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‘Very well, thank you, Sally. And I have some good news.’
‘Y-you do?’
‘I’d like to offer you our front desk position.’
Normally quite good at filling awkward silences, Sally was suddenly too shaken and surprised to utter a single syllable.
‘I assume you’re still interested?’ Janet eventually enquired.
‘Oh, yes,’ Sally managed at last. ‘I’m very interested. It’s fantastic news. I’m thrilled.’
Stunned would be a better word, but somehow she was able to listen carefully while Janet explained about her starting salary and details like superannuation and staff induction. She returned to the lunch table in a daze.
‘Have you had bad news?’ Anna asked.
‘No, on the contrary.’ Sally gave a shaky laugh. ‘I’ve got a job.’
‘Really? That’s wonderful. I hadn’t even realised you’d applied for one.’
Sally grinned. ‘It’s with Blackcorp.’
‘Blackcorp? Wow! They’re from the big end of town. When did all this happen?’
‘I had the interview yesterday.’
Anna’s eyes widened. ‘But you were minding Rose yesterday.’
‘I know.’ Sally suppressed a strange urge to giggle. ‘Amazing, isn’t it? They couldn’t change my appointment, so they let me take Rose with me. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Of course I don’t mind. I trust you to look after my little sweetheart.’ Anna gave her daughter a proud motherly pat. ‘She must have been very well behaved.’
‘She was…quiet as a mouse,’ Sally assured her truthfully.
CHAPTER THREE
SALLY started work at Blackcorp on the following Monday morning and by lunch time she knew she was going to love it. Most of the employees were very friendly and many of them stopped at her desk to say hello and to introduce themselves before continuing on through the security doors.
The switchboard was modern, simple and efficient to operate, with a computer list of staff that was easy to access and connect. After the first few calls, Sally began to feel some of the initial stress leave her.
Logan Black strode in, briefcase in one hand, mobile phone in the other, all clean-cut and drop-dead handsome. He almost ignored her, but then he turned abruptly and stared at her with a puzzled frown. Sally wished her throat didn’t feel so dry.
For rather longer than was necessary, her boss’s gaze settled on her. To Sally’s surprise, his frown melted and an unguarded light flared in his eyes, the beginnings of warmth and the promise of a smile—an exceptionally gorgeous smile, she suspected. She feared her legs might give way.
But the reckless moment was over in a flash and Logan Black quickly recovered. His frown returned, he gave her a curt nod and said, ‘Morning, Miss Sparrow.’ And he kept walking.
Miss Sparrow?
Sally opened her mouth to remind her employer, ever so politely, that her name was Finch. But she remembered her new resolution to be more circumspect, so she swallowed her pride, lifted her chin and smiled warmly as she offered a cheery, ‘Good morning, Mr Black.’
He’d already passed her and she was speaking to his back.
How annoying to feel so flustered by the brief encounter. Get control, girl. You’ll be seeing him every day.
Her work kept her busy and there was no chance to be bored. There seemed to be an endless stream of deliveries. All shapes and sizes of boxes were wheeled in on trolleys and important-looking express courier packets arrived, as well as bags of mail. When Sally wasn’t relaying these to various departments, she was answering phone calls, fielding general enquiries and connecting callers to the correct extensions.
By the middle of her first week she’d made firm friends with Kim, a young Chinese-Australian girl who worked in the accounting department, and Maeve, a bubbly redheaded environmental field officer, who’d once worked out west and knew the country around Tarra-Binya.
There were moments when Sally missed home, when she felt nostalgic for the smell of gum trees…the chorus of early morning bird calls…the low throaty growl of her dad’s tractor starting up…
But the homesickness didn’t last long, especially as there was a park close to the office. She soon made a habit of walking through the park every morning and afternoon en route between the train station and the Blackcorp offices. In the middle of the park, the rumble of the traffic became muted and she could enjoy the gentle splashing of the fountain in the pond, the cooing of a hundred pigeons.
There were no Keep off the grass signs, thank heavens, and by the third afternoon she felt confident enough to take off her shoes so she could feel the soft, velvety lawn beneath her bare feet.
There were other people enjoying this green haven in the heart of the city too. Lovers, lost in each other’s eyes. A hunched old man feeding crusts to the pigeons. Two fresh-faced schoolboys kicking a football.
The boys were playing with a man, their father perhaps, or an uncle. His clothes suggested that he worked in the city. He’d removed his jacket and tie, however, as well as his socks and shoes, and he’d rolled up the bottom of his trousers. Sally could see his discarded clothing, left rather nonchalantly on the ground beneath a shady tree, next to the boys’ school bags.
The three males were having such fun, lunging spectacularly to take difficult catches, laughing and yelling instructions and showing off madly. They reminded Sally of her brothers playing in the garden with her dad, except…
Except…
Oh, good grief. The man was Logan Black.
She hadn’t recognised him immediately because he looked so different without his jacket and tie and with that deliriously carefree grin on his face. He looked wonderful now, moving swiftly across the grass with the same spare, easy athleticism of an Outback horseman.
And then Logan Black saw Sally.
One of the boys had just sent him a high arching kick and he was running backwards, eyes up, on the ball, when his gaze flashed towards her.
He seemed to freeze as his gaze met hers. His eyes widened as he recognised her. But then his attention quickly snapped back to the ball.
The small distraction, however, had cost him precious seconds and now he had to tear backwards, arms stretched back behind his head, to catch the football.
Reaching back…reaching…
Sally recognised the danger at the same moment as the boys cried, ‘Uncle! Look out!’
‘Watch the water!’
Their warnings were too late.
Just as Logan’s fingers gripped the ball, he overbalanced, toppling backwards into the pond.
Sally didn’t hesitate. She raced forward, her mind throwing up scary memories of her brothers’ close calls in the creek at Tarra-Binya. Logan Black could hit his head on a submerged rock. He might become entangled in weed. Worst of all, he might not be able to swim.
By the time she reached the edge of the pond, however, Logan was already struggling to his feet. The water was only knee-deep and he hadn’t dropped the football. Despite his dripping state, he held it triumphantly aloft, as if catching it were the most important thing in the world and ruining expensive Italian trousers counted for nothing.
Men!
Sally wanted to feel anger, was dismayed by the mad thumping of her heart, so different from the reaction of the boys, who rushed up beside her and immediately doubled over with helpless laughter. She had to admit it was an amazing sight—her boss standing knee-deep in water and drenched from head to toe.
But soon she was painfully aware of Logan’s wet business shirt, rendered transparent by the water and now plastered against his skin. He might have been naked! She could see every detail of his tanned chest and the impressive bulk of his shoulders. She couldn’t drag her eyes from the sight of his deeply sculpted muscles, the pleasing taper to his narrow hips.
Embarrassing heat flooded her.
‘Hey, Uncle Logan, great save,’ called one of the giggling boys.
Logan grinned back at them good-naturedly, threw the ball to the taller boy, then switched his gaze swiftly to Sally. He didn’t speak as he stepped out of the pond, water streaming from his clothing.
Sally felt compelled to say something. ‘I’m so glad you’re all right, Mr Black. For a minute there, I thought I was going to have to dive in and rescue you.’
He grunted something incomprehensible and then his gaze travelled very deliberately downwards from Sally’s hair to her shoes, which were dangling from her hand, and then to her bare feet. A corner of his mouth tilted, just a little, and his eyes seemed to blaze with black flames. Sally felt dizzy, as if she’d done too many cartwheels.
But then the unsettling light in his eyes suddenly died and his mouth flattened. Clearly he was extremely embarrassed to be caught dripping-wet and as good as naked in a public place. And in front of an employee.
Sally, equally embarrassed, dropped her gaze to her feet, which seemed to have become the focus of his attention. Thank heavens she’d given herself a pedicure at the weekend and painted her toenails a frosted berry colour.
He looked displeased, however, and she nervously fumbled with her shoes and struggled to slip them on. It was silly to be so self-conscious. Her bare feet weren’t nearly as revealing as Logan’s transparent shirt. Then again, she was still recovering from a nightmare incident, was still edgy with men.
To make matters worse, the schoolboys were watching her with marked curiosity.
‘These are my nephews,’ Logan explained, speaking with cold dignity befitting The Boss inAn Awkward Situation. He didn’t offer the boys’ names.
Sally tried to sound cool. ‘Hi guys.’ To her dismay she sounded far too breathless.
‘This is Miss…Miss…’ Logan Black frowned and a muscle in his jaw twitched, but he covered his ignorance quickly. ‘This young lady works at Blackcorp.’
Not for much longer, Sally thought miserably. She seemed to be doomed where this boss was concerned. First, her carelessness had preempted Rose’s invasion of his office and now her appearance in the park had distracted him and caused this accident.
‘Shall I pop back to the office and hunt down a towel, Mr Black?’
His frown deepened and he shook his head. ‘No, no. That’s kind of you, but there’s no need.’
It was patently clear that he wanted her to disappear.
Sally took the cue. ‘Well…I must get going or I’ll miss my train.’
With a deliberately cheery wave for the boys, she hurried off, chin high and without a single glance back.
Logan watched her moving swiftly away from him, watched the bounce of her curls lit to a high sheen by the afternoon sun. Just as he’d anticipated, her hair was exceptionally pretty in the sunlight. Her feet were pretty too, so neatly shaped and smooth-skinned. As for the sway of her hips and the sexy curve of her—
‘Do we have to go home already?’
His nephew’s question pulled Logan back from the brink of an untimely fantasy. He glanced at his watch again, became acutely aware of his dripping clothes. A brisk breeze swept across the park and he felt suddenly cold. Time to snap to his senses.
He wondered suddenly what had come over him. How on earth had he allowed himself to be so distracted by his newest employee that he’d fallen in the pond? To make matters worse, he realised with some alarm that his decision to bring his sister’s boys to the park had been inspired by the same girl.
When he’d seen her last week, on the day she’d applied for the front desk job, he’d sensed a special warmth and closeness between the young woman and the tiny girl and he’d been hit by a strangely inexplicable sense of loneliness—the loneliness of self-imposed isolation. Very soon after that he’d rung his sister, Carissa, knowing that it had been far too long since he’d seen her.
Now, as he drove the boys to their home, he tried to forget about the front desk girl. He suffered his sister’s chuckling bewilderment when she saw his drenched clothes, but she was kind enough to offer him a hot shower and a pair of her husband Geoff’s jeans and a T-shirt.
She offered him dinner too. Geoff had been delayed at work, so it was a noisy meal of chicken and pasta in Carissa’s bright kitchen. Logan usually ate alone, defrosting his housekeeper’s frozen meals in the microwave, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed a relaxed, laughter-filled meal like this.
Several times, a picture of the girl in the park flashed into his thoughts. He wondered where she was dining tonight, then quickly scotched that thought. When Logan wanted a woman, he chose wisely from the ambitious and sophisticated businesswomen who were as keen to avoid emotional entanglements as he was.
He couldn’t afford to be sidetracked. He had a five-year business plan which didn’t allow for a dangerous flirtation with a girl fresh from the country with stars in her eyes.
Sally told herself that there was no sense in letting her mind go over and over this afternoon’s encounter. But all evening her mind kept tossing up memories of her boss in the park. She kept seeing the look of unguarded happiness on Logan Black’s face as he’d played with his nephews. She kept remembering the raw masculine appeal of his body beneath the wet shirt and the shocking heat of her response.
She shouldn’t be feeling that way about her boss, didn’t want to feel that way about any man. She was still getting over the painful lesson she’d learned on a summer’s night at a ball in the Tarra-Binya Country Club’s hall.
Her mistake, on that night, had been that she was too trusting, too friendly. Perhaps she’d also been a little too complacent.
She’d been to so many country dances that she’d felt completely at ease and in her element and, of course, she’d welcomed the added excitement of the newcomer, Kyle Francis.
Kyle was handsome, suntanned and tall, with a very trendy hairstyle that screamed City Man. He also had dreamy blue eyes, a very sexy smile and a glamorous movie star aura and he’d sent all the girls at the dance atwitter. But, almost as soon as he’d arrived, he’d made a beeline for Sally and she’d found it enormously flattering that he was only interested in her.
The dance music that evening had been fabulous—supplied by a band that had come all the way from Tamworth. Kyle had danced superbly and Sally had floated on happiness.
She’d wondered later if his expensive aftershave had cast some kind of spell over her, because she’d been totally ensnared by his magnetic allure.
The evening had been so hot that all the doors and windows in the hall had been flung wide open to catch the slightest breeze, so it was incredibly easy to slip outside. Sally had been more than happy to let Kyle kiss her, and when he’d suggested that they take a stroll along the shadowy creek bank where she-oaks shielded them from view, she’d been too excited to pay attention to the niggling warnings of her common sense.
She’d never once encountered a problem with any of the local fellows. One or two had tried moves on her, of course, but things had never gone any further than she’d wanted them to. Besides, the local guys knew the Finch brothers would come down like a ton of bricks if anyone ever upset their baby sister.
Sally hadn’t dreamed that Kyle planned to seduce her right then and there in the pine needle strewn earth of the river bank. She hadn’t guessed that his charm would switch in a flash if he didn’t get what he wanted.
But that had happened.
So quickly, the night had changed from a carefree evening of fun to one of stark terror and violence. Sally shuddered and cringed as the gruesome memories assaulted her now like physical blows.
She had to take deep steadying breaths as she pushed the nightmare images aside and told herself that all that was in the past. She was fine now. Steve had rescued her before any real harm was done and he’d sent Kyle Francis fleeing, never to return.
The family had closed ranks around Sally to protect her, of course, but finally she’d felt compelled to break free from her parents’ and brothers’ smothering concern. She’d come to Sydney to claim her independence, but she would achieve this much more readily if she remembered that Logan Black was her boss. No more, no less.
At work the next morning, one of the special couriers was leaning casually against Sally’s desk, one elbow on the counter top while he quizzed her about her plans for the coming weekend, when clipped footsteps marched across the marble foyer, then stopped.
She looked up to find Logan Black standing stock still. To her dismay, she felt her cheeks grow hot.
‘M-Mr Black.’ She managed to smile. ‘Good morning.’
He didn’t respond, just stood there, looking grim.
‘Was there something you wanted?’ she asked. ‘Can I help?’
Again, he didn’t answer, simply let his relentless gaze sweep over Brett, the courier, before shooting a pointed glance at the clock on the wall.
Brett got the message and beat a hasty retreat. Finally, the boss spoke. ‘I have an important visitor arriving at ten o’clock. Charles Holmes, the CEO of Minmount Mining.’
