A Daring Proposition. Miranda Lee

afterwards? What of all the interesting, larger-than-life people she had met? The challenges she had had to rise to? The satisfaction she had felt when something she had personally organised had gone off without a hitch?

      When she left Haywood Promotions she would leave not just Guy, but a way of life. What would she do? Where would she go?

      Oh, she didn’t doubt she could get another job in Sydney, but could she bear to be in the same city as the man she loved and not be a part of his life? Guy was a high-profile personality. He would be on television, in newspapers and magazines, probably with a stunning blonde in tow.

      Samantha grimaced, remembering his date with Debra last night. She was a relatively successful singer on the local club circuit who had come to Guy, ostensibly seeking him as a new manager. One hour after walking into his life she had looked like becoming his next lover.

      Would she have gone to bed with Guy on their first date? Samantha wondered bitterly.

      Nothing surer, came back the cruel answer.

      Her heart squeezed tight.

      ‘Excuse me, but don’t you get out here?’

      Samantha jolted out of her mental agony, throwing the woman seated next to her a startled look before recognising her as a regular on this particular bus. Her eyes snapped back to see that they had long left the bridge and were standing at the King Street junction. Luckily the lights were red at that moment so the bus couldn’t move off.

      ‘Gosh, yes, I do,’ Samantha gasped, snatching up her umbrella and jumping to her feet. ‘Thank you so much.’

      ‘No trouble. You’d better hurry, though. The lights will change soon.’

      They did. Just as Samantha made it to the back platform. The bus lurched forward and she half jumped, half fell off, landing in a gutter that was doing a good imitation of the Grand Canyon rapids in full flood.

      It was all she could do to keep her balance as the torrent surged around her ankles, splashing up her legs and under her skirt. She swayed and yelped. People were streaming by along the pavement, shoulders hunched, heads down, umbrellas jammed down low. But no one stopped to help. No one cared.

      ‘Who could ever want to live in this heartless place?’ she muttered, and stomped out of the raging torrent, unleashing her automatic umbrella with a vicious snap.

      You do, came the dampening answer.

      Infuriated with herself more than the rain, Samantha joined the trampling herd and eventually made it across George and Pitt Street, up through Martin Place then left down Elizabeth Street to the building that housed Guy’s office. The rain eased off as soon as she pushed through the circular glass doors, making her mutter several reproachful words to higher authorities.

      Not that He would take any notice, Samantha thought crossly. Look at all the prayers she had said on a certain other matter! She might as well have been praying to win the lotto, for all the results she’d had.

      Soaked and very irritated, Samantha marched across the huge black and white tiled foyer and stuffed herself into one of the crowded lifts, jabbing the floor-fourteen button with the end of her umbrella. Living in the city, she decided, wasn’t conducive to maintaining the sweet, Christian-like nature she’d had as a child.

      Well, she rethought more honestly as the lift heaved its cargo upwards, one shuddering floor at a time. Perhaps I never was exactly sweet...

      The memory of herself at high school flooded back, bringing with it the remembered agony of her adolescence. On the surface she had maintained the quiet, reserved, ladylike façde that her mother’s strict country upbringing had imparted to her. Underneath she had longed to break out, to scream at her classmates who had cruelly nicknamed her Amazon Sam, to rant and rave against the body Mother Nature had given her. No wonder she and poor skinny, pimply Norman had gravitated towards each other. They had been the misfits in their class. The uglies.

      Samantha smiled wryly to herself in the corner of the lift as she thought of her graduation dance. She’d looked as good as she could that night, all done up and dressed in a pretty mauve dress that had minimised her figure faults. Norman had looked surprisingly good as well, his well-tailored suit giving him shoulders, the night-light softening the effect of his bad skin.

      Had it been her improved appearance or the promise of imminent freedom from the torture of school that had made her act so recklessly later in the evening?

      Samantha sighed as floor nine came and went. Be honest, she told herself. You know precisely why you let Norman go ‘all the way.’ He started telling you you were beautiful and that he loved you.

      Now, no other boys had ever said either of those things to Samantha. At five feet ten inches tall and carrying far too many pounds during her teenage years, she had not been the femme fatale of her school.

      Norman’s protestations of everlasting love had been very disarming.

      Only later had Samantha realised what a crazy thing she had done, giving her virginity so carelessly. She hadn’t even enjoyed it! Could hardly even remember it happening, it had been over so fast. Never again, she had vowed. Never again!

      It had been difficult, though, to convince Norman she didn’t love him, and it had been a relief when at the end of summer she had gone to live with her widowed Aunt Vonnie in far-away coastal Newcastle while she did a secretarial course.

      Samantha shook her head fondly as she thought of her Aunt Vonnie. It had been her aunt who had directed her towards more sensible eating habits, which had trimmed down her bulk to more graceful proportions, her aunt who had paid for her deportment lessons, her aunt who’d overridden parental objection when she’d wanted to find a career in Sydney.

      Samantha had been ever so grateful to her at the time. Now she wasn’t so sure. If she hadn’t come to Sydney, hadn’t answered that newspaper advertisement which had ended up with her sharing a flat with gorgeous blonde Lana, hadn’t met Guy that ghastly night when Lana had been supposed to go to Jesus Christ Superstar with him and stood him up...

      ‘Don’t you get out here?’ someone said for the second time that day.

      Samantha bit her lip and muttered sheepish thanks to the man holding the doors open for her. This would never do, she told herself as she squelched along the green-carpeted corridor. What did it matter what she’d done all those years ago or how she’d come to be in Sydney in the first place? Her problem was getting through today, through having to watch Guy breeze in all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, without a cigarette in sight.

      She stopped at the door furthest along on the left and fished around in her handbag for her set of office keys. Finding them, she inserted the heaviest one, turned the lock and extracted the key. She was about to go in when she stopped and stared at the gilt lettering on the door. ‘HAYWOOD PROMOTIONS,’ it said on the top line. ‘GUY HAYWOOD—MANAGING DIRECTOR.’

      She could vividly recall the day they had moved into this office, the feeling of excited relief at having a real place to work in after many difficult months of trying to help Guy run his expanding business from the front room of his terraced house in Paddington.

      He had taken her out to dinner after work as a reward for staying on late. Tired and hungry, she had gone, without thinking of any possible consequences.

      Not that Guy hadn’t been a perfect gentleman. He had. But it had been the first time Samantha had been exposed to the relaxed, social animal her boss became during his leisure hours, so different from the demanding, often distracted dynamo she dealt with during the day.

      She’d always thought him attractive, admiring his elegant dark looks as well as his tall, athletic build. But she had never before felt the impact of his sex appeal, which had hit her in waves from across the table as he’d automatically slipped into the mode of charming dinner companion. He hadn’t realised what effect he was having on her, she was sure, but by the end of the night her feelings had taken an irreversible change of direction, her respectful admiration being overwhelmed by a love that