Twice In A Lifetime. Kierney Scott
minutes, all she needed was ten minutes to speak to Liam. She glanced at the door. He was thirty feet away.
Screw it. She had nothing to lose. She grabbed her hand luggage and made a dash towards his door. Too late she considered the possibility of security, but of course he would have security—he was worth more than the GDP of a small country. As she reached the door the office was filled with the shrieking of a high-pitched alarm. It blared out in long piercing notes.
“Fantastic,” Sarah muttered under her breath.
Bureaucratic Barbie was two paces behind and closing in quickly. Sarah was definitely going to be hitting the gym when she got back to Scotland; being outrun by a scrawny girl in stilettos was completely unacceptable.
She pushed open the door with the same vigour as a sprinter crossing the finish line of a hundred-metre dash, but without the grace, and more laboured breathing.
She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him. All the air in her lungs left her body with a painful whoosh. It was Liam, only different. She didn’t know what she’d expected but this wasn’t it. She had been so focused on getting a meeting with Liam she had not thought of what it would mean to come face to face with him again after over a decade.
Liam pushed his chair away from his desk and stood. He had changed so much.
Gone was the tall skinny kid, replaced by six feet three of hard muscle. Even through his crisp white shirt, she could make out the lines of pecs over a flat stomach. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing tan flesh. His face had changed too. Once upon a time he was never without a cheeky smile, but now his full lips were tightened in a humourless expression. His sandy hair had gone lighter in the desert sun. Soft lines fanned out around his eyes, but they did nothing to soften the sharp angles of his face. Everything about him was encased in a raw masculinity that was as threatening as it was alluring.
“Sarah,” he said. His eyes widened and then quickly narrowed again. If he was shocked to see her again, he was covering it well. But he always had been good at keeping his feelings guarded.
“Mr McPherson, I am so sorry. Security will be here any minute. I can’t believe she just barged past me,” the secretary shouted as she pulled at Sarah’s arm.
With some effort, Sarah twisted her arm away; the scrawny girl was stronger than she looked.
“I can,” Liam said. If she was not wrong, there was a hint of sadness in his tone. “It’s fine. I knew Ms Campbell in a previous life. She never did let anything get in the way once she had a notion.” This time the only thing his tone betrayed was antipathy. His voice had become so much deeper and his accent had become so faint, it was almost impossible to place it as Scottish, while hers had become broader and her vernacular more common. It was an occupational hazard of being a drugs counsellor on Salamander Street. No one was going to trust her if she sounded like a private school twit—not that she was. She grew up on the same council estate as Liam, though no one would ever guess that the man in front of her had ever laid eyes on a scheme. He was perfectly polished and in control. For the first time Sarah felt self-conscious about the way she looked and sounded. But why should she be ashamed? It was Liam that changed and turned his back on everyone he knew.
“By that previous life, do you mean the one before you sounded like a toffee-nosed Yah?”
The taut muscles in his jaw clenched and then relaxed again; a smooth smile took shape on his full lips. His gaze darted to the secretary. “Thank you, Gemma. That will be all.”
The woman opened her mouth to speak, presumably to ask who the lunatic he had allowed into his office was, but then snapped it shut and spun on her heel.
“Liam, I need to—”
He cut her off by indicating the alarm that was still blaring. When the ringing stopped he gestured to her to sit downand asked, “What brings you to Dubai, Ms Campbell?”
Her back stiffened. Ms Campbell. He could pretend she was nothing to him in front of his staff, but she would be damned if she let him pretend they were nothing to each other when they were alone. A shared history meant something, even if he wanted to pretend it didn’t. “Just wanted to see if Niddrie Nae Socks had got too big for his britches. But I can’t even find him.” She sat down on the leather couch.
“Still the same Sarah, I see. Nice to know life has not softened you any. But it is a long way to come just to take the piss.”
She had to shake her head. She had changed a lot but he wouldn’t know anything about that because he had left her and never looked back. “You never responded to any of my calls or emails.”
“Did you email me? I didn’t get it,” he said, the annoyance written plainly on his tanned features.
“No, it has been a few years.” She was perplexed by his sudden change in emotion. Why would he care if he had missed an email from her? It wasn’t as if he had responded to any.
“And phones have stopped working in Scotland?” he asked dryly. Gone was any hint of emotion. He was all business again, his gaze hard and calculating. She could see how the man in front of her had become one of Britain’s wealthiest exports. She could not imagine it of the Liam she knew, but this wasn’t him. This was a stranger who bore a striking resemblance to the boy she once loved.
“Would you have answered?” she asked.
He stared through her. “Why are you here, Sarah? Is it your granny? Is she unwell?”
She shook her head. “No, Granny is fine. Well, as fine as any whisky-drinking eighty-five-year-old can be. Still smokes twenty a day. I have given up trying to get her to stop. What’s the point at this stage?”
“Indeed.” For the first time, a smile tugged at Liam’s mouth. His whole face softened. He looked younger when he smiled, softer somehow, more like her Liam. “So why are you here?”
Her pulse quickened. In an instant she remembered feelings she had spent years learning to forget. She shook her head. It wasn’t the same person and the sooner she remembered that, the better. He had fooled her once but he would not be getting the opportunity to fool her again. “It is nice to see you too, Liam. Interesting to see your new accent didn’t come with manners.”
“Is it nice to see me?” he asked. His knuckles brushed against her cheek as he pushed back a strand of hair from her face.
Her breath caught in her throat. Her mouth was suddenly dry and it was hard to concentrate on anything past the heat radiating from her core. How could he still do that to her? With a simple touch her body forgot all the hurt and betrayal. It would be so easy to lean into him and see if he tasted the same.
Lucky her heart still remembered.
She pulled her hand away as if she had just grabbed hold of a stinging nettle. “It is always nice to see someone from home that has done well.” She shifted away from him. She needed to put some distance between them. She didn’t need the task of trying to get over him again; once was enough for any woman.
“I don’t suppose you see many of them,” he said simply.
She opened her mouth to protest but he was right—she did not know anyone else from their council estate in Niddrie who had even managed to get off the dole, let alone make something of themselves. She looked past Liam, to the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the sparking cerulean waters of the Persian Gulf. Past the marina, luxury yachts dotted blue horizon. There was no denying Liam had accomplished more than anyone could have ever dreamed. “You’re the only one,” she admitted.
“Why are you here, Sarah?” he asked again.
“I need your help, Liam. I don’t know if I have the right to ask for anything from you after everything, but you are my only hope.”
A look of terror washed over his face; for a second there was a pained expression that she knew too well, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. He pushed his sleeves up further on his arms and sat down beside her