That was some segue, he thought. ‘That I was. It was a business trip. In and out.’
‘I can’t believe you never came out to visit. It’s a forty- minute flight to Boston.’
‘And a half-day spent at JFK. Time prohibitive.’
She nodded. Locked eyes. Swallowed. There was a husky note to her voice when she said, ‘I missed you, you know.’
And just like that, with the faintest whisper of vulnerability, Ava turned Caleb’s stoic resistance to putty. His tingling nerves burst into action, stinging the length of his fingers until he ached to reach out and touch her arm. To run his thumb over that full bottom lip. To hook a finger beneath that leather strap and slide its hidden secrets and regrets into the light.
Bad news. Little Ava Halliburton was nothing but bad news and it would pay to remember it. Just to hit the point home, through the pocket of his trousers he grabbed a pinch of leg hair and gave it a nice painful tug.
After her words had long since begun to fade into the noise around them, Ava cleared her throat and looked down at her shoes. ‘I missed all of you guys. Heaps. Seeing everyone today really hit home how long I’ve been gone. My cousin the DJ was eight when I left and now…’
‘Now he knows how to work a CD stacker like nobody’s business.’
‘Exactly.’
She glanced up at him from beneath those impossible eyelashes. He’d always thought them her best feature. But now they were running a pretty close tie with those wide smooth lips. He bit the inside of his cheek in penance.
Then said, ‘It’s nice to see you finally managed to peel yourself away from lectures and study groups for your brother’s big day.’
A glint sparked within her sky-blue eyes and her lips widened, creating soft pink apples in her cheeks. Heaven help him.
‘And just as nice to see you are no less of a buffoon than you always were. I can’t believe Damo had to ask for the ring no less than three times. It will be the story they’ll bring up every wedding anniversary for ever more.’
He gave a short bow. ‘I aim to please.’
‘Mmm,’ she said, her eyes all too easily leaving his as she surveyed the room. ‘I remember now you always were the kind of guy who liked to steal the limelight.’
She remembered now? How flattering. He said, ‘While you always preferred to run from attention as though it might burn.’
The glint in her eyes flickered. Ever so slightly. But enough he knew he’d scored a hit. It felt less satisfying than he’d thought it would.
She brought her champagne glass to her lips and his obedient eyes followed. And then he saw that her left ring finger was clean and clear.
The last he’d heard she was meant to be living with a professor double her age or some such tale. It was one of many such tales he’d heard over the years, stories of inappropriate and much older men, of subsequent broken hearts and consequential school transfers from one side of the world to the other.
He wondered if running into Ava’s ‘plus one’ was going to be his after-dinner surprise. He pictured some obscenely tall, grey-haired type with small glasses and a vocabulary built to keep ne’er-do-wells like him in their place.
At least by the look of things either the guy was a dud and hadn’t given the poor girl the appropriate bling, or she was, in fact, as yet, still single.
He was a torn man deciding which was the more deserved outcome.
When he looked up she was watching him. More than just watching him—her eyes were roving slowly and carefully over every inch of his face.
When she noticed he had noticed, she smiled. ‘I can see some things have changed. You never had stubble before.’
She reached out a hand but it stopped just millimetres short of touching him, the backs of her knuckles grazing nothing but air as she traced the contours of his face.
‘It didn’t occur to you to shave for the occasion,’ she said.
Caleb took the opportunity to run his fingers over his stubble; the sting of short, sharp hair against skin was beautifully distracting to his other senses, which were on overload.
All that soft familiar hair, soft female skin, soft clouds of perfume he couldn’t identify but knew he’d never forget; those soft pink lips he’d kissed for the last time only moments before she’d walked away… Taking any naivety he might once have had with her.
‘Nah,’ he drawled, letting his hand drop to toy with his crystal-cut glass. ‘I’m a rogue now, didn’t you know? If I shaved I’d be unrecognisable.’
‘Right. Wouldn’t want to disappoint your public.’
The side of his mouth twitched into a smile despite itself. ‘I’ve never been known to disappoint before.’
And where in the past she might have frowned, knowing there was a double entendre in there somewhere, and then blushed as she figured it out, this time her eyes slid back to lock with his.
She gave him a small smile to match his own. Then nodded, almost imperceptibly. Perhaps little Ava Halliburton had found time in her busy pencil-sharpening schedule to grow up after all.
‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘You’ll be on the business end of lots of pointing and staring and frowning if you stand next to me for too long. Your reputation will never be the same again.’
‘I’ll live.’
Caleb adjusted his stance as everything south of his thyroid felt fuel injected.
Before he had the chance to find out just how grown up she might yet be, she disregarded him in favour of looking up.
He tipped his head to see what was so great up there to find the stars were out in force, twinkling majestically through the gap between the two large swathes of white gauzy fabric that hung over the night.
Beside him Ava sighed. ‘Did you know Galileo died in sixteen forty-two, the year of Isaac Newton’s birth?’
Caleb grinned. Any other woman might have made a big deal about the romance of the stars and the moon and the colour-tinted cake frosting… But not Ava. For all their history, and for all the niggling discomfort he felt not quite knowing where they stood with one another now, he couldn’t deny she was one of a kind.
He leant his backside against the bar and crossed one ankle atop the other and asked, ‘So how is school?’
After a few last lingering moments gazing at the dark sky, she dragged her eyes back to him. ‘School’s fine.’
‘And what’s your major? I can never keep up.’
‘I’m nearing the end of my doctorate in Social Anthropology.’
‘Meaning next time we see one another I’ll have to call you Dr Halliburton? Marvellous.’
She didn’t answer, just gave an indecipherable smile.
‘And what does a doctorate in Social Anthropology entail exactly?’
‘My paper is on consumption, gender and economic status among Manhattan adolescents.’
‘Buying patterns of New York kids?’ he asked.
Her smile was flat. ‘It’s not quite that simple. It’s a study of ethnicity, family structure, peer pressure, needs versus desires, and identity.’
Spin it however she pleased, after her fancy-schmancy degree was finished little Ava Halliburton would be wanted by any American company that bought and sold goods and had a clue. Clever girl.
‘So