Читать книгу His Until Midnight - Никки Логан - Страница 12
ОглавлениеFOUR
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.’
Why was this so hard? She shouldn’t still care.
She shouldn’t still remember so vividly the way she’d craned her neck from inside the funeral car to see if Oliver was walking in the procession of mourners. Or the way she’d only half attended to the raft of well-wishers squeezing her hand after the service because she was too busy wondering how she’d missed him. It was only later as she wrote thank-you cards to the names collected by the funeral attendants that she’d finally accepted the truth.
Oliver hadn’t come.
Blake’s best friend—their best man—hadn’t come to his funeral.
That particular truth had been bitter, but she’d been too swamped in the chaos of new widowhood to be curious as to why it hurt so much. Or to imagine Oliver finding a private way of farewelling his old mate. Like downing a half-bottle of whisky.
‘He always did love a good label,’ she acknowledged.
A little too fondly as it turned out since Blake’s thirst for good liquor was deemed a key contributor to the motor vehicle accident that took his life. But since her husband sitting in his den enjoying a sizeable glass or three with the evening newspaper had given Audrey the space and freedom to pursue things she enjoyed, she really couldn’t complain.
The natural pause in the uncomfortable conversation was a cue to both of them to eat, and the tart seafood amuse-bouche was small enough that it was over in just mouthfuls.
Behind her, the gentle buzz of dragonfly wings close to glass drew her focus. She turned to study the collection that gave the restaurant its name. There were over one hundred species in Hong Kong—vibrant and fluorescent, large and small—and Qīngtíng kept an immaculate and stunning community of them in the specially constructed habitat.
She discreetly took several deep breaths to get her wayward feelings under control. ‘Every year, I forget how amazing this is.’
And, every year, she envied the insects and pitied them, equally. Their captive life was one of luxury, with every conceivable need met. Their lives were longer and easier than their wild counterparts and neither their wetland nor food source ever dried up. Yet the glass boundaries of their existence was immutable. New arrivals battered softly against it until they eventually stopped trying and they accepted their luxurious fate.
Ultimately, didn’t everyone?
‘Give him a chance and the dragonfly curator will talk your ear off with the latest developments in invertebrate husbandry.’
His tone drew her eyes back. ‘I thought you only flew down for the day? When did you have a chance to meet Qīngtíng’s dragonfly guy?’
‘Last Christmas. I unexpectedly found myself with time on my hands.’
Because she hadn’t come.
The shame washed in again. ‘It was...too soon. I couldn’t leave Australia. And Blake was gone.’
He stared at her. Contemplating. ‘Which one of those do you want to go with?’
Heat rushed up her neck.
‘They’re all valid.’ His silence only underscored her lies. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come last year, Oliver. I should have had more courage.’
‘Courage?’
‘To tell you that it was the last time I’d be coming.’
He flopped back in his chair. ‘Is that what you’ve come to say now?’
It was. Although, saying it aloud seemed to be suddenly impossible. She nodded instead.
‘We could have done that by phone. It would have been cheaper for you.’
‘I had the Testore—’
‘You could have come and not told me you were here. Like you did in Shanghai.’
Every muscle tightened up.
Busted.
She generally did her best to deal with Shanghai contacts outside Shanghai for a very specific reason—it was Harmer-country, and going deep into Oliver’s own turf wasn’t something she’d been willing to risk let alone tell him about. But how could he possibly know the population had swelled to twenty-five-million-and-one just that once? She asked him exactly that.
His eyes held hers. ‘I have my sources.’
And why exactly were his sources pointing in her direction?
‘Before you get too creeped out,’ he went on, ‘it was social media. Your status listed your location as the People’s Square, so I knew you were in town.’
Ugh. Stupid too-smart phones. ‘You didn’t message me.’
‘I figured if you wanted to see me you would have let me know.’
Oh. Sneaking in and out of China’s biggest city like a thief was pathetic enough, but being so stupidly caught out just made her look—and feel—like a child. ‘It was a flying visit,’ she croaked. ‘I was hunting a Paraguayan harp.’
Lord. Not making it better.
‘It doesn’t matter, that’s in the past. I want to know why you won’t be returning in the future.’
Discomfort 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 added a few more degrees to the heat that was only just settling back under her jacket. Because that was essentially true. Behind closed doors they lived more like siblings. But what he probably didn’t know was that Blake saved the PDAs up most particularly for when Oliver was there. Scent marking like crazy. As though he was subliminally picking up on the interest she was trying so very hard to disguise.
She breathed in past the tightness of her chest. ‘Really, Oliver? That’s what you want to do today? Take shots at a dead man?’
Anger settled between his brows. ‘I want to just enjoy today. Enjoy your company. Like we used to.’
He slid the gift back across in front of her. ‘And on that note, open it.’
She sat unmoved for a moment but the steely determination in his gaze told her that was probably entirely pointless. He was just as likely to open it for her.
She tore the wrapping off with more an annoyance she hoped he’d misread as impatience.
‘It’s a cigar.’ And a pack of cards and M&M’s. Just like three years ago. Her eyes lifted back to his. Resisted their pull. ‘I don’t smoke.’
‘That’s never stopped me.’
She struggled against the warm memory of Oliver letting her beat him at cards and believing she hadn’t noticed. ‘That was a great day.’
‘My favourite Christmas.’
‘Nearly Christmas.’
His dark head shook. ‘December twenty-fifth has never compared to the twentieth.’
She sat back. ‘What do you do on Christmas Day?’
‘Work, usually.’
‘You don’t go home?’
‘Do I go to my father’s home? No.’
‘What about your mum?’
‘I fly her to me for Chinese New Year. A less loaded holiday.’
Audrey just stared.
‘You’re judging me,’ he murmured.
‘No. I’m trying to picture it.’
‘Think about it. I can’t go back to Sydney, I can’t go to a girlfriend’s place on Christmas without setting up the expectations of rings and announcements, and the office is nice and quiet.’
‘So you work.’
‘It’s just another day. What do you do?’
‘I do Christmas.’ She shrugged.
But it wasn’t anywhere near as exciting as flying to see Oliver. Or as tasty as whatever festive treat Qīngtíng had in store for her. And it didn’t warm her for the rest of the year. It was roast dinners and eggnog and family and gifts that none of them needed and explaining ad nauseam every year why Blake wasn’t there.
Here she’d got to split her focus between the beautiful skyline that was Hong Kong and Oliver. Depending on her mood.
Her eyes fell back on his gift. She picked up the cigar and clamped it between her teeth in a parody of him. Two seconds later she let it fall out again.
‘Ugh. That’s horrible.’
His laugh could have lit the other end with its warmth. ‘You get used to it.’
‘I can’t imagine how.’
Yet somehow, while it tasted awful on her own lips, she caught herself deciding it might taste better on his. And then she had to fight not to stare there. Oliver made that a whole lot harder by leaning forward, picking up the cigar where she’d dropped it, rolling it under his nose and then sliding the sealed end between his teeth. Pre-loved end first.
Something about the casual intimacy of that act, of him putting her saliva into his mouth so effortlessly—as if they were a long-term couple perfectly used to sharing bodily fluids—sent her heart racing, but she used every ounce of self-control she had to keep it from showing as he mouthed it from the right to the left.
Not the worst way to end your days if you were a cigar—
Stop!
Behind his easy smile his gaze grew unnaturally intent. And she grew inexplicably nervous.
‘So,’ he started, very much like one of his poker-plays, ‘if we’re not friends what are we?’
She choked slightly on her Cristal. ‘Sorry?’
‘I accept your assertion that we’re not friends. But I wonder, then, what that means we are.’
Rabbit. Headlights. She knew it wasn’t dignified and she knew exactly how that bunny felt, watching its fate careen inevitably closer.
‘Because there were two things that defined our relationship for me...’ He used the word ‘defined’ as though it meant ‘constrained’. ‘One was that you were the wife of a friend. Now—tragically—no longer the case. And the other was that we were friends. Apparently also now no longer the case. So, tell me, Audrey—’
He leaned forward and swilled the liquid in his glass and his eyes locked on hard to hers.
‘—where exactly does that leave us?’
