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She thought about this and was only a little shocked to realise this meeting might lose its gloss if she learned too much about this man. She shook her head. Right now Liam Conway was an intriguing Man of Mystery, a figure of limitless potential. He could be anything... a podiatrist, a priest, a pirate or a poet.
What seemed more important than boring details like his occupation was the fact that he shared her birthday! Her star sign. My God, they were almost soul mates. She rewarded him with her warmest smile. ‘Happy Birthday, Liam Conway.’
‘Thank you.’ He returned his wallet to his pocket and lifted his glass. ‘Are you going to finish your drink?’
‘I’m not sure that I should.’ She gave her cocktail a stir with her straw. ‘I don’t know what they put in these things.’
‘Hmmm ... the ingredients of a Screaming Orgasm. That’s a big question, Alice.’
This time, when their gazes met, his eyes signalled a very direct, unambiguous message, a message so dark and sensual that she was both alarmed and turned on. Her heart picked up pace, sweat filmed her skin and she felt a sensuous tug deepwithin her. Good grief. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt like this.
Desperate to change the subject she asked, ‘Where were you on your sixth birthday?’
CHAPTER TWO
LIAM blinked as if his brain had been in a completely different country and it seemed to take him ages to compute Alice’s question. Where had he been on his sixth birthday? ‘Um – I was on my parents’ orchard down on the Granite Belt.’
‘So, while I was being born, you were stuffing yourself with peaches and plums?’
‘Possibly. Although I would have preferred ice cream if it was on offer.’
‘No party?’
‘My parents didn’t have much time for parties – except on significant birthdays.’
For a moment he seemed lost in a cloud of darkness. He downed his drink quickly and then gave a little shake as if to rid himself of a ghostly presence. Alice had the distinct impression he was sorry he’d told her so much.
‘That’s why I like to celebrate now,’ he said but the intensity in his voice was at odds with his words.
‘I’m all for celebrating.’ But then she remembered that she’d had enough to drink, so her options for celebrating in a bar were limited. Perhaps it was time for her to leave.
She pictured herself hopping off her barstool, thanking Liam Conway for the cocktail and bidding him farewell. In her mind’s eye she saw herself walking out of the bar and calling a taxi to take her home. Back at her Edge Hill flat, she would listen to one of her favourite Spanish guitar CDs and drink a chaste cupof hot chocolate, and then she’d read a paperback novel until she fell asleep.
She knew exactly what she would do, what sheshoulddo. It was all very clear.
But she didn’t move.
‘It really is bad luck to have your friends abducted by aliens on your birthday,’ Liam said quietly.
‘Yeah,’ Alice agreed with a rueful smile. ‘I was hoping I’d finished my run of bad luck.’ And immediately she regretted saying that. ‘Sorry, you’re looking for fun, not hard luck stories.’
Liam shrugged. ‘I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. Until I saw you.’
His smile sent a delicious shiver right through her and she reached for her abandoned drink.
‘It was a guy who put those shadows in your eyes, wasn’t it?’ Liam said.
She was too surprised to be cautious. ‘Yes.’
‘A rat?’
‘A toad.’ She might have smiled at that, but to her dismay, the scene she’d tried so hard to forget leapt into her mind. ‘I – I came home early one afternoon and found him in bed with another woman.’
Pressing a fist against her mouth, she struggled again with the horror of the memory.
Liam looked genuinely upset. ‘Toad is too polite for a man like that. Some of us have a lot to answer for.’
To Alice’s surprise, his unexpected empathy seemed to open the floodgates on the feelings she’d been working so hard to hide. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised,’ she found herself saying. ‘I’d been picking up the telltale signs that he was straying. I just didn’t want to believe it.’
