LITMIR.BIZ

      TWO

      December 20th, three years ago

      Qīngtíng Restaurant, Hong Kong

      Behind her back, Audrey pressed the soft flesh of her wrists to the glassy chill of the elevator’s mirrored wall, desperate to cool the blazing blood rushing through her arteries. To quell the excited flush she feared stained her cheeks from standing this close to Oliver Harmer in such a tight space.

      You’d think twelve months would be enough time to steel her resolve and prepare herself.

      Yet here she was, entirely rattled by the anticipation of a simple farewell kiss. It never was more than a socially appropriate graze. Barely more than an air-kiss. Yet she still felt the burn of his lips on her cheek as though last year’s kiss were a moment—and not a full year—ago.

      She was a teenager again, around Oliver. All breathless and hot and hormonal. Totally fixated on him for the short while she had his company. It would have been comic if it weren’t also so terribly mortifying. And it was way too easy to indulge the feelings this one day of the year. It felt dangerous and illicit to let the emotions even slightly off the leash. Thank goodness she was old enough now to fake it like a seasoned professional.

      In public, anyway.

      Oliver glanced down and smiled at her in that strange, searching way he had, a half-unwrapped DVD boxed set in his hands. She gave him her most careful smile back, took a deep breath and then refocused on the light descending the crowded panel of elevator buttons.

      Fifty-nine, fifty-eight...

      She wasn’t always so careful. She caught herself two weeks ago wondering what her best man would think of tonight’s dress instead of her husband. But she’d rationalised it by saying that Oliver’s taste in women—and, by implication, his taste in their wardrobes—was far superior to Blake’s and so taking trouble to dress well was important for a man who hosted her in a swanky Hong Kong restaurant each year.

      Blake, on the other hand, wouldn’t notice if she came to the dinner table dressed in a potato sack.

      He used to notice—back in the day, nine years ago—when she’d meet him and Oliver at a restaurant in something flattering. Or sheer-cut. Or reinforcing. Back then, appreciation would colour Blake’s skin noticeably. Or maybe it just seemed more pronounced juxtaposed with the blank indifference on Oliver’s face. Oliver, who barely even glanced at her until she was seated behind a table and modestly secured behind a menu.

      Yet, paradoxically, she had him to thank for the evolution of her fashion sense because his disdain was a clear litmus test if something was too flattering, too sheer-cut. Too reinforcing.

      It was all there in the careful nothing of his expression.

      People paid top dollar for that kind of fashion advice. Oliver gifted her with it for free.

      Yeah...his gift. That felt so much better on the soul than his judgement. And seasonally appropriate, too.

      This year’s outfit was a winner. And while she missed the disguised scrutiny of his greenish-brown gaze—the visual caress that usually sustained her all year—the warm wash of his approval was definitely worth it. She glanced at herself in the elevator’s mirrored walls and tried to see herself as Oliver might. Slim, professional, well groomed.

      Weak at the knees with utterly inappropriate anticipation.

      Forty-five, forty-four...

      ‘What time is your flight in the morning?’ His deep voice honey-rumbled in the small space.

      Her answer was more breath than speech. ‘Eight.’

      Excellent. Resorting to small talk. But this was always how it went at the end. As though they’d flat run out of other things to talk about. Entirely possible given the gamut of topics they covered during their long, long lunch-that-became-dinner, and because she was usually emotionally and intellectually drained from so many hours sitting across from a man she longed to see but really struggled to be around.

      It was only one day.

      Twelve hours, really. That was all she had to get through each year and wasn’t a big ask of her body. The rest of the year she had no trouble suppressing the emotions. She used the long flight home to marshal all the sensations back into that tightly lidded place she kept them so that she disembarked the plane in Sydney as strong as when she’d left Australia.

      She’d invited Blake along this year—pure survival, hoping her husband’s presence would force her wayward thoughts back into safer territory—but not only had he declined, he’d looked horrified at the suggestion. Which made no sense because he liked to catch up with Oliver whenever he was travelling in Asia, himself. Least he used to.

      In fact, it made about as little sense as the not-so-subtle way Oliver changed the subject every time she mentioned Blake. As if he was trying to distance himself from the only person they had in common.

      And without Blake in common, really what did they have?

      Twenty-seven, twenty-six, twenty-five...

      Breath hissed out of her in a long, controlled yoga sigh and she willed her fluttering pulse to follow its lead. But that persistent flutter was still entirely fixated on the gorgeous, expensive aftershave Oliver wore and the heat coming off his big body and it seemed to fibrillate faster the closer to the ground floor they got.

      And they were so close, now.

      Ultimately,

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