gnawed at her intestines. ‘I can’t keep flying here indefinitely, Oliver. Can’t we just say it’s been great and let it go?’
He processed that for a moment. ‘Do all your friends have best-by dates?’
His perception had her buzzing as furiously as the dragonflies. ‘Is that what we are? Friends?’
‘I thought so.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I never got the sense that you were here under sufferance. You certainly seemed very comfortable helping me spend my money.’
‘Oliver—’
‘What’s really going on, Audrey? What’s the problem?’
‘Blake’s gone,’ she pointed out needlessly on a great expulsion of breath. ‘Me continuing to come and see you...What would be the point?’
‘To catch up. To see each other.’
‘Why would we do that?’
‘Because friends nurture their relationships.’
‘Our relationship was built on someone who’s not here any more.’
He blinked at her—twice—and his perfect lips gaped. ‘That might be how it started but it’s not like that any longer.’ An ocean of doubt swilled across the back of his gaze, though. ‘I met you about six minutes before Blake did, if you recall. Technically, I think that means our friendship pre-dates Blake.’
That had been an excruciating six minutes, writhing under the intensity of the sexiest man she’d ever met, until his infinitely more ordinary friend had wandered into the Sydney bar. Blake with his narrower shoulders, his harmless smile and his non-challenging conversation. She’d practically swamped the man with her attention purely on reactive grounds, to crawl out from under Oliver’s blistering microscope.
She knew when she was batting above her average and thirty seconds in his exclusive company told her Oliver Harmer was major league. Majorly gorgeous, majorly bright and majorly bored if he was entertaining himself by flirting with her.
‘That doesn’t count. You only spoke to me to pass the time until Blake turned up.’
He weighed something up. ‘What makes you think I wasn’t laying groundwork?’
‘For Blake?’
His snort drew a pair of glances from across the room. ‘For me. Blake’s always been quite capable of doing his own dirty work...’ As if it suddenly occurred to him that they were speaking of the dead, his words petered off. ‘Anyway, as soon as he walked in the room you were captivated. I knew when I’d been bested.’
What would Oliver say if he knew she’d clung to Blake’s conversation specifically to avoid having to engage with his more handsome friend again? Or if she confessed that she’d been aware of every single move Oliver made until the moment she left her phone number with Blake and fled out into the Australian night.
He’d probably laugh.
‘I’m sure it did no permanent damage to your self-esteem,’ she gritted.
‘I had to endure his gloating for a week. It wasn’t every day that he managed to steal out from under me a woman that I—’ His teeth snapped shut.
‘A woman that what?’
‘Any woman at all, really. You were a first.’
She shook her head. ‘Always so insufferable. That’s why I gave my phone number to him and not you.’
That and the fact she always had been a coward.
He settled back into his sofa. ‘Imagine how different things would be if you’d given it to me that day.’
‘Oh, please. You would have bored of me within hours.’
‘Who says?’
‘It’s just sport for you, Oliver.’
‘Again. Who says?’
‘Your track record says. And Blake says.’
Said.
He sat forward. ‘What did he say?’
Enough to make her wonder if something had gone down between the two friends. She hedged by shrugging. ‘He cared about you. He wanted you to have what he had.’
The brown flecks amid the green of his iris seemed to shift amongst themselves. ‘What did he have?’
‘A stable relationship. Permanency. A life partner.’
Would he notice she didn’t say ‘love’?
‘That’s rich, coming from him.’
‘What do you mean?’
He glanced around the room and shifted uncomfortably in his seat before bringing his sharp, intent gaze back to her. Colour stained the very edge of his defined jaw. Audrey reached up to press her hand to her topknot to stop the lot falling down with the angle of her head. The pins really weren’t doing their job so she pulled them out and the entire arrangement slid free and down to her shoulders.
His expression changed, morphed, as she watched, from something pointed to something intentionally dull. ‘Doesn’t matter what I mean. Ancient history. I didn’t realise old Blake had such passion in him.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Such possession. I always got the impression that your marriage was as much a meeting of minds as anything else.’
Heat raced up from under her linen collar. What’s wrong, Oliver, can’t imagine me inspiring passion in a man? ‘You hadn’t seen us together for years,’ she said, tightly.
Why was that?
‘My business relies on my ability to read people, Audrey. I hung out with you guys a lot those few years before your wedding. Before I moved to Shanghai. The three amigos, remember? Plenty of opportunity to form an opinion.’
Did she remember...?
She remembered the long dinners, the brilliant, three-way conversations. She remembered Oliver stepping between her and some drunk morons in the street, once, while Blake flanked her on the protected side. She remembered how breathless she felt when Oliver would walk towards them out of the twilight shadows and how flat she felt when he walked away.
Yeah. She remembered.
‘Then you must recall how partial Blake was to public displays of affection.’ Oliver used to get so embarrassed by them, looking away like the fifth wheel that he was. Hard to imagine the confident man that he now was being discomposed by anything. ‘Wasn’t that sufficient demonstration of his feelings?’
‘It was a demonstration all right. I always got the feeling that Blake specially reserved the displays of affection for when you were in public.’
Mortification
