Her Favorite Rival Read online

  “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?”

  Audrey gave her a gentle punch on the arm. “Even though it’s a feat on a par with landing a man on the moon, I will. Because it’s you, and because I’m that kind of girl.”

  By the time she’d returned and helped Megan repair her makeup and talked some more about her friend’s recalcitrant ovaries and uncooperative uterus, the window for sandwich-grabbing had well and truly closed. Audrey was due in her office for a phone hookup with some interstate colleagues. Not that she minded, at all. Megan had saved her sanity more times than she could count, and Audrey would have been happy to hold her friend’s hand all afternoon.

  Still, by two-thirty hunger was gnawing a hole in her belly, and she hobbled to the staff room to collect the tub of emergency yogurt she had stashed in the fridge. She did a little air punch when she saw that a generous colleague had left a bunch of bananas on the table with a note taped to them: Help yourself. Banana and yogurt—practically a three-course meal.

  She took a seat before pulling the largest and ripest fruit from the bunch and peeling the top off her yogurt. She’d just eased her shoes off and taken a big bite of banana when a tall, gray-haired man in his late fifties appeared in the doorway. She recognized him instantly as Henry Whitman and nearly choked.

  “Excuse me, can you tell me where Gary O’Connor’s office is, please?” The man smiled thinly, his gray eyes flicking over her in efficient assessment before taking a quick inventory of the staff room.

  Audrey swallowed a mortified moan. She’d dragged herself out of bed at the horrific hour of four-thirty so she could be in a position to make a good first impression on this man, and instead she got to meet him with bulging cheeks and an enormous half-peeled banana in her hand.

  She chewed like crazy and tried to force the lump of banana down her suddenly tight throat. The silence seemed to stretch as he waited for her answer, eyebrows slightly raised. She was on the verge of attempting to mime directions to Gary’s office when the banana finally slid down her throat.

  Thank. God.

  Eyes watering, she summoned what she hoped was a gracious, professional smile. “Sorry about that.” Her voice sounded funny. As though she’d choked down a chunk of banana, in fact. “Gary’s office is the first on your left around the corner. The one with the Father Christmas suit hanging from the coatrack.”

  “Father Christmas. Right. Thank you.”

  She started to introduce herself, but he was already turning away. A heartbeat later, he was gone.

  Audrey swore under her breath and groped under the table with her feet, searching for her shoes. Had he noticed that her feet were bare? God, she hoped not. She so did not want her new boss’s first impression to be of her barefoot and chipmunk-cheeked, holding the world’s most phallic food.

  She was sliding her right foot into its shoe when Zach cruised into the room, coffee mug in hand.

  “Mathews.” He gave her a casual salute.

  She stood. She wasn’t in the mood for his mocking smiles right now. She’d just crashed and burned, big time. Despite her careful plotting and planning, her scary, intimidating new boss now thought she was about as dynamic as a cud-chewing Jersey cow.

  “You know, something’s been bugging me, Mathews.” Zach leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest, his tone serious but his eyes laughing. “We were the only people here this morning—so where exactly were you headed so urgently with all those important papers?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know.” Not the world’s wittiest comeback, but it was the best she could do at short notice.

  “That was the point of me asking, actually.”

  She wasn’t sure what devil prompted her next words. Maybe it was the way Zach was laughing at her, or maybe it was because she was disconcertingly aware of the fact that his crossed-arm posture accentuated the breadth of his shoulders and the muscles in his biceps.

  “So, what do you think of Whitman?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t met him yet.” Zach’s eyes narrowed. “Why, have you?”

  “We had a little chat.”

  Very little, but he didn’t need to know that.

  “Yeah? What about?”

  “This and that. Christmas, that kind of thing.” She waved a hand to suggest a broader conversation.

 
“What was your impression?”

  She thought to the moment when she’d looked into Whitman’s cold, steely eyes.

  “Surprisingly approachable, actually.”

  Zach would find out soon enough that their new CEO was a cyborg, but it wouldn’t hurt to keep him off-balance in the short term.

  “Good to hear,” Zach said. “Makes the range review presentations a little less daunting.”

  She’d been turning to leave, wanting to exit on a high, but his words brought her up short.

  “The range reviews? What’s he got to do with the range reviews?”

  Regularly reviewing and assessing the performance of the products within the various departments under her purview was an integral part of her—and Zach’s—role.

  “He’s sitting in on them. Didn’t you hear?”

  She blinked rapidly, trying to get her head around his announcement. The range reviews were tomorrow. She’d assumed she’d be presenting to the merchandising manager, Gary, as usual, as well as the panel of store owners who sat on the catalog committee. Since Makers was a cooperative, its 645 member stores liked to have a say in what was stocked and how it was promoted, and the representative store owners on the committee spoke on their behalf. They could be a force to be reckoned with at times, but she was used to dealing with them.

  Henry Whitman was a whole other story, though.

  “When did you find this out?” Her voice was high with surprise.

  “Last week sometime.”

  Which meant he’d had days to make his presentation as kick-ass as possible, while she had—she checked her watch—less than twenty-four hours.

  Aware of Zach watching her, she forced herself to shrug as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “Should make it a bit more interesting than usual.”

  “Absolutely.” He grinned, the epitome of cocky arrogance.

  She forced her mouth into what she hoped was an equally confident smile and headed for the door, making an effort not to hobble in her too-tight shoes or show by the flicker of an eyelid that she was battling a panicky wash of adrenaline. Showing any weakness in front of this man was the equivalent of a limping gazelle bathing in gravy and handing out paper plates and serviettes to the waiting lions. She wasn’t about to make it easy for him.

  In her office, she dialed her boss.

  “Gary, what’s this I’m hearing about Henry Whitman sitting in on our range reviews tomorrow?”

  “Oh, yeah. I meant to let you know. He wants to get a feel for our systems, see people in action.”

  “Right.” She bit the single word out. Gary was a good guy, but sometimes he forgot to pass on things and this was a classic example.

  “Relax, Audrey. You’ll do fine.”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  She tossed the phone onto her desk and called up the range review file. She’d opted to rationalize the portable heating range and had arranged her points neatly in a slide show presentation, complete with product specifications, images and pricing. It was fine, perfectly adequate, but there were no bells or whistles or extras. She knew without a doubt that Zach’s would have all of the above, and more.

  “Crap.”

  You can do this. You’ve got all night to make this better. Take a deep breath and think.

  She stared at her computer screen, but instead of neat bullet points, she saw her bank statement. She’d stretched herself so she could buy the small one-bedroom apartment she called home. She had car payments to meet, too. If she failed to impress tomorrow and the Executioner put her head on the chopping block, it wouldn’t take long before her life unraveled at the seams.

  She shook her head in instinctive rejection of the scenario. She had all night. It would be enough.

  She would make it enough, if it killed her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IT WAS NEARLY seven by the time Zach switched off his computer and slid the paperwork he was taking home with him into his briefcase.

  A single light shone on the other side of the department. Audrey’s office. He hesitated, then changed course. He couldn’t help smiling when he stopped in her doorway. The sleek, put-together woman from this morning was long gone. Her hair had been released from the updo and hung to her shoulders in a rumpled mess. Her jacket had been discarded and her sleeves rolled up. Her shoes were abandoned in the corner, lying on their sides. She glanced at him before her gaze returned to the computer.

  “If you’re looking for the quarterly report, I passed it on to Tom already,” she said, referring to a dense, complicated report they circulated among the department to save on paper waste, one of Makers’s feeble attempts at being environmentally aware.

  He knew without asking that she was working on her range review; it was what he’d be doing, too, if he’d just learned that his new boss was going to be breathing down his neck during the presentation.

  “Unclench, Mathews. Your review is probably word perfect, as always. Go home and get some food and sleep.”

  Her gaze lifted to his again, her expression incredulous. “As. If.”

  Which was exactly what he’d say, too, if their positions were reversed.

  “If you’re overtired, you’ll make mistakes.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Humor me and at least stop for dinner, then.”

  She frowned, as well she might. What did he care if she ate or not? She was his rival, not his friend.

  “This may come as a shock to you, but I’ve been looking after myself for a few years now. I think I have the hang of it,” she said.

  Fine. He wasn’t even sure what impulse had driven him to swing by her office, anyway. Whatever it was, it had been a mistake.

  “Suit yourself.” He started to turn away, then hesitated. “If you get to the point where you’re ready to chew your arm off, there’s a stash of protein bars in the bottom left drawer of my desk.”

  She blinked, clearly surprised by his offer. He lifted a hand in farewell and headed for the exit, unsettled by his own altruistic impulse. For a long time now, his energies had been focused on only two things—protecting his mother from herself and establishing himself in his career. Everything else—women, friendships, outside interests—had taken a backseat. It was the reason his last girlfriend, Tina, had walked. She’d said he didn’t care enough, and in the eight months since their breakup he’d come to acknowledge that she’d been right. The bottom line was that there were only so many hours in the day, and he had only so much energy. Which was why he’d been sleeping alone since Tina bailed on him.

  So why was he looking out for Audrey, worrying about whether she was skipping dinner, for God’s sake?

  He threw his briefcase onto the backseat of his Audi sedan and slid behind the wheel, uncomfortably aware that part of his motivation might be that Audrey was about his age, with a damn fine figure and a low, sexy voice that had always intrigued him.

  Yeah. Hard as it was to admit, apparently he wasn’t immune to the urgings of testosterone.

  Well, his gonads were going to have to find someone else to fixate on, because there was no way in hell he was going to so much as look sideways at a work colleague. He’d seen too many people undone by workplace affairs to be stupid enough to go there.

  It took him half an hour to drive across town to his place in Surrey Hills. He’d bought his down-at-the-heel three-bedroom Victorian cottage as an investment and was renovating it in slow stages. Once it was finished he planned to sell it and upgrade. All part of his five-year plan.

  The air still smelled faintly of paint when he let himself in, despite the fact that he’d redecorated the front part of the house more than four months ago. Maybe if he cooked a little more, there would be competing smells to drown out the paint odor. He wasn’t about to start tonight, though.

  There was leftover Chinese in the fridge, and he nuked it before sitting at the kitchen counter and going over the papers he’d brought home.

  Tomorrow was a big day. He had a friend from un
iversity who had worked under Henry Whitman at his previous company, so Zach knew Whitman’s reputation for making lightning assessments. If he screwed up his presentation or failed to impress, things were going to get tense.

  They might get tense, anyway. It all depended on what Whitman’s mandate was from the retailers who’d employed him to lead their company. Build and cultivate, or slash and burn.

  He put his paperwork into his briefcase at nine and grabbed his car keys. What he really wanted was a hot shower and an early night, but ever since he’d spoken to Vera this morning there’d been an alarm sounding in the back of his mind, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep until he’d checked on his mother.

  He drove west until he was wending through the streets of his childhood in the working-class suburb of Footscray. He stopped in front of his mother’s house, but didn’t get out of the car. Now that he was here, he couldn’t bring himself to face her. In all likelihood she would be high, and he wasn’t up to managing her tonight. Familiar guilt tugged at him, but he’d learned long ago that no matter what he did, he would always feel guilty. A tougher lesson had been learning that he was also entitled to a life. Nothing would be gained by his sacrificing everything on the altar of his mother’s addiction.

  The lights were on in the front room, the flicker of the television visible through the thin net curtains. There was no car in the driveway or any other sign of a boyfriend. He sat staring at the lit window, hoping like hell that Vera had it wrong. After ten minutes he started the car and drove off.

  He stripped and stepped beneath a hot shower when he got home. Moments from the day flashed across his mind’s eye as he let the water run over his shoulders and back, but the one that stuck was the picture of Audrey striding so purposefully and self-importantly across the foyer at 6:30 a.m., a stack of papers in hand. The look on her face when she’d realized it was him and not Whitman...