“Tell me about it. I bet it rains again like last year.”
Audrey could still recall the sheer misery of completing eighteen holes in the drizzling rain. Oh, the humanity.
“It’s times like these that I remember hardware is a male-dominated industry,” she said.
“I know. I would totally make it a spa day if we ruled the roost,” Megan said.
“Followed by a shopping spree.”
They gave each other a jokey high-five as they parted ways. Audrey diverted by Jenny’s desk to find out who she’d be playing with next Wednesday. She was pleasantly surprised to see she’d been teamed with three of her favorite suppliers. At least the day wouldn’t be a total bust.
She worked until seven before packing up her desk for the day. As luck would have it, Zach and Gary were about to enter the stairs to the parking garage as she approached. She slowed her pace, hoping they’d get the hint, but Gary stood to one side, gesturing for her to go first.
“After you, madam,” he said with his usual friendly smile.
“Thanks.”
She carefully didn’t look at Zach as she slipped into the stairwell, but she was preternaturally aware of the fact that he followed her down the stairs.
“I was filling Zach in on the golf day,” Gary said, his voice echoing in the enclosed space.
“I hope you told him not to try to win.”
Gary laughed loudly.
“No, he didn’t, as a matter of fact,” Zach said.
All the little hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, a physiological response she was powerless to stop. Her body, it seemed, remembered his body all too well.
“The chairman likes to win,” she explained as she pushed through the fire door at the base of the stairs. “And he’s a sulky loser.”
“Just as well that I suck at golf, then,” Zach said as he followed her into the garage.
“Looks like you might have some competition for the Lame Duck award this year, Audrey. Better keep an eye out,” Gary joked as he moved past them, heading for his car.
“That was two years ago, Gary. Two years,” she called after him, shaking her head at his teasing.
“I take it golf is not your sport?” Zach asked.
“My golf skills are marginally better than my ice hockey skills. Which are nonexistent.”
He laughed, the sound low and addictive. “I’ll be in good company, then.”
She gave him a skeptical look. “Right. I bet ‘sucking’ for you means you have a handicap over ten or something.”
“No, I genuinely suck. Small children can drive a ball farther.”
“See, you gave yourself away. Only people who play a lot of golf say ‘drive.’ Rank amateurs like me say ‘hit.’”
He laughed again and she found herself racking her brain, trying to come up with something else to say to make him laugh. “I had it drilled into me by a golf pro during the ten most miserable lessons of my life.”
“I had twenty and I still hit into the rough every third shot.”
“Noted. I’ll be sure to hang back when you’re teeing off.”
“A good idea. Frankly, the way most of us play, this tournament should come with a health and safety warning,” she said.
“I bet there’s at least one guy who turns up in those knicker golf pants though, right?”
It was her turn to laugh. “Plus fours? Oh yeah. And one of those little hats with a pompom.”
He was closer. She wasn’t sure who had moved, her or him, but he was definitely closer. His gaze scanned her face before dropping below her chin. She took a shallow breath, painfully aware of her breasts, of how good it had felt when he’d held them and touched them and teased her nipples with his mouth.
She licked her lips. “We could—”
The glare of headlights suddenly swept over them. They both shielded their eyes until the car had straightened up. Gary gave a little toot of his horn and a wave as he drove toward the exit ramp.
It was like a bucket of cold water, straight from Antarctica. Audrey took a step backward, and so did Zach.
“We are really, really bad at business-as-usual,” she said, giving him a rueful look.
“I know.”
“This has got to stop, Zach. We’ve got to get it back to normal.”
“Okay. It would help if you started wearing a hessian sack to work. And maybe you could shave your head.”
She didn’t smile. This was serious stuff. They’d been seconds away from doing something stupid before those headlights had swept over them. At work. Everything inside her cringed as she imagined exactly how busted they would have been, framed in bright lights by their boss.
“Maybe we should both do our best to schedule appointments out of the office for the next little while,” she said.
“Okay.”
“And if situations like this come up, we just walk away.”
He frowned. “That’s not always possible.”
He was right.
“What do you suggest, then?”
“You don’t want to know what I’m thinking right now.”
Despite everything, a wave of pure lust washed over her at his words.
“That’s my cue to leave,” she said, taking a step backward.
His mouth tightened for a moment, then he nodded. “Okay.”
Without saying another word, they both headed for their respective cars. The nervous-scared-excited feeling didn’t fade until he’d driven up the exit ramp, his sleek car disappearing into the night.
Temptation had officially left the building.
Sitting behind the wheel of her car, she let out a long sigh. Despite the slipups they’d had, they’d survived the first day with no out-and-out disasters. That was a good thing. And it had to get easier, right?
Right?
She worried at the problem all the way home but didn’t come up with a single viable solution. They were simply going to have to strap themselves to the mast and work through this. They were both mature, rational adults with plenty of incentives to control themselves. Common sense would win out. It had to.
Her phone was ringing as she let herself into her apartment and she rushed to answer it.
“Audrey speaking,” she said a little breathlessly.
It was testament to how nuts she was that a little part of her hoped it was Zach calling.
“Audrey. It’s me,” her sister said.
“Leah.” She could hear the surprise in her own voice. She and her sister weren’t exactly big on spontaneous phone calls.
“Have you got a minute? Or have I caught you at a bad time?”
“No. I mean, yes. I have a minute. I just got home from work, actually.”
“I hear you. My chicken tikka masala is doing laps of the microwave as we speak.”
“Frozen meals, Dr. Mathews? I’m surprised,” Audrey joked.
“Why? I’m human like everyone else.” Leah’s tone was defensive. “The last thing I want to do when I get home is slave over a hot stove.”
“I was trying to be funny, Leah.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes. I’m tired. Sorry.”
“Okay.” Audrey sank onto the arm of her couch, trying to think of something else to say. “Um...how’s being thirty treating you?”
“Audrey, can we meet?” her sister asked abruptly. “Can we have lunch sometime, or dinner?”
Audrey blinked, blindsided by Leah’s request. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d caught up, just the two of them. “Sure. We can do that. Lunch or dinner. Whatever suits.”
“Good. Great. I can’t do anything this weekend, but how about next week sometime? Maybe Friday night?” Leah said.
Audrey could almost see her scrolling through the electronic organizer she always kept with her.
“Sounds good. Where do you want to go?”
“I have no idea. Frozen tikka masala is pretty much my speed these days.”
“I prefer the green curry chicken. More rice.”
This time her sister laughed. “Noted. I’ll try it.”
“I’ll ask around for recommendations and get back to you.”
“Look at us, two sad workaholics with no idea where to get a good meal. Mum and Dad trained us well, huh?” There was a dark note to Leah’s tone, something Audrey had never heard before.
“Still getting heat over the immunology decision, are you?”
“Probably until the day I die. Listen, my other phone is ringing so I need to go.”
“No worries. I’ll see you next Friday, okay?”
Audrey was thoughtful as she went into the bedroom and started undressing. Something was clearly up with her sister. She wondered what it was. Something to do with the disagreement with their mother? It seemed highly probable, given the vibe at Leah’s birthday lunch.
She made a face as she walked into the bathroom for a quick shower. If Leah was expecting her big sister to have some pearls of wisdom for dealing with their mother, she was so out of luck it wasn’t funny. If anything, it should be the other way around. Leah had always been able to bring a smile to their mother’s face; Audrey, on the other hand, had a knack for stimulating her critical gland.
She felt a distinct flutter in her chest when she thought about having dinner with her sister, about what they might talk about and where they might go. It took her a second to understand it was nervousness.
The truth was, she and Megan saw each other more often, talked more intimately and shared more than she and her sister did. There was a very real chance their dinner could be a stilted, awkward nightmare.
You’ll find out soon enough.
Indeed. In the meantime, there was dinner to nuke, and some reports to read before she went to bed. Which meant it was time to leave the warm shower.
It wasn’t until she dried off that she noticed that the small red mark on her inner thigh had all but faded away. Only two days, and it was almost gone.
Yet if she closed her eyes, she could still feel the weight of Zach pressing her into the bed. She could still feel the delicious tug of his mouth at her breasts, the firm pressure of his hand between her legs.
She sighed and opened her eyes.
If they didn’t work together, if they’d met at a different time and place and under completely different circumstances...
But they did, and they hadn’t, and sighing and wafting about the house feeling horny and wistful wasn’t going to change any of that.
Big-girl panties, Mathews. Remember?
Feeling distinctly flat, she went to make dinner.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ZACH WASN’T THE type to indulge in false modesty where his sporting prowess was concerned. He was a good runner, a pretty great basketball player, and he’d competed in the Portsea Pier to Pub open-sea swimming competition four times, each time achieving a spot in the top ten.
Not too shabby, if he did say so himself.
But when it came to golf, any athletic ability he possessed evaporated into thin air. He simply didn’t get the appeal or point of the sport, and consequently his technique sucked the big one.
No amount of practice at the local driving range or lessons with pros was going to change that—and yet here he was, less than twenty-four hours before tee-off at the Makers annual golf tournament, whacking away at a bucket full of small white balls, until his shoulders ached and his palms burned against the grip of the club. What he should really be doing was trying to get on top of his ever-increasing workload, but his ego had demanded he at least make an attempt to lift his golf game out of the toilet.
Intellectually, he understood that it wasn’t the end of the world that golf was not his thing, but there was no getting away from the fact that if he had a choice, he’d really prefer not to look like a complete dick in front of Audrey tomorrow.
She may have reassured him that she was an average player, but he knew her too well to accept her at her word. Average for Audrey probably meant that she didn’t get a hole-in-one every time.
He swung the club back and addressed the ball, watching as it soared in a long, swinging arc to the left. Why did he keep hooking it? It was beyond him. And, frankly, he was a little over it.
Which probably meant it was time to head home and resign himself to a humbling day tomorrow. No doubt his ego would survive, even if Audrey trounced him thoroughly.
It occurred to him that an outside observer might find it telling that even though there were over a hundred and fifty men and women competing tomorrow, Audrey was the one he was fixated on.
In his defense, she was pretty damned hot, and it had been a tough few days. As per their agreement, he and Audrey had done their best to not be in each other’s faces at work. He’d scheduled appointments off-site and kept to his side of the department, and she’d done the same. He’d even canceled out of a meeting they were both scheduled to attend, only to find out later that she had, too.
He’d hoped that time and distance and lack of proximity would dull the thud of desire he felt whenever he was near her, but only this morning she’d walked into the kitchen as he was making himself a coffee and he’d taken one look at her and gotten hard. The urge to grab her and push her against the counter had been so strong he’d abandoned his cup and left the space, unable to guarantee his self-control.
It has to get better sometime.
He tossed his keys on his bedside table when he got home, only too aware that the “it’ll get better” line was one he’d fed himself after their kiss, too. And look how that had turned out.
Still, it wasn’t as though there was an option B. Not one that he was prepared to allow himself to fantasize about, anyway. A long run took some of the edge off, and a twenty-page marketing proposal from one of his suppliers did the rest. By eleven he was tired enough to sleep and he turned off the light.
He started awake hours later, dragged to reality by the phone ringing. He was instantly alert, adrenaline coursing through him as he reached for the handset.
“Black speaking.” The glowing numerals on his clock told him it was two in the morning.
“It’s me, love,” Vera said apologetically. “Sorry to wake you, but I wanted to let you know your mum’s in a bit of a bad way. She called me an hour or so ago, and I’ve done my best, but she’s burning up, can hardly walk. Can’t keep anything down, either. I’m pretty sure it’s not just withdrawal.”
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “It sounds like she’s got an infection. Maybe cotton fever. Or an abscess.”
“How would I check for that?”
“You don’t. I’ll be there in twenty.”
“All right. I’ll be here.” Her creaky voice sounded immeasurably relieved.
He ended the call and reached for the nearest piece of clothing, which happened to be his work pants. Shoving his feet into sneakers, he grabbed the hoodie from the chair beside his bed, scooped up his wallet, phone and keys, and left the house.
His mother’s place was lit up like the Fourth of July. He bounded up the front steps and rapped once to announce his arrival, then let himself in.
“It’s me,” he called.
“In the bedroom, love.”
Vera was hovering by the bed when he entered the room, her broad face creased with concern. His mother lay with her eyes closed, a frown furrowing the skin between her brows, an indicator that she was both conscious and in pain.
“Thanks for coming over so fast,” Vera said.
He shook his head. She shouldn’t be thanking him. She had no obligation to be mixed up in any of this, and he would be grateful until his dying day for her simple generosity and decency.
“It’s the other way around and you know it,” he said as he knelt beside the bed and pressed his palm to his mother’s forehead.
Her eyes opened slowly and she focused on him briefly before closing them again.
“Not feeling so good,” she said. Her cheeks were sunken, her
face flushed.
“Don’t look so good, either,” he said lightly.
She was burning up, as Vera had said. He lifted the sheet and did a quick check of her arms and legs. He found the culprit on her inner thigh, near her groin.
“Jesus, Mum,” he said, sitting back on his heels, appalled by the ugly red mess she’d made of her femoral vein.
Only truly desperate junkies shot up into their neck or groins. Usually it meant all other means of getting the drug into their bodies had collapsed. That his mother had been playing this particular game of Russian roulette shouldn’t have had the power to surprise him, but it did. Judy had seen more than one of her friends lose limbs to infections like this over the years. She knew better.
“Was only for a little while,” his mother said without opening her eyes. “Until my arm recovered....”
He was already pulling his phone from his pocket. “You need to be in the hospital.”
She didn’t say a word and he assumed she was resigned to her fate. She was no stranger to the emergency room.
He gave the details to the dispatcher and then did a quick round of the house to ensure his mother didn’t have a stash anywhere. While it was unlikely that the police would turn up with the ambulance, it wasn’t unheard of, and the last thing he needed was his mother being arrested for possession again.
He checked all her usual spots—in the freezer, inside the cushions on the couch, taped beneath the basin in the bathroom.
Nothing. Good. Returning to the bedroom, he put together an overnight bag for his mother. He was folding her dressing gown when a knock sounded.
“That’ll be them,” he said.
“I’ll get it,” Vera said.
“Thanks, Vera.” He made a mental note to do something spectacular for her. Maybe treat her to a holiday in Queensland or something.
When he turned his mother was watching him, tears pooling in her eyes.
“I’ve messed up again, haven’t I?”
He moved to the bed and took her hand. The tendons and bones were visible beneath the skin, and he wondered when she’d last had any fluids.
“They’ll look after you at the hospital.”
She closed her eyes, sending a single, fat tear rolling down her cheek.
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