Not that she’d actually believed him at the time, but a year was the longest relationship she’d ever known him to have.
Maybe she was just in denial.
‘Turns out there was more than one “one” for Tiffany.’ The tiniest glimmer of hurt stained his eyes.
Oh, no. ‘Who called it off?’
His answer came fast and sure. ‘I did.’
Oliver Harmer was a perpetual bachelor. But he was also Shanghai’s most prized perpetual bachelor and so she couldn’t imagine the average woman he dated being too fast to throw away her luxury future.
But she knew from Blake how seriously Oliver felt about fidelity. Because of his philandering father. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He shrugged. ‘She was with someone when I met her; I was foolish to think that I’d get treated any different.’
Foolish perhaps, but he was only human to hope that he’d be special enough to change his girlfriend’s ways. And if ever there was a man worth changing for... Audrey dropped two cards onto the table and Oliver flicked her two replacements from the top of the pack with confident efficiency before taking three of his own.
‘What did she say when you confronted her?’ she murmured.
‘I didn’t see any purpose in having it out,’ he squeezed out past the cigar. ‘I just cut her loose.’
Without an explanation? ‘What if you were mistaken?’
The look he threw her would have withered his corporate opponents. ‘I checked. I wasn’t.’
‘Checking’ in Oliver’s world probably meant expensive private surveillance. So no, he wouldn’t have been wrong. ‘Where is she now?’
He shrugged. ‘Still on our honeymoon, I guess. I gave her an open credit card and wished her the best.’
‘You bought her off?’ She gaped.
‘I bought her forgiveness.’
‘And that worked?’
‘Tiffany never was one for labouring under regret for long.’
Lord, he had a talent for ferreting out the worst of women. Always beautiful, of course and—*cough*—agile, but utterly barren on the emotional front. To the point that she’d decided Oliver must prefer them that way. Except for the trace of genuine hurt that had flitted across his expression...
That didn’t fit with the man she thought she knew.
She studied the nothing hand in front of her and then tossed all five cards down on the table in an inelegant fold.
‘Why can’t you just meet a nice, normal woman?’ she despaired. ‘Shanghai’s a big city.’
He scooped the pile of bright M&M’s towards him—though not before she snaffled yet another one to eat—and set about reshuffling the cards. ‘Nice women tend to give me a wide berth. I can’t explain it.’
She snorted. ‘It would have nothing to do with your reputation.’
Hazel eyes locked on hers, speculative and challenging. Enough to tighten her chest a hint. ‘And what reputation is that?’
Ah...no. ‘I’m not going to feed your already massive ego, Oliver.’
Nor go anywhere near the female whispers she’d heard about Oliver ‘the Hammer’ Harmer. Dangerous territory.
‘I thought we were friends!’ he protested.
‘You’re friends with my husband. I’m just his South-East Asian proxy.’
He grunted. ‘You only agree to our ritual Christmas catch-up for the cuisine, I suppose?’
‘Actually, no.’
She found his eyes—held them—and two tiny butterflies broke free in her chest. ‘I come for the wine, too.’
He snagged a small fistful of M&M’s and tossed them across the elegant, carved coffee table at her, heedless of those around them sharing the Christmas-themed menu sixty storeys above Hong Kong.
Audrey scrabbled madly to pick them up. ‘Ugh. Isn’t that just like a squazillionaire. Throwing your money around like it’s chocolate drops.’
‘Play your hand,’ he griped. But there was a definite smile behind it. As there always was. Christmases between them were always full of humour, fast conversation and camaraderie.
At least on the surface.
Below the surface was a whole bunch of things that she didn’t let herself look at too closely. Appreciation. Respect. A great, aching admiration for his life and the choices he’d made and the courage with which he’d made them. Oliver Harmer was the freest human being she knew. And he lived a life most people would hunger for.
She certainly did 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