A Night with the Society Playboy

‘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 that answers my next question. You are still teacher’s pet.’

Some unnamed emotion flashed across her eyes like quicksilver, but she lifted her chin and it was gone. ‘If your memory stretches back far enough I’m sure you’ll remember I was never the teacher’s pet. I ask far too many obnoxious questions, which I’ve since discovered nobody really likes.’

Caleb laughed through his nose. And at the same time he felt muscles stretching that hadn’t been used in years. Jousting muscles.

For a guy who had things come all too easily to him all his life, Ava Halliburton had always been hard work. She’d never backed down from an argument. Never given an inch when she could take a mile. She was a challenge. And there was nothing Caleb liked sinking his teeth into more.

Down, boy.

‘Have you seen your parents yet?’ he asked.

She glanced down at her drink. ‘I’ve so far managed to avoid that little reunion.’

He didn’t half blame her. Since her parents’ divorce she and her father had barely spoken, and her mother, though a delight to sit next to at a dinner party, was a Stonnington Drive cliché: ten per cent plastic, ninety per cent self- absorbed, and the last kind of creature who should ever have been allowed to be in charge of nurturing another living soul.

‘And how are yours?’ she asked. ‘Merv and Marion still as surly as ever?’

‘My mother has taken up pole-dancing.’

Ava’s jaw dropped while her bright eyes danced. ‘She has not!’

‘That she has. Her doctor suggested it would be good for her blood pressure. As to my dad’s blood pressure? I’d put money on the fact she gave that little to no thought whatsoever.’

Ava ducked her chin and smiled into her drink. When she looked back at him her head was cocked, that wide warm smile of hers was out in force, and Caleb felt the years just slip away.

‘Are you staying here?’ he asked, when the real question he wanted answered was would she be staying long.

‘Hotel,’ she said, shaking her head, thick dark hair cascading over her shoulders.

Caleb shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets to stop from reaching out and brushing her hair back so that he could better see her face. She did always have such a charming face.

She glanced up towards the big house perched magnificently atop the great lawn. ‘You know this is the first time I’ve set foot in this place in near on ten years.’

Nine years and four months. Caleb gritted his teeth until his jaw hurt, hating the fact that he knew that.

He’d lived more, bigger, harder, better in those nine years and four months than most men lived in a lifetime, yet the fact that Ava had not seen a day of it still left an indent somewhere deep beneath his ribs.

Out of the corner of his eye Caleb saw Damien waving frantically at him from the other side of the marquee. He was miming taking a photograph.

‘Then I reckon you have a lot of catching up to do with a lot of people,’ he said. ‘I should stop monopolising your time.’

He squared his shoulders and took a step backwards, disentangling himself from the heady mix of cloying memories and Ava’s faint but memorable scent. ‘And it seems my best- man duties have barely begun. Are you sticking around?’

‘Until the death,’ she said, raising her glass to him.

‘Fine. If I don’t see you again before you go, it’s been swell.’

‘The swellest.’ She smiled serenely, not giving away any kind of clue as to whether ‘until the death’ meant she was flying out at midnight or if she was back to stay.

Caleb shook his head to stop the ridiculous guessing games. It mattered to him not a lick either way.

He’d seen her. He’d talked. He’d been within touching distance. And he’d survived. He’d more than survived. He’d remained blissfully untouched.

Well, as untouched as a man in the company of a beautiful woman could ever hope to be.

He leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek. She lifted her face to him, a small smile lighting her features.

In the moment before his lips touched her cheek he felt as if he’d been smacked across the back of the head with a mallet as the close up image of long dark eyelashes fluttering against warm golden skin covered in the palest smattering of tiny freckles stamped itself upon his consciousness…

Waxing his boat late one evening. A sound. The scrape of a shoe on concrete. Turning. Ava, a shadow in the doorway. Tears glistening on those same cheeks.

And then the kiss. Their first kiss. Their first everything.

Her slim pale arms in the air, so trusting, as he slid her Greenpeace-emblazoned T-shirt over her head. The depth of feeling in her large eyes as she unclasped her bra. All that beautiful pale skin revealed just for him. Only for him.

Ava…

Once again her name shot through him, though this time it came to him like the first summer breeze: surreptitious, lingering, and a herald of delights yet to come.

He closed his eyes, rested his lips upon her cheek for the barest amount of time and did his best not to breathe through his nose. But the second it occurred to him he couldn’t help himself.

With his first breath she smelled faintly of soap, of powdered make-up and of orange blossoms.

With his second he got schoolroom chalk, old library books, and the fresh-cut grass at that spot by the Yarra where they’d gone every day one summer holiday to play backyard cricket.

And finally, most strongly, miles of freshly vacuumed carpet beneath his feet as he’d stood in Melbourne Airport’s International Terminal, completely stunned to realise that she was really leaving him behind and leaving his broken heart trampled beneath her feet.

He pulled away and the delicious scent of powder and orange blossoms returned, leaving him wanting more.

And for a man who wanted for nothing, that was something. His was a life of wealth and success, of fast cars and fast women. Of the best of everything money could pay for. It was a life lived loud and hard, no apologies to anyone.

He should have thanked her. His drive, his detachment, his determination to win at all costs had sprung from the ashes of that long-ago day.

Ava Halliburton had made a man of him.

Yet as Caleb turned his back on her he hoped she had an airline ticket burning a hole in her purse.

Ava stood alone in the middle of the big white puffy wedding marquee, her heart pounding so loudly in her ears she was surprised she’d heard a word Caleb had said.

Coming home had been nerve-racking enough knowing she was set to confront those in her immediate family whom she hadn’t spoken to in a long time. So she’d deliberately put Caleb to the back of her mind.

Caleb Gilchrist. The boy she’d hero-worshipped since she was fourteen. The boy who’d always pulled her plaits, had coined the nickname Avocado, which had stuck all through high school. Her brother’s best friend. The devil on her shoulder. The thorn in her side.

Her first.

It was a good thirty seconds before she realised she was still watching him walk away.

She bit her lip and looked around her, sure that the strange guilty pleasure of it was written all over her face. But once she was sure nobody gave a hoot about the practical stranger in their midst, her eyes slid back to him.

The years had been good to him. Better than good. They’d given him shoulders a tailor would kill to dress. A mien of haughty condescension that oozed power and privilege. He wore his tuxedo with such authority and ease he could have given James Bond a run for his money.

He now had a jaw that she’d barely been able to keep from tracing. His ash-brown hair was cut short, hiding any evidence of its natural curl. And his dark hazel eyes, which had always been fuelled by a mischievous glint, were now lit by a very different fire. Confidence? Experience? Or a play-by-play photographic memory of their night together?

She closed her eyes tight on the reminiscence.

All that had been a long, long time ago. Eons. A lifetime. Yet a funny kind of energy skidded down her bare arms.

When she opened her eyes, she watched him chat with someone she didn’t know. He smiled his killer smile and her chest tightened.

And she wasn’t even a woman who was usually struck by so much obvious male beauty any more. She liked men who were…seasoned. Men whose suits bore elbow patches rather than designer labels. Men whose beards had grown in rather than men whose stubble made them appear downright wicked.

Her current man was of a generation that meant it had been some time since he’d had the kind of knockout rear view that made a girl happy to see him walk away.

Her man? Ha! For a moment she’d forgotten she was now all alone in the world with no man to speak of. In fact, she wasn’t sure she’d ever had a man in her life long enough to call him her man. Lucky for her she was smart enough to know why.

If her mother had been less interested in where she lived, how she dressed, and who knew about it, then she and her father would never have separated, their divorce would not have been as vicious and unexpected, and Ava would have gone out into the world feeling more safe, more secure, and less likely to run from every situation in which she felt herself getting sucked into any scenario even vaguely resembling a relationship.

Feeling like a wallflower, and one in need of a therapist if she didn’t get her head sorted and fast, Ava began a slow weave through the space, hoping she at least looked as if she knew where she was going.

She smiled benignly at others she didn’t know. People obviously important in her brother’s life. It made her more than a little sad that she’d spent so much time away, and less than sure she’d made the right move in coming back.

To Stonnington Drive. A row of thirty homes, no more, but a stronghold all the same. It was the last bastion of the provincial old-fashioned good life to be found in what was now a relatively cosmopolitan city.

Stonnington Drive men wore suits long after they’d retired from high-powered jobs in the city. Stonnington Drive women believed in gin, tennis, and boarding school for the kids.

Ava believed it a suffocating, pulverising existence. The pressure to keep up with the Joneses, and the Gilchrists for that matter, had broken down her parents’ marriage in the most vociferous, public, ravaging way. The run-on effect had left her searching for guidance wherever she could find it. And every day she’d been away from the place she’d thanked her lucky stars she’d managed to get out when she had.

For who knew at nineteen how strong one’s principles really were? Another year there, another reason to stay, who knew…?

She glanced over to her brother to find Caleb had joined him. Damien had survived their childhood and made good. But he’d been older. Stronger. Luckier.

The two men put arms around one another as they ducked heads and talked. Best friends, even after all these years. As close as brothers. Closer even, considering her father had always treated Caleb like the second son he’d never had.

No wonder.

He was the perfect by-product of his upbringing: rich, good-looking, arrogant, lackadaisical. So she ought to have felt ambivalent in his company, despite their friendship all those years ago.

So why, now, couldn’t she shake him off?

Because this place was insidious. It had a way of drawing people in with its luxury and its easy living and never letting them go. She felt her back teeth grinding and had to click her jaw open wide in order not to let it bother her.

Damien wrapped his arms around his bride and herded her towards the photographer, who was standing by a massive ice sculpture of a mobile phone. Ava felt a twinge of remorse that she had no idea what circumstances had led to what must have been some kind of crazy in joke in her brother’s life.

Damien and Chelsea began to kiss, and didn’t let up. It was so sweet. So romantic. Her stomach twisted. She had to look away.

A pair of hazel eyes snagged hers. Caleb again.

Guests’ heads bobbed between them cutting off her view, but every few seconds that hot hazel gaze sliced through the air, unreadable at that distance, yet aimed directly at her.

She hadn’t needed his earlier warning to take heed where he was concerned. It had taken no more than a second in his company to see that, just as she’d changed over the years, the boy she’d known, in all his varied incarnations, was no more.

There was apathy in his overly relaxed stance, arrogance in the angle of his chin, and the glimmer of barely restrained sensuality radiating from those disarming hazel eyes.

And despite the distance, despite the string quartet playing the perfectly respectable ‘Clair de Lune’, and despite the two-hundred-odd elegant party guests chatting up a storm between them, under his watch she began to feel warm and restless all at once.

She ought to have looked away. To have let her eyes slide past his as though she hadn’t even noticed.

But after the month she’d had, having a man who looked like Caleb Gilchrist looking at her as if she were some kind of exotic dish he’d once tasted, and now was deciding if he wanted to go back for seconds, was like an elixir. Like a balm to the great gaping wound in her own self-worth she was trying her best to conquer.

She cocked her head in question. A leisurely smile lit his eyes. The heat of it leapt across the marquee and burned her cheeks.

She hadn’t heard from him in nearly ten years. Yet she’d often wondered if he thought of that night fondly or with regret, or if he thought of it at all. Right then her question was answered; her old friend was not reminiscing about pulling her plaits.

Her heart responded, thumping hard and steady against her ribs, making her feel soft and breathless and interesting, not the great big loser with bad judgement in her past and big trouble in her future who’d jumped on the plane in Boston because spending time with her unhinged family had felt like the lesser of two evils compared with the situation awaiting her back at Harvard.

He made her feel as if her blood were so much lemonade. Always had. And it was the exact kind of feeling she needed right now.

She licked her suddenly dry lips and Caleb’s smile grew until she could see a pair of pointy incisors. It was the slow, easy, sure smile of a predator who knew exactly what his prey was thinking. Ava was almost glad somebody did as right then she had no idea.

The hand holding the champagne glass shook ever so slightly. Enough so she sought out a table and placed the half-empty flute out of reach.

She turned away, ran her damp palms down the sides of her dress, spotted a gap in the crowd and went for it.

She hit the edge of the lavish white marquee and kept on walking, as fast as her low heels would carry her through the lush grass. She lifted her skirt, jogged up the steps at the rear of her parents’ house and slipped inside.

And while everything outside had steadily made her feel as if she’d stepped into the Twilight Zone, inside the house was like déjà vu.

The walls were still panelled white below, pale striped wallpaper above, the floor still shiny blonde wood. Moonlight spilled in from discreetly angled skylights in the three-storey-high ceiling.

Memories swarmed over her, good and bad. But at least at last, for the first time since she’d left American soil the day before, she felt as if she was able to breathe again.

Coming home, even if only for a few days before she had to return to Harvard to front the Academic Review Committee, was the right decision.

Home was surely the only place to come to sort out her head, and her mess of a life, because this was where it had been all screwed up in the first place. It hadn’t occurred to her that Caleb Gilchrist might play a starring role in the sorting. But if that’s the way the fates wanted to play it, then who was she to argue?

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