from within the boundaries of her awkward marriage. It was hard not to esteem his choices.
And then below all of that... The ever-simmering attraction. She’d grown used to it now, because it was always there. And because she only had to deal with it once a year.
He was a good-looking man; charming and affable, easy to talk to, easy to like, well built, well groomed, well mannered, but not up himself or pretentious. Never too cool to toss a handful of chocolates in a fine restaurant.
But he’d also been best man at her wedding.
Blake’s oldest friend.
And he was pursued by women day in and day out. She would be two hundred per cent mortified if Oliver ever got so much of a hint of the direction of her runaway thoughts—not the least because it would just inflate his already monumental ego—but also because she knew exactly what he’d do with the information.
Nothing.
Not a damned thing.
He would take it to his grave, and she would never fully know if that was because of his loyalty to Blake, his respect for her, or because something brewing between them was just so totally inconceivable that he’d chalk it up to an aberrant moment best never again spoken of.
Which was pretty much the right advice.
She wasn’t like the women he normally chose. Her finest day was the day of her wedding when she’d been called ‘striking’—and by Oliver, come to think of it, who always seemed to say the right thing at the right moment when she was on rocky emotional ground. She didn’t look as good as his women did in their finery and she didn’t move in the same circles and know the same people and laugh overly loud at the same stories. She wasn’t unattractive or dull or dim—she’d wager the entire pile of M&M’s in front of her on the fact that she could outrank every one of them on a MENSA test—but she certainly didn’t turn heads when she was in the company of the beautiful people. She lacked that...stardust that they had.
That Oliver was coated-to-sparkling in.
And in all the years she’d known him, she’d flat out never seen him with someone less beautiful than he was.
Clearly some scientific principle of balance at work there.
And when even the laws of nature ruled you out...
‘All right, Cool Hand Luke,’ she said, ripping her thoughts back to safer territory. ‘Let’s get serious about this game.’
* * *
That treacherous snake.
Audrey clearly had no idea whatsoever of Blake’s latest conquest. Her face had filled just then with genuine sympathy about Tiffany, but nothing else. No shadows of pain at the mention of someone’s infidelity, no blanching. No tears for a betrayal shared. Not that she was the tears-in-public type, but the only moisture in those enormous blue eyes was old-fashioned compassion.
For him.
Which meant that either Blake had lied and Audrey had no idea that her husband considered their marriage open, or she did know and Blake had worn her down to the point that she just didn’t care any more.
And that awful possibility just didn’t fit with the engaged, involved woman in front of him.
Oliver eyed her over his cards, pretending to psych her out and throw her game but really using the opportunity to study the tiniest traces of truth in her oval face. Her life tells. She wasn’t flat and lifeless. She was enjoying the cards, the food, the conversation. She always did. He never flattered himself that it was him, particularly, that she hurried to see each year, but she loved the single day of decadence that they always shared on December twentieth. Not the expenditure—she and Blake were both on healthy incomes and she could buy this sort of experience herself if she really wanted to—it was the low-key luxury of this restaurant, this day, that she really got off on.
She was the only woman he’d ever met who got more excited by not being flashy with his money. By being as tastefully understated as she always was. It suited her down to the ground. Elegant instead of glitzy, all that dark hair twisted in a lazy knot on top of her head with what looked like bamboo spears holding it all together. The way her hands occasionally ran across the fabric of her tailored skirt told him she enjoyed how the fabric felt against her skin. That was why she wore it; not for him, or any other man. Not because it hugged the intriguing curve of her thighs almost indecently. The money Audrey spent on fashion was about recognising her equal in a quality product.
Whether she knew that or not.
Which was why he struggled so badly with Blake’s protestations that Audrey was cool with his marital...excursions. He got that they didn’t have the most conventional of marriages—definitely a meeting of minds—but she just didn’t strike him as someone who would tolerate the cheapening of her relationship through his playing around. Because, if nothing else, Blake’s sleeping around reflected on her.
And Audrey Devaney was anything but cheap.
‘Oliver?’
He refocused to find those sapphire eyes locked hard on his. ‘Sorry. Raise.’
She smiled at his distraction and then flicked her focus back down to her cards, leaving him staring at those long, down-curved lashes.
Did she know that her husband hooked up with someone else the moment she left town? Did that bother her? Or did she fabricate trips specifically to give Blake the opportunity, to give herself necessary distance from his infidelity, and preserve the amazing dignity that she wore like one of her silk suits. He’d never got the slightest sense that she evened the score while she travelled. Not that he’d necessarily know if she did—she would be as discreet about that as she was about the other details of her life—but her work ethic was nearly as solid as her friendship. And, as the lucky beneficiary of her unwavering loyalty as a friend, he knew that if Audrey was in Asia working then that was exactly what she’d be doing.
Working her silk-covered butt off.
And, if she wasn’t, he’d know it. When it came to her, his radar was fine-tuned for the slightest hint that she was operating on the same wavelength as her husband.
Because if Audrey Devaney was on the market, then he was in the market.
No matter the price. No matter the terms. No matter what he’d believed his whole life about fidelity. He’d had enough hot, restless nights after waking from one of his dreams—riddled with passion and guilt and Audrey up against the cold glass of the window facing out over Victoria Harbour—to know what his body wanted.
‘Call.’ She tossed a cluster of M&M’s onto the pile, interrupting the dangerous direction of his thoughts.
But he also knew himself pretty well. He knew that sex was the great equaliser and that reducing a woman that he admired and liked so much to the subject of one of his cheap fantasies was just his subconscious’ way of dealing with the unfamiliar territory.
Territory in which he found himself fixated on the only woman he knew who was genuinely too good for him.
‘Your game.’ Oliver tossed aces and jacks purely for the pleasure of seeing the flush Audrey couldn’t contain. The pleasure that spilled out over the edges of
