His Until Midnight (5 page)

Her eyes shot back up. ‘That wouldn’t have happened—’

His hands twisted more firmly around hers, but not to hold her close. He used the leverage to push her gently away from him. ‘It would have happened because I’m a heartbeat and some sorely tested willpower from doing it right now. I
want
you in my arms, Audrey. I
want
you in my bed. And it has nothing to do with Blake being gone because I’ve wanted the same thing each Christmas for the last five years.’

Every muscle in her body tensed up and he knew it.

Amazing, excruciating seconds passed.

‘But that’s not who we are,’ he went on. ‘I know that. Reducing what we have to the lowest common denominator might be physically rewarding but it’s not what our...
thing
...is worth. And so what we’re left with is this awkward...awareness.’

Awareness. So he felt it, too. But it wasn’t just awkward, it was awful. Because she suddenly got the sense that it made Oliver as uncomfortable as it made her. Not expressing it, just...feeling it.

‘I value your friendship, Audrey. I value your opinion and your perception and your judgement. I get excited coming up here in the elevator because I know I’m going to be seeing you and spending a day with you picking through your brilliant mind. The only day I get all year. I’m not about to screw that up by hitting on you.’

Oh.
A small part of her sagged. But was it relief or disappointment? ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Why?’

The blood must have returned to her face if she could still blush. ‘Because it’s such a cliché.’

‘It’s flattering. The fact that a woman I value so highly finds things in me to value in return is...validating. Thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me.’ That was just a little bit too close to patronising.

‘Okay. I’ll just be silently smug about it instead.’

The fact that she could still laugh, despite everything...Yet, sure enough, the sound chuffed out of her. ‘That seems more like you.’

They stood, nothing between them but air. And an emotional gulf as wide as the harbour.

‘So now what?’

He considered her and then shook his seriousness free. ‘Now we move on to the third course.’

SIX

Pineapple, hops, green tomato served in Brazil-nut-coated clusters

Did the earth
lurch on its axis between courses for the rest of Qīngtíng’s chic clientele? None of them looked overly perturbed. Maybe this building was constructed to withstand earth tremors.

Because Oliver’s entire existence had just shifted.

The two of them retreated to silence and polite smiles as a stack of curious, bite-size parcels were placed before them and the waiter announced in his accented English, ‘Pineapple and green tomato clusters coated in Brazil nut.’

The parcels might have been small but he and Audrey each took their time first testing and then consuming the tart morsels. Buying time. Really necessary time. Because the last thing he felt like doing was eating.

He’d come
this
close.

He almost touched her, back then when she’d turned her blanched face away from him with such dismay. He almost pulled her back into his chest and breathed down onto her hair that none of it mattered. Nothing that had gone before had any relevance.

Their slate started today, blank and full of potential.

But that wasn’t just embarrassment on her face. That was dread. She didn’t
want
to be feeling any kind of attraction to him.

She didn’t deserve his anger. He’d reacted automatically to the suggestion that he
was
as pitiful as he’d secretly feared when it came to her, but it wasn’t Audrey’s fault she’d pegged him so accurately. His anger was more appropriate directed at himself.
He
was the one who couldn’t get another man’s wife out of his head.
He
was the one who found himself incapable of being with a beautiful woman, now, and not wanting to peel back the layers to see the person inside. And
he
was the one who was invariably disappointed with what he found there, because they all paled by comparison.

Audrey was the best woman—the best human being—he knew. And he knew some pretty amazing people. But she was the shining star atop his Christmas tree of admired friends, just as glittering and just as out of reach.

And right up until a few minutes ago he’d believed she was safe territory. Because right up until a few minutes ago he had no idea that she was in any way into him. He’d grown so used to not acting on all the inappropriate feelings he harboured.

What the hell did he
do
in a world where Audrey Devaney was both single and into him?

‘What happened with you and Blake?’ she suddenly asked, cutting straight through his pity party. Her eyes were enormous, shimmering with compassion and curiosity. And something else... An edge of trepidation.

No. Not a conversation he could have with her. What would it achieve now that Blake was dead? ‘We just...grew apart.’

Two pretty lines appeared between her brows. ‘I don’t understand why he didn’t say something. Or suggest that I stop coming. For so long. That seems unlike him.’

‘You’d expect him to force you to declare your allegiance?’

She picked her way, visibly, through a range of choices. ‘He knew why I came here. He would have told me if it was no longer necessary.’

Necessary.
The bubble of latent hope lost half of its air. The idea that she’d only been coming each year to please her husband bit deep. Attraction or no attraction.

‘There must have been something,’ she urged. ‘An incident? Angry words?’

‘Audrey, leave it alone. What does it matter now that he’s gone?’

She leaned forward, over the nutty crumbs of the decimated parcels. ‘I never did understand why you were friends in the first place. You’re so different from Blake.’

‘Opposites attract?’ That would certainly explain his still-simmering need to absorb Audrey into his very skin. Too bad that was going to go insatiate. ‘We weren’t so different.’ At least not at the beginning.

But, those all-seeing eyes latched onto the mystery and weren’t about to let go. ‘He did a lot of things that you generally disagreed with,’ she puzzled. ‘I’m trying to imagine what it would have taken to drive you away from him.’

Her unconscious solidarity warmed him right down to the place that had just been so cold. ‘What makes you think it wasn’t something
I
did?’

Her lips twisted, wryly. ‘I knew my husband, Oliver. Warts and all.’

And that was about the widest opening he was ever going to get. ‘Why did you marry him?’

The curiosity changed focus. ‘Why do people usually marry?’

‘For love,’ he shot back. Not that he’d know what that looked like. ‘Did you love him?’

And could she hear how much he was hoping the answer was ‘no’?

‘Marriage means different things to different people.’

Nice hedge. ‘So what does it mean to you?’

She hesitated. ‘I don’t subscribe to the whole “lightning bolt across the crowded room” thing.’

It was true. There’d been no lightning bolt when she walked into the bar that first day. But when she’d first pinned him with her intellect and locked those big eyes on him just minutes later, he’d had to curl his fingers under the edge of the bar to keep from lurching backwards at the slam of
something
that came off her. Whatever the hell it was.

A big, blazing ball of slow burn.

‘You don’t aspire to that?’ he dug.

‘The great romantic passion? No.’ A little colour appeared on her jaw. ‘It hasn’t been my experience. I value compatibility, shared interests, common goals, mutual respect, trust. Those are things that make a marriage.’

A hollow one, surely. Although how would he know? No personal experience to reference and a crap example in his parents’ marriage, which barely deserved the title—just a woman living in the purgatory of knowing her husband didn’t love her.

He risked a slight probe. ‘Did Blake agree with that?’

She brought her focus back to him. ‘I... Yes. We were quite sympathetic on a lot of things.’

Well, there was one area in particular that old Blake was definitely
un
sympathetic with Audrey.

Fidelity
.

‘You never looked at someone else and wondered what it might be like?’ He had to know.

Her eyes grew wary. ‘What
what
might be like?’

‘To be with them. Did you never feel the pull of attraction to someone other than Blake and wonder about a relationship that started with good, old-fashioned lust?’

‘You’re assuming that
wanting
and
taking
are connected. It comes back to that mutual trust and respect. I just wouldn’t do that to my partner. I couldn’t.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘I thought you, of all people, would understand that.’

A cold stone formed in his gut.
Of all people...
‘You’re talking about my father?’ They’d never discussed his father and so he knew whatever she knew had come from Blake. The irony of that...

‘Was he very bad?’

He took a deep breath. But if sharing something with her, especially something this personal, was the only intimacy he was going to get from Audrey Devaney, he’d embrace it. ‘Very.’

‘How did you know what he was doing?’

‘Everyone knew.’

‘Including your mother?’

‘She pretended not to.’ For her son’s sake. And maybe for her own.

‘Did she not care?’

His stomach tightened at the memory of the sobbing he wasn’t supposed to have heard when she thought he was asleep. His jaw tightened. ‘She cared.’

‘Why did she stay?’

The sigh wracked his body. ‘My father was incapable of fidelity but he didn’t drink, he was never violent, he remembered birthdays and he had steady employment. He was, in all other ways, a pretty reasonable father.’

If you didn’t count a little thing called integrity.

Part of Oliver’s own attraction to Audrey had always been her values. This was not a woman who would ever have knowingly done wrong by the man she shared vows with. Just a shame Blake hadn’t returned the favour.

‘So she chose to stay.’ And that had been a green light in his father’s eyes. The ultimate hall pass.

‘Maybe she didn’t think she could do better?’

‘Than a man who was ruthlessly unfaithful—surely no one would think that?’ It hit him then how freely he was having this discussion. After so many years of bleeding the feelings out in increments.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know that you’ll ever be able to relate. Because of who you are. Successful and charming and handsome. It’s not that easy for everyone else.’

His heart swelled that she thought him handsome enough to say it aloud. ‘You think I don’t have my demons?’

She stared at him. ‘I’m sure you do. But doubting your worth is not one of them.’

She wasn’t wrong. His ego had been described by the media as ‘robust’ and in the boardroom as ‘unspeakable’.

‘And can you, Audrey? Relate?’

She stared out across the harbour to the towering giants on the other side. But her head nodded, just slightly. ‘When I got to upper school I’d gone from being the tubby, smart girl to the plain, smart girl. I didn’t mind that so much as long as it also came with “smart” because that was my identity, that was where I got my self-worth from. Academic excellence.’

‘I wish I’d known you then.’

Her laugh grated. ‘Oh, no... The beautiful people and I didn’t move in the same hemisphere. You would never have even seen me then.’

‘That’s a big assumption to make.’ And kind of judgemental. Which wasn’t like her at all.

She leaned forwards. ‘For the first two years of high school boys didn’t want to know me. I was invisible and I just got on with things, under the radar. And then one day I got...discovered. And that was the end of my cruise through school.’

‘What do you mean “discovered”?’

‘The same way species are discovered even though they’ve been there for centuries. I didn’t change my hair or get a makeover or tutor the captain of the football team. It wasn’t like the movies. One day I was invisible and the next—’ she shrugged ‘—there I was.’

‘In a good way?’

She took a healthy swallow of her wine. ‘No. Not for me.’

The pain at the back of her eyes troubled him. ‘What happened?’

‘Nothing. At first. They just watched me, wherever I went. Like they weren’t sure how to engage with me.’

They...
like a pack.

‘One of them asked me out to a movie once. Michael Hellier. I didn’t know how to say no kindly so I said yes and it was all over the school in minutes. They hunted me down, then, the girls from that group, and they slammed me against the bathroom wall and told me I was fishing outside of my swamp.’ She lifted her eyes. ‘But he’d asked me, I couldn’t just not turn up. So I went. I don’t even remember what film we saw because all I could think about the entire time I was with him was those girls. I convinced myself they were spying from the back row. I barely spoke to him and I didn’t even take off my coat even though I was sweating like crazy under it, and when he tried to put his arm around me I literally froze. I sat there, totally rigid for the entire movie, and the moment the credits rolled I stammered out my thanks and I ran out of the cinema.’

Oliver sat silently, the whole, miserable story playing out in his mind, his anger bubbling up and up as it proceeded.

She turned more fully towards him, eyes blazing. ‘I enjoyed it, Oliver. The attention of those boys. I enjoyed that none of them quite knew how to deal with me. I enjoyed being a puzzle in their eyes and I enjoyed how it made me feel. The shift in power. It felt like vindication forevery tease I’d endured as a kid. As if “
See! I am worthy
.” I liked being visible. And I liked being sought after. I liked how fast my heart beat when I was near him because he was interested in me. And I totally played up to it.

‘But I earned what happened to me.’ She sighed. ‘And I earned every cruel nickname they gave me after that. I tried to play a game I wasn’t equipped for and I lost. I never made that mistake again. I never
reached
like that again. And after a while that starts to feel really normal. And so maybe something like that happened to your mother—’

God, he’d totally forgotten they’d been talking about Marlene Harmer.

‘—something that taught her not to overreach.’

Or hope? Or expect more from people?

Or feel, maybe?

He asked the first thing that came to him. The thing he’d always, secretly, wanted to know. ‘Is that why you chose Blake that day in the bar? Because some jerks in school taught you not to aim higher?’

The words hung, unanswered, between them. It was the first time either of them had ever acknowledged what had happened that night. How actively she’d focused her attention on Blake rather than on him. Almost to the point of rudeness.

And also hovering out there, in bright neon, was his presumption that Blake was somehow
less
. But deep down he knew that to be true—at least when it came to Audrey.

Audrey was never meant to be Blake’s.

Not in a just world.

Indecision swam across her gaze, and he watched her trying to decide what was safe to reveal. When she did speak it was painfully flat and her eyes drifted slightly to his left. ‘Blake was within reach.’

Low-hanging fruit.

Oliver flopped back against the rear of his sofa, totally lost for words, understanding, just a little bit, what Audrey had just said about vindication. He’d always wondered what drew Audrey to Blake instead of him that day, but such thoughts were arrogant and unkind given Blake was supposedly his best friend. So he’d swallowed them. Buried the question mark way down deep.

And now he had his answer.

An absurd kind of hope—totally at odds to the conversation they were having—washed through him.

Audrey didn’t pick Blake because she deemed him the better man...

He was just the
safer
man.

Just like that, a whole side of her unfolded like spreading petals revealing an aspect to her he’d never suspected.

‘It kills me to think that my mother would have harboured those kinds of feelings about herself and that my father would have reinforced them...’