The Girl he Never Noticed by Lindsay Armstrong Read Free Book Online Page A

absolutely mesmerised by each other.
    Had he made it up with Portia? she wondered. Did that account for his better mood? Or had he found a replacement for Portia?
    Whatever it was, Liz relaxed a bit, and she did not take exception when they got caught in a traffic jam on the way to a meeting, and to kill the time he asked her about her earlier life.
    It was a dull day and had rained overnight. There was an accident up ahead and the traffic was hopelessly gridlocked. There was a helicopter flying overhead.
    ‘It must be a serious accident,’ Liz murmured. ‘We could be late.’
    He switched off the motor and shrugged. ‘Nothing we can do,’ he said, with uncharacteristic patience. ‘Tell me how you grew up?’
    Liz pleated the skirt of the red dress she wore with a light black jacket, and thought, Why not?
    ‘Uh…let’s see,’ she said reflectively. ‘My father was a teacher and very academic, whilst my mother…’ She paused, because sometimes it was hard to sum up her mother. ‘She’s this intensely creative person—
so
good with her hands but not terribly practical.’
    She smiled. ‘You wouldn’t have thought it could work between them, but it did. She could always liven him up, and he could always deflect her from her madder schemes. As a teacher, of course, he was really keen on education, and he coached me a lot. That’s how I came to go to a private school on a scholarship. I also went to uni on scholarships. He—’ She stopped.
    ‘Go on,’ Cam murmured after a few moments.
    She cast him an oblique little glance, wondering at the same time why he was interested in this—why she was even humouring him…
    ‘I used to think I took more after him—we read together and studied things together—but lately some of Mum has started to shine through. She’s an inspired cook, and I’m interested in it now—although I’ll never be the seamstress she is.’
    ‘So how did you cope with getting your degree and being a single mum?’ he queried. ‘Simple arithmetic suggests Scout must have intervened somewhere along the line.’
    Liz looked at his hands on the steering wheel and switched her gaze away immediately. Was this just plain curiosity, or…? But was there any reason not to give him the bare bones of it anyway?
    ‘It was hard work, but in some ways it kept me sane. It was a goal I could still achieve, I guess—although I had to work part-time.’ She paused and looked rueful. ‘At all sorts of crazy jobs at the same time.’
    ‘Such as?’
    ‘I was a receptionist in a tattoo parlour once.’ She looked nostalgic for a moment. ‘I actually got a bunch of flowers from a group of bikies I came to know there when Scout was born. Uh—I worked in a bottle shop, a supermarket. I did some nanny work, house cleaning.’
    She stopped and gestured. ‘My father had died by then—he never knew Scout—but I was determined to get my degree because I knew how disappointed he would have been if I hadn’t.’
    ‘How did you get into this kind of work?’
    Liz smiled. ‘I had a lucky break. One of my lecturers had contacts with the agency, and a good idea of the kind of replacement staff they supplied. She schooled me on most aspects of a diary secretary’s duties, my mother set me up with a suitable wardrobe, and
voilà
!—as they say.’
    ‘Helped along by being as bright as a tack.’ He said it almost to himself. ‘I gather you take time off between assignments?’
    She nodded. ‘I always try for a couple of weeks—not only to give my mother a break, but to be able to spend more time with Scout myself.’
    ‘So she still makes your clothes? Your mother?’
    ‘Yes. She made that jacket.’ Liz explained how she’d come to have it with her on the day of the cocktail party. ‘She actually made it for the part-time weekend job I have as cashier at a very upmarket restaurant.’
    ‘Your father would be proud of you.’
    ‘I don’t know about that.’
    ‘And Scout’s father? Any more