Her Favourite Rival

She started to introduce herself, but he was already turning away. A heartbeat later, he was gone.

Audrey swore under her breath and groped under the table with her feet, searching for her shoes. Had he noticed that her feet were bare? God, she hoped not. She so did not want her new boss’s first impression to be of her barefoot and chipmunk-cheeked, holding the world’s most phallic food.

She was sliding her right foot into its shoe when Zach cruised into the room, coffee mug in hand.

“Mathews.” He gave her a casual salute.

She stood. She wasn’t in the mood for his mocking smiles right now. She’d just crashed and burned, big time. Despite her careful plotting and planning, her scary, intimidating new boss now thought she was about as dynamic as a cud-chewing Jersey cow.

“You know, something’s been bugging me, Mathews.” Zach leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest, his tone serious but his eyes laughing. “We were the only people here this morning—so where exactly were you headed so urgently with all those important papers?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Not the world’s wittiest comeback, but it was the best she could do at short notice.

“That was the point of me asking, actually.”

She wasn’t sure what devil prompted her next words. Maybe it was the way Zach was laughing at her, or maybe it was because she was disconcertingly aware of the fact that his crossed-arm posture accentuated the breadth of his shoulders and the muscles in his biceps.

“So, what do you think of Whitman?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t met him yet.” Zach’s eyes narrowed. “Why, have you?”

“We had a little chat.”

Very little, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Yeah? What about?”

“This and that. Christmas, that kind of thing.” She waved a hand to suggest a broader conversation.

“What was your impression?”

She thought to the moment when she’d looked into Whitman’s cold, steely eyes.

“Surprisingly approachable, actually.”

Zach would find out soon enough that their new CEO was a cyborg, but it wouldn’t hurt to keep him off-balance in the short term.

“Good to hear,” Zach said. “Makes the range review presentations a little less daunting.”

She’d been turning to leave, wanting to exit on a high, but his words brought her up short.

“The range reviews? What’s he got to do with the range reviews?”

Regularly reviewing and assessing the performance of the products within the various departments under her purview was an integral part of her—and Zach’s—role.

“He’s sitting in on them. Didn’t you hear?”

She blinked rapidly, trying to get her head around his announcement. The range reviews were tomorrow. She’d assumed she’d be presenting to the merchandising manager, Gary, as usual, as well as the panel of store owners who sat on the catalog committee. Since Makers was a cooperative, its 645 member stores liked to have a say in what was stocked and how it was promoted, and the representative store owners on the committee spoke on their behalf. They could be a force to be reckoned with at times, but she was used to dealing with them.

Henry Whitman was a whole other story, though.

“When did you find this out?” Her voice was high with surprise.

“Last week sometime.”

Which meant he’d had days to make his presentation as kick-ass as possible, while she had—she checked her watch—less than twenty-four hours.

Aware of Zach watching her, she forced herself to shrug as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “Should make it a bit more interesting than usual.”

“Absolutely.” He grinned, the epitome of cocky arrogance.

She forced her mouth into what she hoped was an equally confident smile and headed for the door, making an effort not to hobble in her too-tight shoes or show by the flicker of an eyelid that she was battling a panicky wash of adrenaline. Showing any weakness in front of this man was the equivalent of a limping gazelle bathing in gravy and handing out paper plates and serviettes to the waiting lions. She wasn’t about to make it easy for him.

In her office, she dialed her boss.

“Gary, what’s this I’m hearing about Henry Whitman sitting in on our range reviews tomorrow?”

“Oh, yeah. I meant to let you know. He wants to get a feel for our systems, see people in action.”

“Right.” She bit the single word out. Gary was a good guy, but sometimes he forgot to pass on things and this was a classic example.

“Relax, Audrey. You’ll do fine.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

She tossed the phone onto her desk and called up the range review file. She’d opted to rationalize the portable heating range and had arranged her points neatly in a slide show presentation, complete with product specifications, images and pricing. It was fine, perfectly adequate, but there were no bells or whistles or extras. She knew without a doubt that Zach’s would have all of the above, and more.

“Crap.”

You can do this. You’ve got all night to make this better. Take a deep breath and think.

She stared at her computer screen, but instead of neat bullet points, she saw her bank statement. She’d stretched herself so she could buy the small one-bedroom apartment she called home. She had car payments to meet, too. If she failed to impress tomorrow and the Executioner put her head on the chopping block, it wouldn’t take long before her life unraveled at the seams.

She shook her head in instinctive rejection of the scenario. She had all night. It would be enough.

She would make it enough, if it killed her.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS NEARLY seven by the time Zach switched off his computer and slid the paperwork he was taking home with him into his briefcase.

A single light shone on the other side of the department. Audrey’s office. He hesitated, then changed course. He couldn’t help smiling when he stopped in her doorway. The sleek, put-together woman from this morning was long gone. Her hair had been released from the updo and hung to her shoulders in a rumpled mess. Her jacket had been discarded and her sleeves rolled up. Her shoes were abandoned in the corner, lying on their sides. She glanced at him before her gaze returned to the computer.

“If you’re looking for the quarterly report, I passed it on to Tom already,” she said, referring to a dense, complicated report they circulated among the department to save on paper waste, one of Makers’s feeble attempts at being environmentally aware.

He knew without asking that she was working on her range review; it was what he’d be doing, too, if he’d just learned that his new boss was going to be breathing down his neck during the presentation.

“Unclench, Mathews. Your review is probably word perfect, as always. Go home and get some food and sleep.”

Her gaze lifted to his again, her expression incredulous. “As. If.”

Which was exactly what he’d say, too, if their positions were reversed.

“If you’re overtired, you’ll make mistakes.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Humor me and at least stop for dinner, then.”

She frowned, as well she might. What did he care if she ate or not? She was his rival, not his friend.

“This may come as a shock to you, but I’ve been looking after myself for a few years now. I think I have the hang of it,” she said.

Fine. He wasn’t even sure what impulse had driven him to swing by her office, anyway. Whatever it was, it had been a mistake.

“Suit yourself.” He started to turn away, then hesitated. “If you get to the point where you’re ready to chew your arm off, there’s a stash of protein bars in the bottom left drawer of my desk.”

She blinked, clearly surprised by his offer. He lifted a hand in farewell and headed for the exit, unsettled by his own altruistic impulse. For a long time now, his energies had been focused on only two things—protecting his mother from herself and establishing himself in his career. Everything else—women, friendships, outside interests—had taken a backseat. It was the reason his last girlfriend, Tina, had walked. She’d said he didn’t care enough, and in the eight months since their breakup he’d come to acknowledge that she’d been right. The bottom line was that there were only so many hours in the day, and he had only so much energy. Which was why he’d been sleeping alone since Tina bailed on him.

So why was he looking out for Audrey, worrying about whether she was skipping dinner, for God’s sake?

He threw his briefcase onto the backseat of his Audi sedan and slid behind the wheel, uncomfortably aware that part of his motivation might be that Audrey was about his age, with a damn fine figure and a low, sexy voice that had always intrigued him.

Yeah. Hard as it was to admit, apparently he wasn’t immune to the urgings of testosterone.

Well, his gonads were going to have to find someone else to fixate on, because there was no way in hell he was going to so much as look sideways at a work colleague. He’d seen too many people undone by workplace affairs to be stupid enough to go there.

It took him half an hour to drive across town to his place in Surrey Hills. He’d bought his down-at-the-heel three-bedroom Victorian cottage as an investment and was renovating it in slow stages. Once it was finished he planned to sell it and upgrade. All part of his five-year plan.

The air still smelled faintly of paint when he let himself in, despite the fact that he’d redecorated the front part of the house more than four months ago. Maybe if he cooked a little more, there would be competing smells to drown out the paint odor. He wasn’t about to start tonight, though.

There was leftover Chinese in the fridge, and he nuked it before sitting at the kitchen counter and going over the papers he’d brought home.

Tomorrow was a big day. He had a friend from university who had worked under Henry Whitman at his previous company, so Zach knew Whitman’s reputation for making lightning assessments. If he screwed up his presentation or failed to impress, things were going to get tense.

They might get tense, anyway. It all depended on what Whitman’s mandate was from the retailers who’d employed him to lead their company. Build and cultivate, or slash and burn.

He put his paperwork into his briefcase at nine and grabbed his car keys. What he really wanted was a hot shower and an early night, but ever since he’d spoken to Vera this morning there’d been an alarm sounding in the back of his mind, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep until he’d checked on his mother.

He drove west until he was wending through the streets of his childhood in the working-class suburb of Footscray. He stopped in front of his mother’s house, but didn’t get out of the car. Now that he was here, he couldn’t bring himself to face her. In all likelihood she would be high, and he wasn’t up to managing her tonight. Familiar guilt tugged at him, but he’d learned long ago that no matter what he did, he would always feel guilty. A tougher lesson had been learning that he was also entitled to a life. Nothing would be gained by his sacrificing everything on the altar of his mother’s addiction.

The lights were on in the front room, the flicker of the television visible through the thin net curtains. There was no car in the driveway or any other sign of a boyfriend. He sat staring at the lit window, hoping like hell that Vera had it wrong. After ten minutes he started the car and drove off.

He stripped and stepped beneath a hot shower when he got home. Moments from the day flashed across his mind’s eye as he let the water run over his shoulders and back, but the one that stuck was the picture of Audrey striding so purposefully and self-importantly across the foyer at 6:30 a.m., a stack of papers in hand. The look on her face when she’d realized it was him and not Whitman...

He laughed out loud. She’d been so damned annoyed. Mind, so had he. But it hadn’t taken her long to find her feet again, calling him on his haircut, just as he’d called her on her new shoes.

It was a pity they worked for the same company, because if he was free to follow his instincts where she was concerned—

What? You’d date her for a while and then screw that up, too?

The smile slipped from his lips.

It was irrelevant. As he’d established more than once today, Audrey wasn’t exactly his biggest fan, and he’d never make a move on her, even if she was.

He turned his face into the spray, reminding himself that there were worse things in the world than being lonely and horny.

Just because he couldn’t think of them right now didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

* * *

AUDREY RUBBED HER temples, willing her aching eyes to focus on the screen. She was so tired she could barely see straight. She’d tweaked her presentation within an inch of its life, but anxiety kept her at her desk, going over and over each page. She wanted to knock it out of the park tomorrow. She wanted Henry Whitman to remember her as the go-getter with the awesome range review, not the chipmunk-cheeked banana-eater from the staff room.

She wanted—

The low, demanding growl of her stomach echoed. She’d been ignoring her belly for the past two hours, but now she was getting to the sick stage of hunger where she was feeling more than a little shaky.

Ever heard of the law of diminishing returns? Time to go home, princess.

She knew the voice in her head was right. Her brain was mush, her judgment out the window. As much as it killed her to admit it, Zach had been on the money when he’d said that if she was overtired, she’d make mistakes.

She hit Save, then—to be safe—made a backup of her presentation and emailed it to herself. She was shutting down her computer when her phone rang in her handbag.

She grabbed it and recognized the number as her parents’. She hesitated, not sure if she was up to a conversation with her mother right now. Then she straightened her spine and took the call.

“Hi, Mum.”

“Audrey. Have I caught you at a bad time?” Her mother’s voice was cool and briskly efficient, as though she was working her way down a to-do list and talking to Audrey was the next item to be crossed off. Knowing her mother, it was probably not far from the truth.

“No, no, you’re good. How are you? How’s Dad?” She could hear the polite stiffness in her own voice but was powerless to stop it. After years of agonizing over their relationship and trying to make up for the mistakes of her past, she had come to accept that this was simply the way things were—not so bad, but not so great, either.

“We’re well, thank you. I won’t keep you, but I wanted to ask you to save the seventeenth for Leah’s birthday. Your father is keen to take her somewhere special for lunch.”

“Sure. I’ll put it in my calendar now.” It was her sister’s thirtieth, so it made sense that their father would want to make a splash.

“She’s been working so hard lately, she deserves a treat.”

Like both their parents, Leah was a doctor, but while Karen and John were both G.P.s, Leah was training to be a cardiothoracic surgeon, something their mother had always wanted for her.

“How many years left now?” Audrey asked.

“Four. Which seems like a long time at the moment but the sky is literally the limit when she’s completed her training.” There was no missing the pride in her voice.

And why not? Leah had always been the best at everything. High school had been a walk in the park, she’d graduated at top of her class at university and she’d secured a place in the cardiothoracic program without breaking a sweat. It stood to reason that once Leah finished her training she would have a stellar career that would make their mother even prouder.

“Well, she’s on the downhill run now,” Audrey joked. “She can start taking it easy soon.”

“I don’t think your sister knows how. We had a spa day together last week and she spent the whole time checking her messages and making phone calls. Typical high achiever.” Her mother gave a fond sigh.

Audrey picked up her pen and started drawing circles on the notepad beside her phone.

“How’s everything else? Did you sort out the problem with the lawn?”

“What problem with the lawn?” Her mother sounded completely blank.

“The drainage. Last time we spoke you’d had some problems with flooding down the back.”

“Oh, that was months ago. Your father had someone come in and dig a ditch or something. Anyway, it’s all fine now.”

“Good.”

They talked about the weather and her parents’ garden for a few more minutes, then her mother insisted on “letting her go.”

Audrey closed her eyes, aware of the old, old hollow feeling behind her breastbone. Every now and then, her mother or father or sister said something that gave her a glimpse into the world they shared with one another—cozy dinners for three, outings to the theater, European holidays. Last week, a mother-daughter spa day.

And Audrey hadn’t spoken to any of them for over a month. Even after so many years, it hurt to know it all went on without her. She’d be lying if she pretended anything else.

“Definitely time to go home.”

Before she became completely maudlin and pathetic.

She snagged the strap of her handbag and her briefcase then stood. The room spun crazily as the blood rushed from her head, and she slapped her hand onto the desk to steady herself.

Whoa. Someone has low blood sugar.

She held out her hand, and sure enough it was shaking. It was nearly ten, and she’d been at her desk since six-thirty in the morning. Lunch had been two bites of banana and a snack-size yogurt—hours ago.

So much for knowing how to look after herself. Barefoot, she made her way to the staff room in the hope that there were some bananas left. No such luck. The cookie jar was empty, too, only a few crumbs in the bottom to taunt the truly desperate. She opened the fridge and eyed the detritus left from other people’s lunches. Squishy-looking fruit and dry, curled sandwiches. Blurg.

If you get to the point where you’re ready to chew your arm off, there’s a stash of protein bars in the bottom left drawer of my desk.

She shut the fridge door. There was no way she was raiding Zach’s stash. There was something about the idea of accepting a favor from him that made her uncomfortable.

Her stomach growled, an audible counterargument to her thoughts. She looked around the kitchen a little desperately. She’d make herself another cup of coffee with lots of sugar. That should do the trick. She opened the fridge in search of milk, only to find none.

Damn it. She hated black coffee with a passion.

Stop being so bloody precious. Eat his protein bar and go home and get a good night’s sleep. Like a grown-up.

Gritting her teeth, she marched out of the staff room before she could think the matter to death. Zach’s office was on the opposite side of the department from hers. She paused in the doorway, then committed herself to his domain.

Like her, he had a company-issue desk made from blond wood veneer. The bookcase and filing cabinet were also standard-issue, but he’d hung a series of black-and-white framed photographs on the walls, arty shots of old buildings and other architectural features, as well as bringing in an old-fashioned wood-and-brass desk lamp. She’d been in his office for only brief moments before, and she paused in front of one the photographs. A moody photograph of a European street, it was stark and simple. She wondered if he’d taken it himself.

She gave herself a shake. She was here for sustenance, not snooping. She couldn’t stop herself from noticing his pristine desktop as she pushed his chair back to access the drawers, though. His blotter was unblemished, his in-and out-trays empty. By contrast, her own desk looked like a war zone: piles of papers, catalogs bristling with sticky notes, crumbs in her keyboard, a million reminders to herself scribbled across the blotter. She hadn’t sighted her in-tray for over a month, it was buried beneath so much paperwork. She prided herself on the fact that, if pushed, she could lay her hand on anything within thirty seconds, but the fact remained that Zach had her beat, hands down, in the anal tidiness stakes.

She slid the bottom drawer open. Sure enough, a box of protein bars was inside. There were two flavors, Dutch chocolate and French vanilla, and she chose vanilla. She was about to shut the drawer when her gaze fell on a bottle of aftershave. She reached for it and lifted it to her nose, inhaling a light citrus scent with surprising spicy base notes. Mmm. Nice. She sniffed again, closing her eyes as she tried to identify what it reminded her of. The beach in summer? No, it was more intimate than that. Perhaps—

Abruptly she registered what was she was doing—hovering over Zach’s desk, sniffing his aftershave. She whipped her hand away from her face so quickly she almost dropped the bottle. She returned it to the drawer, being careful to put it exactly where she had found it, then closed the drawer. There was a memo pad beside Zach’s computer and she reached for the nearest pen to write him an IOU. It wasn’t until she felt the weight of the thing that she realized she wasn’t holding an ordinary plastic ballpoint. Black and shiny with warm golden accents, the pen had real heft to it. When she pressed it against the paper, it rolled effortlessly, silkily across the page. Then she spotted the tiny telltale star logo on the end.

Montblanc.

Wow. No wonder his handwriting was always so crisp and elegantly formed.

Must be nice to be able to drop three figures on a fancy pen. She made a noise, unable to imagine a universe where she would have enough money to spare to allow herself that kind of indulgence.

She returned the pen to the caddy on Zach’s desk and escaped his office, taking with her the slightly guilty sense that she’d invaded his privacy. Checking out his photos and sniffing his aftershave and using his fancy-schmancy pen was hardly on a par with riffling through his underwear drawer, but if their positions were reversed, she knew she wouldn’t be thrilled to know he’d lingered over her personal effects. In fact, the thought of him examining her space in that way made her toes curl into the carpet.

In her office, she tore the wrapper off the protein bar and ate it with stolid determination, chewing and swallowing until the thing was gone and the edgy, shaky feeling had passed.

She let out a sigh of relief, then grabbed her bag, briefcase and shoes and headed for the garage.

Whether she liked it or not, Zach had saved her bacon tonight. She would make a point of thanking him for his generosity tomorrow—as well as replacing the bar, of course. Under no circumstances would she try to get close enough to find out if he was wearing any of that delicious aftershave, though. And she definitely wouldn’t ask him to confirm her guess about the photos on his office wall.

He was still the enemy, after all. Or, at best, her fiercest rival. It would never pay to forget that.

* * *

“HOW DID IT GO?” Megan asked.

Audrey sank onto the bar stool next to her best friend and let her bag slide to the floor. “I’m alive. That’s about all I’m willing to commit to right now.”

Twenty minutes ago she’d left the conference room after delivering her range review and enduring nearly an hour and a half of brutal, probing questions courtesy of Henry Whitman. He’d asked about her range initiative, grilling her on every possible detail, then branched out into asking about her strategy for the department, her thoughts on the retail hardware sector in Australia, her experience in the industry...

Even though it was only five o’clock when she emerged, she’d been so exhausted and wrung out she hadn’t hesitated to bail when she found Megan’s note indicating that she’d be waiting at Al’s Place. She’d said goodbye to her assistant, Lucy, and made for the exit as though the hounds of hell were on her tail.

Megan slid a glass of red wine along the bar toward her. “Here. You look like you could use this.”