bleak as her voice. ‘Stirring.’
He drained the last of the Cristal from his glass. ‘I’m just trying to shake you free of the cold, impersonal place you put yourself in order to have this conversation.’
‘I don’t mean to be impersonal.’ Or cold. Though that was a term she’d heard before courtesy of Blake. In his meaner moments.
‘I know you don’t, Audrey. That’s the only reason I’m not mad at you. It’s a survival technique.’
‘Uh-huh...’ She frowned in a way she hoped would cover the fact he was one hundred per cent right. ‘And what am I surviving?’
‘This day?’ He stared, long and hard. ‘Maybe me?’
‘Don’t flatter yourself.’
Four staff with exquisite timing arrived with the second seafood plate of the degustation experiences ahead of them. Two cleared the table and two more lay down matching shards of driftwood, decorated with glistening seaweed, and nested in it were a selection of oceanic morsels. A solitary lobster claw, calamari in a bed of roe, a fan of some kind of braised whitebait and—
Audrey leaned in for a good look. ‘Is that krill?’
Oliver chuckled and it eased some of the tension that hung as thick as the krill between them. ‘Don’t ask. Just taste.’
Whatever it was, it was magnificent. Weird texture on the tongue but one of the tastiest mouthfuls she’d ever had. Until she got to the lobster claw.
‘Oh, my...’
‘They’ve really outdone themselves with this one.’
The whole selection slid down way too easily with the frosty glass of Spanish Verdelho that had appeared in front of each of their dishes. But once there was nothing left on their driftwood but claw-husk and seaweed, conversation had no choice but to resume.
‘Ask me how I know,’ Oliver urged and then at her carefully blank stare he clarified. ‘Ask me how I know what it is that you’re doing.’
She took a deep slow breath. ‘How do you know what I’m supposedly doing, Oliver?’
‘I recognise it. From dealing with you the past five years. Eight if you want to go right back to the beginning.’
Oh, would that she could. The things she would do differently...
‘I recognise it from keeping everything so carefully appropriate with you. From knowing exactly where the boundaries are and stopping with the tips of my shoes right on the line. From talking myself repeatedly into the fact that we’re only friends.’
Audrey’s heart hammered wildly. ‘We are.’
He leapt on that. ‘So now we are friends? Make up your mind.’
She couldn’t help responding to the frustration leaching through between his words. ‘I don’t know what you want from me, Oliver.’
‘Yes, you do.’ He shifted forward again, every inch the predator. ‘But you’re in denial.’
‘About what?’
‘About what we really are.’
They couldn’t be anything else. They just couldn’t. ‘There’s no great mystery. You were my best man. You were my husband’s closest friend.’
‘I stopped being Blake’s friend three years ago, Audrey.’
The pronouncement literally stunned her into silence. Her mouth opened and closed silently in protest. She knew something had gone down between them but...that long ago?
She picked up the M&M’s. ‘This long?’
‘Just after that.’ He guessed her next question. ‘Friendships change. People change.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she whispered. And why hadn’t Blake? He knew that she saw Oliver whenever she went to Hong Kong. Why the hell wouldn’t her husband tell her not to come?
He took a long breath. ‘I didn’t tell you because you would have stopped coming.’
Only the gentle murmur of conversation, the clink of silverware on plates and the hum of dragonfly wings interrupted the long, shocking silence. There was so much more in that sentence than the sum of the words. Two staff materialised behind them, unobtrusively cleared away the driftwood and shell remnants and left a small palate cleanser in their place. Then they were alone again.
‘So, my comments today can’t have been a surprise, then.’ She braved her way carefully through the next moments. ‘You knew I was going to end it.’
‘Doesn’t mean I’m going to acquiesce politely and let you walk off into the sunset.’
Frustration strung tight and painful across her sternum. ‘Why, Oliver?’
He swapped the cigar from the left side of his mouth to the right. ‘Because I don’t want to. Because I like what we do and I like how I feel when we do it. And because I think you’re kidding yourself if you don’t admit you feel the same.’
The challenge—and the truth—hung out there, heavy and unignorable.
A nervous habit from her childhood came screaming back and, even though she knew she was doing it, she was helpless to stop her palms from rubbing back and forth along her thighs.
In desperation, she spooned up the half-melted sorbet and its icy bite shocked the breath right back into her. Oliver waited out her obvious ploy.
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