A Night with the Society Playboy

‘Not good enough,’ Caleb said, still finding it hard to simmer down. Especially after that long hot look he and the woman of the hour had shared across the crowded room. He hadn’t imagined it. The electricity between them could have shorted out the dozen Swiss designed watches in between.

‘Fine,’ Damien said. ‘The truth is, after what you told me I didn’t want to get your hopes up. That afternoon at the bar just before I proposed to Chelsea—’

Caleb held up a hand to stop his friend from saying any more. He remembered full well what he’d admitted to Damien in a unseemly fit of empathy brought on by a mix of hay fever medication, a week of late nights covering for his love-struck business partner, and a rearing of the ugly head of some random lone romantic gene life hadn’t yet managed to quash.

He hadn’t thought it wise to tell his best friend that he and the guy’s sister had done the horizontal tango in a canoe in the University of Melbourne boat shed the day before she’d fled the country. But he had admitted that he’d had feelings for her a long, long time ago.

In case Caleb was feeling particularly forgetful Damien added, ‘If not for my screwball parents setting such a bad example of what a real relationship should be like you and I could be related.’

Caleb’s hand moved close enough to Damien’s mouth he had to lean back away from it. ‘Thanks for the recap.’

Damien grinned. ‘Any time. So how did the big reunion go? Did violins play, hearts dance, angels weep?’

‘It was peachy. Not exactly as exciting as root canal, but more fun than test cricket.’

Damien’s eyes narrowed. ‘Like that, is it?’

Caleb smiled; no teeth, no humour.

‘I go on my honeymoon in three days’ time. Between now and then I’m going to need you around and I’m going to want her around. So promise me you’ll play nice.’

Caleb took a stuffed mushroom from a passing waiter and said nothing.

‘It’s taken some kind of convincing to make my new bride believe not all families are as screwed up as hers. I don’t need you two going at each other as you always did and spoiling the illusion for me, all right?’

Instead of dignifying Damien’s comments with a response Caleb stared at a point in the middle of his forehead, turned up the volume of his voice and asked, ‘Are you wearing make-up?’

Damien’s chin dropped and his eyebrows disappeared under his dark fringe. ‘Are you kidding me?’

At her husband’s raised voice Chelsea stopped talking and turned to join their little gathering. Kensey formed the last edge of the circle. And both women turned to look hard at Damien.

Caleb popped the mushroom in his mouth, grinned at his friend and walked away. Out of the marquee and towards the house.

‘Play nice!’ Damien called out from behind him. ‘For my sake, play nice.’

Caleb gave a small wave over his shoulder and made no promises.

Caleb rounded the corner of the Halliburtons’ large foyer and found Ava sitting on the winding staircase, her legs drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her knees, her ankles turned so that the toes of her silver Mary-Janes kissed.

Even though she had an empty stubby of beer dangling from one hand she couldn’t have looked more like a little kid dressed up in her elder’s finery if she’d tried.

When she saw him there she smiled.

‘Hi,’ she said, tilting the beer his way.

‘Hi,’ he said, pulling up short and tucking his hands into his trouser pockets.

Her smile, if anything, widened. And if she was any other woman, he would have thought by the coquettish look in her eyes the bottle in her hand swinging back and forth meant she was contemplating replacing one vice for another.

‘We have to stop meeting like this,’ she said.

‘Ten years and not a word. Now twice in ten minutes. If I didn’t know better, Ms Halliburton, I would think you were following me.’

‘Hey, I was here first.’

‘So you were.’

He smiled. She smiled some more. It was all far too civilised. It couldn’t last.

‘Any particular reason you’ve chosen to snub the festivities?’ he asked.

Her soft mouth slowly grew wider and wider until her face was all about killer cheekbones and eye sparkles, and Caleb decided it best not to say anything remotely nice or amusing in the hopes she’d save that debilitating smile of hers for someone else.

‘I’m hiding,’ she said.

‘From whom?’

‘Family, basically.’

‘Right. So have you caught up with your father yet?’

She bit her lip and looked straight through him for several seconds before blurting out, ‘Aunt Gladys. I’m mainly hiding from Aunt Gladys. She’s cornered me three times already with the aim of setting me up with her nephew Jonah. The fact that Jonah is also my cousin seems to have escaped her.’

‘That’s a tad alarming, even for Aunt Gladys.’

‘I’ll say. I figure if I stay out of sight she’ll find some other poor sap to coerce.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’

Caleb wondered why she hadn’t just told Aunt Gladys she was with someone. The image of the lanky grey-bearded professor, who no doubt thanked his lucky stars daily for whichever man in her past had sent her into the arms of someone of his ilk, popped unwittingly into his mind. He mentally stuck out his foot and smiled inwardly as the figure tripped over his large shoes and fell face flat on the floor.

After that diverting little thought he figured now seemed as good a time as any to find out what the situation was.

‘You didn’t think to bring a date along to ward off randy family members?’ he asked. ‘Just in case I run into Aunt Gladys I’d love to be fully informed so that I can help you out any way I can.’

Ava blinked and her eyes suddenly seemed darker. ‘I only arrived this morning. Not much time to rustle up a date. There was a guy washing windows at an intersection on the way from the airport. If only I’d been more on the ball.’

‘If only.’

If only she would give him a straight answer.

Maybe what she needed was a straight question.

‘So where’s this professor of yours Damien told me so little about? Back at the hotel? Past his bedtime? Or did he not want to give up his nightly malted milk by the fire with his cat at his feet to come across the pond?’

‘Yep,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘Something like that.’

She lifted herself off the step and wobbled a tad. Caleb wondered if that had been her first beer.

‘So,’ she said, head down, hair falling in a waterfall over her face as she scuffed her shoe against the step, ‘which of the bevy of beautiful blondes out there under the stars is your arm candy for the evening?’

‘Who says I have any interest in arm candy?’

She lifted her chin, her mouth twisted as she pinned him with her trademark flat, discerning, too-smart-for-her-own- good gaze. ‘There is such a thing as email, you know. And from what I hear from those who’ve used said email to tell me things about home, these days you’re a regular hound dog.’

Caleb laughed. The sudden explosive release of tension was such a surprise he let it rumble through him a good deal longer than he’d normally bother.

And it felt good. Really good.

It was enough to make him glad he’d sought her out again. For one thing she didn’t seem to have an inordinate interest in Roman blinds. And for another he was definitely enjoying her attempt at being sassy. She honestly had no idea she looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

‘And what makes you think you can trust such stories?’ he asked.

‘The source.’

He glanced her way, eyebrow raised.

‘My brother.’

Caleb laughed again. ‘You can’t be quoting your brother, I’m sure.’ Damien would have used far less ambiguous language.

‘I am,’ she said. ‘Or I think I am. He may have put things another way and I simply extrapolated that meaning. So you’re not a hound dog?’

The minx actually looked disappointed.

‘Honey, I’m not sure any man has been a “hound dog” since the nineteen fifties.’

‘But—’

‘But I understand your meaning. And he was quite wrong. I’m perfectly discriminating,’ he said with a devilish smile.

‘How’s that? No blondes after Labour Day?’

‘I said I was discriminating, not an imbecile.’

This time Ava laughed. Her eyes brightened, her hair shimmied, and those lips… Damn, but she was one gorgeous creature.

Caleb’s extremities stirred as he wondered how long it might take for butter to melt anywhere else on her body.

‘So anyway,’ Ava said, before he could sink too deeply into that fantasy, ‘I was thinking of heading up to my old bedroom for a nose around. See if my mother turned it into an aquarium, or a gift-wrapping room, or a yoga studio. What do you reckon?’

‘Knowing your mother I’d say…trophy room.’

Ava clicked her fingers. ‘Right. Of course it is. So, do you want to come see if you’re right?’

Caleb waited for the other shoe to drop, but she merely blinked at him, all ingenuous blue eyes.

Ava was inviting him up to her old bedroom.

It didn’t mean what the sudden surge of adrenalin throughout his body indicated it meant. Or did it?

Only one way to find out for sure…

He placed his right foot on the bottom step and leaned in towards her, thus crowding her personal space to the point where he could see flecks of silver and navy in her irises.

And he waited for her to lean away. Or frown. Or run as she had run before.

But she didn’t move an inch. She just blinked back at him until he could tell that an extensive array of wheels whirred madly in her head.

Every look, every move, every word that had come out of her mouth had been entirely deliberate. She knew exactly what she was doing. She’d done it all before…

Her arms in the air, so trusting, as he slid her Greenpeace-emblazoned T-shirt over her head. Her small hands tugging his T-shirt from his jeans. Her soft hands sliding around his waist…

Caleb’s temperature began to soar.

Ava reached out and ran a hand over the carved sphere balanced on the end of the banister and said, ‘You coming?’

He had never in his life wanted to be an inanimate lump of wood more. He waved a hand up the stairs. ‘After you.’

Damien had asked him to play nice, after all.

Damien…

He shunted that particular name from his mind. This had nothing to do with his best friend and business partner. Nothing to do with the guy who’d taken him in and made him feel a part of a family the moment he’d realised Caleb’s own family were as warm as a meat locker.

It never had. And it seemed it never would.

Ava gave a little curtsy, ducked her chin and smiled before jogging upstairs without looking back. It wasn’t until she was halfway up that he came to his senses and followed.

She didn’t even glance at the several other doors they passed, she just kept walking until they hit the third door from the end. It was closed. Her chest lifted and dropped before she grabbed the handle, turned and opened the door.

‘Was I right?’ Caleb asked.

She shot him a quick glance, and the smile that lit her face was as stunning as it was surprised. ‘Not even close.’ And in she went, leaving the door open for him to join her.

If he’d thought his body temperature was adversely affected by her before, now it was skyrocketing far too quickly out of his control for his liking.

One of the many things Caleb liked about himself was the fact that he was never out of control. Whether entertaining clients at a gentlemen’s club, risking millions of dollars on one single stock market trade, or in the presence of a beautiful woman, he never let himself forget where he was and what he wanted from the situation.

All he could think to account for his current state was that he had not one single clue what he wanted from Ava Halliburton…

Her soft hands sliding around his waist. Her warm lips opening up beneath his. Her cool, naked body wrapped around him. The two of them joining. Sultry, hushed, tender joining. And all the pressure and hope and expectation that sat upon his shoulders each and every day stilled…

He shook his head to shatter the avalanche of memories overcrowding common sense.

You are two old friends, he told himself. This has nothing to do with the last twenty-four hours you spent together; it has everything to do with the several years before that. Or the ten years since. You are both simply being pleasant. Re-forging ancient ties. For Damien’s sake. Damien your business partner and best friend.

Ava poked her head back out the door and curled a saucy finger at him, then disappeared back into that which Caleb had once seen as the promised land.

If he truly believed they were simply being pleasant he was some kind of fool. And if he gave in to the invitation in Ava Halliburton’s sultry blue eyes then he was an even greater fool. On a thousand different levels.

Nevertheless he turned the corner and followed her into the bedroom. Her bedroom. Kept neat and tidy and exactly as it had looked the day she left.

There Ava’s bonhomie faltered. She glanced from him to the bed, which stood out like an albatross in the middle of the near wall. Then she shot to the other side of the room to open the bay windows, putting as much distance between them as she could.

Once the breath of cool night air took some of the edge off the heat simmering like a mirage between them, she relaxed again. And soon became engrossed in the hundred- odd books filling her childhood bookcase.

Caleb sauntered over to her dressing table, picked up a powder brush and sniffed. The scent was overwhelmingly familiar. Powdered make-up and orange blossoms.

It brought back a dozen memories. A hundred moments. It was sweet. Clean. And irresistible. It was her.

No other woman in the world smelt quite like that. Like innocence and loveliness and spring and whimsy. He’d been with enough of the female population to be quite sure. Not that he’d been keeping score.

He put the brush back where he found it and turned to find Ava picking out a book, opening the first page and beginning to read. He knew the rest of the world, including him, had slipped away the instant the first word on the page had sunk into her consciousness. She’d always been that way. Wholly engaged. Greedy for knowledge. Smartest in the room by a Melbourne mile.

He ambled away from the dressing table, sparing a longer glance at the frilly pink bed taking up the bulk of the room before his gaze shifted back to her, and he wondered how close he might be able to get before she remembered he was even in the room.

Her bedroom. Alone. With her. And that cruel, sweet, intoxicating scent.

She grabbed a hunk of hair, twisted it into a knot and held it atop her head and he wondered if he sank his nose into the skin below her right ear whether she might feel as soft and sexy as she looked.

The longer he spent watching her, the more he realised that he’d been kidding himself. The tousled, gangly dilettante of years past was no more.

Arcing smile lines book-ended the corners of her soft pink mouth and the frown lines above the bridge of her nose never completely went away. While the best curves now curved all the more, overall her figure had fined down as the last of her puppy fat had been eaten away by cold winters of the northern hemisphere.

And where the old Ava had curved self-consciously into herself, this Ava stood straight, shoulders back, hip cocked, sure of herself in a way Caleb wasn’t certain he wanted to identify.

The Ava he’d known so briefly and lost so quickly all those years before had been exceedingly smart, but mostly a scared and stubborn girl.

This Ava was all woman.

Music from the marquee below filtered up through the night and wafted into the room. Shuffling cymbals, a moody piano, and a breathy male voice singing of foolish lovers.

She looked up from her book, blinked, stared for a moment through the bay windows, then smiled a sad smile. A smile heavy with experience. Innocence and whimsy suddenly didn’t belong anywhere near the airless atmosphere of her bedroom.

Caleb realised his heart was thumping far too loudly in his chest for comfort.

‘I love this song,’ Ava said, her voice unnaturally husky.

She turned from the waist and looked his way, her smile soft and warm, her eyes hooded dreamily as she looked him in the eye with half her attention on the hazy melody echoing across the lawn.

Caleb didn’t look away. He couldn’t. Hell, he didn’t want to. He simply let himself drink in the sight of her. Those piercing blue eyes. That fringe of sooty lashes. The heavy dark hair cascading over her shoulders.

Until that moment, Caleb didn’t even know there was such a thing as perfect shoulders. Hers were lean, shapely, pale as porcelain with curves and crevices in all the best places.

She sucked her wide lips between her teeth, looked down at her hands, only then remembered the book she was holding, and furrowed her brow ever so slightly. She shut the book with a loud snap, then reached around to slide it back into place on the bookshelf, angling her head so that Caleb realised that her neck was pretty damned near perfect too.

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