He had a debt to pay, which left him with no choice but to put his business goals first. Always.
At the sound of a knock on his door on Monday morning Liam looked up to find Dennis Ericson, the branch office manager, lounging a casual hip against the door frame and wearing a supercilious smile.
‘Good morning, Dennis.’ Liam rose and held out his hand. The men had met before when Liam was making his pre-purchase investigations, but not as employer and employee. Dennis was in his mid-to-late forties, a family man, going thin on top and soft around the middle.
He accepted Liam’s handshake, but the wry grimace on his face somewhat marred the sincerity of the gesture.
‘You’ve settled in quickly, then,’ he said, casting an openly curious glance around the office, checking the few small changes the new boss had made to its layout.
Liam nodded. ‘Spent the weekend in here, going through files.’
The silly grin returned. ‘And have you claimed your prize?’
‘What prize?’
For answer, Dennis shot him a sideways, narrow-eyed glance.
Liam sensed that he was being set up. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Saturday’s Cairns Post,’ Dennis said ominously. ‘Page three.’
Liam shook his head. ‘I didn’t check the weekend papers. Is it something important? Some corporate offer?’
At that Dennis laughed. From his hip pocket he extracted what looked like a newspaper cutting and he flipped it onto the desk.
Annoyed by the smugness of the fellow, Liam refused to rise to the bait. He knew from experience that there was always someone wanting to get the upper hand with the new boss on the first day. He gave the folded cutting a cursory glance, and then stood very still and perfectly silent. Watching Dennis. Waiting.
Dennis’s smile slipped. His Adam’s apple slid up and down and, when Liam refused to move, he pouted. Finally, he picked up the clipping and unfolded it. ‘Take a gander at this.’
Liam scanned it. Bloody hell.
‘Aren’t you lucky, sir? You’re this week’s Mystery Winner.’ Dennis seemed to take pleasure from his boss’s obvious surprise. His cockiness revived. ‘Dinner for two at The Beach House,’ he said. ‘All you have to do is give the local newspaper office a call.’
It was a photo of Liam leaving the Hippo Bar. With Alice. Clipped and enlarged, no doubt, from a shot the photographer had taken of three girls whose faces were rather out of focus in the foreground. He and Alice looked blissfully happy. Intimate. They were holding hands and her head was dipping towards him as if she was listening intently to something he said.
A white ring circled his head and the caption above the photo read: Who is this man? The text below explained, as Dennis had, that this mystery winner could claim his prize of a dinner for two.
‘Do these mystery prizes happen often?’ he asked.
‘Every week,’ replied Dennis smugly.
So much for keeping that night under wraps.
‘Nice work, boss.’ The edge to Dennis’s voice was sharp enough to cut chain wire. ‘I suppose we can skip the lecture on management probity and staff relations?’
Teeth gritted against a biting retort, Liam screwed the paper into a ball and tossed it across the office to the waste-paper basket. He was grateful that it curved in a perfect arc and fell neatly into the basket, dead centre. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said quietly.
‘That you started getting extra-friendly with the staff the minute you hit town?’
Liam’s response was to move past Dennis, to reach for the door and to close it with deliberate control.
‘Sit down, Dennis.’ With a curt nod he indicated the chair by the desk. ‘You and I are going to have a little chat.’
Dennis sat. And his confident smirk began to wane as Liam took the high-backed leather executive chair and leaned back, watching him, without speaking.
Liam was damned if he was going to let this fellow launch a smear campaign. He knew that if he didn’t act promptly, Alice’s reputation would be dirt by morning-tea time.
With his elbow, he gave a file clearly marked Dennis Ericson a surreptitious nudge towards the front of his desk and then he stabbed at his desk phone for front of house reception.
‘Sally,’ he said, enjoying the way Dennis’s eyes bulged when he read the name on the folder. ‘Hold all my calls, please. And don’t send anyone through to my office. It’s most important that I’m not interrupted for the next twenty minutes.’
‘Morning, Dennis.’ Alice called her greeting as they passed in the hall outside her office.
‘Morning,’ he growled rudely, without making eye contact.
What was eating him?
Gulp. Had it started already? Was this because he’d seen the photo in the paper? The phone calls from her family had begun about five minutes after Liam left her on Saturday. Alice’s mother and each of her aunts had rung, all demanding details about the strange man in the photo.
No one from work had contacted her, but she knew it was silly to hope that, by some miracle, none of them had seen the photo. She’d been dreading coming to the office this morning.
‘What’s the matter? I’m not late, am I?’ She glanced at her watch. She was late, actually, thanks to traffic lights on the blink at a busy intersection, but not enough to upset anyone, especially as it was well-known that she often worked late or through her lunch hour without extra pay.
Dennis pursed his lips. ‘I’m sure you can be as late as you like from now on.’ He continued on, calling over his shoulder, ‘You’re sitting pretty now, Alice.’
Oh, great. That more or less confirmed her fears.
There was only one way to play it this morning. Cool. Carry on as if it was business as usual.
She went through to the office she shared with two other travel consultants, Mary-Ann and Shana.
‘You know what’s eating Dennis?’ she asked. And then she realised that playing it cool was a good idea in theory…but the who’s-she-trying-to-kid? look on her workmates’ faces made her stomach pitch.
Mary-Ann clicked a button to boot up her computer. ‘It’s not so much a matter of what’s eating Dennis, but who,’ she said. ‘Actually, it’s who’s eating him and spitting him out into little pieces.’
‘And the answer is the new boss,’ added Shana. ‘First morning on the job and this Liam Conway’s kicking heads. He lined poor Dennis up for a performance appraisal.’
‘Oh.’ Alice sat down quickly, a split-second before her legs began to shake.
‘Instead of kicking heads he should pull his own head in,’ muttered Shana.
‘Don’t tell me the new boss is an ogre?’
Shana rolled her eyes. ‘As if we need to tell you anything about him. Why don’t you tell us?’
Taking in her workmates’ identical expressions, Alice released her breath with a soft sigh. ‘OK, you’ve seen the photo in the Post.’
‘Of course we’ve seen it.’
‘How could we miss it?’
‘But,’ added Mary-Ann, ‘we didn’t know who the guy was till this morning.’
Shana