gave a cool smile. ‘I suppose I should feel flattered that you still remember that particular conversation,’ she dismissed with a shrug of her slender shoulders, aware even as she did so that the noise and bustle of the busy hotel had faded into the background.
Those deep blue eyes, surrounded by long dark lashes that should have looked ridiculous on such an otherwise muscularly attractive man—but somehow didn’t—narrowed speculatively. ‘But you aren’t, are you?’ he finally said slowly.
Flattered that he should still remember, after all these years, the first real conversation they had ever had? No, she wasn’t flattered. After what had followed, why on earth should she be?
No! She quickly brought her resentful thoughts under control. Anger was not an option. Better to make no reply at all than one that sounded in the least emotional.
Liam tilted his head thoughtfully to one side at her continued silence. ‘You’ve had all that beautiful long dark hair cut off,’ he murmured frowningly.
‘It’s easier to manage,’ she bit out abruptly, knowing that the short, dark cap of almost black hair made a perfect oval for her gamine features—those different-coloured eyes, the small pointed nose, the wide mouth and determined chin. The softening tendrils of hair at her temples and nape took away the severity of the short style.
‘I like it.’ He nodded approvingly.
Her earlier resentment returned. She didn’t care whether he liked her hair in this style or not. In fact, if she were completely honest, she didn’t care what Liam O’Reilly felt about anything!
She determinedly swallowed down those angry feelings. ‘Would you care to join me?’ She indicated the tray containing her pot of coffee. ‘I can ask for another cup.’
Liam gave a glance down at the serviceable watch he wore on his right wrist. He was left-handed, Laura remembered all too clearly. As were a lot of artistic people.
‘Or perhaps you’re already meeting someone here?’ she suggested lightly as she noted that glance.
‘As a matter of fact, I am,’ he admitted. ‘But not for a few more minutes yet,’ he added with satisfaction, moving around the chair she sat in to sprawl his long length into the chair opposite.
Laura would have never actually said that Liam sat in a chair; his exceptional height meant that chairs were either usually too low or too lacking in depth for him.
At five feet eight inches tall in her stockinged feet, Laura was quite tall herself, an image she deliberately nurtured nowadays by wearing tailored suits and blouses. Her suit was dark charcoal today, her blouse emerald-green. It was an image she was more than grateful for at this moment, Liam always having had the effect in the past of making her feel tiny. And very feminine.
‘Would you like coffee?’ she offered, her hands calmly clasped on her skirt-covered thighs as she coolly faced him.
‘No, thanks,’ he refused. ‘I find it almost as addictive as the cigarettes I once smoked.’ His mouth twisted with distaste.
Laura’s eyes widened. ‘You’ve given up smoking?’ When she had known him eight years ago he had smoked at least thirty a day. More so when he was working. When…?
Liam grinned at her surprise. ‘Hard to believe, isn’t it? Liam O’Reilly, the hard drinker, hard smoker is a reformed character.’
‘I doubt it’s quite as serious as that,’ she replied mockingly.
He gave a low laugh, those dark blue eyes gleaming as he looked across at her. ‘You’ve grown up, little Laura,’ he pronounced admiringly.
‘At twenty-nine, I should hope that I have!’
Which made him now thirty-nine, Laura realised, also noting, now that she could see him more clearly, that her first impression of his not having changed wasn’t quite correct. The last eight years had definitely left their mark. There were lines now beside his eyes and mouth that owed nothing to laughter, a sprinkling of grey in the blue-black hair at his temples.
‘Twenty-nine,’ Liam repeated thoughtfully, blue eyes narrowed. ‘And what have you been doing with yourself the last eight years, Laura?’ he prompted hardly, his gaze moving—subconsciously, it seemed—to the ring finger on her left hand.
A finger that, although completely bare, nevertheless showed the mark of her having once worn a ring there…
‘This and that,’ she dismissed unhelpfully, having no intention of telling him anything about herself. ‘And what about you? What have you been doing the last eight years?’
His mouth twisted. ‘Obviously not writing,’ he observed harshly.
‘No?’ Laura didn’t give away, by word or facial expression, the fact that she was well aware that no new Liam O’Reilly book had appeared on the bookshelves for over eight years. ‘But then, you probably didn’t need to write again after the amazing success you had with Time Bomb,’ she went on lightly.
“‘Didn’t need to write again!’” Liam repeated accusingly, no longer lounging back in his chair but sitting tensely forward, eyes gleaming like twin jewels, his face intensely alight with emotion.
‘I meant from a monetary angle, of course,’ Laura continued, still meeting the fierceness of his gaze unflinchingly. That she had hit upon a raw nerve she didn’t doubt. But she had a need to see his response to that direct hit. ‘You must have made millions out of Time Bomb. The film rights alone—’
‘And what good has all that money been to me when I haven’t written a word since?’ he rasped.
She shrugged. ‘Presumably it’s kept you in relative comfort over the last eight years—even without the drink and cigarettes!’ she teased. ‘You certainly seemed to be enjoying your life the last time I saw you,’ she couldn’t resist adding.
Which had to be an understatement! Liam had achieved a certain amount of success with the four books he’d published before the political thriller Time Bomb. But nothing like the explosion—and she excused the pun!—that had followed the publication of his fifth book.
Three weeks after the release of the hardback edition, Time Bomb had been number one in the bestseller lists. Liam had appeared on numerous television programmes, the film rights had been bought, and Liam had been whisked off to Hollywood to write the screenplay and help with the casting.
The last Laura had seen of Liam had been a photograph in the newspapers, when he’d married the beautiful blonde-haired actress who had been about to play the female lead in the film of his book.
And Laura Carter, the student Liam had been seeing before he’d left England, had been left behind and forgotten.
At first she had been bewildered by Liam’s abandonment, disbelieving that she could mean so little to him when she had been slavishly devoted to him. But as the days and then weeks had passed, with no word from him, she had become angry. This had been followed by bitterness when she’d seen the photograph in the newspapers of him with his bride, and finally had come acceptance that Liam no longer considered her a part—even remotely—of his new life in America. With that acceptance had come her desire to move on, to make a success of her own life.
Her
