Barbara Hannay - In the Boss's Arms

Liam held his breath. There was an unsettling pause before she replied.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Conway, I’m busy with clients at the moment. Can you give me—oh, say, fifteen minutes?’

‘Certainly.’ Liam swallowed. He’d seen little of her over the past week—just the occasional glimpse from a distance down the corridor. Now the sound of her voice triggered a constriction in his throat.

He knew he’d been avoiding her. Cowardly of him? No doubt. Untenable for an effective working environment? Most certainly.

‘Come as soon as you’re free,’ he said.

She wasn’t free for another forty-five minutes and he distracted himself by making phone calls, continuing to contact the various resorts and attractions the company dealt with. He was questioning the people who ran them to find out what his staff and consultants were doing well and what they were doing wrong.

When at last Alice knocked on his door, he jumped to his feet. ‘You’ve had a busy morning,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘No problems? Nothing I should know about?’

‘No, just some complicated transport arrangements for a Japanese group.’

Something about the way she said that made him wonder if her delay had been deliberate. Was she trying to avoid him as carefully as he’d been avoiding her? ‘Please, take a seat.’

She sat very primly, shoulders back, ankles crossed neatly. She was wearing a short grey skirt and now she made an attempt to camouflage its hemline by positioning a notebook and a pen just so.

But the skirt wasn’t the only problem. The pale, intensely feminine blouse beneath her businesslike jacket was damnably distracting. The blouse wasn’t transparent, but the way his imagination worked it might as well have been.

Liam wondered if he should insist that his staff wear an ultra-conservative uniform. Then again, that wouldn’t be much use. It was Alice who was distracting, not her choice of clothes.

She looked demure, almost prim, here in his office, but all he could think of was how uninhibited she’d been when she was alone with him, how passionately she’d made love.

He snatched his gaze away from her and took a moment to refocus on the business he had to discuss. ‘I’d like to talk to you about the outback tours. I know they’ve been your responsibility in the past.’

She looked surprised. ‘I haven’t been in charge of that area for a couple of years.’

‘Quite. Dennis Ericson took over from you.’

‘Yes.’

He pointed to the stack of hard-copy files on his desk and to the computer screen. ‘I’ve been going through the company’s history and I’ve noticed that the outback package tours used to be very popular but these days they aren’t doing nearly as well as the tours to the reef and the rainforest. I’d like to hear your thoughts on that.’

‘Oh…’ Alice looked down at her hands and he could sense her discomfort.

He suspected it wouldn’t be easy for her to give him an honest appraisal without implicating the staff member who’d taken control from her. Ericson.

‘Well, to start with, the reef and the rainforest have more obvious and well-established attractions,’ she said. ‘That’s where the big operators are and they’re very strong in marketing and promoting their product. It’s a lot easier to interest people in island cruises in glass-bottomed boats than in the hot and dusty outback.’

‘But from what I’ve seen we used to connect tourists to a huge range of outback activities in the past. Everything from wilderness canoeing with helicopter drops to visiting Aboriginal communities and outback picnic races.’

Alice nodded. ‘Actually, the farm stays and cattle musters were probably our most popular drawcards.’

‘What happened to them?’

She gave a half-hearted shrug but didn’t comment.

‘I’d like you to be honest with me, Alice. It’s important to get to the bottom of the problem. I expect growth in every area of my business.’

‘But I’m not sure that I can help you.’

‘Just tell me what you know.’

She sighed. ‘There have been a few problems,’ she admitted carefully. ‘I’d say it started after we switched to a different airline for the charter flights out to the remote areas.’

Liam nodded. This change of airline, he was sure, had been Dennis’s decision.

‘The new company was much cheaper,’ said Alice.

‘But that economy came at a price?’

‘Yes, they were too casual. Vague about timetables. Passengers were left stranded, luggage misplaced. And fair enough, we scored some bad word-of-mouth publicity.’

Liam nodded and made notes. ‘What else?’

She tapped her pen against the cover of her notebook, taking her time before she replied. ‘We used to have about fifty popular farm stays on our books and quite a few fishing spots up in the Gulf Country, but a lot of them pulled out.’

‘Why?’

She hesitated. ‘Haven’t you already discussed this with Dennis?’

Liam had.

‘I’ve taken note of Dennis’s observations,’ he said. ‘But I’d like to hear your opinion.’

She frowned. ‘Our outback contacts said it wasn’t worth it.’

‘Are you saying that they removed their properties from our books, or they dropped out of tourism altogether?’

It was clear she didn’t want to answer this question. She opened her notebook, stared at a blank page, and then shut it again with a snap.

‘Is that what happened?’ Liam prompted again. ‘These cattle stations stopped taking tourists?’

‘No.’

Liam waited.

‘They went to other tourist agencies.’

‘Why?’ he asked again.

Alice looked away and drew a sharp breath. ‘I’m not sure.’

Now she was lying. He knew that, but he felt a grudging respect for her attempt to protect her colleague.

‘Could it have been a PR problem?’ he suggested carefully. ‘Were a few toes stepped on? A few egos bruised?’

She looked directly at him and the loveliness of her soft grey eyes snagged at his breath.

Very carefully, she said, ‘I guess it’s easy sometimes for people in the city to misread country folk and to believe they haven’t kept up with the times.’

‘But that’s rubbish. When it comes to market trends and meeting consumer demands, the people in the outback are as astute as anyone else.’ He’d told Dennis Ericson as much.

He tapped long fingers on his desk top. ‘As you might have guessed, I plan to turn this situation around. I’m going into the outback tomorrow to check things out. A kind of reconnaissance and goodwill tour.’

Alice nodded, her eyes watching him.

‘I want you to come with me.’

The look of dismay that swept over her face shocked him, but he kept his face stone-hard.

His assessment of the company records showed a clear period of growth while Alice had been in charge of the outback operations. And after observing the way she handled his questions, he felt certain she had the diplomatic skills needed to win back lost clients—if that was still possible.

He cracked a small smile. ‘Just remember I’m the boss and I get to make the decisions.’

His brashness fired two pink spots in her cheeks. ‘I thought your first priority was to hunt down new premises. Somewhere flash on the Esplanade.’

‘I’ve simply changed my priorities. As I see it now, my biggest problem is the outback and I’m going to tackle the most pressing problem first.’

Her hands twisted nervously. ‘You know you shouldn’t be asking me to do this, Liam. Take Shana. She’s from Mount Isa and she has good contacts out west.’

‘Shana’s also a single parent with a rather emotionally fragile pre-school child.’

Her head shot up. ‘You know about Toby?’