he’d found international networking to be the aspect of his business he enjoyed most. But now it kept him from getting back to Cairns.
To Alice.
‘Rita,’ Liam called as his assistant was almost out of the room. ‘One other thing. Could you please telephone the Cairns office?’
‘Certainly.’
‘I’d like to pass a private message to…’ He paused and then swore softly. No, he didn’t want Rita to ring Alice at the office. Scowling angrily, he rubbed at his forehead. He hadn’t spoken to Alice in a week.
There was no time to ring her now.
Suddenly he gave an abrupt little laugh of triumph as he hit on a better idea. ‘Can you take time to do some shopping today?’
‘Well, yes. What would you like me to get you?’
When Liam told her what he wanted and where he wanted it sent, Rita’s eyebrows lifted high, but then, like a well-trained PA, she lowered them again just as quickly. ‘I can do that in my lunch break,’ she said.
‘Take as long as you need,’ Liam told her and then he grabbed his suit jacket from its peg near the door and shrugged it on as he went out to greet Mr Toh.
Alice had never been so glad to reach the end of the working week.
Friday afternoon. She could scurry home and hide.
She could be pathetic and lonely and no one would notice.
Keeping up appearances in the office, pretending a nonchalance she didn’t feel, had nearly killed her, but now she could stop pretending that she didn’t care what Liam was doing in Sydney, who he was with, or that he hadn’t contacted her. She’d suffered two weeks of sleepless nights and stressful days—no wonder she felt tired, weepy and sick in the stomach whenever she thought about food.
As she parked her car in the garage, she wondered if she should try to drag herself out somewhere tonight, to a movie perhaps. If she really exhausted herself she might sleep at last. She should make an effort to do something.
She grabbed her briefcase from the passenger seat, locked the car and went to check the mailbox. Two envelopes with windows. Nothing personal, just bills. Terrific.
She was halfway up the path to her front door when a van pulled up, a courier express-delivery van, and the driver was looking directly at her.
Intensely curious, she waited and watched him get out, extract a largish parcel from the back of the van and begin to walk towards her.
‘I have a delivery for—’ he squinted to read the name on the address ‘—Alice Madigan.’
‘That’s me,’ she said and she realised she was trembling. How silly, but she’d seen a Sydney postmark.
Her heart kept up a wild kind of skipping as she signed for the parcel, thanked the delivery man and carried the box into the house. She set it on the kitchen counter and found a sharp knife to cut through the tape, and she seemed to take ages to undo the packaging and the masses of bubble wrap, but at last the contents were revealed.
A beautiful glass bowl. It was gorgeous. A wave
