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 her usual propriety. She loved to win. She loved to beat him, particularly.
And he loved to watch her enjoy it.
She flipped a trio of fours on top of the mound of M&M’s triumphantly and her perfectly made-up skin practically glowed with pleasure. Instantly, he wondered if that was what she’d look like if he pushed this table aside and pressed her back into the sofa with his lips against that confident smile and his thigh between hers.
His body cheered the very thought.
‘Rematch,’ he demanded, forcing his brain clean of smut. Pretty sad when throwing a card game was about as erotic as any dream he could conjure up. ‘Double or nothing.’
She tipped her head back to laugh and that knot piled on the top and decorated with a bit of stolen airport tinsel wobbled dangerously. If he kept the humour coming maybe the whole thing would come tumbling down and he’d have another keeper memory for his pathetic fantasy-stalker collection.
‘Sure, while you’re throwing your chocolates away...’
She slipped off her shoes and pulled slim legs up onto the sofa as Oliver dealt another hand and, again, he was struck by how down to earth she was. And how innocent. This was not the relaxed, easy expression of a woman who knew her husband was presently shacked up with someone that wasn’t his wife.
No question.
Which meant his best friend was a liar as well as an adulterer. And a fool, too, for cheating on the most amazing woman either of them had ever known. Just wasting the beautiful soul he’d been gifted by whatever fate sent Audrey in Blake’s direction instead of his own all those years ago.
But where fate was vague and indistinct, that out-of-place rock weighing down her left hand was very real, and though her husband was progressively sleeping his way through Sydney, Audrey wasn’t following suit.
Because that ring meant something to her.
Just as fidelity meant something to him.
Perhaps that was the great attraction. Audrey was moral and compassionate, and her integrity was rooted as firmly as the mountains that surged up out of the ocean all around them to form the islands of Hong Kong where they both flew to meet each December twentieth. Splitting the difference between Sydney and Shanghai.
And he was enormously drawn to that integrity, even as he cursed it. Would he be as drawn to her if she was playing the field like her selfish husband? Or was he only obsessed with her because he knew he couldn’t have her?
That was more his playbook.
Just because he didn’t do unfaithful didn’t mean he was pro-commitment. The whole Tiffany thing was really a kind of retirement. He’d given up on finding the woman he secretly dreamed was out there for him and settled for one that would let him do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted and look good doing it.
And clearly even that wasn’t meant to be.
‘Come on, Harmer. Man up.’
His eyes shot up, fearing for one irrational moment that she’d read the direction of his inappropriate thoughts.
‘It’s just one game,’ she teased. ‘I’m sure you’ll take me on the next one.’
She was probably right. He’d do what he did every Christmas: give enough to keep her engaged and entertained, and take enough to keep her colour high with indignation. To keep her coming back for more. Coming back to him. In the name of her cheating bastard of a husband who only ever visited him when he was travelling alone—though he’d be sure to put an end to that, now—and who took carnal advantage of every opportunity when Audrey was out of the country.
But, just as he suppressed his natural