Her Favourite Rival

How...bizarre.

It had never occurred to him that anyone might take him for anything other than what he was—a poor kid who’d made good. He liked nice things, but he hadn’t bought his car or his watch or his suit because he wanted other people to look at him and think he was something he wasn’t. He’d bought them because he could. Because he’d admired and wanted them, and he’d had more than enough of missing out in his life. Seeing something beautiful and fine and knowing he could make it his own was a power he would never, ever take for granted and never, ever tire of exercising.

Screw it. Who cares what she thinks? Let her believe what she wants to believe.

An excellent notion, except for one small problem: he did care what Audrey thought of him. And not only because he wanted to get her naked.

She was smart. She was determined. She was funny. There was something about her, a tilt to her chin or a light in her eye or...something that spoke to him. He wanted to know more about her. Where she came from, who her parents were, what her school years had been like, if she was all about chocolate or if vanilla was her poison of choice. He wanted more of her.

I’m the only person in the world I can rely on, and if I don’t make things happen, they don’t happen. I’m not going to apologize for that.

They were her words, but the huge irony was that he could just as well have spoken them himself. Certainly they reflected his philosophy in life.

Audrey might not recognize it, but they had a lot in common.

He mulled over the other things she’d said as he drove home, especially the stuff about him laughing at her. Did he really always smile when he saw her? He thought back over their recent interactions, but couldn’t remember what he’d been doing with his face when he’d been talking to her. Certainly, he always relished the opportunity to be in the same room as her. Was it possible his enjoyment manifested itself in the form of a gormless grin?

He shook his head in self-disgust. He really, truly needed to get a grip on himself if that was the case, for his own personal dignity if not for sound business reasons. The last thing he wanted was to be cast as the unrequited desperado in their little office drama.

Not a look he’d ever been keen to cultivate.

By the time he got home he’d decided the best thing he could do—the smartest thing—was to get through this project as quickly and painlessly as possible. Do his bit, keep to himself, keep things purely professional. And make sure he was aware of what his mouth was doing when he was around her.

Simple.

Which didn’t explain why he woke at two in the morning and spent twenty minutes rummaging through dusty old boxes in the back of his closet until he’d found what he was looking for: the official grade two school photograph from Footscray Primary, circa 1989. The corners were curled, but there was no missing his scrawny, scrape-kneed seven-year-old self in the front row. He stared at the image for a long moment. The thin, unsmiling kid in the photo had been grappling with both his mother’s and his father’s destructive lifestyles at the time the picture was taken, learning that the things other kids in his class took for granted—meals, loving supervision, care—were only ever going to be sporadic features in his own life.

Happy times. Thank God he’d survived them.

Pushing the carton back into the depths of the closet, he crossed to his briefcase and slipped the photograph into a pocket.

The thought of it burned in the back of his mind the whole of the next day as he debated the wisdom behind the urge that had driven him out of bed in the early hours.

He didn’t want Audrey to mistake who he was. He didn’t want her to misunderstand him. Probably a futile, dangerous wish, given their work situation and the pressures they were both currently facing, but her misconception of him was eating away at his gut and he was almost certain he couldn’t simply suck it up and move on.

Probably that made him an idiot, but so be it. He’d been called worse things in his time.

Still, he was undecided about what he was going to do with the photograph right up until the moment he joined Audrey in the meeting room. She’d beaten him to the punch—again—and was writing something in her notebook when he entered, a small frown wrinkling her brow, her glasses balanced on the end of her nose. Her head was propped on one hand, the chestnut silk of her hair spilling over her shoulder. She looked studious and serious and shiny and good, and something tightened in his chest as he looked at her.

Then she registered his presence and her expression became wary and stiff. She slid off her glasses. “Oh, hi. I was about to grab a coffee. Do you want one?”

In that second he made his decision, for good or for ill. Placing his briefcase on the table, he flicked it open and pulled the photograph from the inside pocket.

“Thanks. But there’s something I want to show you first.”

Then, even though he knew it was dumb and that it would serve no purpose whatsoever, he slid the photograph across the table toward her.

* * *

AUDREY STARED AT the photograph Zach had pushed in front of her. Why on earth was he giving her a tatty old class photo?

“Is this something to do with the analysis?” she asked stupidly.

Then her gaze fell on the small, dark-haired boy in the front row and she understood what this was and who she was looking at. Zach was smaller than the other children. He was also the only one who wasn’t smiling. Both his knees were dark with gravel rash, and his hair very badly needed a cut. Her gaze shifted to the plaque one of the children was holding: Footscray Primary School, Grade Two, 1989.

Slowly she lifted her gaze to his.

“You went to Footscray Primary?” She could hear the incredulity in her own voice. She felt incredulous—there was no way that this polished, perfect man could have emerged from one of Melbourne’s most problematic inner-city suburbs. It didn’t seem possible to her. Although Footscray had enjoyed a renaissance in recent years thanks to the real estate boom and its proximity to the city, for many, many years the inner western suburb had been about stolen cars and drug deals and people doing it tough.

“Footscray Secondary College, too,” Zach confirmed.

She blinked as the full import of what he was saying hit home. All the assumptions she’d made about him and all of the niggling little resentments and moments of self-conscious inadequacy that had sprung from those assumptions... All wrong.

All of it.

Oh, boy.

She’d judged him from day one, slotting him neatly into a tidy little box that accorded with her view of the world. All because she’d looked at his expensive suits and smooth good looks and fancy car and decided he was one of God’s gifted people. But it hadn’t only been about him—about her perception of him, anyway. It had also been about her, about the chip she carried on her shoulder because no matter how hard she worked and how far up the food chain she climbed and how carefully she colored in between the lines, there was a part of her that would always feel like an impostor thanks to the lessons of her childhood and the mistakes of her teenage years.

“You know, I think that’s the first time I’ve seen you truly stumped for a response,” Zach said.

“Hardly.” It seemed to her that she was all too often speechless and incoherent when he was around. “I’ve made a lot of assumptions about you, haven’t I? I’m sorry. That was...really dumb and rude of me.”

“I didn’t set the record straight because I wanted an apology. I figured if we were working together it would be good if we were on the same page.”

Very decent of him. Not that she deserved it. When she thought of all the different ways she’d misjudged him... It literally made her toes curl inside her shoes. When had she become such a horrible, narrow-minded, threatened person?

“I feel like an enormous idiot, if it’s any consolation to you.” Along with a lot of other things—petty, smug, stupid, to name a few.

“To be fair, I do own a Patek Philippe watch.”

She realized a little dazedly that he was smiling, and she understood that he was very generously letting her off the hook.

“Don’t forget your Hugo Boss shoes,” she said after a short pause.

“And my Armani suit. Although today it’s Ermenegildo Zegna.”

“Pretty impressive.” She meant it, too. Not because she was impressed by luxury brands, but because he’d clearly shaken off a behind-the-eight-ball start in life to get to a point where he could buy himself such beautiful things. That kind of commitment and hard work and determination took gumption and smarts and whole host of other damned fine characteristics.

“The point has never been to impress anyone.”

She believed him. He’d never been ostentatious about his belongings. If anything, he’d been understated—to the point where she’d assumed his nonchalance stemmed from contempt bred from familiarity.

She picked up the photograph, studying seven-year-old Zach again. How she could have gotten it so wrong for so long was a question that was going to keep her awake into the small hours, squirming with discomfort. Which was as it should be.

“It’s not a big deal, Audrey. I just wanted to clear the air.”

She looked at him, studying him through the prism of her new understanding. The bump in his nose took on new significance, as did the breadth of his shoulders and the bright directness of his gaze. It struck her that she’d been right when she’d judged Zach as being different—she’d simply misunderstood the why of it.