She tipped her head back to laugh and that knot piled on the top and decorated with a bit of stolen airport tinsel wobbled dangerously. If he kept the humour coming maybe the whole thing would come tumbling down and he’d have another keeper memory for his pathetic fantasy-stalker collection.
‘Sure, while you’re throwing your chocolates away...’
She slipped off her shoes and pulled slim legs up onto the sofa as Oliver dealt another hand and, again, he was struck by how down to earth she was. And how innocent. This was not the relaxed, easy expression of a woman who knew her husband was presently shacked up with someone that wasn’t his wife.
No question.
Which meant his best friend was a liar as well as an adulterer. And a fool, too, for cheating on the most amazing woman either of them had ever known. Just
wasting
the beautiful soul he’d been gifted by whatever fate sent Audrey in Blake’s direction instead of his own all those years ago.
But where fate was vague and indistinct, that out-of-place rock weighing down her left hand was very real, and though her husband was progressively sleeping his way through Sydney, Audrey wasn’t following suit.
Because that ring meant something to her.
Just as fidelity meant something to him.
Perhaps that was the great attraction. Audrey was moral and compassionate, and her integrity was rooted as firmly as the mountains that surged up out of the ocean all around them to form the islands of Hong Kong where they both flew to meet each December twentieth. Splitting the difference between Sydney and Shanghai.
And he was enormously drawn to that integrity, even as he cursed it. Would he be as drawn to her if she was playing the field like her selfish husband? Or was he only obsessed with her because he knew he couldn’t have her?
That was more his playbook.
Just because he didn’t do unfaithful didn’t mean he was pro-commitment. The whole Tiffany thing was really a kind of retirement. He’d given up on finding the woman he secretly dreamed was out there for him and settled for one that would let him do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted and look good doing it.
And clearly even that wasn’t meant to be.
‘Come on, Harmer. Man up.’
His eyes shot up, fearing for one irrational moment that she’d read the direction of his inappropriate thoughts.
‘It’s just one game,’ she teased. ‘I’m sure you’ll take me on the next one.’
She was probably right. He’d do what he did every Christmas: give enough to keep her engaged and entertained, and take enough to keep her colour high with indignation. To keep her coming back for more. Coming back to him. In the name of her cheating bastard of a husband who only ever visited him when he was travelling alone—though he’d be sure to put an end to that, now—and who took carnal advantage of every opportunity when Audrey was out of the country.
But, just as he suppressed his natural distaste for Blake’s infidelity so that he could maintain the annual Christmas lunch with his best friend’s wife, so he would keep Blake’s secret.
Not only because he didn’t want to hurt gentle Audrey.
And not because he condoned Blake’s behaviour in the slightest—though he really, really didn’t.
And not because he enjoyed being some kind of confessional for the man he’d stood beside at his wedding.
No, he’d keep Blake’s secret because keeping it meant he got to have Audrey in his life. If he shared what he knew she’d leave Blake, and if she left Blake Oliver knew he’d never see her again. And it was only as he saw her friendship potentially slipping away like a landslide that he realised how very much he valued—and needed—it.
And her.
So he did what he did every year. He concentrated on Audrey and on enjoying what little time they had together this one day of the year. He feasted like the glutton he was on her conversation and her presence and he pushed everything else into the background where it belonged.
He had all year to deal with that. And with his conscience.
He stretched his open palm across the table, the shuffled cards upturned on it. As she took the pack, her soft fingers brushed against his palm, birthing a riot of sensation in his nerve endings. And he boxed those sensations up, too, for dealing with later, when he didn’t have this amazing woman sitting opposite him with her all-seeing eyes focused squarely on him.
‘Your deal.’
TWO
December 20th, three years
ago
Qīngtíng Restaurant, Hong Kong
Behind her back,
Audrey pressed the soft flesh of her wrists to the glassy chill of the elevator’s mirrored wall, desperate to cool the blazing blood rushing through her arteries. To quell the excited flush she feared stained her cheeks from standing this close to Oliver Harmer in such a tight space.
You’d think twelve months would be enough time to steel her resolve and prepare herself.
Yet here she was, entirely rattled by the anticipation of a simple farewell kiss. It never was more than a socially appropriate graze. Barely more than an air-kiss. Yet she still felt the burn of his lips on her cheek as though last year’s kiss were a moment—and not a full year—ago.
She was a teenager again, around Oliver. All breathless and hot and hormonal. Totally fixated on him for the short while she had his company. It would have been comic if it weren’t also so terribly mortifying. And it was way too easy to indulge the feelings this one day of the year. It felt dangerous and illicit to let the emotions even slightly off the leash. Thank goodness she was old enough now to fake it like a seasoned professional.
In public, anyway.
Oliver glanced down and smiled at her in that strange, searching way he had, a half-unwrapped DVD boxed set in his hands. She gave him her most careful smile back, took a deep breath and then refocused on the light descending the crowded panel of elevator buttons.
Fifty-nine, fifty-eight...
She wasn’t always so careful. She caught herself two weeks ago wondering what her best man would think of tonight’s dress instead of her husband. But she’d rationalised it by saying that Oliver’s taste in women—and, by implication, his taste in their wardrobes—was far superior to Blake’s and so taking trouble to dress well was important for a man who hosted her in a swanky Hong Kong restaurant each year.
Blake, on the other hand, wouldn’t notice if she came to the dinner table dressed in a potato sack.
He used to notice—back in the day, nine years ago—when she’d meet him and Oliver at a restaurant in something flattering. Or sheer-cut. Or reinforcing. Back then, appreciation would colour Blake’s skin noticeably. Or maybe it just seemed more pronounced juxtaposed with the blank indifference on Oliver’s face. Oliver, who barely even glanced at her until she was seated behind a table and modestly secured behind a menu.
Yet, paradoxically, she had him to thank for the evolution of her fashion sense because his disdain was a clear litmus test if something was
too
flattering,
too
sheer-cut.
Too
reinforcing.
It was all there in the careful nothing of his expression.
People paid top dollar for that kind of fashion advice. Oliver gifted her with it for free.
Yeah...his
gift
. That felt so much better on the soul than his
judgement
. And seasonally appropriate, too.
This year’s outfit was a winner. And while she missed the disguised scrutiny of his greenish-brown gaze—the visual caress that usually sustained her all year—the warm wash of his approval was definitely worth it. She glanced at herself in the elevator’s mirrored walls and tried to see herself as Oliver might. Slim, professional, well groomed.
Weak at the knees with utterly inappropriate anticipation.
Forty-five, forty-four...
‘What time is your flight in the morning?’ His deep voice honey-rumbled in the small space.
Her answer was more breath than speech. ‘Eight.’
Excellent. Resorting to small talk.
But this was always how it went at the end. As though they’d flat run out of other things to talk about. Entirely possible given the gamut of topics they covered during their long, long lunch-that-became-dinner, and because she was usually emotionally and intellectually drained from so many hours sitting across from a man she longed to see but really struggled to be around.
It was only one day.
Twelve hours, really. That was all she had to get through each year and wasn’t a big ask of her body. The rest of the year she had no trouble suppressing the emotions. She used the long flight home to marshal all the sensations back into that tightly lidded place she kept them so that she disembarked the plane in Sydney as strong as when she’d left Australia.
She’d invited Blake along this year—pure survival, hoping her husband’s presence would force her wayward thoughts back into safer territory—but not only had he declined, he’d looked horrified
at the suggestion. Which made no sense because he liked to catch up with Oliver whenever he was travelling in Asia, himself. Least he used to.
In fact, it made about as little sense as the not-so-subtle way Oliver changed the subject every time she mentioned Blake. As if he was trying to distance himself from the only person they had in common.
And without Blake in common, really what did they have?
Twenty-seven, twenty-six, twenty-five...
Breath hissed out of her in a long, controlled yoga sigh and she willed her fluttering pulse to follow its lead. But that persistent flutter was still entirely fixated on the gorgeous, expensive aftershave Oliver wore and the heat coming off his big body and it seemed to fibrillate faster the closer to the ground floor they got.
And they were so close, now.
Ultimately, it didn’t matter what her body did when in Oliver’s immediate proximity—how her breath tightened, or her mouth dried or her heart squeezed—that was like Icarus hoping his wings wouldn’t melt as he flew towards the sun.
There was nothing she could do about the fundamental rules of biology. All that mattered was that it didn’t show on the outside.
On pain of death.
Tonight she’d been the master of her anatomy. Giving nothing away. So she only had to last these final few moments and she’d be away, speeding through the streets of Hong Kong en route to her own hotel room. Her cool, safe, empty bed. The sleepless night that was bound to follow. And the airport bright and early in the morning.
She should really get the red-eye next year.
It was impossible to know whether the lurch in her stomach was due to the arrest of the elevator’s rapid descent or because she knew what was coming next. The elegant doors seemed to gather their wits a moment before opening.
Audrey did the same.
They whooshed open and she matched Oliver’s footfalls out through the building’s plush foyer onto the street, then turned on a smile and extended a hand as a taxi pulled up from the nearby rank to attend them.
‘Any message for Blake?’
She always kept something aside for this exact moment. Something strong and obstructive in case her body decided to hurl itself at him and embarrass them all. Invariably Blake-related because that was about the safest territory the two of them had. Blake or work. Not to mention the fact that reference to her husband was usually one of the only things that made a dent in the hormonal surge that swilled around them when they stood this close.
The swampy depths of his eyes darkened for the briefest of moments as he took her hand in his large one. ‘No. Thank you.’
Odd.
Blake hadn’t had one, either. Which was a first...
But her curiosity about that half-hidden flash of anger lasted a mere nanosecond in the face of the heat soaking from his hand into the one he hadn’t released anywhere nearly as swiftly as she’d offered it. He held it—no caresses, nothing that would raise an eyebrow for anyone watching—and used it to pull her towards him for their annual Christmas air-kiss.
Her blood surged against its own current; the red cells rushing downstream to pool in fingers that tingled at Oliver’s touch stampeding against the foolish ones that surged, upstream, to fill the lips that she knew full well weren’t going to get to touch his.
She thrilled for this moment and hated it at the same time because it was never enough. Yet of course it had to be. The sharp, expensive tang of his cologne washed over her catgut-tight senses as he leaned down and brushed his lips against her cheek. A little further back from last year. A little lower, too. Close enough to her pulse to feel it pounding under her skin.
Barely enough to even qualify as a kiss. But ten times as swoon-worthy as any real kiss she’d ever had.
Hormones.
Talk about mind-altering chemicals...
‘Until next year,’ he breathed against her ear as he withdrew.
‘I will.’
Give my regards to Blake
. That was what usually came after ‘the kiss’ and she’d uttered her response before her foggy brain caught up to the fact that he hadn’t actually asked it of her this year. Again, odd. So her next words were stammered and awkward. Definitely not the cool, calm and composed Audrey she usually liked to finish her visit on.
‘Well, goodbye, then. Thank you for lunch.’
Ugh. Lame.
Calling their annual culinary marathon ‘lunch’ was like suggesting that the way Oliver made her feel was ‘warm’. Right now her body blazed with all the unspent chemistry from twelve hours in his company and her head spun courtesy of the shallow breathing of the past few minutes. Embarrassed heat blazed up the back of her neck and she slipped quickly into the waiting taxi before it bloomed fully in her face.
Oliver stood on the footpath, his hand raised in farewell as she pressed back against the headrest and the cab moved away.
‘Wait!’
She lurched against her seat belt and suddenly Oliver was hauling the door open again. For one totally crazy, breathless heartbeat she thought he might have pulled her into his arms. And she would have gone into them. Unflinchingly.
But he didn’t.
Of course he didn’t.
‘Audrey—’
She shoved her ritualistic in-taxi decompression routine down into the gap between the seat back and cushion and presented him with her most neutral, questioning expression.
‘I just... I wanted to say...’
A dozen indecipherable expressions flitted across his expression but finally resolved into something that looked like pain. Grief.
‘Merry Christmas, Audrey. I’ll see you next year.’
The anticlimax was breath-stealing in its severity and so her words were little more than a disenchanted whisper. ‘Merry Christmas, Oliver.’
‘If you ever need me...need anything. Call me.’ His hazel eyes implored. ‘Any time, day or night. Don’t hesitate.’
‘Okay,’ she pledged, though had no intention of taking him up on it. Oliver Harmer and The Real World did not mix. They existed comfortably in alternate realities and her flight to and from Hong Kong was the inter-dimensional transport. In this reality he was the first man—the only man—she’d ever call if she were in trouble. But back home...
Back home she knew her life was too beige to need his help and even if she did, she wouldn’t let herself call him.
The taxi pulled away again and Audrey resumed decompression. Her breath eased out in increments until her heart settled down to a heavy, regular beat and her skin warmed back up to room temperature.
Done.
Another year survived. Another meeting endured in her husband’s name and hopefully with her dignity fully intact.
And only three hundred and sixty-five days until she saw Oliver Harmer again.
Long, confusing days.