His Until Midnight

by Nikki Logan

  ‘Because now I’m—’

  She floundered and he bent in closer to study her. ‘You’re what? The only thing that’s changed in our relationship is your marital status.’

  Her body locked up hard as awareness flooded his eyes.

  ‘Is that it, Audrey? You’re worried now because you’re single?’

  ‘How will it look?’

  ‘You’re a widow. No one will give a toss what you do or who you see. There’s no hint of scandal for them to inhale.’ But as she stared at him in desperate silence the awareness consolidated down into acute realisation. ‘Or are you more concerned about how it will look, to me?’

  Her pulse pounded against her throat. ‘I don’t want to give the wrong impression.’

  ‘What impression is that?’ Cool and oh, so careful.

  ‘That I’m here because... That we’re...’

  He flopped back against the plush sofa, the cigar hanging limply from his mouth. ‘That you’re interested?’

  ‘That I’m offering.’

  Expressions chased across his face then like a classic flicker-show and finally settled on heated disbelief. ‘It’s lunch, Audrey. Not foreplay.’

  That word on those lips was all it took; her mind filled then with every carnal thought about him she’d ever suppressed. They burst out just as surely as if someone took the lid off the tank holding all those dragonflies captive, releasing them to fill the room and ricochet off the walls. It took all her concentration to force them back into the lead-lined box where she usually kept them.

  ‘Seriously, what’s the worst that could happen? If I made a move on you, you’d only have to say no.’

  Her lips tightened even further. ‘It would be awkward,’ she squeezed out.

  His snort drew the glance of the maître d’. ‘Whereas this conversation is such a pleasure.’

  ‘I don’t think your sarcasm is warranted, Oliver.’

  ‘Really? Your inference is that I would make some kind of fool of myself the very moment you’re available.’ Disbelief was wiggling itself a stronghold in his features. ‘How new do you imagine I am to women, Audrey?’

  He was so close to the truth now, she didn’t dare speak. But that just gave him an empty stage to continue his monologue. And he was getting right into the part.

  ‘I’m curious. Do you see me as pathetically desperate—’ his whisper could have cut glass ‘—or is it just that you imagine yourself as so intensely desirable?’

  Hurt speared straight down into that place where she kept the knowledge that she was the last sort of woman he’d want to be with. ‘Stop it—’

  But no. He was in flight.

  ‘Maybe it wouldn’t be that way at all. I’m considered quite a catch, you know. They even have a nickname for me. Could your crazy view of the world cope with the fact that I could make a move and you wouldn’t be able to say no? Or want to?’

  There was no way on this planet that he wouldn’t see the sudden blanche of her face. The blood dropped from it as surely as if the sixty floors below them suddenly vaporised.

  And finally he fell silent.

  Stupid, blind, lug of a man.

  Audrey stood and turned to stare at the dragonflies, her miserable arms curled protectively around her midsection where the intense ache was still resident. It was that or fling her hands up to her mortified face. Beyond the glass, the other diners carried on, oblivious to the agony swelling up to press with such intent against her chest wall.

  ‘Is that it?’ Oliver murmured behind her after a mute eternity. ‘Is that why you don’t want to be here?’

  Mortification twisted tighter in her throat. She raised a finger to trace the glass-battering of a particularly furious dragonfly wedged in the corner of the tank who hadn’t yet given up on its dream of freedom. ‘I’m sure you think it’s hilarious.’

  The carpet was too thick and too new to betray his movement, but she saw his reflection loom up behind her. Over her. He stopped just before they touched.

  ‘I would never laugh at you,’ he said, low and earnest. ‘And I would never throw your feelings back in your face. No matter what they were.’

  She tossed her hair back a little. Straightened a little more. She might be humiliated but she would not crawl. ‘No. I’m sure you’ve had prior experience with the inconvenient attachment of women.’

  That was what made the whole thing so intensely humiliating. That she was just one of dozens—maybe hundreds—to fall for the Harmer allure.

  ‘I care for you, Audrey.’

  ...but...

  It had to be only a breath away. ‘Oh, please. Save it for someone who doesn’t know you so well.’

  The soberness in his voice increased. ‘I do care for you.’

  ‘Not enough to come to my husband’s funeral.’ She spun. Faced him. ‘Not enough to be there for your friend in the hardest week of her life when she was lost and overwhelmed and so bloody confused.’ She reached for her handbag on the empty seat at the end of the table. ‘Forgive me for suspecting that our compassion-meters aren’t equally calibrated.’

  With a deft swing, she had the handbag and all its contents over her shoulder and she turned toward the restaurant’s exit. Remaining courses, be damned.

  ‘Audrey—’ His heavy hand curled around her upper arm. ‘Stop.’

  She did, but only because she’d made quite enough of a scene for one lifetime. And this was going to be the last memory of her he had; she didn’t want it to be hysterical.

  ‘I think I should explain—’

  ‘You don’t owe me an explanation, Oliver. That’s what makes this whole situation so ridiculous. You owe me nothing.’

  He wasn’t hers to have expectations of. He wasn’t even her husband’s friend any more. He was just an acquaintance. A circumstantial friend.

  At best.

  ‘I wanted to be there, Audrey. For you. But I knew what would have happened if I’d flown in.’ He took her hands in his and held them gently between them. ‘You and I would have ended up somewhere quiet, nursing a generous drink and a bunch of stories long after everyone else had gone home, and you would have been exhausted and strung out and heartbroken.’ She dipped her head and he had to duck his to keep up eye contact. ‘And seeing that would have broken my heart. I would have taken you into my arms to give you support and make all the pain just vanish—’ he took a deep breath ‘—and we would have ended up in bed.’

  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.’
<
br />   ‘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 unsympathetic 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 suppo
sed 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.