A Bride For Barra Creek

CHAPTER TWO

‘KISS you?’ Lizzy flushed in embarrassment as she heard her voice rise to a squeak, and she cleared her throat quickly.

‘Why should I do that?’ That was better. Deeper, steadier, just a touch of amusement to show that she recognised that he was joking. Much more like the sophisticated PR consultant she was supposed to be.

‘You said that you would do anything,’ Tye pointed out.

Without quite knowing why, Lizzy’s assurance began to trickle away, and she eyed him uneasily. ‘Well, I know I did, but…’

‘Are you trying to tell me that you’re not prepared to do anything?’

‘You’re not serious!’

‘Don’t I look serious?’

He did. Absolutely serious.

Lizzy swallowed. ‘Do you interview all your prospective employees like this?’

‘Only those with the potential to fulfil a very special role.’ Tye’s face was still perfectly straight, but Lizzy seized on the glimmer of amusement she could see in the grey eyes.

‘You are joking!’

‘No, I’m not,’ he said. ‘You asked what you could do to convince me that it was worth giving you a chance, and I’ve told you. You can kiss me.’

‘But how can you possibly tell anything about my PR skills from a kiss?’ Lizzy objected, trying to ignore the way her heart was racketing around her chest at the mere thought of kissing him.

‘I’m not interested in your skills,’ said Tye. ‘I want to know whether you’re the kind of person who’s prepared to stand out from the crowd—and I don’t just mean by wearing ridiculous shoes. Look around you, Lizzy,’ he went on, nodding his head in the direction of the other guests. ‘See how many people are watching us while trying not to make it obvious. They don’t like the fact that you’re talking to me.’

It was true. Lizzy, following his glance, noticed how friends that she had known for years averted their eyes while others were eyeing her covertly. It was an uncomfortable feeling, and she turned back to Tye, an uncharacteristic frown in her blue eyes.

OK, so he wasn’t the most charming man in the world, and his reputation certainly didn’t bear close scrutiny, but he wasn’t that bad. Lizzy wouldn’t go so far as to say that she liked him. He was cold and callous, and he had made little attempt to conceal his contempt for her family and friends, but there was something intriguing about him, something that stimulated and provoked and disconcerted her all at the same time.

‘I’m not welcome here,’ Tye was saying, not sounding at all bothered by the fact. ‘No one has been prepared to come right out and say it, but it’s obvious. I don’t belong here, and if I’d given them the slightest excuse there would have been plenty of people more than happy to throw me out. It’s been bad enough for them to see you standing here with me all this time. How do you think they’d react if you kissed me?’

Lizzy tried to picture the scene, but although she could imagine kissing Tye with startling clarity, somehow she couldn’t get past that to visualise the reactions of anyone watching.

‘You’d be breaking ranks big time,’ Tye answered for her. ‘You’d be saying you didn’t care what anyone thought, that you’d do whatever it took to get what you want.’ He looked into Lizzy’s face, a faint smile on his lips as doubt wrestled with determination to prove herself in the blue eyes. ‘And that’s the kind of person I’m looking for,’ he said.

‘And if I don’t want to break ranks?’

Tye shrugged carelessly. ‘You walk away. I leave. I find someone else.’

He might at least sound as if he cared one way or another, thought Lizzy with something suspiciously close to petulance. She looked away from him, edgily running a finger around the base of her glass.

She had always prided herself on her refusal to fit the mould. As a young girl she had grumbled endlessly about the old-fashioned attitudes of her parents and their friends. The district might cover vast distances but it had a distinctly small town mentality.

Lizzy hadn’t been able to wait to leave home for the city. She thought of herself as cosmopolitan, and whenever she came home she made a point of looking as stylish as possible. Her transformation into city girl was treated as something of a standing joke in the community, and Lizzy played up to it. She knew that the teasing was affectionate, and she liked the fact that they thought of her as unconventional.

You’d be saying you didn’t care what anyone thought. Tye had issued a challenge, and she longed to take it up, but deep down Lizzy knew that she did care. These people were her family and friends. She might not choose to live in the outback, but that didn’t mean she wanted to shock or offend them unnecessarily. When it came down to it, Lizzy just wanted everyone to like her.

There would be uproar if she kissed Tye Gibson, and in spite of her assertion of confidence Lizzy quailed inwardly at the thought.

‘I can hardly fling myself into your arms in the middle of my sister’s wedding,’ she prevaricated, unaware that her thoughts were written clearly in her expressive face. ‘It would cause a scene. While it might prove your point, I’m not prepared to do anything to spoil her day. It wouldn’t be fair.’

Tye looked faintly bored by her dithering. ‘I wasn’t thinking of a passionate clinch,’ he said with a sardonic look. ‘I know you’re much too nice a girl to go in for anything like that!’

‘Oh.’

Lizzy wasn’t sure she liked the way he’d said that word ‘nice’. It wasn’t that she wanted to kiss him—God forbid!—but she didn’t want to be the kind of girl who didn’t dare either. She stood feeling foolish, unable to decide whether she was relieved or offended at Tye’s lack of interest in being kissed by her.

‘What were you thinking of?’ she asked him uncertainly.

‘More along the lines of a peck on the cheek,’ said Tye, lifting his brows in a way that made Lizzy feel ridiculous for having thought that he could possibly mean anything else. ‘A quick kiss to say goodbye, that’s all.’

‘Oh,’ said Lizzy again.

She bit her lip. Between the crowds, she caught a glimpse of her parents, greeting friends on the other side of the woolshed. They wouldn’t like her kissing Tye at all, and nor would anyone else.

Perhaps no one would notice. It would be dark by then and the party would be well away. Everyone would be too busy enjoying themselves to wonder what she was doing with Tye Gibson, and anyway, it would only take a second.

And it would be worth it. A very special role, wasn’t that what Tye had called it? Quite apart from what it would do for her CV, an important job with a company like GCS was bound to be lucrative, Lizzy calculated.

It was all very well not wanting to upset anybody, but the hard fact was that she needed the money. Since Stephen had moved out she had had all the bills to pay, and Ellie’s wedding had proved expensive, too, what with flying backwards and forwards between Perth and Mathison, buying presents and searching out the perfect bridesmaid’s dress.

Not to mention the shoes.

Lizzy contemplated the champagne in her glass with an inward grimace at the thought of her credit card bill. Face it, her only other choice was to get a bar job of some kind to tide her over. It wasn’t that she hadn’t done it before, but it certainly wasn’t what she had planned to be doing at thirty-three, and the prospect was humiliating when she thought about how she had boasted about her grand new career.

She could ask her parents for help, but it wouldn’t be fair right now when they had all the expense of Ellie’s wedding to cope with. No, Lizzy decided, she wouldn’t go to them. It was her own fault that she had given up a perfectly good job, and it was up to her to find a way out of her financial problems.

She could settle for a bar job.

Or she could kiss Tye Gibson.

A choice between scraping together enough money to pay the bills and seizing the opportunity of an important job with a prestigious organisation that could relaunch her career. Why was she even hesitating? Lizzy wondered.

Tye had been watching the conflicting emotions flitting across her face, but now he looked ostentatiously at his watch and put down his glass. ‘I might as well go,’ he said.

‘What, now?’ Lizzy regarded him with dismay. She had thought that she would have the rest of the evening to build up courage.

‘No point in hanging around,’ said Tye. ‘I’ve done what I came to do. I thought it would be interesting to see if things had changed round here, but obviously they haven’t.’ The grey eyes gleamed with mockery as he looked at Lizzy. ‘Shall I see myself out, or are you coming?’

How hard could it be? It was ridiculous to make such a fuss about a tiny kiss. All she had to do was walk across the woolshed with him, say goodbye and press her cheek to his.

Piece of cake.

Lizzy put down her glass. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said.

Something flickered in Tye’s eyes, and was gone. ‘Good,’ was all he said.

Turning, he headed across the middle of the woolshed floor to the wide wooden doors that stood open to the night. No creeping round the edges for Tye Gibson, thought Lizzy with a mixture of exasperation and admiration as she hurried to keep up with him. He went straight for what he wanted, and to hell with anyone who got in his way.

He walked with the long, deliberate stride of a man used to walking alone, appearing not to notice the almost tangible hostility of the crowd, or the way it parted uneasily before his ruthless self-assurance. Struggling to keep up with him in her frivolous shoes, Lizzy was very conscious of the eyes following her. So much for not being noticed. They might as well have had a brass band and ticker tape.

A murmuring rose behind them as the guests closed back into their groups, but she didn’t hear. Tye had paused at the doors and was waiting for her to catch up. Lizzy told herself that her sudden breathlessness was due to hurrying on unsteady heels, and nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that any moment now she was going to kiss him.

Outside, it was already dark. Two more steps would have taken them into the shadows, but he had stopped deliberately in the doorway so that they were framed against the darkness in the brightness of the light that shone directly above their heads. It was like being on stage.

‘I’ll say goodbye,’ said Tye, and held out his hand. His face was quite straight, but the startlingly light eyes glinted with a mocking challenge.

He thought that she would lose her nerve, Lizzy realised, and it was enough to bring her chin up. This was her chance to prove herself.

She took his outstretched hand. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, surprised at how steady her voice sounded.

The press of his palm was cool and firm, and as his fingers closed around hers she felt something uncurl alarmingly inside her, but she made herself look directly into his eyes, her own very blue and sparkling with defiance.

‘It was nice to meet you,’ she went on deliberately, and without releasing her grip she brought her other hand up to rest against his chest.

She could feel the power of his body through his jacket. It seemed to reverberate through her palm, tingling along her arm and deep into the core of her being, and she had a sudden, vivid sense that time had slowed while her senses simultaneously speeded up. She was acutely aware of the texture of the material beneath her hand, of Tye’s fingers imprisoning hers, of the sound of her own heart thudding in her ears.

Lizzy was a tall girl, but Tye was taller still, and when he made no effort to bend his head she had to lift herself onto her toes to bring her face close to his, balancing herself by spreading her hand against his chest. She pressed her cheek against Tye’s cool skin, feeling its roughness, breathing in his clean, masculine smell, grazing it with her lips, shivering at the sensation.

Everything seemed to be happening hazily, as if in slow motion. Lizzy had forgotten their audience, but she hadn’t forgotten what she was doing, and when she felt Tye’s fingers begin to loosen their grip she tightened her hold. If she was making a point, she might as well make it properly. She would show Tye just how willing she was to stand out from the crowd!

Tye tensed questioningly as her hand slid up from his chest to his shoulder, and she turned her head. For a fleeting moment blue eyes looked into grey, and then Lizzy smiled, lowering her lashes, and all at once it seemed perfectly natural to touch her mouth to his.

She was prepared for his lips to feel as cold and unyielding as the rest of him, but they weren’t like that at all. They were firm, yes, but they were warm, warm and inviting and exciting, and Lizzy was jarred by a deep, instinctive sense of rightness that was as undeniable as it was disturbing.

Perturbed by the feeling, she would have pulled away if Tye hadn’t chosen that exact moment to put his free arm around her and lift her hard against him. Lizzy found herself pinioned between the massive solidity of his body and the steel strength of his arm, and she felt at once helpless and disconcertingly secure.

His mouth returned the pressure of hers for a long, giddying moment, his lips searingly persuasive, and his hand burning through the silky dress onto her skin—the briefest of touches, but enough to galvanise Lizzy’s senses in a single, incandescent instant so electric that she gasped.

It was enough to break the kiss. Tye’s arm fell, his hand released hers, and Lizzy was left, dizzy and disorientated, somehow managing to stand upright on legs that twitched and trembled with a life of their own. The blue eyes were dazed, and she blinked furiously to clear her head.

What had happened? One second she had been coolly determined to impress him, and the next…oh, the next there had been that scorching whoosh of sensation, thrilling and terrifying at the same time. Lizzy couldn’t have even said how long it lasted. She knew only that it had been long enough to jolt the world out of its usual orbit and that nothing was quite the same as it had been before.

Shaken, she focused at last on her hand. It was clutching Tye’s shoulder, crumpling his jacket between her fingers, and the belated recognition that she was still clinging to him was enough to make Lizzy snatch it away, although she could have done with the support.

She had kissed him because she needed a job, not a shoulder to lean on. Remember?

‘Will—?’ She stopped, horrified by the huskiness of her voice. ‘Will you consider me now?’ she managed croakily after having to clear her throat humiliatingly a couple of times.

‘I certainly will,’ said Tye, and then he demolished all Lizzy’s desperate attempts to pull herself together by smiling.

He had smiled at her before, but his smiles had been mocking at best. This smile was different. It softened the grim lines of his face and warmed the cool eyes with a blithe charm that was as devastating as it was unexpected, and Lizzy’s heart did a peculiar somersault that left her even more breathless than she had been before. It was as if she had blinked to find someone completely different standing before her.

‘Wh—wh—when…?’ she stammered, trying to ask him about the interview, but her tongue kept sticking to the roof of her mouth, so thick and unwieldy that she couldn’t get the words out.

Tye seemed to understand. Reaching into his inside pocket, he pulled out a business card and offered it to Lizzy, who took it with nerveless fingers.

‘Give me a call,’ he said, and turned to walk out of the woolshed and away into the starry outback night, leaving Lizzy to stare after him, his card clutched unread in her hand.

Five to eight. Lizzy looked at her watch for the umpteenth time, and wondered if it was too late to change her shoes.

She had been pleased with her reflection when she left her room. Having dithered for ages about what she should wear, Lizzy had settled at length on a plain shift dress which was flattering without being too revealing. It was very simply cut, relying on the vibrant turquoise colour and the softness of the material for its effect. Lizzy thought it made her look stylish and professional, without making it seem as if she had tried too hard to impress Tye.

Maybe it was a bit shorter than she would normally wear to an interview, but then most interviews didn’t involve being flown to Sydney and collected from the airport by limousine, or being put up in a hotel so luxurious her eyes had popped when she saw the room.

It had taken Lizzy ages to pluck up the courage to ring Tye on the Monday after Ellie’s wedding. She’d sat by the phone, tapping his card against her teeth, wishing she could put that kiss from her mind and feeling ridiculously, pathetically nervous at the idea of seeing him again. Even the thought of his voice at the other end of the phone had been enough to set the nerves jittering and jangling underneath her skin.

What had been the point of going through all that to get his number if she wasn’t even going to call him? Lizzy had asked herself sternly. Chances were that Tye would simply put her in touch with the personnel department and she would never have anything else to do with him.

She had to pay for those shoes somehow, didn’t she?

And after all that, when she’d finally dialled the number, she’d got not Tye but his icily efficient assistant, who had told her that she would make arrangements for Lizzy to fly to Sydney. Mr Gibson, she’d said, would see her for dinner the following Friday at eight o’clock. It seemed a funny time for an interview, but Lizzy had been too intimidated by the PA’s manner to question her further.

Her spirits had risen on the flight over to Sydney. A first-class ticket, limousine service from the airport, a luxurious suite in a top-class hotel…Tye must have been serious about it being an important job. Lizzy congratulated herself on having had the courage to kiss him. It had been awkward afterwards, to say the least, but clearly it had been worth it.

To celebrate, Lizzy had taken herself shopping as soon as she’d arrived in Sydney, and had found a pair of shoes so perfect for her dress that she hadn’t been able to resist buying them to wear instead of the elegant black ones that she had brought with her. Now, sitting beside an elaborate fountain in the lobby as she waited for Tye to arrive, Lizzy wondered if they had been such a good idea.

They were beautiful, just the right colour and decorated with mock peacock feathers fixed into place by a glass jewel, but perhaps they were, after all, a bit much?

Everybody else in the hotel was dressed so discreetly you just knew their clothes had cost a fortune, and Lizzy had seen one or two glances at her shoes, usually followed by disparagingly raised eyebrows. The gesture reminded her sharply of Tye.

He would be here any minute. Lizzy looked at her watch again, trying to ignore the churning sense of anticipation and nerves. Beside her, the water trickled into the fountain in a way that was meant to be soothing but instead was having the opposite effect. She crossed her legs, then uncrossed them, drummed her fingers on the edge of her seat, resisted the urge to check her makeup.

Really, she was being ridiculous! Lizzy sat upright. This was an interview, not a date. She would be fine. All she had to do was be cool and professional, and let Tye know that as far as she was concerned the kiss had been no more than a mildly unusual interviewing technique.

‘Cool…professional…’ she muttered to herself, only to find her eyes drawn back to her shoes.

No, they weren’t the right image! She would have to go and change. If she hurried, she could get up to her room and back before he arrived.

Jumping to her feet, Lizzy turned towards the lifts, but she had only taken three steps before the glass doors hissed open and Tye strode into the lobby.

The air leaked out of Lizzy’s lungs at the sight of him, and she stopped dead, conscious of a sense of recognition so sharp that it was almost a shock. It wasn’t that she hadn’t expected to recognise Tye, it was just that she hadn’t been prepared for him to seem quite so…familiar. It was as if she had always known that dark, guarded face, the watchful eyes, that air of barely leashed power.

Pausing in the middle of the lobby, Tye let his piercing gaze sweep round until he found Lizzy. Skewered by his eyes, she could only stand frozen by the fountain, her heart beating frantically in her throat as he came towards her.

‘Hi!’ She smiled nervously, wincing inwardly as she heard her own voice. Cool and professional? Yeah, sure!

Clearing her throat, Lizzy held out her hand. ‘Thank you for seeing me.’

An improvement. Composed, competent, in control. Well, fairly.

There was an odd look in Tye’s eyes as he inspected her, subjecting her to an intense but strangely impersonal scrutiny. His gaze travelled from the soft mass of blonde hair framing her face, with its tilting blue eyes and wide, humorous mouth, skimming over the vivid dress and down the long, slender legs, ending at the shoes with their jaunty feathers and gaudy jewels.

One corner of his mouth quirked, and he lifted his eyes to Lizzy’s. ‘It’s a pleasure,’ he said.

He took her hand, and the moment his fingers closed around hers Lizzy felt her composure wobble. His clasp was warm and firm, and the touch of his palm sent little tingles down her arm. All he had to do was shake her hand and she was drowning in giddying sensation, as if they’d kissed all over again. It wasn’t fair.