The Dating Game

‘Yes, I can see that,’ Craig said, taking the chance for another up and down examination of Sarah’s tiny frame.

Yep, hair too long and shaggy. Attitude a little sleazy. And it wouldn’t have killed the guy to wear a tie, would it? ‘Craig, mate, you’re giving Superman a run for his money with the X-ray vision.’

Sarah gave one of those little chokes of suppressed laughter, and followed it up with a pinch to David’s thigh—hard enough to make him wince.

‘Actually, I take after my mother,’ she said smoothly. ‘Adam overdosed on Quinn genes.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Do you … um … have a lot to do with Lane at work, Craig?’

‘Not really,’ Craig said, and David could almost feel the relief ooze out of Sarah. ‘I’m in the public relations department, managing sponsorships and events like tonight’s. I wouldn’t know one of Lane’s economic indicators if it hogtied me and threw me in a truck.’

‘I work in PR too!’ Sarah said eagerly. Too eagerly. David was going to have to tell her to play it cooler. ‘I’m with Frisk & Frolic. We’re doing the PR for the Western Sydney Arts Festival, which is why Lane thought I should come along tonight—in case there were opportunities for cross promotion with this exhibition. It’s travelling around the city, right?’

‘The city and then all over the country,’ Craig said, and the conversation was off and running.

So they had something in common, David thought. Good. Great.

Although working in the same field could end up being a bit yawn-worthy. Maybe Craig wasn’t the best choice after all. David started looking around the room for alternatives, but was brought up short by the sound of Sarah laughing.

He tuned into the conversation, discovered Sarah was taking humorous issue with Craig’s bozo-ish interpretation of one of the paintings on display, and found himself gritting his teeth. Craig was an ignoramus; she shouldn’t be indulging him.

Oh God, he really was acting like Sarah’s father. He needed to start behaving like a normal, mature-but-not-ancient wingman. Who would not be thinking about knocking a guy’s arm accidentally-on-purpose to get it away from a girl’s bare elbow. Who’d be thinking about getting himself laid, now his mission had been accomplished.

Anthea. He would find smart, sexy Anthea, who was as determinedly no-strings as David was, and had given him all the signals earlier in the night. Anthea, who had a calculator rather than a thesaurus for a brain, and whose vocabulary he knew from past experience he could scramble, until the only word she could find was his name, screamed out at the point of climax.

Climax, orgasm, ejaculation. Arrrrrghhh.

‘I knew you two would have a lot in common,’ David said, and only when Sarah darted a surprised look at him did he realize he’d bowled that out right in the middle of one of Craig’s sentences. ‘I’ll leave you to your PR discussion.’

He saw Anthea across the room and headed for her, and the promise of sex. Even though the sure knowledge of exactly how it would go with Anthea filled him with … with ennui!

Enn-bloody-ui.

***

Sarah was very conscious of David across the room, flirting with the buxom bottle-blonde she’d met earlier. Anthea, her name was, and she was waving her sizeable boobs in David’s face so enthusiastically, Sarah suspected he wasn’t going to get his eyes off them long enough to monitor Sarah’s progress with Craig.

A shame, because she’d landed a date with Craig to hear him sing on Saturday night and she wouldn’t have minded letting David know how quickly she’d managed it. After behaving like a lovelorn desperado in the storeroom, her pride could have used the boost. Which, of course, was counterintuitive! If she wasn’t a lovelorn desperado, she wouldn’t have had to ask David to help her in the first place, would she? And really, it wasn’t as though getting dates had ever been a problem. It was what came afterwards she had trouble with. So—reality check—she didn’t have anything to brag to David about yet.

She thought ahead to how the date with Craig might unfold. Cool city venue. Starting with champagne, served in those old-fashioned coupe glasses—the ones Naughty Noel had told her were based on the shape of Marie Antoinette’s breasts. (And hooray that someone’s small boobs had been celebrated once upon a time!) Craig making his way to the stage. A quick wave to her from there, making it clear to everyone she was ‘with the band’. Craig moving to the microphone. Then that first sound of his voice—deep … sexy … jazzy. Enthralling everyone.

Maybe they’d go for a walk in the moonlight after the gig. Stop for supper. He’d want to drive her home, but she’d demur. She lived over the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Mosman, it was too far, a cab would be fine, but maybe next time …?

Or maybe he’d invite her to his place for coffee or a nightcap. Maybe a kiss goodnight would turn into something more. Maybe they’d end up in bed! Just because she’d never gone that far on a first date before didn’t mean she couldn’t. It wasn’t as though holding out until date four or five had ever got her anywhere other than Dumpsville.

In fact, the more she thought about it, the smarter it seemed to find out sooner rather than later if there was sufficient sexual compatibility to sustain a relationship—or, conversely, if a guy was the type to lose interest in you the minute he got you between the sheets. In both scenarios, you could cut your losses and move on all the faster, instead of wasting six days the way she had with Liam.

Maybe she’d get David’s perspective on that next week. Which of course wouldn’t help her on Saturday night with Craig. Unless she could somehow check with David tonight …? She turned in David’s direction, only to see him heading towards the exit.

How could he be leaving?

‘Sarah?’

Sarah jumped, hastily refocusing her attention where it was supposed to be. ‘Sorry, Craig, I was hoping to have a quick word with David.’ She gestured to the exit. ‘But I see he’s heading out.’

Craig glanced over to where David had been stopped on the threshold by Anthea and chuckled. ‘Yeah, looks like he has another engagement.’

Sarah forced out an answering chuckle, but as David finally left the building with Anthea, and Craig grabbed her a fresh champagne from a passing waiter, she decided that without David present to give her the benefit of his tutelage there was no point in sticking around.

For the sake of appearances, she waited until she’d drunk half her champagne before making her excuses, by which time she’d skilfully drawn in three other people to ensure Craig wouldn’t feel abandoned.

She felt vaguely dissatisfied as she hailed a taxi, which didn’t make sense, given everything had gone according to plan. Nevertheless, the dissatisfaction persisted all the way home.

Ordinarily, Sarah would have stopped in at her mother’s for a Frangelico, divulged her latest plan, and asked for an opinion on whether she’d done the right thing—but yesterday, her mother had left for her Mediterranean cruise with Massimo (who seemed set to become her fifth husband), so Sarah was going to be on her own for the next few months.

Not that a four-time divorcee was really a trustworthy love guru. Nor was her mother likely to be objective. Sarah could go on a chainsaw massacre through the city streets and her mother would find a way to make it praiseworthy. Talk about permissive parenting! Adam was always warning Sarah that their mother was her enabler, but Sarah had no complaints.

Well, maybe one complaint, given it had been her mother who’d suggested Adam take on the job with Lane. Not that anyone could have predicted how that would unfold! Adam had been sent to talk Lane out of her insane plan to hire a tutor to teach her to seduce the super-experienced David Bennett; instead Adam had signed up for the job and had been teaching Lane things Sarah didn’t want to know about for the past seven weeks. The mind positively rebelled! Everything had since gone so haywire, nobody knew what was going on! Even Lane and Adam seemed to be playing a clueless game of who liked whom.

Sarah had been petrified Lane would fall in love with her commitment-phobic brother, but according to Lane’s super-intuitive housemate Erica, Adam was the one doing the falling—which made Lane’s very deliberate introduction of David Bennett tonight cause for grave concern. Was David Bennett in Lane’s past or her future or nowhere? David said past, but who knew what Lane wanted?

How was a sister supposed to help her brother under such circumstances? Not, it seemed certain, by getting in the middle of it and posing for his enemy, however innocent the intention. Maybe that was why Sarah really wanted her mother just then—to give her the tick of approval she knew deep down she didn’t deserve.

Or maybe she was more like her mother than she thought. So desperate to find ‘the one’ she’d try anything—even though in her mother’s case ‘the one’ never seemed to end up being ‘the one’ and people like Bertie, husband number four who was just thebest, got thrown on the scrap heap for nothing.

Well, at least Sarah could be certain David’s advice would be less ‘enabling’ and thus more effective than any she’d get from Elvira Quinn-Smyth-Jacobs-Grahame! Which still didn’t assuage her conscience but at least meant she wouldn’t be throwing Lane and Adam on the pyre to no purpose.

She headed up the side path to her granny flat, hoping her precious home would soothe her spirits the way it usually did. Her flat was something of a showpiece. Her father was the award-winning architect Xavier Quinn, and because he always spoiled her rotten, he’d designed it to within an inch of its life.

Not to be outdone, her mother—who was a top-notch interior designer—had thrown herself into decorating the space with her usual vivid passion. It might be tiny, but it was exquisite. Kitchen, dining and living areas merging seamlessly. Pale wood finishes. Violet sofa. Crimson coffee table. Hot pink cabinet holding her slightly battered Agatha Christie novels. A wall of shelves displaying her lovingly collected snow domes.

The bedroom was no more than an alcove, painted chartreuse, separated from the rest of the space by a blind in a glorious shade of magenta. French doors opened from the living room and her bedroom onto a superb garden, designed by Adam himself even though he had a team of landscapers at his firm (because her brother was every bit as indulgent as their parents) to provide maximum privacy from whatever shenanigans were going on up at the main house.

The whole of it was like one of her snow domes. An intensely private, tiny world where everything was perfect. Coloured the way she wanted, styled the way she liked, cut off from the wider world, protected, controlled. Not many men cared to make the trek to her place. Many men avoided it out of a misplaced fear they’d be under scrutiny, so close to her mother’s house. But that was the way she liked it—a world where she was in charge of picking and choosing who came and went.

So why, tonight, as she entered and looked around, did she feel out of step with it? Why was she walking around picking up objects then putting them back while trying to imagine what David’s place looked like?

Something about David suggested he’d been born fully matured, occupying his own loft apartment. It would be sophisticated, sleek, stylish, minimalist. Pale, cool, neutral colours. Funky metal accents. An easel positioned in a well-lit corner …

Hmm. From that perspective, he was going to hate her place. He was going to think it was nothing but an overblown, over-coloured, schoolgirl’s cubby house. And she wasn’t even going to be allowed to stalk off in a snit when he told her his opinion.

She realized with a start that she’d picked up her mother’s favourite snow dome—of Rome’s Trevi Fountain—and was giving it a too-frenzied shake. Ha! As though shaking the snow around ever did anything to change the world inside! However manic the shake, the snow still settled to reveal the same idyll. Was that a reflection of her life? Did she need shaking up? Were her insides static? Or maybe there was something significant about the fact that she’d chosen the Trevi Fountain for this abuse? Some deep-seated aversion to her mother’s latest beau, perhaps?

O-kay—that was all a bit deep and disturbing. Which is what happened when she was left to her own devices, without her mother or Lane or Erica to bounce things off. And since her mother was on the other side of the world and there was no way could she talk to Erica or Lane just at the moment without revealing her David Bennett perfidy, it was time to pack away the second-guessing for the night.

She was going to soak her dissatisfaction away in her cedar hot tub, purpose built for her minuscule bathroom (and who cared that David Bennett wouldn’t fit in it without having to break two leg bones?) and then go to bed and forget about David until next Wednesday.

Unfortunately, as she started to drift off to sleep, an image of David, arms circling her in the storeroom, slid into her brain like a serpent that had been biding its time to strike.

She sat up, snapping on the bedside light, hoping the sudden brightness would dispel it, but the picture seemed entrenched. She supposed the miracle would have been if she hadn’t thought of that particular moment once she was in bed. His erection wasn’t exactly a forgettable entity—not at that size!