The Girl he Never Noticed by Lindsay Armstrong

about myself, my life, et cetera.’
    He brooded over this for a moment, then, ‘And your mother? What’s her opinion?’
    ‘She’s all for it—although it took a bit of persuading to get her to agree to stay in Sydney and take up the costume design job. But I pointed out that she’s only fifty and she needs a life of her own. Of course she’ll come up and spend time with us—if that’s OK?’
    ‘Fine.’ His lips twisted. ‘Are you looking forward to it, though? All the pragmatism in the world isn’t going be much good to you if you hate it up there. If you feel it’s beneath your skills or whatever.’
    ‘Hate
it up there?’ Liz repeated wryly. ‘That would be hard to do.’
    ‘Or if you feel lonely.’
    Their gazes caught as he said it, and Liz found shecouldn’t look away. Something in the way he said it, and the way he was looking at her, held her trapped.
    She moistened her lips. ‘I plan to be too busy to feel lonely.’
    But she knew immediately this wasn’t the right response. It didn’t answer the unasked question he was posing—the question of, as he had put it, the electricity that sometimes sizzled between them. Even now it was there between them as he stood watching her, so tall, so—She sought for the right expression. So dynamic that she couldn’t help being physically moved by him—moved and made to wonder what it would be like to be in his arms.
    She actually felt all the little hairs on her body stand up as she wondered this, and realised to her amazement that she’d given herself goosebumps again.
    But there was more.
    Lonely,
she thought on a sudden indrawn breath.
    She’d been lonely for years. Lonely for that special companionship with a man who was your lover. And she had no doubt that Cameron Hillier would meld those two roles brilliantly. For how long, though, before another Portia crossed his path? Well, maybe not a Portia, but—Stop it! she told herself. Don’t go there…
    ‘Liz? Are we going to play games about this?’
    She trembled inwardly, but it struck her that she’d only ever been honest with this man, and she’d continue to be so.
    ‘If you mean am I going to deny that an attraction exists for me? No, I’m not. But…’ She paused and rubbed her palms together, then laced her fingers. ‘Ican’t let it affect me. I made one terrible mistake in the name of what I thought was love, but it turned out to be only a passing attraction. I’m still trying to pick up the pieces—the pieces not only of my life but of my—my morale, maybe.’
    She stopped, and didn’t know that a terrible tension was visible in her expression. She did try to lighten her tone. ‘You’d think five years would be enough to get over it.’ She smiled briefly. ‘But not so. And then, if you’ll forgive me, Mr Hillier, there’s you.’
    ‘Go on,’ he invited dryly. ‘Or can I guess? You don’t know whether my intentions are honourable or the opposite?’ He paused, then said deliberately, ‘I certainly wouldn’t be so heartless as to leave you pregnant and alone.’
    ‘I did…walk out on him,’ she whispered.
    ‘Liz, you’re twenty-four now. That means you would have only been
nineteen
when it happened. Right?’ he said interrogatively.
    ‘Well, yes. But—’
    ‘How old was he?’ he continued. ‘Older, I gather?’
    ‘He—he was thirty-five.’
    ‘And who was he? I don’t want names,’ he added as she took a quick, tempestuous breath. ‘What was he in your life?’
    Her shoulders slumped. ‘One of my tutors.’
    He studied her for a long moment. ‘That’s an old, old story, Liz,’ he said. ‘An older man in some sort of authority. A young, possibly naïve, starstruck girl. He shouldn’t have walked out of your life without a backward glance when things came right for him withanother woman. He should have known better
right from the start.’
    Liz fiddled with her bangles for a long moment and found that breathing was difficult. Why? she questioned