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You’d think twelve months would be enough time to steel her resolve and prepare herself.
Yet here she was, entirely rattled by the anticipation of a simple farewell kiss. It never was more than a socially appropriate graze. Barely more than an air-kiss. Yet she still felt the burn of his lips on her cheek as though last year’s kiss were a moment—and not a full year—ago.
She was a teenager again, around Oliver. All breathless and hot and hormonal. Totally fixated on him for the short while she had his company. It would have been comic if it weren’t also so terribly mortifying. And it was way too easy to indulge the feelings this one day of the year. It felt dangerous and illicit to let the emotions even slightly off the leash. Thank goodness she was old enough now to fake it like a seasoned professional.
In public, anyway.
Oliver glanced down and smiled at her in that strange, searching way he had, a half-unwrapped DVD boxed set in his hands. She gave him her most careful smile back, took a deep breath and then refocused on the light descending the crowded panel of elevator buttons.
Fifty-nine, fifty-eight...
She wasn’t always so careful. She caught herself two weeks ago wondering what her best man would think of tonight’s dress instead of her husband. But she’d rationalised it by saying that Oliver’s taste in women—and, by implication, his taste in their wardrobes—was far superior to Blake’s and so taking trouble to dress well was important for a man who hosted her in a swanky Hong Kong restaurant each year.
Blake, on the other hand, wouldn’t notice if she came to the dinner table dressed in a potato sack.
He used to notice—back in the day, nine years ago—when she’d meet him and Oliver at a restaurant in something flattering. Or sheer-cut. Or reinforcing. Back then, appreciation would colour Blake’s skin noticeably. Or maybe it just seemed more pronounced juxtaposed with the blank indifference on Oliver’s face. Oliver, who barely even glanced at her until she was seated behind a table and modestly secured behind a menu.
Yet, paradoxically, she had him to thank for the evolution of her fashion sense because his disdain was a clear litmus test if something was too flattering, too sheer-cut. Too reinforcing.
It was all there in the careful nothing of his expression.
People paid top dollar for that kind of fashion advice. Oliver gifted her with it for free.
Yeah...his gift. That felt so much better on the soul than his judgement. And seasonally appropriate, too.
This year’s outfit was a winner. And while she missed the disguised scrutiny of his greenish-brown gaze—the visual caress that usually sustained her all year—the warm wash of his approval was definitely worth it. She glanced at herself in the elevator’s mirrored walls and tried to see herself as Oliver might. Slim, professional, well groomed.
Weak at the knees with utterly inappropriate anticipation.
Forty-five, forty-four...
‘What time is your flight in the morning?’ His deep voice honey-rumbled in the small space.
Her answer was more breath than speech. ‘Eight.’
Excellent. Resorting to small talk. But this was always how it went at the end. As though they’d flat run out of other things to talk about. Entirely possible given the gamut of topics they covered during their long, long lunch-that-became-dinner, and because she was usually emotionally and intellectually drained from so many hours sitting across from a man she longed to see but really struggled to be around.
It was only one day.
Twelve hours, really. That was all she had to get through each year and wasn’t a big ask of her body. The rest of the year she had no trouble suppressing the emotions. She used the long flight home to marshal all the sensations back into that tightly lidded place she kept them so that she disembarked the plane in Sydney as strong as when she’d left Australia.
She’d invited Blake along this year—pure survival, hoping her husband’s presence would force her wayward thoughts back into safer territory—but not only had he declined, he’d looked horrified at the suggestion. Which made no sense because he liked to catch up with Oliver whenever he was travelling in Asia, himself. Least he used to.
In fact, it made about as little sense as the not-so-subtle way Oliver changed the subject every time she mentioned Blake. As if he was trying to distance himself from the only person they had in common.
And without Blake in common, really what did they have?
Twenty-seven, twenty-six, twenty-five...
Breath hissed out of her in a long, controlled yoga sigh and she willed her fluttering pulse to follow its lead. But that persistent flutter was still entirely fixated on the gorgeous, expensive aftershave Oliver wore and the heat coming off his big body and it seemed to fibrillate faster the closer to the ground floor they got.
And they were so close, now.
Ultimately, it didn’t matter what her body did when in Oliver’s immediate proximity—how her breath tightened, or her mouth dried or her heart squeezed—that was like Icarus hoping his wings wouldn’t melt as he flew towards the sun.
There was nothing she could do about the fundamental rules of biology. All that mattered was that it didn’t show on the outside.
On pain of death.
Tonight she’d been the master of her anatomy. Giving nothing away. So she only had to last these final few moments and she’d be away, speeding through the streets of Hong Kong en route to her own hotel room. Her cool, safe, empty bed. The sleepless night that was bound to follow. And the airport bright and early in the morning.
She should really get the red-eye next year.
It was impossible to know whether the lurch in her stomach was due to the arrest of the elevator’s rapid descent or because she knew what was coming next. The elegant doors seemed to gather their wits a moment before opening.
Audrey did the same.
They whooshed open and she matched Oliver’s footfalls out through the building’s plush foyer onto the street, then turned on a smile and extended a hand as a taxi pulled up from the nearby rank to attend them.
‘Any message for Blake?’
She always kept something aside for this exact moment. Something strong and obstructive in case her body decided to hurl itself at him and embarrass them all. Invariably Blake-related because that was about the safest territory the two of them had. Blake or work. Not to mention the fact that reference to her husband was usually one of the only things that made a dent in the hormonal surge that swilled around them when they stood this close.
The swampy depths of his eyes darkened for the briefest of moments as he took her hand in his large one. ‘No. Thank you.’
Odd. Blake hadn’t had one, either. Which was a first...
But her curiosity about that half-hidden flash of anger lasted a mere nanosecond in the face of the heat soaking from his hand into the one he hadn’t released anywhere nearly as swiftly as she’d offered it. He held it—no caresses, nothing that would raise an eyebrow for anyone watching—and used it to pull her towards him for their annual Christmas air-kiss.
Her blood surged against its own current; the red cells rushing downstream to pool in fingers that tingled at Oliver’s touch stampeding against the foolish ones that surged, upstream, to fill the lips that she knew full well weren’t going to get to touch his.
She thrilled for this moment and hated it at the same time because it was never enough. Yet of course it had to be. The sharp, expensive tang of his cologne washed over her catgut-tight senses as he leaned down and brushed his lips against her cheek. A little further back from last year. A little lower, too. Close enough to her pulse to feel it pounding under her skin.
Barely enough to even qualify as a kiss. But ten times as swoon-worthy as any real kiss she’d ever had.
Hormones.
Talk about mind-altering chemicals...
‘Until next year,’ he breathed against her ear as he withdrew.
‘I will.’
Give my regards to Blake. That was what usually came after ‘the kiss’ and she’d uttered her response before her foggy brain caught up to the fact that he hadn’t actually asked it of her this year. Again, odd. So her next words were stammered and awkward. Definitely not the cool, calm and composed Audrey she usually liked to finish her visit on.
‘Well, goodbye, then. Thank you for lunch.’
Ugh. Lame.
Calling their annual culinary marathon ‘lunch’ was like suggesting that the way Oliver made her feel was ‘warm’. Right now her body blazed with all the unspent chemistry from twelve hours in his company and her head spun courtesy of the shallow breathing of the past few minutes. Embarrassed heat blazed up the back of her neck and she slipped quickly into the waiting taxi before it bloomed fully in her face.
Oliver stood on the footpath, his hand raised in farewell as she pressed back against the headrest and the cab moved away.
‘Wait!’
She lurched against her seat belt and suddenly Oliver was hauling the door open again. For one totally crazy, breathless heartbeat she thought he might have pulled her into his arms. And she would have gone into them. Unflinchingly.
But he didn’t.
Of course he didn’t.
‘Audrey—’
She shoved her ritualistic in-taxi decompression routine down into the gap between the seat back and cushion and presented him with her most neutral, questioning expression.
‘I just... I wanted to say...’
A dozen indecipherable expressions flitted across his expression but finally resolved into something that looked like pain. Grief.
‘Merry Christmas, Audrey. I’ll see you next year.’
The anticlimax was breath-stealing in its severity and so her words were little more than a disenchanted whisper. ‘Merry Christmas, Oliver.’
‘If you ever need me...need anything. Call me.’ His hazel eyes implored. ‘Any time, day or night. Don’t hesitate.’
‘Okay,’ she pledged, though had no intention of taking him up on it. Oliver Harmer and The Real World did not mix. They existed comfortably in alternate realities and her flight to and from Hong Kong was the inter-dimensional transport. In this reality he was the first man—the only man—she’d ever call if she were in trouble. But back home...
Back home she knew her life was too beige to need his help and even if she did, she wouldn’t let herself call him.
The taxi pulled away again and Audrey resumed decompression. Her breath eased out in increments until her heart settled down to a heavy, regular beat and her skin warmed back up to room temperature.
Done.
Another year survived. Another meeting endured in her husband’s name and hopefully with her dignity fully intact.
And only three hundred and sixty-five days until she saw Oliver Harmer again.
Long, confusing days.
THREE
December 20th, two years ago
Qīngtíng Restaurant, Hong Kong
Oliver stared out at the midnight sky, high enough above the flooding lights of Hong Kong to actually see a few stars, and did his best to ignore the screaming lack of attention being paid to him by Qīngtíng’s staff as they closed up the restaurant for the night.
The arms crossed firmly across his chest were the only thing keeping his savaged heart in his chest cavity, and the beautifully wrapped gift crushed in his clenched fist was the only thing stopping him from slamming it into the wall.
She hadn’t come.
For the first time in years, Audrey hadn’t come.
FOUR
December 20th, last year
Obsiblue prawn and caviar with Royale Cabanon Oyster and Yuzu
‘You’re lucky I’m even here.’
The rumbled accusation filtered through the murmur of low conversation and the chink of expensive silverware on Qīngtíng’s equally expensive porcelain. Audrey turned towards Oliver’s neutral displeasure, squared the shoulders of her cream linen jacket and smoothed her hands down her skirt.
‘Yet here you are.’
A grunt lurched in Oliver’s tanned throat where a business tie should have been holding his navy silk shirt appropriately together. Or at the very least some buttons. Benefit of being such a regular patron—or maybe so rich—niceties like dress code didn’t seem to apply to him.
‘Guess I’m slow to learn,’ he said, still dangerously calm. ‘Or just naively optimistic.’
‘Not so naive. I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘You don’t look too pleased about it.’
‘Your email left me little choice. I didn’t realise how proficient you’d become in emotional blackmail.’
‘It wasn’t blackmail, Audrey. I just wanted to know if you were coming. To save me wasting another day and the flight from Shanghai.’
Shame battled annoyance. Yes, she’d stood him up last year, but she found it hard to imagine a man like Oliver left alone and dateless in a flash restaurant for very long. Especially at Christmas. Especially in a city full of homesick expats. She was sure he wouldn’t have withered away from lack of company.
‘And playing the dead best friend card seemed equal to your curiosity, did it?’
Because that was the only reason she was here at all. The relationship he’d had with her recently passed husband. And she’d struggled to shake the feeling that she needed to provide some closure for Oliver on that friendship.
His hazel eyes narrowed just a hint in that infuriating, corporate, too-cool-for-facial-expression way he had. But he didn’t bite. Instead he just stared at her, almost daring her to go on. Daring her, just as much, to hold his glower.
‘They got new carpet,’ she announced pointlessly, thrilled for an excuse not to let him enslave her gaze. Stylised and vibrant dragonflies decorated the floor where once obscure oriental patterns had previously lain. She sank the pointed tip of her cream shoe into the plush opulence and watched it disappear into Weihei Province’s best hand-tufted weave. ‘Nice.’
‘Gerard got another Michelin.’ He shrugged. ‘New carpet seemed a reasonable celebration.’
Somehow, Oliver managed to make her failure to know that one of Hong Kong’s most elite restaurants had re-carpeted sound like a personal failure on her part.
‘Mrs Audrey...’
Audrey suppressed the urge to correct that title as she turned and took the extended hand of the maître d’ between her own. ‘Ming-húa, lovely to see you again.’
‘You look beautiful,’ Ming-húa said, raising her hand to his lips. ‘We missed you last Christmas.’
Oliver shot her a sideways look as they were shepherded towards their customary part of the restaurant. The end where the Chinese version of Christmas decorations were noticeably denser. They racked up a bill this one day of the year large enough to warrant the laying on of extra festive bling and the discreet removal of several other tables, yet, this year, more tables than ever seemed to have been sacrificed. It left them with complete privacy, ensconced in the western end of the restaurant between the enormous indoor terrarium filled with verdant water-soaked plants and fluorescent dragonflies, and the carpet-to-ceiling reinforced window that served as the restaurant’s outer wall.
Beyond the glass, Victoria Harbour and the high-tech sparkle and glint of hundreds more towering giants just like this side of the shore. Behind the glass, the little haven that Audrey had missed so badly last Christmas. Tranquil, private and filled with the kind of gratuitous luxury a girl really should indulge in only once a year.
Emotional sanctuary.
The sanctuary she’d enjoyed for the past five years.
Minus the last one.
And Oliver Harmer was a central part of all that gratuitous luxury. Especially looking like he did today. She didn’t like to notice his appearance—he had enough ego all by himself without her appreciation adding to it—but, here, it was hard to escape; wherever she looked, a polished glass surface of one kind or another offered her a convenient reflection of some part of him. Parts that were infinitely safer facing away from her.
Chilled Cristal sat—as it always did—at the centre of the small table between two large, curved sofas. The first and only furniture she’d ever enjoyed that was actually worthy of the name lounge. Certainly, by the end of the day they’d both be sprawled across their respective sides, bodies sated with the best food and drink, minds saturated with good conversation, a year’s worth of catching up all done and dusted.
At least that was how it normally went.
But things weren’t normal any more.
Suddenly the little space she’d craved so much felt claustrophobic and the chilled Cristal looked like something from a cheesy seduction scene. And the very idea that she could do anything other than perch nervously on the edge of her sofa for the next ten or twelve hours...?
Ludicrous.
‘So what are you hunting this trip?’ Oliver asked, no qualms whatsoever about flopping down into his lounge, snagging up a quarter-filled flute on the way down. So intently casual she wondered if he’d practised the manoeuvre. As he settled back his white shirt stretched tight across his torso and his dark trousers hiked up to reveal ankles the same tanbark colour as his throat. ‘Stradivarius? Guarneri?’
‘A 1714 Testore cello,’ she murmured. ‘Believed to now be in South East Asia.’
‘Now?’
‘It moves around a lot.’
‘Do they know you’re looking for it?’
‘I have to assume so. Hence its air miles.’
‘More fool them trying to outrun you. Don’t they know you always get your man...or instrument?’
‘I doubt they know me at all. You forget, I do all the legwork but someone else busts up the syndicates. My job relies on my contribution being anonymous.’
‘Anonymous,’ he snorted as he cut the tip off one of the forty-dollar cigars lying on a tray beside the champagne. ‘I’d be willing to wager that a specialist with an MA in identification of antique stringed instruments is going to be of much more interest to the bad guys than a bunch of Interpol thugs with a photograph and a GPS location in their clammy palms.’
‘The day my visa gets inexplicably denied then I’ll start believing you. Until then...’ She helped herself to the Cristal. ‘Enough about my work. How is yours going? Still rich?’
‘Stinking.’
‘Still getting up the noses of your competitors?’
‘Right up in their sinuses, in fact.’
Despite everything, it was hard not to respond to the genuine glee Oliver got from irritating his corporate rivals. He wasted a fair bit of money on moves designed to exasperate. Though, not a waste at all if it kept their focus conveniently on what he wasn’t doing. A reluctant smile broke free.
‘I was wondering if I’d be seeing that today.’ His eyes flicked to her mouth for the barest of moments. ‘I’ve missed it.’
That was enough to wipe the smile clean from her face. ‘Yeah, well, there’s been a bit of an amusement drought since Blake’s funeral.’
Oliver flinched but buried it behind a healthy draw from his champagne. ‘No doubt.’
Well... Awkward...
‘So how are you doing?’ He tried again.
She shrugged. ‘Fine.’
‘And how are you really doing?’
Seriously? He wanted to do this? Then again, they talked about Blake every year. He was their connection, after all. Their only true connection. Which made being here now that Blake was gone even weirder. She should have just stayed home. Maybe they could have just done this by phone.
‘The tax stuff was a bit of a nightmare and the house was secured against the business so that wasn’t fun to disentangle, but I got there.’
He blinked at her. ‘And personally?’
‘Personally my husband’s dead. What do you want me to say?’
All the champagne chugging in the world wasn’t going to disguise the three concerned lines that appeared between his brows. ‘Are you...coping?’
‘Are you asking me about my finances?’
‘Actually no. I’m asking you how you’re doing. You, Audrey.’
‘And I said fine.’
Both hands went up, one half filled with champagne flute. ‘Okay. Next subject.’
And what would that be? Their one reason for continuing to see each other had gone trundling down a conveyor belt at the crematorium. Not that he’d remember that.
Why weren’t you at your best friend’s funeral? How was that for another subject? But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
Unfortunately, for them both, Oliver looked as uninspired as she did on the conversation front.
She pushed to her feet. ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a—’
‘Here we go!’ Ming-húa appeared flanked by two serving staff carrying the first amuse-bouche of their marine-themed Christmas degustation. ‘Obsiblue prawn and caviar with Royale Cabanon Oyster and Yuzu.’
Audrey got ‘prawn’, ‘caviar’ and ‘oyster’ and not much else. But wasn’t that kind of the point with degustation—to over-stimulate your senses and not be overly bothered by what things were or used to be?
Culinary adventure.
Pretty much the only place in her life she risked adventure.
She sank politely back onto her sofa. It took the highly trained staff just moments to place their first course just so and then they were alone again.
Oliver ignored the food and slid a small gift-wrapped parcel across the table.
Audrey stared at the patched-up wrapping. Best he was prepared to do after she’d stood him up? ‘Um...’
‘I don’t expect anything in return, Audrey.’
Did he read everyone this well? ‘I didn’t imagine we’d be doing gifts this year.’
‘This was from last year.’
She paused a moment longer, then pulled the small parcel towards her. But she didn’t open it because opening it meant something. She set it aside, instead, smiling tightly.
Oliver pinned her with his intense gaze. ‘We’ve been friends for years, Audrey. We’ve done this for years, every Christmas. Are you telling me you were only here for Blake?’
The slightest hint of hurt diluted the hazel of his eyes. One of the vibrant dragonflies flitting around the enormous terrarium matched the colour exactly.
She gifted him with the truth. ‘It feels odd to be doing this with him gone.’
She didn’t want to say wrong. But it had always felt vaguely wrong. Or her own reaction to Oliver certainly had. Wrong and dishonest because she’d kept it so secret and close to her heart.
‘Everything is different now. But our friendship doesn’t have to change. Spending time with you was never just about courtesy to a mate’s wife. As far as I’m concerned we’re friends, too.’
Pfff. Meaningless words. ‘I missed you at your mate’s funeral.’
A deep flush filled the hollow where his tie should have been. ‘I was sorry not to be there.’
Uh-huh.
‘Economic downturn made the flight unaffordable, I guess.’ They would spend four times that cost on today’s meals. But one of Oliver’s strengths had always been courage under fire. He pressed his lips together and remained silent. ‘Or was it just a really busy week at the office?’
She’d called. She knew exactly where he was while they’d buried her husband. ‘Or did you not get my messages in time?’
All eight of them.
‘Audrey...’ The word practically hissed out of him.
‘Oliver?’
‘You know I would have been there if I could. Did you get the flowers I arranged?’
‘The half-a-boutique of flowers? Yes. They were crammed in every corner of the chapel. And they were lovely,’ honesty compelled her to admit. And also her favourites. ‘But they were just flowers.’
‘Look, Audrey, I can see you’re upset. Can I please just ask you to trust that I had my reasons, good reasons, not to fly back to Sydney and that I had my own private memorial for my old friend back home in Shanghai—’ Audrey didn’t miss the emphasis on ‘old’ friend ‘—complete with a half-bottle of Chivas. So Blake had two funerals that day.’