A Bride For Barra Creek. Jessica Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ up his glass, chinking it against Lizzy’s.

      ‘Here’s to a successful partnership!’ he said.

      Partnership? Did he say partnership? Lizzy stared at him. ‘You mean I’ve got the job?’ she asked incredulously.

      ‘If you want it,’ said Tye carefully.

      Did she want it? Did a drowning man want a lifebelt? Lizzy laughed.

      ‘I want it,’ she assured him gaily. ‘Oh, this is fantastic! Thank you!’ She beamed at him as they chinked glasses again, her blue eyes sparkling with delight. ‘I can’t tell you what a relief it is,’ she babbled on, all smiles as she settled back into her chair, able to relax at last. ‘I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever find another job!’

      To think that she had been contemplating that advert for a waitress in the local café, and now here she was being offered a job with GCS! Lizzy’s mind raced ahead to the future. Working for such an international company, there were bound to be opportunities for travel, weren’t there? Lizzy pictured herself armed with a battery of mobile phones and an electronic organiser, jumping on and off planes, dashing around New York and…And what?

      Her careering fantasy screeched to a halt as she realised that she still had no idea at all of what the job entailed. ‘Er…what exactly is this special project you want me for?’ she asked Tye.

      He hesitated. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said at last. ‘And very sensitive. I don’t want to say any more until I’m sure that I can trust you.’

      Lizzy’s rocketing spirits collapsed. ‘You mean, you might not want me after all?’ she said, unable to keep the disappointment from her voice. Surely he had said that the job was hers if she wanted it?

      Tye looked at her, the corners of his mouth lifting in a slight smile. ‘Oh, no, I want you all right,’ he said. ‘But you might change your mind when you know what’s involved, and I don’t want to explain that just yet. Do you mind?’

      Lizzy didn’t think that she was in any position to mind. ‘Well, no, of course not,’ she said, completely mystified.

      What on earth was he going to ask her to do? The obvious suspicion flickered across her mind, only to be dismissed. A man like Tye didn’t need to pay women to sleep with him, and anyway, judging by those whose names had been linked with his in the gossip columns, she wasn’t exactly his type. He seemed to like his women dark and exotic, and she could hardly be described as either. She was too blonde, too normal.

      Too nice.

      Lizzy looked at the tiny bubbles drifting lazily upwards in her glass and sighed.

      ‘I’m sorry if it seems unreasonable,’ said Tye, misinterpreting her expression, ‘but you’ll understand later why I don’t want to put all my cards on the table right now.’

      ‘Can’t you say anything about it?’ Lizzy pleaded. ‘At least tell me if it’s a PR job!’

      ‘I think you could say that,’ he conceded.

      ‘Doesn’t GCS have a PR department already?’

      Tye frowned down into his champagne. ‘This isn’t to do with GCS,’ he said, and then lifted his eyes to meet Lizzy’s confused blue gaze. ‘It’s to do with me.’

      ‘I see,’ she said, although she didn’t.

      ‘Look,’ he said, raking a hand through his dark hair in a gesture of frustration, ‘let’s start again, shall we? We’ll treat this as an ordinary interview, and I’ll explain everything later.’

      ‘All right,’ said Lizzy in some relief. She knew where she was with an interview. ‘Not that most ordinary interviews are conducted over champagne like this!’ she couldn’t resist adding with a glance at the bottle.

      Tye shrugged. It was clearly your common-or-garden everyday champagne as far as he was concerned. ‘I thought if we had a drink together, and dinner, it would be a good way to find out more about you,’ he said with an edge of impatience. ‘We can go back to the office and sit on either side of a desk if you’d prefer.’

      ‘No, no, this is fine!’ said Lizzy hastily. She put her glass on the table, sat upright, smoothed her dress down over her knees and looked expectantly at Tye. ‘Where do you want me to begin? With my last job?’

      ‘No.’ Tye waved her precious work experience aside. ‘I’m more interested in your personal background.’

      ‘But you know all that,’ she objected.

      ‘Do I? I know you grew up in the outback but live in the city. I know that you’re very sociable, and that you have a very…’ He paused, searching for the right word. ‘A very individual taste in shoes,’ he decided. ‘But that’s about it. There must be more to you than that.’

      God, yes, there must, thought Lizzy, racking her brains to think of something else to convince him that she was really a complex and interesting personality. A sociable, city-dwelling shoe-lover. All true, but it did make her sound a bit superficial.

      ‘I like reading,’ she said lamely, although she really preferred a good movie, or an afternoon’s shopping.

      She could see from Tye’s face that he was not impressed. ‘Well, what else do you want to know?’ she asked crossly.

      ‘How about why a woman with your personality and apparent ability is so desperate for a job that she’s prepared to take on an assignment without even knowing what it is or what she’ll have to do?’ Tye suggested in a dry voice.

      ‘It was my own fault,’ Lizzy admitted after a long pause. She might as well tell him. ‘It took me ages to decide what I wanted to do. I tried all sorts of jobs, but eventually I ended up in PR, and it was perfect for me. I loved the parties and the organisation and the…the buzz.’

      She waved her hands to try and illustrate the excitement of those heady days. ‘I managed to get a job with one of the top agencies in Perth, and for a while everything was fine. It was more than fine, actually. I had a great job, a fantastic social life, a wonderful boyfriend. We got engaged, had a wild party.’ She smiled a little sadly. ‘I thought I had it all.’

      ‘So what happened?’ asked Tye, a faint sneer in his voice. ‘Did your wonderful boyfriend turn out to be not so wonderful after all?’

      ‘No, nothing like that.’ Lizzy shook her head. The light gleamed on her blonde hair as she leant forward to pick up her glass and sipped her champagne as she tried to think how to explain to someone as cynical as Tye what had prompted her to do what she had done.

      ‘An old friend of mine got married,’ she said at last. ‘I went up for the wedding, and seeing Gray and Clare together…well, I guess it made me realise what I was missing. I don’t really know how to explain it,’ she went on, looking at Tye’s sceptical expression. ‘I enjoy my life, but theirs was somehow more intense, more vivid.

      ‘I realised that I was in a rut, not just professionally but emotionally. Stephen was—is—wonderful, but we didn’t have what Clare and Gray have. We’d been living together for about a year, and we’d sort of drifted into the idea of getting married. We were good friends, comfortable together, and there wasn’t anyone else СКАЧАТЬ