The Dating Game

by Avril Tremayne

  A shame, because she’d landed a date with Craig to hear him sing on Saturday night and she wouldn’t have minded letting David know how quickly she’d managed it. After behaving like a lovelorn desperado in the storeroom, her pride could have used the boost. Which, of course, was counterintuitive! If she wasn’t a lovelorn desperado, she wouldn’t have had to ask David to help her in the first place, would she? And really, it wasn’t as though getting dates had ever been a problem. It was what came afterwards she had trouble with. So—reality check—she didn’t have anything to brag to David about yet.

  She thought ahead to how the date with Craig might unfold. Cool city venue. Starting with champagne, served in those old-fashioned coupe glasses—the ones Naughty Noel had told her were based on the shape of Marie Antoinette’s breasts. (And hooray that someone’s small boobs had been celebrated once upon a time!) Craig making his way to the stage. A quick wave to her from there, making it clear to everyone she was ‘with the band’. Craig moving to the microphone. Then that first sound of his voice—deep … sexy … jazzy. Enthralling everyone.

  Maybe they’d go for a walk in the moonlight after the gig. Stop for supper. He’d want to drive her home, but she’d demur. She lived over the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Mosman, it was too far, a cab would be fine, but maybe next time …?

  Or maybe he’d invite her to his place for coffee or a nightcap. Maybe a kiss goodnight would turn into something more. Maybe they’d end up in bed! Just because she’d never gone that far on a first date before didn’t mean she couldn’t. It wasn’t as though holding out until date four or five had ever got her anywhere other than Dumpsville.

  In fact, the more she thought about it, the smarter it seemed to find out sooner rather than later if there was sufficient sexual compatibility to sustain a relationship—or, conversely, if a guy was the type to lose interest in you the minute he got you between the sheets. In both scenarios, you could cut your losses and move on all the faster, instead of wasting six days the way she had with Liam.

  Maybe she’d get David’s perspective on that next week. Which of course wouldn’t help her on Saturday night with Craig. Unless she could somehow check with David tonight …? She turned in David’s direction, only to see him heading towards the exit.

  How could he be leaving?

  ‘Sarah?’

  Sarah jumped, hastily refocusing her attention where it was supposed to be. ‘Sorry, Craig, I was hoping to have a quick word with David.’ She gestured to the exit. ‘But I see he’s heading out.’

  Craig glanced over to where David had been stopped on the threshold by Anthea and chuckled. ‘Yeah, looks like he has another engagement.’

  Sarah forced out an answering chuckle, but as David finally left the building with Anthea, and Craig grabbed her a fresh champagne from a passing waiter, she decided that without David present to give her the benefit of his tutelage there was no point in sticking around.

  For the sake of appearances, she waited until she’d drunk half her champagne before making her excuses, by which time she’d skilfully drawn in three other people to ensure Craig wouldn’t feel abandoned.

  She felt vaguely dissatisfied as she hailed a taxi, which didn’t make sense, given everything had gone according to plan. Nevertheless, the dissatisfaction persisted all the way home.

  Ordinarily, Sarah would have stopped in at her mother’s for a Frangelico, divulged her latest plan, and asked for an opinion on whether she’d done the right thing—but yesterday, her mother had left for her Mediterranean cruise with Massimo (who seemed set to become her fifth husband), so Sarah was going to be on her own for the next few months.

  Not that a four-time divorcee was really a trustworthy love guru. Nor was her mother likely to be objective. Sarah could go on a chainsaw massacre through the city streets and her mother would find a way to make it praiseworthy. Talk about permissive parenting! Adam was always warning Sarah that their mother was her enabler, but Sarah had no complaints.

  Well, maybe one complaint, given it had been her mother who’d suggested Adam take on the job with Lane. Not that anyone could have predicted how that would unfold! Adam had been sent to talk Lane out of her insane plan to hire a tutor to teach her to seduce the super-experienced David Bennett; instead Adam had signed up for the job and had been teaching Lane things Sarah didn’t want to know about for the past seven weeks. The mind positively rebelled! Everything had since gone so haywire, nobody knew what was going on! Even Lane and Adam seemed to be playing a clueless game of who liked whom.

  Sarah had been petrified Lane would fall in love with her commitment-phobic brother, but according to Lane’s super-intuitive housemate Erica, Adam was the one doing the falling—which made Lane’s very deliberate introduction of David Bennett tonight cause for grave concern. Was David Bennett in Lane’s past or her future or nowhere? David said past, but who knew what Lane wanted?

  How was a sister supposed to help her brother under such circumstances? Not, it seemed certain, by getting in the middle of it and posing for his enemy, however innocent the intention. Maybe that was why Sarah really wanted her mother just then—to give her the tick of approval she knew deep down she didn’t deserve.

  Or maybe she was more like her mother than she thought. So desperate to find ‘the one’ she’d try anything—even though in her mother’s case ‘the one’ never seemed to end up being ‘the one’ and people like Bertie, husband number four who was just the best, got thrown on the scrap heap for nothing.

  Well, at least Sarah could be certain David’s advice would be less ‘enabling’ and thus more effective than any she’d get from Elvira Quinn-Smyth-Jacobs-Grahame! Which still didn’t assuage her conscience but at least meant she wouldn’t be throwing Lane and Adam on the pyre to no purpose.

  She headed up the side path to her granny flat, hoping her precious home would soothe her spirits the way it usually did. Her flat was something of a showpiece. Her father was the award-winning architect Xavier Quinn, and because he always spoiled her rotten, he’d designed it to within an inch of its life.

  Not to be outdone, her mother—who was a top-notch interior designer—had thrown herself into decorating the space with her usual vivid passion. It might be tiny, but it was exquisite. Kitchen, dining and living areas merging seamlessly. Pale wood finishes. Violet sofa. Crimson coffee table. Hot pink cabinet holding her slightly battered Agatha Christie novels. A wall of shelves displaying her lovingly collected snow domes.

  The bedroom was no more than an alcove, painted chartreuse, separated from the rest of the space by a blind in a glorious shade of magenta. French doors opened from the living room and her bedroom onto a superb garden, designed by Adam himself even though he had a team of landscapers at his firm (because her brother was every bit as indulgent as their parents) to provide maximum privacy from whatever shenanigans were going on up at the main house.

  The whole of it was like one of her snow domes. An intensely private, tiny world where everything was perfect. Coloured the way she wanted, styled the way she liked, cut off from the wider world, protected, controlled. Not many men cared to make the trek to her place. Many men avoided it out of a misplaced fear they’d be under scrutiny, so close to her mother’s house. But that was the way she liked it—a world where she was in charge of picking and choosing who came and went.

  So why, tonight, as she entered and looked around, did she feel out of step with it? Why was she walking around picking up objects then putting them back while trying to imagine what David’s place looked like?

  Something about David suggested he’d been born fully matured, occupying his own loft apartment. It would be sophisticated, sleek, stylish, minimalist. Pale, cool, neutral colours. Funky metal accents. An easel positioned in a well-lit corner …

  Hmm. From that perspective, he was going to hate her place. He was going to think it was nothing but an overblown, over-coloured, schoolgirl’s cubby house. And she wasn’t even going to be allowe
d to stalk off in a snit when he told her his opinion.

  She realized with a start that she’d picked up her mother’s favourite snow dome—of Rome’s Trevi Fountain—and was giving it a too-frenzied shake. Ha! As though shaking the snow around ever did anything to change the world inside! However manic the shake, the snow still settled to reveal the same idyll. Was that a reflection of her life? Did she need shaking up? Were her insides static? Or maybe there was something significant about the fact that she’d chosen the Trevi Fountain for this abuse? Some deep-seated aversion to her mother’s latest beau, perhaps?

  O-kay—that was all a bit deep and disturbing. Which is what happened when she was left to her own devices, without her mother or Lane or Erica to bounce things off. And since her mother was on the other side of the world and there was no way could she talk to Erica or Lane just at the moment without revealing her David Bennett perfidy, it was time to pack away the second-guessing for the night.

  She was going to soak her dissatisfaction away in her cedar hot tub, purpose built for her minuscule bathroom (and who cared that David Bennett wouldn’t fit in it without having to break two leg bones?) and then go to bed and forget about David until next Wednesday.

  Unfortunately, as she started to drift off to sleep, an image of David, arms circling her in the storeroom, slid into her brain like a serpent that had been biding its time to strike.

  She sat up, snapping on the bedside light, hoping the sudden brightness would dispel it, but the picture seemed entrenched. She supposed the miracle would have been if she hadn’t thought of that particular moment once she was in bed. His erection wasn’t exactly a forgettable entity—not at that size!

  She’d just bet David knew she was thinking of it, too. It’s not as if he’d been trying to hide it. Not that she believed for a second his state of arousal had anything to do with her specifically. The way Lane had described him, he was the type to always be ready. It meant no more than that tossed-out suggestion of his that they have sex. Nothing more than a bargaining chip—I’ll have sex with you if you pose for my portrait. Arrogant sod!

  She giggled suddenly, remembering how he’d described himself: Yes, I’m an egomaniac, a boaster, a narcissist. He had a sense of humour, at least. Which only made him more dangerous.

  She gave her pillow a thump, turned off the bedside lamp, and yanked the covers up.

  No way was David lying in bed agonizing over everything she’d said and done and thought during the evening. He’d be too busy with Anthea. His hands travelling over Anthea’s balloon boobs. Whispering sex words to her, preparing to plunge into her …

  Sarah sat up abruptly and switched the bedside light on again, because the image in her head was wrong. It wasn’t Anthea in bed with David, it was her. Her heart was racing, her muscles were tense, and there was a heavy, pulsing ache between her thighs that made her want to touch herself … and think about David touching her.

  This had to stop! Aside from the fact that fantasising about him was disgustingly disloyal, she had more important things to think about. Like Saturday night. She turned off the bedside lamp and determinedly dragged Craig’s face into focus in her badly behaved brain. Craig kissing her … her, sliding her fingers into his hair …

  Really, Craig’s hair was a little too long; David was right about that. And it needed a good brush. Although she was fairly certain she’d seen a flake of dandruff on his shoulder at the gallery, and who knew what other dandruff flakes a thorough brushing might dislodge? Perhaps that was why he didn’t brush it?

  She sat up and turned on the bedside light again. ‘Really?’ she said out loud. ‘So buy him some anti-dandruff shampoo!’

  Off went the bedside lamp again—and at that exact moment, a sound like the clash of cymbals pierced the air and she jumped half out of her skin with a strangled scream. What the—?

  Oh! Her phone, in its usual place on her bedside table beside the on-again-off-again lamp, had lit up. Except her phone had never clashed like cymbals before.

  She snapped on the bedside light again. One quick glance at the phone told her the clash of cymbals denoted the arrival of a text from David. Or, as he’d listed himself in her contact list, Dreamboat David.

  She wanted to laugh, but found herself strangely breathless. Her fingers trembled as she opened the message. She was wildly curious about what he might say … and a little bit apprehensive. But the message turned out to be prosaic:

  Address for next Wednesday. SydneyScape Apartments #3011

  Before she could start tapping out a response, the cymbals clashed again, making her jump before she could stop herself. She was going to have to change that tone to something less heart-attack-inducing. A job for tomorrow. But for now, she opened the text.

  Be there or be square

  She was smiling as she composed her own text, but the cymbals clashed once more and a new text popped onto the screen before she could send it:

  Or maybe a circle, a triangle and some rectangles

  Again, she started tapping out a text, only for the cymbals to clash:

  Sorry—cubist joke

  Sarah gave up at that point and sent him a simple nerd emoji.

  As she slid back under the covers, it occurred to her that if David was texting her, he mustn’t be in bed with Anthea. Not that Sarah cared. It was just a stray thought.

  She was still smiling as she drifted into sleep.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Five seconds after hitting the intercom outside the glass doors of SydneyScape Apartments, Sarah found herself in an impressive marble lobby. Spying a desk manned by a well-dressed concierge, she headed in that direction, only to be forestalled by the concierge’s regal wave in the direction of the elevators. As she veered obediently, the concierge picked up the phone on his desk—calling David to announce her arrival, Sarah guessed.

  The elevator doors glided silently open; Sarah stepped in; they glided silently closed. After a hushed ascent, the elevator stopped with an almost non-existent whoosh at the thirtieth floor, disgorging her onto a plush beige carpet that muffled any hint of a footfall.

  She felt a laugh bubbling up in reaction to the almost unnatural silence … until the sight of David leaning against the doorframe of his apartment along the corridor immobilized everything about her, even her vocal cords. All she could do was stare. He was wearing well-worn jeans and a T-shirt that fitted him like a second skin, and he looked even more delectable than he’d looked in a suit. She couldn’t quite believe that she’d had the nerve to make a deal with this handsome, poised, intimidatingly perfect man.

  And then he smiled, and Sarah found herself walking, Pied Piper style, towards him.

  ‘What’s in the suit bag?’ he asked, when she reached him.

  ‘What I’m wearing,’ she said, sounding a little too breathless for her liking. She cleared her throat. ‘For the painting. It wasn’t an easy decision to make.’

  He stepped into the apartment, holding the door open for her. ‘No? Why so hard?’

  ‘Well, it’s a portrait.’

  ‘Yeees.’

  ‘And I want to look … historic. I first thought maybe a business suit, but that seemed kind of boring. Next, I went for a day dress—one with poppies, very cheerful—but who wants to be quite that casual on canvas?’ She stepped over the threshold. ‘I also tried on a basic black ensemble, but it smacked a little too much of a crime writer’s publicity shot, so, I … I … Oh!’ As she took in the big, airy room.

  Bright, exotic rugs scattered across dark wooden floorboards. A couch in a deep, velvety orange. There was a low wooden coffee table, two cabinets holding intriguing treasures and several tables topped with quirky artefacts. The walls were covered with modern paintings of different styles and sizes. There were two groupings of Aboriginal spirit poles in earthy colours each side of French doors that opened onto a deck, through which Sarah could see a beautifully lit sculpture soaring skywards, the twinkling lights of the ci
ty almost close enough to touch, and the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the distance. There were doors at either end of the room. Sarah guessed one led to the kitchen and dining room; the other to the bedrooms and bathrooms.

  ‘Uh-oh, you’ve stopped talking!’ David said, laying the suit bag across the couch. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Your apartment,’ she answered, and then laughed as the rest of what he’d said hit her. ‘Oh, you! I don’t talk all the time, you know.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t slept with you, so I can’t say what happens then.’

  ‘Ha-ha-ha.’

  ‘So what’s wrong with my apartment?’

  ‘It’s just not what I expected.’

  ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘Something a little more Don Juan, only modern.’

  ‘The mind boggles at what a modern Don-Juan-style apartment would look like.’

  ‘To start with, it would have nude etchings!’ she said smartly.

  ‘I’m never going to live down those etchings, am I? Thank God I’m not painting you naked or you’d have me pegged as a dirty old man.’

  ‘Actually, how old are you?’

  ‘Thirty-four—old enough to be deemed decrepit by your peer group. But I’m not dirty, I promise.’ He grinned. ‘Although I can be, on request.’

  ‘And how often is that requested?’

  ‘More often than you’d believe. Why? Are you sorry you didn’t take me up on my original offer?’

  ‘Oh, if I’d known it was dirty sex on offer, who knows what I might have agreed to?’ She gave a gusty sigh. ‘Ah well, lost opportunities—a bit like that premature ejaculator I told you about last week.’

  ‘Hey, don’t rope me in with any premature ejaculators!’

  ‘Well, I haven’t slept with you, so I can’t rule you out there.’