His Until Midnight

by Nikki Logan

  It didn’t matter that the living area wasn’t large because it had the most spectacular back yard she’d ever seen.

  Pity she was in no mood to enjoy it.

  ‘Tell me,’ she gritted the moment the door closed behind her.

  But Oliver waited until he’d removed her dripping jacket and folded it on the non-porous safety of the slate bench top in the open-plan kitchen. Short of removing her blouse and skirt, too, there wasn’t much else he could do to clean her up.

  Audrey folded her arms across her damp front and walked to the enormous window to just...stare.

  ‘He called them his Christmas bonus.’ Oliver sighed behind her.

  Pain lanced through her. That was just crass enough for Blake, too. ‘Who were they? Where did he find them?’

  ‘I don’t know, Audrey.’

  ‘How long have you known? The whole three years?’

  ‘The first year I thought maybe he’d grow out of it. But when he did it again the following year, I realised it wasn’t a one-off. So I confronted him about it.’

  She squeezed her hands around her elbows. ‘So...five years in total? Also known as our whole marriage?’

  Her voice shook on that and she saw him behind her, reflected in the glass of the balcony, his head bowed. The most defeated she’d ever seen him.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Audrey. You don’t deserve this.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ she whispered.

  ‘Because I knew how much it would hurt you.’

  She spun. ‘You preferred to leave me in a marriage where I was being made a fool of?’

  ‘I couldn’t be sure you didn’t know.’

  She couldn’t prevent the rise in her voice. ‘You thought I might know and stay?’

  Like his mother? Was that what his upbringing taught him?

  ‘I couldn’t be sure,’ he repeated. ‘It’s not an easy subject to raise.’

  Which would explain why half their day had gone by before he elected to mention it.

  ‘Is this why you didn’t come to his funeral?’

  ‘I’ve explained why—’

  ‘Right. In case you couldn’t keep your hands off me.’ She snorted. ‘I didn’t actually believe you about that.’ The hurt she was feeling had to go somewhere, and Oliver was right there.

  ‘Well, you should, because I meant every word. Why do you think I sent your favourite flowers and not his? I wanted to be there for you.’

  ‘Just a shame that Blake didn’t share your enthusiasm for me or he may not have felt the need to stray.’

  Ugh. Even the word sounded so wretched. And even though her head knew that Blake was the one who’d been so sad and weak, it didn’t stop her from feeling like the pathetic one.

  ‘So you and he...’ Oliver risked.

  She spun around. ‘Did we have a rich and fulfilling sex life? Apparently not. I knew I didn’t rock his world but I didn’t realise I’d driven him to such desperate lengths.’

  ‘It wasn’t you, Audrey.’

  ‘It was at least half me!’

  He crossed to her, took her hands from around her ruined blouse and cupped them. ‘It wasn’t you at all.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t Don bloody Juan. He seems to have had no problems in that regard.’

  ‘I swear to you, Audrey, there was nothing you could have done differently.’

  ‘How would you know? Did he—?’ Oh, God. ‘Did he talk to you about our sex life, or lack thereof?’

  Yeah, that would be the final humiliation. Oliver could add dud lay to her mounting debit column.

  ‘No. He did not. But he did talk quite freely about his other...encounters. Until I shut that down.’

  She sunk onto an ottoman and buried her face in her hands. ‘I feel like such a fool. How could I not have seen?’

  ‘He didn’t want you to see.’

  ‘Then how could I not have guessed?’ She shot back up onto her feet. ‘We lived such separate lives but I was with him every day—surely I should have at least suspected?’

  ‘Like I said, you look for the best in people.’

  ‘Not any more,’ she vowed.

  ‘Don’t.’ He crossed to stand in front of her. ‘Don’t let him change you. Your goodness is why people will judge him for this, not you.’

  People? Her face came up. ‘How many people know?’

  He dropped his eyes to the carpet. ‘A few. I gather he wasn’t all that subtle.’

  A sudden image of Blake with a buxom post-adolescent on each arm strolling through inner Sydney filled her mind and thickened her throat. Everything she wasn’t. Young, stacked, lithesome and probably the kind of performer in bed that she could never hope to be.

  And so public... Maybe he wanted to be caught? Wasn’t that what the experts said about men who had affairs? And maybe she would have caught him out if she’d been paying the slightest bit of attention to her marriage.

  Reality soaked in as the tears dried up. She’d set herself up for this the day she gave her work and her friends and her hobbies more importance than her marriage.

  She straightened on a deep inward breath.

  ‘Audrey...’ Oliver warned, his voice low. ‘I know what you’re doing.’

  She tossed back her hair. ‘What am I doing?’

  ‘You’re tallying up the ways this is your fault.’

  He knew her so well. How was that possible?

  ‘Do I need to say it again?’ he growled.

  ‘Apparently you do.’

  He stared at her, indecision scouring that handsome face. Then he stepped forward and took her hands again, squatting in front of her. ‘Audrey Devaney, this was not your fault.’

  He spoke extra-slowly to get through her hysteria.

  ‘There was nothing in this world that you could have done to change this—’ he tightened his hold on her hands so much she actually glanced down at his white knuckles ‘—short of changing gender.’

  Her tear-ravaged eyes shot back up to his one more time. Utterly speechless. But then denial kicked in.

  ‘No—’

  ‘I think he’d known a really long time,’ he went on, calmly. ‘I think he knew when we were growing up, I think he knew when you guys first started dating and I think he knew when he walked down the aisle with you. But I also think he just couldn’t be on the outside what he didn’t feel on the inside. Not long term.’

  ‘You’re defending him?’

  ‘I’m defending his right to be who he truly was. But, no, I’m not defending his actions. Cheating is cheating and he was hurting someone I care deeply about. That is why I ended my friendship with him.’

  ‘And he knew that?’

  ‘He got a very graphic farewell visit.’

  ‘You were in Sydney? Why didn’t you tell me?’ Although the answer to that was ridiculously patent. To someone whose brain cells weren’t in a jumbled pile. ‘Sorry. Don’t answer that.’

  Just then the tiniest knock came at the big brown doors. Almost like a kitten scratching. Oliver crossed to it and pulled one open and one of the stunning staff from earlier drifted in. She held a neat fold of gorgeous blue silk, threaded through with silver.

  ‘A change of clothes for you,’ Oliver explained. ‘Your suit will be laundered onsite and returned to you before you leave tonight.’

  The girl smiled, revealing flawless, tiny teeth to go with the hourglass figure and hand-span waist, and nudged the clothes towards her. Audrey felt foolish being treated with such kid gloves, so she took the clothes, thanked the girl and turned to go find a bathroom.

  ‘Second on the right,’ Oliver called after her.

  It was a matter of only minutes for her to strip out of her ruined business suit and into the dress that the girl had clearly picked up in the boutiques on street level. Three-quarter length, with the high collar and short sleeves typical of Chinese fashion and accentuating every curve. The depth of the blue was truly stunning and the threads of silver cast a glow that refracted up to in
clude her face.

  Which only served to highlight the tear-struck devastation there. As if things weren’t bad enough.

  She sagged down onto the broad bath edge and slumped, exhausted, against the cool of the tiled wall.

  Blake’s secret life certainly explained a lot. His at times enigmatic behaviour, which she’d chalked up to business tensions. His emotional detachment, never rude but always a few degrees...separated. And their lacklustre—and downright perfunctory—sex life.

  Technically correct but lacking any real heart.

  Turned out there was a very good reason for that.

  And she wasn’t it.

  Her relief at that far eclipsed the shock of discovering her husband was gay. How sad that Blake hadn’t ever managed to reconcile that part of his life. That he felt the need to lie to everyone around him even while it ate him up inside.

  And how sad that she couldn’t have been there for him in his struggle. Because she would have. Her feelings for him might not have been traditional or immense but they were genuine, even when she didn’t always like the things he did. If he’d confided in her, she totally would have supported him. Even as she left him.

  Because hiding inside a marriage was no way to be happy.

  Audrey looked back up into the mirrors lining the far side of the bathroom and practically heard them whisper...

  Hypocrite.

  She’d held onto her fair share of secrets, too, within their marriage. Not quite as destructive as Blake’s, but then again her secrets weren’t quite as colossal as his.

  She tilted her head slightly back in the direction of the living room. Towards Oliver.

  Not quite.

  Thanks to China and its quirks, Audrey knew exactly what she’d find under the bathroom sink. A small refrigerator loaded with bottles of water and, on the left, a stack of dampened, refrigerated towels. Manna during Hong Kong’s steamy wet season. Stocked just because during the dry. A lifesaver now.

  She pressed the topmost wet towel to her flushed face, trying to restore some semblance of order.

  ‘Audrey?’ Oliver murmured through the door.

  She opened it just a crack.

  ‘I thought you might want this?’ He squeezed her purse through to her.

  ‘Thank you. Um...here...’ She bundled up her skirt and blouse and passed the whole wad back through the gap. ‘So she doesn’t have to wait.’

  As his fingers closed around the clothes they brushed against hers, static sparking in their wake. Except it couldn’t be static because she was standing on tiles and the corridor was bamboo-floored. She curled her fingers back into her palm as she pulled it back into the bathroom.

  Oliver murmured and was gone.

  It took two more towels and some hasty repair work with the travel make-up from her purse until she felt vaguely presentable again. She combed through her chaos of hair, pulled the snug blue dress down the few inches it had ridden up with all her fussing and turned to the door.

  Ready or not.

  NINE

  Ginger fingers with lemon spritzer

  ‘How are you doing?’

  It took Oliver a moment to speak after she emerged and when he did there was a hint of tightness to his voice. Uncomfortable at the idea of picking up the conversation where they left off, perhaps, given how hysterical she’d been.

  Well, that was over.

  The beautiful hostess had departed with her things and so they were alone again, but Audrey wasn’t about to resume their previous discussion. She ignored his question and wandered straight past him into a kitchen that looked as if it had been shipped direct from a magazine. And also as if it had never made so much as a cup of coffee. And why would it when the residences in this building were fully serviced by maids and room service?

  ‘Why do you suppose they need two sinks?’ she mused.

  Excellent. Displacement conversation.

  There were dual sinks on opposite sides of the kitchen. Neither of them overlooked the magnificent view, so they clearly weren’t for standing at doing dishes.

  Oliver moved up behind her. ‘Maybe the wealthy entertain a lot? Need the catering facility?’

  She turned. ‘You say that like you’re not one of them.’

  ‘Entertaining is really not where I spend my money.’

  ‘You entertain me every Christmas.’

  ‘You’re an exception to the rule.’ He watched her as she trailed a finger along the granite bench tops, drifting slowly amongst all the polished surfaces. ‘That dress looks—’

  He struggled for words and she hoped whatever he was trying not to say wasn’t ridiculous. Or absurd. Or try hard.

  ‘—like it’s part of your skin. It fits you perfectly.’

  It shouldn’t, given she was taller by a foot than the average Chinese delicacy. She glanced down at her legs where the dress stopped awkwardly halfway up her calves. ‘I think it’s supposed to be longer.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It looks right on you.’

  She bowed in a parody of the cultural tradition and as she came up she saw the burst of dark intensity in his gaze. She swallowed with some difficulty. ‘That’s because you haven’t seen me try to sit down in it, yet.’

  But that wasn’t nearly as difficult as she feared. The dress shifted and gave in all the right places as she sank down onto the edge of the expensive nine-seat sofa running around the far edges of the living space.

  ‘Are we going to ignore it, Audrey?’ Oliver said, still standing a few feet away.

  It. The proverbial elephant in the room. ‘I’m not sure there’s much more to say.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Just like that? You’ve filed it away and dealt with it already?’

  No, she’d filed it away un-dealt with. As was her wont. She smiled breezily. ‘I really don’t want to have to reapply my make-up a second time.’

  Oliver stared down on her. ‘It bothers you that little?’

  Oh, where to begin answering that question? Her tight smile barely deserved the title. ‘Many things about what he did will always bother me. It bothers me that I misread our marriage so much. It bothers me that he respected it little enough to cheat in the first place. It bothers me that he respected me little enough to do it and be so public about it.’

  ‘But not that it was with men?’

  She stared. ‘You said it yourself. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t Audrey Devaney that he felt the need to stray from; it wasn’t his wife that he couldn’t stomach. It was all of us. My whole gender. There’s no better or cleverer or funnier or sexier woman that might have been more suitable than me. His choice means my only lack was a Y chromosome.’

  ‘You don’t lack anything, Audrey.’

  Get real.

  She leaned forward. ‘You know my school experience. That led me to bury myself in study during university and not long after graduating I met Blake.’ And Oliver, but that wasn’t going to help make her point. ‘So my entire sense of who I am romantically—’ she couldn’t even bring herself to say ‘sexually’ ‘—was from him.’

  A man who was just going through the motions for appearances’ sake.

  ‘I thought it was me. I thought I was to blame for the lack of passion in our marriage. That I didn’t inspire it, that I wasn’t worth it.’

  That she couldn’t feel it.

  She shuddered in a breath. ‘All those tears you just witnessed thirty minutes ago, all that devastation...? That was because the only man I’ve ever been intimate with preferred other women to me. Because that’s how much of a dud I was in bed. But here I sit, just twenty minutes later, tearless and comparatively whole. I’m not mourning my marriage, I’m not cursing Blake’s cheating, I’m not even cursing him.’ She lifted wretched eyes to his. ‘What does it say about me that my first reaction on hearing about all those men was relief? Vindication. Because that meant it wasn’t me. That maybe I’m not broken.’

  ‘I think it says you’re human, Audrey. Which I know won’t please you.
You’re a perfectionist and you like things to be orderly.’ He peered down on her. ‘And you’re certainly not broken.’

  She shot to her feet. ‘Words. How would you know? Maybe a hotter woman might have been able to satisfy him.’

  Oliver smiled. ‘Pretty sure it doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘My point is that Blake is still my only reference point. So, really, we know nothing. I could still be a dud.’

  Jeez, with self-belief like that who needed enemies?

  Oliver folded his arms and calmly watched her pace. ‘You haven’t been involved with anyone else since he died? It’s been eighteen months.’

  ‘I’ve been too busy shoring up my life,’ she defended, instantly conscious that maybe it was just further evidence of her lameness. Shoring up her life and conveniently returning directly to type. Her barricaded-up, risk-averse type.

  ‘Audrey, think. You’re missing something obvious—’

  ‘Apparently I’ve been missing it for years!’ That her husband wasn’t into women. She spun on him. ‘And why the hell does this amuse you?’

  ‘—I’m attracted to you.’

  Pfff. ‘You just think the dress is hot.’

  Yet her pulse definitely spiked at his words. But, once again, words were cheap.

  ‘I do think the dress is hot but she had a similar one on, too—’ he nodded to the front door where the beautiful china doll had just departed ‘—and I wasn’t attracted to her. And you weren’t wearing it earlier and I was definitely attracted to you then.’

  ‘You’re Oliver—The Hammer—Harmer. You’d be attracted to anyone.’

  His fists curled that little bit tighter. ‘You’re going to need to find one slur and stick to it, Audrey. Either I’m guilty of swimming too exclusively down the beautiful end of the gene pool or I’ll do anything in a skirt. Which is it?’

  ‘I didn’t say you couldn’t slum it from time to time.’

  That actually seemed to make him mad. For the first time today. ‘I think you’d say anything to win an argument.’