Almost Perfect (18 page)

‘Hi Georgie.'

She wondered if she'd ever be able to hear Liam's
voice on the phone without it sending her pulse racing. She hoped not.

‘Hello,' she replied warmly. ‘Did you get my message?'

‘That's why I'm calling,' he said.

‘Well, what do you think?'

‘I would tell you that if I only knew what it meant.'

‘Oh, Liam, you never understand my text messages, and they're so straightforward.'

He laughed gently. ‘Honey, “straightforward” would be recognisable words in complete sentences with punctuation.'

‘I'm not writing a novel.'

‘No, you're writing some kind of indecipherable code.'

‘Listen, it's only a tiny little screen, you have to be succinct to get your message across.'

‘But you don't get your message across. I have to ring you every single time to find out what it means.'

‘Well then maybe it works after all,' she suggested. ‘Do you want me to tell you what the message said?'

‘Please.'

‘I want to see you, let's meet later.'

‘Well, why didn't you just say that?' he said. ‘Pick you up at the shop?'

‘Rightio.'

‘Do you have to close?'

‘Not today.'

‘So any time after five?'

‘Yep.'

‘See you then.'

‘I'll look forward to it.'

When Georgie opened the door just after five-thirty, Liam was standing there holding his mobile phone, smiling broadly.

‘I'm very proud of you,' he said.

‘Oh?'

‘Look at that.' He showed her the screen of his phone.

LEFT WORK

EARLY. MEET AT

MY PLACE.

‘I know what it says, I sent it,' she said, drawing him inside and closing the door. Georgie had planned for Liam to come here all along, and she had no intention of leaving this flat tonight. Or of allowing him to leave.

‘See, you can write messages I can understand,' Liam went on. ‘These are sentence fragments, granted, but they are grammatically correct, and what's more important, they make sense. We'll have to talk about the whole upper and lower case thing, but this is effective communication, Georgie.'

‘So's this,' she said, looping her arms around his neck and giving him an effective kiss on the mouth. He took a moment to catch up, but soon she felt his arms close around her.

Eventually they came up for air.

‘Hello,' said Liam, smiling at her.

‘Hello.'

‘You're wearing that dress.'

‘I am.' She figured it deserved a repeat appearance, seeing as they didn't even get to the second act last time. ‘I wondered when you were going to notice.'

He glanced around. ‘What's going on here?'

It was still light outside, so to create atmosphere Georgie had drawn all the blinds and lit candles around the room. The place looked better in the dim light anyway. And there was soft, slow, slinky jazz playing on the stereo. No animals had been harmed in the recording of that music.

‘I thought we'd celebrate,' Georgie said, watching the bemusement on his face as he looked around the flat.

‘Oh, what are we celebrating?'

‘I am officially the sole occupant of this dwelling. My flatmate is no longer. I mean, she didn't die or anything, but she has moved on.'

On Saturday afternoon Tracey had climbed into a friend's Kombi and disappeared off into the sunset. It was like the end of a Clint Eastwood movie. No fanfare, no fuss. She just left. Georgie had tried to feel sad for a while, she thought it was the polite response, but she couldn't sustain it. Truth was, she was over the moon.

‘So that means we have the place to ourselves,' she went on. ‘We have the whole night–'

‘Except that we don't.' Liam's tone was almost curt. ‘I have a late meeting.'

Georgie considered him calmly. ‘What time's
your meeting?'

He frowned at her. ‘Well, it's late,' he said, flustered, ‘later on.'

‘Then you've got time for a drink,' she said lightly, taking him by the hand and leading him over to the kitchen. She opened the fridge door. ‘Look, I have beer, the foreign kind you drink. Or,' she said, turning around to the bench, ‘I know you like red wine, so I asked the man at the bottle shop to help me choose a good one.'

Liam saw the bottle sitting on the bench. ‘You're letting it breathe,' he said quietly. He looked at her then as he brought her hand to his lips and held it there for a moment. ‘You're sweet, you know that?' he said. He drew her close and kissed her tenderly. Georgie knew she had melted the polar ice cap. Now she just had to keep the heat on.

‘Are you going to have a drink with me?' Liam asked eventually.

‘Mm,' she mused. ‘I always get a headache when I drink red wine.'

‘I'm just guessing, but does the red wine you drink normally come out of a box?'

She nodded. ‘Or sometimes from a glass carafe at the pizza place down the road.'

He smiled indulgently at her before turning to examine the bottle. ‘Well this won't give you a headache, Georgie. This is expensive wine, you shouldn't have.'

She shrugged.

‘At least let me teach you how to drink it properly,' he said, pouring the wine into glasses
Georgie had left out on the bench.

‘There's something more to it than putting the glass to your lips and knocking it back?'

He laughed gently, handing her one of the glasses. ‘You should never gulp red wine, you're missing the best part if you guzzle it.'

‘Okay, so what do I do?'

‘Sip it slowly, taking a small amount back onto your tongue and holding it there.'

Georgie followed his directions. ‘Now what?' she gurgled.

He smiled at her. ‘Try not to talk, for one thing. See if you can discern the different flavours. You should be able to taste raspberry, mulberry . . .' He waved the glass under his nose. ‘. . . perhaps a little mint.'

Georgie frowned, swallowing.

‘So what did it taste like?'

‘Red wine,' she said bluntly.

He shook his head. ‘This is a superb wine, Georgie, you're not enjoying it to its full potential.'

‘Oh, I'm enjoying it all right. It's much smoother than the red wines I've tasted.'

‘That's because it has a low level of tannin.'

‘That's good?'

‘Absolutely. Tannin comes from grape skins and stalks mostly,' he explained, warming to the topic. ‘You must have tannin to preserve the wine so that it ages gracefully, but if it's not balanced against the fruit and other flavours it will overpower, leaving that bitter, mouth-puckering aftertaste. A good wine is at its peak when the tannins have mellowed
enough to release . . .' Liam paused. ‘Okay, I'll shut up now.'

‘No, it's very interesting,' Georgie protested.

‘Your eyes were glazing over.'

‘See, it is a good wine.'

He smiled and leaned back against the kitchen bench, taking a sip from his glass. Georgie stood there too, not sure what to do next. She felt as though a stopwatch was ticking away in her chest. No, that was just her heart beating. She didn't know when Liam's meeting was, but she figured she must have at least an hour or so before he had to leave. There was no time to waste.

‘Do you want to sit down?' she asked.

‘Ah, no,' he said. ‘I'm right.'

‘Don't you want to take your jacket off at least?'

‘No, no. I'm fine.'

Georgie looked at him directly. ‘Relax, Liam, I'm not going to bite.'

He lifted an eyebrow. ‘I'm not so sure about that.'

She took a slurp of her wine and put her glass down on the bench. Her heart was pounding so hard now she almost felt sick. He must realise what she was expecting. If he rejected her advances this time, what would that mean? Maybe he had second thoughts about taking this ‘path' after all. But that was ridiculous. They were two consenting adults, they couldn't keep necking in the car forever. Georgie had to take charge.

‘So this is your place,' said Liam. He was using the small-talk shield. It would be no match when she pulled out the big guns. ‘Couldn't really see much
the other night.'

‘Have a look around,' she said, turning back into the main room. It was a fairly standard L-shaped living area, with a couple of sofas grouped in one arm and a dining table and chairs grouped in the other. Apart from that, various cabinets and bookshelves filled up all the available wall space, and books, framed photos and knick-knacks filled up all available shelf space therein. Georgie was an incorrigible hoarder, a trait she had picked up from her mother. Zan became visibly uncomfortable in Georgie's flat and had offered more than once to come and help her ‘do something about it'. But Georgie knew she'd never be able to sustain whatever designer miracle Zan could wrought, and so it would ultimately be a waste of her time. Nick was kinder. He insisted she had a style all her own which he liked to call ‘
eclectic baroque du jour
'. Georgie didn't know what that meant but it sounded better than ‘
Your place looks like a garage sale after all the good stuff's gone
', as Zan had once remarked.

Liam wandered over towards one of the bookshelves. ‘You have a lot of books,' he commented.

‘Hazard of the profession.'

‘Of course,' he nodded. ‘Is this your family?' he asked, stooping a little to look more closely at a grouping of photographs.

Georgie came up beside him. ‘Yes, that's my brother Nick and my sister Suzanne.'

‘And you. How old were you there?'

‘Mm, probably only about twelve.' Georgie indicated another shot. ‘That one was taken last
year.'

‘And these must be the nieces I keep hearing about?'

‘Louise's and Nick's girls,' Georgie nodded. ‘That's Molly and that's Grace.'

Liam smiled, considering them. ‘Cute.' His eyes scanned further along the photos. ‘And who's this?'

‘That's my foster child, Beata, from Rwanda. She's eight years old now.'

He looked at her quizzically. ‘You mean the charity thing?'

‘Uhuh.'

‘But you're not making enough money to do that,' he insisted.

‘Of course I am.'

‘No, what I mean to say is that charitable donations are good tax deductions in many cases, but considering the size of your business there would be far more effective write-offs. There's no real need for something like this.'

Georgie looked at him, confounded. ‘There is in Rwanda.'

Liam closed his eyes, shaking his head. ‘Sorry, I didn't mean–'

‘Hey,' said Georgie, interrupting him, ‘I love this song, dance with me?' She didn't give him much choice, looping her arms around his neck and swaying to the music. But he was obviously uncomfortable. Georgie reached up and kissed him lightly on the lips. ‘What's the matter?'

‘No, nothing,' he said seriously. ‘I just don't want
you to think I'm callous.'

‘I don't think you're callous.'

‘Look, I know it's a good thing to support a child in the third world. My brain just works like that because of my job.'

‘Well, that can't be good for the soul,' Georgie remarked.

‘You're probably right.' He pulled her closer. ‘You know, you're very good for me, Georgie Reading.'

‘Hmm, like a healthy breakfast cereal?'

Liam smiled down at her then. ‘No, better than that,' he said, looking intently into her eyes. ‘You see, you know what's important, and when I'm with you, then I know what's important.'

Georgie didn't know what to say to that, but it didn't matter because now Liam was kissing her. She loved kissing him. She was well aware of their time constraints, but she wasn't going to rush this. Pretty soon they were going to make love for the first time. Georgie wasn't going to rush any of it.

After a while she slid her hands under his jacket, easing it over his shoulders.

‘What are you doing?'

‘It's getting a little hot, don't you think?' she murmured. She tossed the jacket across a nearby chair and turned back to face him. He was watching her, breathing hard. She could feel the energy sparking between them. Time to strike. She backed him towards the sofa, not breaking eye contact. As he lowered himself to sit, she climbed onto his lap, facing him, her legs straddling his.

He swallowed. ‘What are you doing?'

‘You keep asking that. Haven't you worked it out yet?'

‘Like this?'

‘You don't like it like this?'

‘I . . .' But he couldn't speak, he seemed overwhelmed. Georgie held his face and tilted his head, bringing her mouth down hard onto his. She could feel him responding, gradually letting go. His arms slid around her, his hands stroked her back, her shoulders, moving aside one strap of her dress, caressing her breast. Georgie pressed her pelvis against him and he moaned. They were both becoming more urgent, but when his mouth left hers and found its way to her breast, Georgie really started to lose it. She knew she had to hang onto the last shred of self-control she had for a little longer.

‘Liam,' she murmured into his ear, ‘have you got anything with you?'

He stopped, looking up at her, an almost bewildered expression in his eyes. ‘What?' he said vaguely.

Georgie smiled at him. ‘Protection?'

Blank.

‘Prophylactics?'

Now he was frowning.

‘Condoms?'

Third time lucky, though he was clearly gobsmacked. ‘No, I'm sorry. I wasn't expecting . . .'

‘It's okay.'

He sighed. ‘It's a long time since I've had to think about that.'

‘I figured as much,' Georgie said, flicking the strap of her dress back over her shoulder as she
climbed off him.