by Nikki Logan
‘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.
‘I love you, Oliver. I always have. I always will. And my love makes me stronger and better whether we’re together or not.’
He twisted so that they faced each other on the spacious couch. ‘I don’t ever want to go hours without you, let alone months. Not again.’
‘Then that’s how we’ll do it,’ she breathed. ‘One day at a time. Until days have become weeks and weeks years, and before you know it we’ll have been together, in love, as long as we were apart, in love.’
‘I can’t imagine what it would have been like being alone without loving you all those years. How desolate it would have been.’
Loving you...
There was such veracity in the way it just slipped out in the middle of that sentence. As though it had always been a part of his subconscious and they weren’t the most important words she’d ever heard.
Her laugh was five-eighths sob.
Something occurred to him then. ‘Imagine if we’d never met. If you’d gone to the bar next door that day. I wouldn’t have had you to keep me sane all this time.’
‘Imagine if I’d been braver that first day and actually managed a proper conversation with you.’
‘I never would have let you go,’ he vowed.
‘We’d be an old married couple by now.’
His smile bit into her ear. ‘We’d be the horniest married couple Hong Kong had ever seen.’
She lifted her head. ‘Hong Kong?’
‘We’d have lived here, wouldn’t we?’
Audrey considered that. ‘Yeah, I think we would. Maybe you would have bought this penthouse anyway.’
‘I bought the restaurant for you, after you didn’t come, so I would always have you.’
‘A little excessive, really.’
He huffed. ‘A little desperate.’
She traced his lip with her tongue tip. ‘I love you, desperate.’
‘I love you, period.’
Okay, so she didn’t mind hearing it formally, too. She would never, ever tire of hearing it.
They studied each other, drowning in each other’s depths and tangling their fingers.
‘I have a gift for you,’ he said almost sheepishly as he crossed to the expensive tree in the corner.
‘The cello wasn’t enough?’
He handed her the parcel, small and suspiciously square and faultlessly gift-wrapped. ‘I would have sent it to you if you hadn’t come.’
‘The paper is too perfect to ruin—’
He took the parcel from her and tore the beautiful bow off the top, then handed it back. Problem solved.
Inside a distinctive jeweller’s box taunted her. ‘Oliver...’
‘Don’t panic. It’s not a ring,’ he assured. ‘Not this time.’
Not this time...
A tiny leather tie lifted off the clasp and let her open the box. She couldn’t help the soft gasp. Inside, resti
ng as though it had just alighted on the black silk pillow, was an exquisite stylised dragonfly necklace, its tiny white-gold body encrusted with gemstones and its fine wings a mix of aquamarine and laser-cut sapphire. At its head, a woman’s torso carved from jade, bare-breasted and beautiful.
‘That reminded me of you,’ he murmured, almost apologetic. ‘Wild and stylish and natural all at once. I had to have it.’
Tears welled so violently it was almost impossible to appreciate the handcrafted beauty. ‘It’s...’
Were there enough words to sum up what this meant to her? Such a personal and special gift. More meaningful than any cello. Or restaurant. Or penthouse.
This was up there with the chair for things she’d run back into a burning high-rise for. She pressed herself into his arms, the jeweller’s box curled into one of the fists she snaked around his neck.
‘It’s perfect,’ she breathed against his ear. ‘Thank you.’
Her teary kiss was more eloquent than she could ever be and so she buried herself in his chest, crawling onto the sofa with him and letting the thrum of her heartbeat against his communicate for her. He draped the dragonfly around her neck and it nestled down between her breasts. Over her heart.
Oliver busied himself playing with it, alternating between stroking it and the breasts either side of it. Slowly the dragonfly heated with the warmth coming off her.
‘Do you think Blake sensed it?’ she said, after some time, to distract herself from his talented fingers. ‘How drawn to each other we were?’
‘What makes you ask that?’
‘He was always so uptight when I was around you. I figured maybe he could sense my attraction.’
‘Are you kidding? You have the best poker face in the world. I had no clue and I was perpetually on alert for the slightest sign.’ She frowned and he kissed it away. ‘I think it’s more likely he could sense my attraction. I’m a mere grasshopper to your sensei of emotional discipline.’
‘But why would he care if you were attracted to me, given what we now know?’
‘Dog in a manger?’ Oliver nibbled his way up her shoulder blades. ‘Maybe he resented my attention to his property.’
As tempting as it was to drop the conversation and find out where all that nibbling would lead to, something in her just wouldn’t let it go. ‘It wasn’t resentment. It was envy.’
He grinned and it just needed an unlit cigar to be perfect. ‘Maybe it wasn’t about you? I am pretty sexy...’
He laughed but Audrey sat up on her elbow, considered him. ‘And Blake was pretty gay.’
‘No, Audrey. I was kidding.’
Her whole body tingled with revelation. ‘He was jealous for you, not of you. That makes so much more sense.’
Something final clicked into place. How flustered Blake used to get if she came to dinner looking hot. It wasn’t attraction, it was anger—that Oliver might grow interested. And all the random, unprovoked touching...that must have been designed to get a reaction out of Oliver, not her.
Maybe Blake had loved his best friend for more years than she had.
‘He wanted you,’ she said. ‘And you wanted me. And he saw that every single time we were all together.’
There was a weird kind of certainty in the thought. No wonder he thought there was something going on in Hong Kong. He knew the truth. He just knew it much earlier than either of them.
‘Poor Blake,’ she whispered. ‘Trapped behind so many masks. And you and I were supposed to be together all along.’
There was just no question. Again, that strange cosmic rightness.
‘We may be slow,’ he said, burrowing into the place below her ear, ‘but we got there.’
‘Promise me no masks between us, Oliver. Ever. Promise me we’ll go back to Audrey and Oliver who can talk about anything, who will share anything. Even the tough stuff.’
He kissed his way to her lips, then, seeing how very serious she was about that, he rested his chin on her forehead and placed his hand on her heart. ‘I give you my solemn oath, Audrey. Whenever we have something tough to discuss we’ll curl up in that chair and talk it out and we won’t leave it until we’re done. No matter what.’
Her eyes shifted right. ‘Our chair?’
‘Our chair.’ He lifted his chin to stare into her eyes. ‘Why?’
‘I was hoping it could be used more for evil than for good,’ she breathed. ‘And it has been a very, very long time between chairs.’
Desire flooded Oliver’s gorgeous gaze. ‘Fortunately, it’s a multipurpose chair. But, come on.’ He pulled her to her feet and towards the window. ‘Let’s make sure it’s fit for purpose.’
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE ONE SHE WAS WARNED ABOUT by Shoma Narayanan.
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ONE
‘That,’ Priya said, pointing dramatically, ‘is the hottest man I have ever seen in my life.’
It was the first evening of their annual office convention and Shweta was already exhausted. The flight from Mumbai to Kerala was short, but it had been very early in the morning and she’d not slept much. Then the day had been crammed with intensely boring presentations that she’d had to sit through with a look of rapt attention on her face.
‘At least look at him!’ Priya was saying, and Shweta looked in the direction of her pointing finger.
A jolt of recognition made her keep staring for a few seconds, but there was no answering gleam in the man’s eyes—clearly he didn’t remember her at all. Not surprising, really. She’d changed quite a bit since they’d last met.
She shrugged, turning away. ‘Not my type.’
Priya gave her a disbelieving stare. ‘Delusional,’ she said, shaking her head sadly. ‘You’re so out of touch with reality you can’t tell a hot man from an Excel spreadsheet. Talking of spreadsheets—that’s one guy I’d like to see spread on my sheets...’
Shweta groaned. ‘Your sense of humour is pathetic,’ she said. ‘Every time I think you’ve reached rock-bottom you find a spade and begin to dig.’
Priya took a swig from her glass of almost-neat vodka. ‘Yours isn’t much better,’ she pointed out. ‘And, pathetic sense of humour or not, I at least have a boyfriend with a pulse. Unlike that complete no-hoper Siddhant...’
‘Siddhant is not...’ Shweta began to say, but Priya wasn’t listening to her.
‘Ooh, he’s looking at you,’ she said. ‘I bet you can’t get him to come and talk to you.’
‘Probably not. I’m really not interested.’ The man had given her a quick glance, his brows furrowed as he obviously tried to place her.
‘You’re a wuss.’
‘This is childish.’ She’d changed a lot since he’d last seen her—if he’d recognised her he’d have definitely come across.
‘Bet you a thousand rupees.’
Shweta shrugged. ‘Sorry, not enough. That pair of shoes I saw last week cost...’
‘OK, five thousand!’
‘Right, you’re on,’ Shweta said decisively.
The man across the room was looking at her again. Shweta took a comb and a pair of spectacles out of her purse. By touch she made a middle parting in her hair and, with little regard for the artfully careless style she’d spent hours achieving, braided it rapidl
y into two plaits. Then she scrubbed the lipstick off her lips with a tissue and put on the spectacles. She still had her contact lenses in and the double vision correction made everything look blurry.
Even so, Priya’s look of horror was unmistakable.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she hissed. ‘You look like the Loch Ness monster. Where did you get those spectacles from? They’re hideous!’
Shweta cut her off, nodding at the man, who was now purposefully headed in their direction. ‘Mission accomplished,’ she said, and Priya’s jaw dropped.
She was still gaping at him as he came up to them. Close up, he was even more breathtaking—over six feet tall, and exuding an aura of pure masculinity that was overwhelming. He was looking right at Shweta, and the quirky, lopsided smile on his perfectly sculpted mouth made him practically irresistible.
‘Shweta Mathur!’ he said. ‘My God, it’s been years!’
He’d thought she looked familiar, but until she’d put on the spectacles he’d had no clue who she was. It was fifteen years since he’d seen her last—they’d been in middle school then, and if Shweta had been the stereotypical hard-working student, he’d been the stereotypical bad boy. He hadn’t changed much, but Shweta had blossomed. She’d always had lovely eyes, and with the spectacles gone they were breathtaking, drawing you in till you felt you were drowning in them.... Nikhil shook himself a little, telling himself he was getting over-sentimental as he neared his thirtieth birthday. But the eyes were pretty amazing, even if you looked at them with a completely cynical eye. Her features were neat and regular, her skin was a lovely golden-brown, and even in her prim black trousers and top her figure looked pretty good. Somewhere along the line she’d even learnt how to use make-up—right now, in her bid to make him recognise her, she’d scrubbed off all her lipstick, and the vigorous treatment had made her unexpectedly lush lips turn a natural red.
‘Hi, Nikhil,’ Shweta said, holding her hand out primly.
Nikhil disregarded it, pulling her into his arms for a hug instead.
