Her Favourite Rival

Maybe he was being paranoid, but he got the distinct impression that he wasn’t Audrey’s favorite person. Which was fine. He’d allocated himself two years at Makers to win a promotion to category manager. He didn’t have time for distractions.

There were ten buyers in the merchandising department, but he’d worked out early on that Audrey was the only competition he needed to worry about. She was one of a handful of female executives, but she never played the gender card to get what she wanted. She was thorough, smart, calm in a crisis and determined. She also had a long history with the company and was well respected. In short, a serious contender for the next category manager opening.

Pity he was going to be the one who got it.

Registering that he was once again thinking about Audrey, he swung away from his computer. Coffee was clearly needed to jump-start his brain. He’d had to forgo his usual morning run to get in early, so caffeine would have to act as a substitute for fresh air and endorphins.

As luck would have it, he had to pass Audrey’s office on the way to the small staff room situated between the marketing and merchandising departments. Her dark head was bent over her desk as she wrote something on a notepad. He wasn’t sure he approved of her new hairstyle. It was too severe for her round face. Made her look like a repressed librarian or school principal.

Still, there was something to be said for repressed librarians. All that pent-up passion...

As if she’d sensed his errant thoughts, Audrey glanced up from her work. She was wearing a pair of dark-framed, rectangular reading glasses, and her gaze met his briefly over the top of the frames, accentuating the schoolmarmish vibe.

She wasn’t schoolmarmish, though. He’d seen her at the office Christmas party, laughing and dancing and enjoying herself. She was fun, when she let her hair down. Fun and more than a little sexy.

Okay, definitely time for coffee.

He made a point of keeping his gaze dead ahead on the return journey and lost himself in his work once he was at his desk. Over the next two hours, the office slowly came to life as the rest of the staff trickled in. He looked up a couple of times as people called out greetings to him, but otherwise he was undisturbed, and he managed to finalize his notes to the supplier.

As nine drew closer, a familiar tension settled into the back of his neck. He waited until nine-thirty before picking up the phone. It was a Monday, after all, and he always checked in with Vera on Mondays.

“Hi, Zach,” she said when she picked up.

“Vera. How are things? Did your daughter have her baby yet?”

“She’s due next week. Although from the size of her I’m beginning to think she’s having twins.” Vera laughed, years of smoking giving the sound a husky roughness.

“This’ll be your third grandchild, right?”

“You’ve got a sharp memory.”

He did. For lots of things, good and bad.

“How’s Mum doing?” he finally asked.

Might as well cut to the chase, since neither Vera nor he was under the illusion that he was calling to talk about the imminent arrival of her grandchild.

“All quiet on the western front at the moment. There might be a new boyfriend on the scene. It’s hard to tell sometimes.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. A new boyfriend. Great. His mother had disastrous taste in men.

“But otherwise everything is good?”

“As far as I can tell.”

“Thanks, Vera. I appreciate it.” Next time he visited his mother, he’d drop by next door, too, and give Vera a box of the Scottish shortbreads she loved and some passes for the movies. She refused to take anything more from him, even though he’d done his best to convince her otherwise over the years.

“You look after yourself, sweetheart,” she said warmly, then he was listening to the dial tone.

He couldn’t stop his mind from racing ahead to what the future would almost inevitably hold if what Vera had said was true. None of it was good. If his mother had a new boyfriend and he ran true to type, there would be hospital visits in the near future. Police visits, too. Then the inevitable binge as his mother drowned her sorrows post-breakup.

Acid burned in his belly. He’d been looking out for his mother one way or another for more than twenty years, and the cycle of ups and downs was always the same. Never-ending. Relentless. And it was always going to be that way, until the day she died.

Suddenly he felt infinitely weary. As though gravity had doubled, dragging him down. He stared at his desk blotter, lost in a world of worry.

The ping of an email arriving cut through his thoughts. His gaze shifted to the screen.

There was work to do—there was always work to do. Reaching for his keyboard, he pushed his troubles aside and concentrated on the matter at hand.

* * *

THE NEW SHOES had been a mistake. By the time midmorning rolled around, Audrey’s feet were throbbing so much she wanted to sob with every step she took. Every time she was safely behind her desk she toed them off, which only made squeezing her now-swollen feet back into the shoes every time she needed to leave her office even more painful.

A lesson learned. Next time she bought new shoes, she would run a marathon in them before she so much as considered wearing them to work.

The “best” thing was that Henry Whitman still hadn’t set foot in the building. The steam off the office street was that Zach’s guess had been right—Henry had taken breakfast meetings with the company’s top five suppliers. Which meant her early start and painful shoes had all been for nothing.

Awesome.

She had a slew of phone calls leading up to lunch and was about to rush out to a sandwich shop to grab a bite when she saw her fellow buyer and friend Megan hustling past her office with her head down. Spider senses tingling, Audrey followed her to the ladies’ room. She entered in time to see her friend’s face crumple with misery. She didn’t hesitate, opening her arms and pulling Megan close for a hug.

“Is this what I think it is?” Audrey asked.

“Yes.”

“Megsy, it’ll happen,” she said quietly. “By hook or by crook, it’ll happen.”

Megan and her husband had been trying to get pregnant for a while now, having suffered a miscarriage early in their relationship.

“I’m so sick of this. Why won’t my body work? What’s wrong with me?” Megan’s voice was thick with tears, her small-featured face flushed.

Audrey pressed a kiss to her temple and squeezed her a little tighter. Megan was going to make a great mum, and Audrey didn’t doubt for a moment that somehow she would get there, whether through the old-fashioned way or IVF or adoption, but it was a long, exhausting row to hoe.

“Hang in there. It’ll happen. And if it doesn’t, you’ll find a way to make it happen.”

“I know. It’s just...hard.” Megan sniffed loudly and Audrey released her, leaning across to pluck a handful of tissues from the box next to the washbasin.

“Thanks.” Megan blew her nose, then took a big, shuddery breath. “Do I look like a panda?”

They both turned to consider her reflection in the mirror—smudged eyes, sad mouth, wavy blonde hair down to her shoulders.

“I’m thinking raccoon. Or Lady Gaga the morning after,” Audrey said.

Megan gave an almost-smile. “I wish.”

“Want me to go get your handbag?”

“Would you?”