He just stared, a stoic plea in his eyes.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, fine!’ She swivelled ahead of him and marched back out into the elevator lobby then up the circular stairs off to the side. The plush carpet disguised his footfalls but she could feel Oliver’s closeness, his eyes on her behind.
‘You’ve lost weight,’ he announced.
She froze. Turned. Glared.
Yes, she’d bloody well lost weight and she really didn’t have much to spare. Now her ‘athletic’ was more ‘catwalk’ than she’d have liked. Especially for preservation of dignity. She didn’t want him knowing how tough she’d been doing it.
His hands immediately shot up either side of him. ‘Right, sorry...keep going. Ten minutes.’
At the top, he passed her and ran his key card through the swipe and the big doors swung open just as they had last year. She followed him into the luxurious penthouse—
—and stopped dead just a few feet in, all the fight sucking clear out of her.
Over by the window, over where he’d first touched her with trembling hands all those long, lonely nights ago, a new piece of furniture had pride of place overlooking the view.
An overstuffed smoking chair.
Their
chair.
The sight numbed her—emotionally and literally.
‘Why is that here?’ she whispered.
He seemed surprised by the direction of her gaze. ‘I had it brought up here. I like to sit on it, look out. Think.’
‘About what?’
‘A lot of things.’ He took a breath. ‘Us, mostly.’
She turned wide eyes on him ‘There is no “us”.’
His shoulders sagged. ‘There was. For one amazing night. I think about that, and I miss it.’
Every muscle fibre in her body tightened up, ready for the ‘but’.
He stepped closer. ‘I sit in that chair and I think about you and I miss
you
.’
‘Careful,’ she squeezed out of an airless chest. ‘I might get the wrong idea and let my
feelings
get away with me.’
When had she become so angry?
He took her hand, seemed surprised by its frigidity, and led her to the luxurious sofa circling the raised floor of the formal area. The sofa that they’d made such fast, furious love on that first time. She pulled her fingers free and crossed to the chair, instead, curling her hands around its ornate back, borrowing its strength. Using it as a crutch.
Exactly the way her memories of it had been this past year.
‘I need you to know something,’ he said. ‘Quite a few somethings, actually.’
She straightened, listening, but didn’t turn around. The Hong Kong skyline soothed her. Speaking of things missed...
‘I started wanting you about ten minutes after you walked into that bar all those years ago.’ The greenish-brown of his eyes focused in hard. ‘Then in the years that followed, I would have given every cent I had to wake up to you just once instead of clock-watching as midnight approached and waiting for the moment you’d flee down the stairs until the following Christmas.’
Her breath slammed up behind the fist his words caused in her chest until she remembered that ‘wanting’ was not the same as
‘wanting’
.
One was short-term and easily addressed, apparently. Maybe that was why he’d lured her back here. Round two.
‘I was captivated from the first time you locked those expressive eyes and that sharp mind on me. You were a challenge because you seemed so disinterested in me and so interested in Blake and that just didn’t happen to me. And I’d sit there, enduring Blake’s hands all over you—’
‘Embarrassed by it.’
‘Not embarrassed, Audrey. Pained. I hated watching him touch you. I hated thinking you preferred his company, his touch, to mine. And that was when I realised there was more than just ego going on. That I didn’t just
want
you. I had
feelings
for you.’
Her fingers curled into the brocade chair-back and she whispered, ‘Why did you send me the key, Oliver?’
‘Because you were right and because I wanted to tell you that, face to face, and I thought it would get your attention.’
‘Right about what?’
‘All of it. The Heathcliff thing. It was so much easier to be consumed with longing and never have to face the reality of what that actually meant. And then to disguise that with work and endless other excuses. You were my best friend’s wife. As unattainable as any woman could possibly be. Completely safe to fixate on.
‘I convinced myself that my inability to connect to women—just one woman—was about having high standards. It was easy to find them wanting and easier still to disregard them because they failed to measure up to this totally unattainable idyll I had. The idea of you.’
He came around in front of the chair, folded one knee on its thick cushion to level their heights and met her eyes. ‘I would find fault with the relationships before they got anywhere near the point of commitment purely to avoid having to face that moment.’
The anguish in his face wheedled its way under her skin and she itched to touch him. But discipline, for once, did not fail her. ‘Which moment?’
‘The moment where I realised that I wasn’t actually capable of committing to them. That I was no more capable of being true to someone than my father. So I’d get out before I had to face that or I chose women who would cheat on me first.’
Oh, Oliver...
‘I counted myself so superior to him all this time—me with my rigid values and my high moral ground—but the whole time I was terrified that I had inherited his inability to commit to someone. To love just one someone.’ He lifted harrowed eyes to hers. ‘And that if ever I let myself, then I’d be exposed as my father’s son to someone to whom it would really matter.’
He stroked her cheek.
‘But then I had you. In my arms. In my bed. And every single thing I’d ever wanted was being handed to me on a platter. The woman against whom every other woman I’d ever met had paled. It was all so suddenly
real
, and there was no good reason for us not to be together—in this chair, in this room, in this town and beyond it. I panicked.’
‘You told me you couldn’t see yourself loving me. You were quite clear.’ Saying it aloud still hurt, even after all this time.
‘Audrey.’ He sighed. ‘My father took my mother’s love for him and used it to bind her in a relationship that he didn’t have to work for. He didn’t value it. He certainly didn’t honour it. What if I did that to you?’
‘What if you didn’t? You aren’t your father, Oliver.’ No matter what she’d said in anger.
‘What if I am?’ Desperation clouded his eyes. ‘Your feelings were going to force me into discovering. That’s why I pushed you away.’
Just twelve months ago she’d stood here, in this penthouse, terrified that she was somehow deficient. And Oliver had proven her wrong. And in doing so changed her life. Now was her chance to return the favour.
‘You are not broken, Oliver Harmer. And you are as much your mother’s son as you are your father’s. Never forget that.’
He suddenly found something in the giant Christmas tree in the corner enormously fascinating, as if he couldn’t quite believe her words were true.
‘Could she love?’ Audrey pressed.
‘Yes.’
‘Then why can’t you?’
Confusion mixed in with the anguish. ‘I never have.’
‘Have you not? Truly?’ She straightened and locked her eyes. ‘Can you think of no one at all?’
He stood frozen.
She kept her courage. ‘It can be easy to overlook. I once loved someone for eight years, almost without realising.’
His skin blanched and it was hard to know whether it was because she’d used the L word in connection with him or because she’d used the past tense.
‘When did you realise?’
She ran her hands across the back of the chair’s fine embroidered fabric. ‘Out of the blue, this one time, curled up in a chair.’
He still just stared. Silence ticked on. She forced herself to remain tough.
‘So, was that what you wanted to tell me?’ she checked.
‘It’s not you it’s me?’
‘It
is
me, Audrey. But no, what I really wanted to do was apologise. I’m sorry I let you leave Hong Kong believing there was anything you could have done differently or anything you could have been that would have made a difference.’
And his guilt was apparently worth a rare cello.
Her lips tightened. ‘You know, this seems to be the story of my life. Last time it was my gender, this time there was nothing I could have done differently short of
caring less
.’
‘This is nothing like Blake.’
‘I’m not ashamed of my feelings. And I’m not afraid of them either. Unlike you.’
His eyes tarnished off as she watched. ‘Meaning?’
‘Exactly what I said. I think you are afraid of the depth of your feelings. Because feeling makes you vulnerable.’
‘What I’m afraid of is hurting you.’
‘Isn’t that my risk to take? Just as it was your mother’s choice to stay with your father.’
Two deep lines cut down between his brows. ‘You can’t
want
to make that choice.’
‘I wouldn’t if I believed that you’ve inherited anything more than eye colour from your father. You dislike him too much. If anything I’d expect you to grow into the complete opposite of him just out of sheer bloody determination.’
‘I saw what losing his love did to my mother.’ Tense and tight but not angry. ‘How vulnerable it made her.’
‘Don’t you trust me?’
‘You know I do.’
‘Then why do you think I would hurt you?’ she begged. ‘I chose to be vulnerable with you last Christmas because I couldn’t think of a single person in the world that I trusted more with my unshielded heart.’
‘I’m afraid I might hurt
you
.’
‘By possibly abandoning me at some point in the future?’
‘I saw what it did to my mother.’ For the first time, the tension in his face hinted at hostility. Except, now, she knew that was what fear looked like on him. ‘And I felt what it did to me.’
She sucked in a breath, loud and punctuated in the frozen moments of silence before he crossed to the edge of the sofa. He pulled a hanging tinsel ball into his hands and punished it with attention.
‘You?’ she risked.
He spun. ‘My father opted out of his
family
, Audrey, not just his marriage. He abandoned me, too.’
‘But he didn’t abandon you. He’s still there now.’
Bleak eyes stared out of the window. ‘Yeah, he did. He just couldn’t be arsed leaving.’
For a heartbeat, Audrey wondered if she’d pushed him too far, but then that big body slumped down onto the sofa, head bowed.
She crossed to his side, sat next to him, curled her hand over his and said the only thing she could think of. ‘I’m sorry.’
He shook his head.
She turned more into him. ‘I’m sorry that it happened. And I’m sorry that it has affected you all this time. Love is not supposed to work that way.’
As her arms came up he tipped down into them, into her hold and slid his own around her middle. She embraced him with everything she had in her. This was Oliver after all, the man she loved.
And the man she loved was hurting.
He buried his face in her neck and she rocked him, gently. One big hand slid up into her hair, keeping her close, and she felt the damp of tears against her neck.
‘You can love, Oliver,’ she said, after minutes of silent embrace. ‘I promise. You just need to let yourself. And trust that it’s safe to do it with me.’
His silence reeked of doubt.
She stroked his hair back. ‘Maybe your love is just like one of the companies you rescue. Broken down by someone who didn’t value it and treat it right. So maybe you just need to get it into the hands of someone who will nurture and protect it. And grow it to its full potential. Because you have so much potential. And so do we.’
His half-smile, when he sat up straighter, told her exactly how lame that analogy was. But too bad, she was committed to it now.
‘Someone like who?’
‘Someone like me. I’m looking to diversify my portfolio, as it happens.’
‘Really?’
She shrugged. ‘I had a bad investment myself not so long ago, something that could have been very different if I’d given it the time and focus it deserved. But I’ve learned from my mistakes and know what to do differently next time.’
His smile twisted. ‘Well, no one’s perfect.’
‘So how about it? Think I might be the sort of person you’d trust a damaged company to? I come highly recommended for my work in the recovery of trafficked stringed instruments.’
He nodded and pressed a grateful kiss to her forehead. ‘Very responsible. And honourable.’
‘And I have federal security clearance,’ she breathed as he pressed another one to her jaw. ‘They don’t give those to just anyone. At all.’
His nod was serious. ‘Hard to argue with Interpol.’
‘And...um...’ She lost her train of thought as his lips found the hollow between her collarbones. ‘I have a blue library card. It means I can take books out of the reference section.’
Kiss. ‘Persuasive.’
‘And I’m not
him
any more than you are.’ The lips stopped dead, pressed into her shoulder. ‘So if I’m willing to take a risk on you despite the fact you’ve already hurt me once, the least you can do is return the favour.’
He pulled away to stare into her eyes for the longest time.
Then, in the space between breaths, the cool damp of his butterfly kisses became the warm damp of his mouth working its way up her throat. Her jaw. Roaming. Exploring. Rediscovering.
‘I never should have let you go,’ he breathed, hot against her ear, right before tonguing her lobe.
She twisted into him, seeking his lips. ‘You had to. So I could come back to you, again.’
And then they were kissing. Hot and hard and frantic. Slow and deep and healing.
‘I don’t want to love anyone else,’ he grated, twisting her under him and pressing her into the sofa with his strength. ‘I don’t want to trust anyone else. Only you, Audrey. It was only ever you.’
He stroked her hair back and applied kiss after kiss to her eyelids, cheekbones, forehead. Worshipping with his mouth. She reached up and stilled his hands, stilled his lips with her own and caught his eyes and held them.