In the Boss's Arms

Chapter Three

LIAM spent most of the weekend at the office, working his way through the company’s files and planning his business strategies. He was determined to lift the Cairns branch’s performance to match what he’d recently achieved in Sydney. As a self-made man, he’d worked impossibly hard over the past decade and he’d developed his own formula for revitalising a business.

New premises and a big investment in promotion and marketing were high on his agenda. And a staff performance appraisal. Several years ago he’d been forced to replace many of the inherited staff with a new team.

Could he do that again?

What about Alice? God help him. Could he be hard-headed and impartial enough to sack her if it was necessary?

All weekend his mind was constantly flooded by memories of her, of her heart-stopping, gut-wrenching loveliness, of the way she’d looked with her dark hair spread across the pillow, her rosy lips parted, inviting him to kiss her. She was so sweet and yet so wildly sensual. How could her husband ever have left her?

Liam had been consumed by an insane desire for her.

But office romances often led to trouble and trouble in business could reach atomic proportions. Staking a claim on Alice Madigan would place his goal, the success of his new business enterprise, in jeopardy. He couldn’t take that risk, not when dark, insistent shadows from his past still haunted him.

He had a debt to pay, which left him with no choice but to put his business goals first. Always.

At the sound of a knock on his door on Monday morning Liam looked up to find Dennis Ericson, the branch office manager, lounging a casual hip against the door frame and wearing a supercilious smile.

‘Good morning, Dennis.’ Liam rose and held out his hand. The men had met before when Liam was making his pre-purchase investigations, but not as employer and employee. Dennis was in his mid-to-late forties, a family man, going thin on top and soft around the middle.

He accepted Liam’s handshake, but the wry grimace on his face somewhat marred the sincerity of the gesture.

‘You’ve settled in quickly, then,’ he said, casting an openly curious glance around the office, checking the few small changes the new boss had made to its layout.

Liam nodded. ‘Spent the weekend in here, going through files.’

The silly grin returned. ‘And have you claimed your prize?’

‘What prize?’

For answer, Dennis shot him a sideways, narroweyed glance.

Liam sensed that he was being set up. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Saturday’s Cairns Post,’ Dennis said ominously. ‘Page three.’

Liam shook his head. ‘I didn’t check the weekend papers. Is it something important? Some corporate offer?’

At that Dennis laughed. From his hip pocket he extracted what looked like a newspaper cutting and he flipped it onto the desk.

Annoyed by the smugness of the fellow, Liam refused to rise to the bait. He knew from experience that there was always someone wanting to get the upper hand with the new boss on the first day. He gave the folded cutting a cursory glance, and then stood very still and perfectly silent. Watching Dennis. Waiting.

Dennis’s smile slipped. His Adam’s apple slid up and down and, when Liam refused to move, he pouted. Finally, he picked up the clipping and unfolded it. ‘Take a gander at this.’

Liam scanned it. Bloody hell.

‘Aren’t you lucky, sir? You’re this week’s Mystery Winner.’ Dennis seemed to take pleasure from his boss’s obvious surprise. His cockiness revived. ‘Dinner for two at The Beach House,’ he said. ‘All you have to do is give the local newspaper office a call.’

It was a photo of Liam leaving the Hippo Bar. With Alice. Clipped and enlarged, no doubt, from a shot the photographer had taken of three girls whose faces were rather out of focus in the foreground. He and Alice looked blissfully happy. Intimate. They were holding hands and her head was dipping towards him as if she was listening intently to something he said.

A white ring circled his head and the caption above the photo read: Who is this man? The text below explained, as Dennis had, that this mystery winner could claim his prize of a dinner for two.

‘Do these mystery prizes happen often?’ he asked.

‘Every week,’ replied Dennis smugly.

So much for keeping that night under wraps.

‘Nice work, boss.’ The edge to Dennis’s voice was sharp enough to cut chain wire. ‘I suppose we can skip the lecture on management probity and staff relations?’

Teeth gritted against a biting retort, Liam screwed the paper into a ball and tossed it across the office to the waste-paper basket. He was grateful that it curved in a perfect arc and fell neatly into the basket, dead centre. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said quietly.

‘That you started getting extra-friendly with the staff the minute you hit town?’

Liam’s response was to move past Dennis, to reach for the door and to close it with deliberate control.

‘Sit down, Dennis.’ With a curt nod he indicated the chair by the desk. ‘You and I are going to have a little chat.’

Dennis sat. And his confident smirk began to wane as Liam took the high-backed leather executive chair and leaned back, watching him, without speaking.

Liam was damned if he was going to let this fellow launch a smear campaign. He knew that if he didn’t act promptly, Alice’s reputation would be dirt by morning-tea time.

With his elbow, he gave a file clearly marked Dennis Ericson a surreptitious nudge towards the front of his desk and then he stabbed at his desk phone for front of house reception.

‘Sally,’ he said, enjoying the way Dennis’s eyes bulged when he read the name on the folder. ‘Hold all my calls, please. And don’t send anyone through to my office. It’s most important that I’m not interrupted for the next twenty minutes.’

‘Morning, Dennis.’ Alice called her greeting as they passed in the hall outside her office.

‘Morning,’ he growled rudely, without making eye contact.

What was eating him?

Gulp. Had it started already? Was this because he’d seen the photo in the paper? The phone calls from her family had begun about five minutes after Liam left her on Saturday. Alice’s mother and each of her aunts had rung, all demanding details about the strange man in the photo.

No one from work had contacted her, but she knew it was silly to hope that, by some miracle, none of them had seen the photo. She’d been dreading coming to the office this morning.

‘What’s the matter? I’m not late, am I?’ She glanced at her watch. She was late, actually, thanks to traffic lights on the blink at a busy intersection, but not enough to upset anyone, especially as it was well-known that she often worked late or through her lunch hour without extra pay.

Dennis pursed his lips. ‘I’m sure you can be as late as you like from now on.’ He continued on, calling over his shoulder, ‘You’re sitting pretty now, Alice.’

Oh, great. That more or less confirmed her fears.

There was only one way to play it this morning. Cool. Carry on as if it was business as usual.

She went through to the office she shared with two other travel consultants, Mary-Ann and Shana.

‘You know what’s eating Dennis?’ she asked. And then she realised that playing it cool was a good idea in theory…but the who’s-she-trying-to-kid? look on her workmates’ faces made her stomach pitch.

Mary-Ann clicked a button to boot up her computer. ‘It’s not so much a matter of what’s eating Dennis, but who,’ she said. ‘Actually, it’s who’s eating him and spitting him out into little pieces.’

‘And the answer is the new boss,’ added Shana. ‘First morning on the job and this Liam Conway’s kicking heads. He lined poor Dennis up for a performance appraisal.’

‘Oh.’ Alice sat down quickly, a split-second before her legs began to shake.

‘Instead of kicking heads he should pull his own head in,’ muttered Shana.

‘Don’t tell me the new boss is an ogre?’

Shana rolled her eyes. ‘As if we need to tell you anything about him. Why don’t you tell us?’

Taking in her workmates’ identical expressions, Alice released her breath with a soft sigh. ‘OK, you’ve seen the photo in the Post.’

‘Of course we’ve seen it.’

‘How could we miss it?’

‘But,’ added Mary-Ann, ‘we didn’t know who the guy was till this morning.’

Shana came around to the front of her desk and crossed her arms over her chest. ‘At least we know now why you weren’t interested in the birthday party we offered to throw for you.’

Mary-Ann added her bit. ‘I thought you were supposed to be at your mother’s on Friday night.’

‘I was,’ said Alice. ‘But it was awful and I left.’

‘Hmm.’ Mary-Ann looked momentarily sympathetic and then doubtful.

‘Honest, guys. I went to the Hippo Bar to look for you, but you weren’t there.’

‘Ever hear of these little devices?’ Shana waved her cell-phone. ‘They’re the latest means of communication. You can speed dial a friend at the touch of a button.’

‘OK, OK.’ Alice raised her hands to ward off their anger. ‘Give me a break. Look, meeting Liam Conway was totally unexpected. He came into the bar. I was on my own and, well, we kinda clicked.’ She took a quick breath. ‘But it was a one-off thing. I won’t be seeing him again.’

The girls were leaning towards her now, faces intent. It was clear they expected more.

‘Clicked as in—totally clicked?’ asked Mary-Ann.

Alice thought it best to ignore that query. ‘I had no idea he was our new boss,’ she said. ‘And he didn’t know me from Eve. It was a really weird coincidence. Bad luck.’

‘Bad luck?’ cried Shana. ‘Honey, I’m not sure that’s what you call it.’

‘When it turns out he’s my new boss, I do.’

‘May I interrupt?’

The voice at the door startled them. There was a collective gasp and a surge of near-panic hit Alice as she turned to see Liam standing there.

Surely he must have heard their conversation?

He came into the room and she dropped her gaze, dusted a crumb from her keyboard. This was going to be worse than she’d feared. One look at Liam and she was remembering the way those grim lips had been soft and hot on her body.

The girls were watching her. She couldn’t be coy or self-conscious. This first encounter at work with Liam was the Big Test.

Taking another quick breath for control, she looked up again and managed a smile. ‘Good morning.’ She was aware of Shana sliding a watchful, sideways look in her direction. ‘Have you met our other consultants, Mary-Ann Dayton—and Shana Holmes?’

Liam shook their hands, greeted them with easy smiles. And then he stood in the middle of the room with his hands resting lightly on his hips, nudging his suit jacket aside.

Clean-shaven, dark and good-looking and dressed in his business suit, he was every inch a corporate leader, dead set on going places.

His blue eyes skirted over Alice as he looked directly at Mary-Ann and then Shana. ‘I know the photo in the Cairns Post has caused quite a stir and I’d like to set the record straight,’ he said. ‘I expect Alice has told you about our chance meeting in the bar last Friday evening.’

He waited, eyebrows raised expectantly. ‘Right,’ he continued, once he’d elicited nods of agreement from the girls. ‘I’m here to assure you that there are no grounds for gossip. That photo means nothing and I don’t expect to hear any more about it from anyone in this company.’

His cool, no-nonsense gaze flicked to Alice, causing considerable difficulty with her breathing. ‘What’s important from now on is this business,’ he said, still looking straight at her. ‘Your jobs.’ His hands dropped from his hips.

Alice couldn’t believe how awful this felt. Liam wasn’t putting a foot wrong. He was doing everything he’d said he would and it was sensible to clear the air, to nip rumours in the bud. He was distancing himself from her, as he’d promised, turning from her lover into her boss.

She should be pleased. She was pleased. In her head.

But her heart felt like a heavy stone, sinking…sinking…

‘OK,’ Liam said. ‘Let’s move on to more important matters. I’d like to schedule a full staff meeting for tomorrow.’

‘Alice, can you come through to my office?’

Liam held his breath. There was an unsettling pause before she replied.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Conway, I’m busy with clients at the moment. Can you give me—oh, say, fifteen minutes?’

‘Certainly.’ Liam swallowed. He’d seen little of her over the past week—just the occasional glimpse from a distance down the corridor. Now the sound of her voice triggered a constriction in his throat.

He knew he’d been avoiding her. Cowardly of him? No doubt. Untenable for an effective working environment? Most certainly.

‘Come as soon as you’re free,’ he said.

She wasn’t free for another forty-five minutes and he distracted himself by making phone calls, continuing to contact the various resorts and attractions the company dealt with. He was questioning the people who ran them to find out what his staff and consultants were doing well and what they were doing wrong.

When at last Alice knocked on his door, he jumped to his feet. ‘You’ve had a busy morning,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘No problems? Nothing I should know about?’

‘No, just some complicated transport arrangements for a Japanese group.’

Something about the way she said that made him wonder if her delay had been deliberate. Was she trying to avoid him as carefully as he’d been avoiding her? ‘Please, take a seat.’

She sat very primly, shoulders back, ankles crossed neatly. She was wearing a short grey skirt and now she made an attempt to camouflage its hemline by positioning a notebook and a pen just so.

But the skirt wasn’t the only problem. The pale, intensely feminine blouse beneath her businesslike jacket was damnably distracting. The blouse wasn’t transparent, but the way his imagination worked it might as well have been.

Liam wondered if he should insist that his staff wear an ultra-conservative uniform. Then again, that wouldn’t be much use. It was Alice who was distracting, not her choice of clothes.

She looked demure, almost prim, here in his office, but all he could think of was how uninhibited she’d been when she was alone with him, how passionately she’d made love.

He snatched his gaze away from her and took a moment to refocus on the business he had to discuss. ‘I’d like to talk to you about the outback tours. I know they’ve been your responsibility in the past.’

She looked surprised. ‘I haven’t been in charge of that area for a couple of years.’

‘Quite. Dennis Ericson took over from you.’

‘Yes.’

He pointed to the stack of hard-copy files on his desk and to the computer screen. ‘I’ve been going through the company’s history and I’ve noticed that the outback package tours used to be very popular but these days they aren’t doing nearly as well as the tours to the reef and the rainforest. I’d like to hear your thoughts on that.’

‘Oh…’ Alice looked down at her hands and he could sense her discomfort.

He suspected it wouldn’t be easy for her to give him an honest appraisal without implicating the staff member who’d taken control from her. Ericson.

‘Well, to start with, the reef and the rainforest have more obvious and well-established attractions,’ she said. ‘That’s where the big operators are and they’re very strong in marketing and promoting their product. It’s a lot easier to interest people in island cruises in glass-bottomed boats than in the hot and dusty outback.’

‘But from what I’ve seen we used to connect tourists to a huge range of outback activities in the past. Everything from wilderness canoeing with helicopter drops to visiting Aboriginal communities and outback picnic races.’

Alice nodded. ‘Actually, the farm stays and cattle musters were probably our most popular drawcards.’

‘What happened to them?’

She gave a half-hearted shrug but didn’t comment.

‘I’d like you to be honest with me, Alice. It’s important to get to the bottom of the problem. I expect growth in every area of my business.’

‘But I’m not sure that I can help you.’

‘Just tell me what you know.’

She sighed. ‘There have been a few problems,’ she admitted carefully. ‘I’d say it started after we switched to a different airline for the charter flights out to the remote areas.’

Liam nodded. This change of airline, he was sure, had been Dennis’s decision.

‘The new company was much cheaper,’ said Alice.

‘But that economy came at a price?’

‘Yes, they were too casual. Vague about timetables. Passengers were left stranded, luggage misplaced. And fair enough, we scored some bad word-of-mouth publicity.’

Liam nodded and made notes. ‘What else?’

She tapped her pen against the cover of her notebook, taking her time before she replied. ‘We used to have about fifty popular farm stays on our books and quite a few fishing spots up in the Gulf Country, but a lot of them pulled out.’

‘Why?’

She hesitated. ‘Haven’t you already discussed this with Dennis?’

Liam had.

‘I’ve taken note of Dennis’s observations,’ he said. ‘But I’d like to hear your opinion.’

She frowned. ‘Our outback contacts said it wasn’t worth it.’

‘Are you saying that they removed their properties from our books, or they dropped out of tourism altogether?’

It was clear she didn’t want to answer this question. She opened her notebook, stared at a blank page, and then shut it again with a snap.

‘Is that what happened?’ Liam prompted again. ‘These cattle stations stopped taking tourists?’

‘No.’

Liam waited.

‘They went to other tourist agencies.’

‘Why?’ he asked again.

Alice looked away and drew a sharp breath. ‘I’m not sure.’

Now she was lying. He knew that, but he felt a grudging respect for her attempt to protect her colleague.

‘Could it have been a PR problem?’ he suggested carefully. ‘Were a few toes stepped on? A few egos bruised?’

She looked directly at him and the loveliness of her soft grey eyes snagged at his breath.

Very carefully, she said, ‘I guess it’s easy sometimes for people in the city to misread country folk and to believe they haven’t kept up with the times.’

‘But that’s rubbish. When it comes to market trends and meeting consumer demands, the people in the outback are as astute as anyone else.’ He’d told Dennis Ericson as much.

He tapped long fingers on his desk top. ‘As you might have guessed, I plan to turn this situation around. I’m going into the outback tomorrow to check things out. A kind of reconnaissance and goodwill tour.’

Alice nodded, her eyes watching him.

‘I want you to come with me.’

The look of dismay that swept over her face shocked him, but he kept his face stone-hard.

His assessment of the company records showed a clear period of growth while Alice had been in charge of the outback operations. And after observing the way she handled his questions, he felt certain she had the diplomatic skills needed to win back lost clients—if that was still possible.

He cracked a small smile. ‘Just remember I’m the boss and I get to make the decisions.’

His brashness fired two pink spots in her cheeks. ‘I thought your first priority was to hunt down new premises. Somewhere flash on the Esplanade.’

‘I’ve simply changed my priorities. As I see it now, my biggest problem is the outback and I’m going to tackle the most pressing problem first.’

Her hands twisted nervously. ‘You know you shouldn’t be asking me to do this, Liam. Take Shana. She’s from Mount Isa and she has good contacts out west.’

‘Shana’s also a single parent with a rather emotionally fragile pre-school child.’

Her head shot up. ‘You know about Toby?’

‘Yes. You see, Alice, I have looked into alternatives.’

Her eyes widened and he thought he caught a flash of emotion. Annoyance? Pique? Was she miffed that he’d exhausted other possibilities before approaching her? The thought stirred him in ways that it shouldn’t.

‘Shana doesn’t want to spend so much time away from her son,’ he said. ‘And Mary-Ann has specialised almost exclusively in the reef tours and attractions.’

‘And Dennis?’

‘I have other plans for him.’ Liam pressed his point home. ‘Alice, you used to look after the client base in the outback and it was doing well. It makes perfect sense that you should accompany me.’

There was a long, awkward silence and at the end of it she let out a sigh. Of defeat? Liam held his breath.

‘I’m sorry, but I’d rather not,’ she said quietly.

‘I’m afraid you don’t have any option. Alice, I’m telling you that this is not negotiable. It’s a directive.’

‘A directive?’ Her eyes flashed with a mutinous glitter, but he glimpsed a flash of pain behind her defiance.

He felt a stab of guilt. Her husband had treated her shabbily and no doubt she found it hard to trust any man now, especially a man who’d deliberately sought her out, and then seduced her.

‘How long would we be gone for?’ she asked.

He forced a casual shrug. ‘For as long as it takes.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Her sudden anger launched her to her feet. ‘What kind of answer is that?’ Her eyes turned smoky, angry as thunderclouds. ‘You might be my boss, Liam, but don’t let the power go to your head. Surely you haven’t forgotten our ground rules? You know perfectly well why we should make this trip as brief as possible.’

‘Don’t you trust me?’ He tried to lighten the question with a chuckle, but even to his ears it sounded hollow—rather destroying the effect.

Her chin tilted to a haughty angle. ‘No. Under the circumstances, I think I’d be foolish to trust you.’