A Night with the Society Playboy

Spin it however she pleased, after her fancy-schmancy degree was finished little Ava Halliburton would be wanted by any American company that bought and sold goods and had a clue. Clever girl.

‘So that answers my next question. You are still teacher’s pet.’

Some unnamed emotion flashed across her eyes like quicksilver, but she lifted her chin and it was gone. ‘If your memory stretches back far enough I’m sure you’ll remember I was never the teacher’s pet. I ask far too many obnoxious questions, which I’ve since discovered nobody really likes.’

Caleb laughed through his nose. And at the same time he felt muscles stretching that hadn’t been used in years. Jousting muscles.

For a guy who had things come all too easily to him all his life, Ava Halliburton had always been hard work. She’d never backed down from an argument. Never given an inch when she could take a mile. She was a challenge. And there was nothing Caleb liked sinking his teeth into more.

Down, boy.

‘Have you seen your parents yet?’ he asked.

She glanced down at her drink. ‘I’ve so far managed to avoid that little reunion.’

He didn’t half blame her. Since her parents’ divorce she and her father had barely spoken, and her mother, though a delight to sit next to at a dinner party, was a Stonnington Drive cliché: ten per cent plastic, ninety per cent self- absorbed, and the last kind of creature who should ever have been allowed to be in charge of nurturing another living soul.

‘And how are yours?’ she asked. ‘Merv and Marion still as surly as ever?’

‘My mother has taken up pole-dancing.’

Ava’s jaw dropped while her bright eyes danced. ‘She has not!’

‘That she has. Her doctor suggested it would be good for her blood pressure. As to my dad’s blood pressure? I’d put money on the fact she gave that little to no thought whatsoever.’

Ava ducked her chin and smiled into her drink. When she looked back at him her head was cocked, that wide warm smile of hers was out in force, and Caleb felt the years just slip away.

‘Are you staying here?’ he asked, when the real question he wanted answered was would she be staying long.

‘Hotel,’ she said, shaking her head, thick dark hair cascading over her shoulders.

Caleb shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets to stop from reaching out and brushing her hair back so that he could better see her face. She did always have such a charming face.

She glanced up towards the big house perched magnificently atop the great lawn. ‘You know this is the first time I’ve set foot in this place in near on ten years.’

Nine years and four months. Caleb gritted his teeth until his jaw hurt, hating the fact that he knew that.

He’d lived more, bigger, harder, better in those nine years and four months than most men lived in a lifetime, yet the fact that Ava had not seen a day of it still left an indent somewhere deep beneath his ribs.

Out of the corner of his eye Caleb saw Damien waving frantically at him from the other side of the marquee. He was miming taking a photograph.

‘Then I reckon you have a lot of catching up to do with a lot of people,’ he said. ‘I should stop monopolising your time.’

He squared his shoulders and took a step backwards, disentangling himself from the heady mix of cloying memories and Ava’s faint but memorable scent. ‘And it seems my best- man duties have barely begun. Are you sticking around?’

‘Until the death,’ she said, raising her glass to him.

‘Fine. If I don’t see you again before you go, it’s been swell.’

‘The swellest.’ She smiled serenely, not giving away any kind of clue as to whether ‘until the death’ meant she was flying out at midnight or if she was back to stay.

Caleb shook his head to stop the ridiculous guessing games. It mattered to him not a lick either way.

He’d seen her. He’d talked. He’d been within touching distance. And he’d survived. He’d more than survived. He’d remained blissfully untouched.

Well, as untouched as a man in the company of a beautiful woman could ever hope to be.

He leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek. She lifted her face to him, a small smile lighting her features.

In the moment before his lips touched her cheek he felt as if he’d been smacked across the back of the head with a mallet as the close up image of long dark eyelashes fluttering against warm golden skin covered in the palest smattering of tiny freckles stamped itself upon his consciousness…

Waxing his boat late one evening. A sound. The scrape of a shoe on concrete. Turning. Ava, a shadow in the doorway. Tears glistening on those same cheeks.

And then the kiss. Their first kiss. Their first everything.

Her slim pale arms in the air, so trusting, as he slid her Greenpeace-emblazoned T-shirt over her head. The depth of feeling in her large eyes as she unclasped her bra. All that beautiful pale skin revealed just for him. Only for him.

Ava…

Once again her name shot through him, though this time it came to him like the first summer breeze: surreptitious, lingering, and a herald of delights yet to come.

He closed his eyes, rested his lips upon her cheek for the barest amount of time and did his best not to breathe through his nose. But the second it occurred to him he couldn’t help himself.

With his first breath she smelled faintly of soap, of powdered make-up and of orange blossoms.

With his second he got schoolroom chalk, old library books, and the fresh-cut grass at that spot by the Yarra where they’d gone every day one summer holiday to play backyard cricket.

And finally, most strongly, miles of freshly vacuumed carpet beneath his feet as he’d stood in Melbourne Airport’s International Terminal, completely stunned to realise that she was really leaving him behind and leaving his broken heart trampled beneath her feet.

He pulled away and the delicious scent of powder and orange blossoms returned, leaving him wanting more.

And for a man who wanted for nothing, that was something. His was a life of wealth and success, of fast cars and fast women. Of the best of everything money could pay for. It was a life lived loud and hard, no apologies to anyone.

He should have thanked her. His drive, his detachment, his determination to win at all costs had sprung from the ashes of that long-ago day.

Ava Halliburton had made a man of him.

Yet as Caleb turned his back on her he hoped she had an airline ticket burning a hole in her purse.

Ava stood alone in the middle of the big white puffy wedding marquee, her heart pounding so loudly in her ears she was surprised she’d heard a word Caleb had said.

Coming home had been nerve-racking enough knowing she was set to confront those in her immediate family whom she hadn’t spoken to in a long time. So she’d deliberately put Caleb to the back of her mind.

Caleb Gilchrist. The boy she’d hero-worshipped since she was fourteen. The boy who’d always pulled her plaits, had coined the nickname Avocado, which had stuck all through high school. Her brother’s best friend. The devil on her shoulder. The thorn in her side.

Her first.

It was a good thirty seconds before she realised she was still watching him walk away.