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‘Ask away. What do you want to know? You want me to start with my blood group?’
Letting out a noisy sigh she slumped back on the pile of pillows. ‘Don’t make a joke of this, please.’
He let her foot go. ‘Okay. I can see there’s something bothering you, so why don’t you get it off your chest?’
The cabin and the surrounding bush seemed incredibly quiet as he waited for her.
‘Can I trust you?’ she asked.
She could see immediately that her question upset him.
‘I would hope so, Alice. What makes you doubt it?’
‘Well...’
There seemed to be a shadow in Liam’s past that bothered her, but the feeling was so tenuous she couldn’t be sure and it would be nosy to push him when they’d only just met, so she took a more obvious route. ‘There’s the business about Shana.’
His mouth pulled into a guilty grimace and then he reached for her foot again and with his thumb he rubbed her instep. ‘Okay, confession time.’ He stroked her skin ever so slowly.
Did he have any idea what that did to her?
‘You’re dead right. I wasn’t completely honest. But you see, when I first asked Shana to come on this trip and she said she couldn’t I was really pleased. It meant I had a genuine excuse to ask you.’ He lifted her foot and dropped a warm kiss in the curve of her arch. ‘You were the right person for the job.’
There was a sound of knocking on the cabin next door, the cabin assigned to Alice. She stiffened and tried to pull her foot from his grasp. Was someone looking for her?
Liam ignored the knock. ‘All along it was you I really wanted,’ he said.
‘I – I see.’ She supposed she should still be angry with him. Problem was, she knew now that she liked being wanted by Liam Conway. She liked it very much, thank you.
There was another knock, on Liam’s door this time.
‘Coming,’ he called, and he dropped one last kiss on her foot before crossing the room to answer it.
He didn’t open the door very wide, but Alice caught a quick glimpse of Noreen King holding a cane hamper.
‘I’ve brought your meals,’ she said.
‘Oh. Wonderful. Thanks very much.’
‘I knocked on Alice’s door, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around, so is it all right if I leave her meal here with you?’ There was no mistaking the curiosity in her voice.
‘Yes,’ said Liam. ‘Yes, that’s fine. I’ll pass it on to her.’ Then he remembered to ask, ‘Do you have any news from the Flying Doctor?’
‘Oh, yes. They said Joe’s making a good recovery. And he’s been singing your praises to anyone who’ll listen.’
‘He should be singing Alice’s praises. She’s the one who attended to him.’
After Liam had thanked her again for the food, he closed the door and came back into the room. ‘I’d say we’ve beensprung.’ His telltale smile suggested that he didn’t mind at all. ‘Now, let’s see what we have to eat. I’m starving.’
Alice wanted to keep their conversation going. Liam had only just started to open up. She wanted to know so much more about him. And at some point she knew she should probably tell him about her problems with infertility.
But Liam was already opening the hamper and she realised that she was hungry.
‘Smells fantastic,’ she said.
They fell on the hamper with the eagerness of children scrambling for cookies after a long day at school. They found a bottle of red wine, a selection of cheeses, freshly baked bread rolls, a crisp green salad and a wonderfully aromatic country-style casserole.
‘Now this is service,’ beamed Liam. ‘We’ve got to get this property back on our books.’
