With This Fling... (7 page)

His mother remained aloof, never mind Charlotte’s many attempts to initiate conversation and find common ground.

Chillingly, publicly unimpressed.

The meal came and went and the hours ground by. People began to make noises about leaving. Charlotte asked if there was anything she could do when it came to the clearing of tables or general tidying up. Grey frowned as Sarah immediately stepped in and began clearing and Olivia waved Charlotte away, telling her to sit and relax and continue telling tales.

Telling tales.

As if nothing she’d said so far could be trusted.

Charlotte smiled politely. She didn’t so much as flinch as she settled back into playing the role of carefree companion and confident lover, and doing herself a disservice in the process, for there was more to her than that. Far more depth than he’d ever suspected.

Maybe it was time to leave.

Grey eased Charlotte away from the other guests until they reached the deck railing. He pointed out the various landmarks and she leaned her shoulder against his and showed every indication of hanging on his every word. He hadn’t touched her since their earlier kiss. He hadn’t been game. Now he turned his back on the view and spread his arms along the railing. Not quite an embrace, but an invitation for Charlotte to take what she would from him. Shelter, if she wanted it. Protection if she felt
the need. Or anything else she might want to avail herself of.

Charlotte traced her fingers along the inside of his arm, up to his elbow and back, and when she reached his hand she covered it with her own, so soft and slim against the rough squareness of his. He liked the contrast. He liked a lot of things about this woman.

‘Ready to go?’ he murmured.

Relief crossed her face and was gone in an instant but this time he saw it. Charlotte Greenstone was more than ready to leave the family embrace and probably had been for hours.

‘Yes.’

‘C’mere,’ he murmured and drew her towards him, touching his lips to her hair as she nestled against him as if she’d been there a thousand times and would be there a thousand more before they were through. ‘You should have said.’

‘It’s your show.’

Yes, but it was
her
identity that was taking the battering.

They made their farewells after that. Sarah receiving Grey’s guarded goodbye with a tight-lipped smile and eyes that wished him to hell. He hadn’t encouraged Sarah’s attentions over the course of the afternoon. Sarah hadn’t given
chase, hadn’t made a scene, hadn’t singled out Charlotte again. Sarah waited, that was all, and Grey wished to hell she wouldn’t.

‘Where to next with your work?’ asked his father as he and Olivia saw them to the door.

‘Could be Borneo,’ said Grey. ‘Could stay here a while. Plans are pretty fluid at the moment.’ He slid Charlotte a quick glance. Charlotte picked it up and responded with a smile.

‘Borneo’s lovely,’ she enthused, playing the Boheme and playing it well. ‘Wonderful place to visit and to work. My godmother and I spent half a year there once, when I was a child. Think of the history.’

‘Think of the malaria,’ said Olivia dryly. ‘What were you and your godmother doing there?’

‘Just looking,’ said Charlotte. ‘We did that a lot. Thank you for having me to lunch.’ She didn’t say she enjoyed it. Olivia didn’t say, ‘Do come again.’

Women.

Grey wasn’t used to a pensive Charlotte Greenstone. A woman who wore her beauty effortlessly, almost unconsciously, but who’d grown quieter and more reflective with every passing kilometre. As if lunch with his parents
and Sarah and all the rest had drained her dry.

‘I’m sorry about my mother,’ he said, after another fifteen kilometres of silence.

‘Mothers are protective of their young,’ she said quietly. ‘You don’t have to be a biology major to get that. Anyway, it’s not as if I’ll be seeing her again.’ Charlotte closed her eyes as if to shut out reality. ‘May I offer up a little bit of advice?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘When you
do
find a woman who interests you, introduce her to your family gradually. Try one limb at a time; or one family member at a time. Don’t involve Sarah, not at the start. It does no one any favours.’

‘Noted,’ he murmured. ‘And thank you.’ He’d do well to keep his eyes on the road and off his companion. His wildly beautiful companion with hidden depths. ‘Are you hungry? We could stop somewhere on the way home. I did promise you dinner.’

‘I can’t eat any more today,’ she said. ‘Your mother sets a fine table.’

‘You have to eat something later on.’

‘I might have a cognac nightcap.’

‘That’s not food.’

‘Want to bet?’

They drove in silence after that, apart from
a murmured comment here and there. When they got to the outskirts of Sydney, Charlotte surprised him yet again by requesting that he drop her at an inner city Rocks address rather than the one he’d picked her up from.

She directed him into a steeply descending driveway, dug a set of keys from her handbag, and pressed a remote switch attached to the key ring. The eight-foot wrought-iron driveway gates began to ease open. A heavy-duty garage Roll-A-Door began to open further down the drive. ‘Who lives here?’

‘Me,’ she said as Grey drove down into a spacious underground car park with room for a dozen or so vehicles. ‘The house at Double Bay belongs to Aurora. At least, it did. Now it’s mine, only I couldn’t face going there tonight. She’d have been disappointed in me today, I think. In the hurt I caused, no matter how much better off Sarah’s going to be without you. Too many lies. Far too many lies of late, and they just keep getting bigger. You can park there.’

He did as suggested, brooding over her remarks as he strode around the car to open the door for her.

She smiled, briefly, as she got out of the car and he closed the door behind her, but there was no leaning into him as there had been for his parents’ benefit. No playing of power games.

‘I’m sorry about today,’ he said gruffly. ‘I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.’

‘You didn’t. We had a deal. A good deal—one I entered into willingly.’ She offered up a small smile. ‘Don’t mind me if I seem a bit morose. It’ll pass.’

He hoped so.

‘Would you care to come up for a coffee?’ she said next. ‘I’ve no agenda, no ulterior motive other than I don’t think much of my own company these days and I do my best to avoid it. You could tell me about your research. About what you hope to find in Borneo.’

Grey hesitated.

‘Never mind,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s not mandatory. We’re square now. And you probably have other places to be.’

Somewhere between this morning and now, Charlotte’s confidence had taken a hammering and self-derision had found purchase. His doing, not hers, and he cursed himself for not seeing, not giving any thought whatsoever to Charlotte’s feelings about the role he’d asked her to play and the hits she would take on his behalf.

‘You should know that a research scientist never misses an opportunity to expound on his work,’ he offered gravely. ‘You don’t even have to be an appreciative audience. You just
have to be awake. And, yes, I’ll join you for coffee.’

They stepped into a lift and went up a few floors and came out onto a landing with only two doors leading from it, one of which was labelled ‘Fire Escape.’

Charlotte’s penthouse apartment boasted a million-dollar close-up view of Sydney Harbour Bridge, framed by enormous, double—or triple—glazed tinted windows. White was the predominant colour in the apartment; white walls and ceilings, white marble floors, white kitchen fixtures and benches and a snow-white leather lounge. And then, as if someone had taken exception to the designer palate and vowed to melt it down, an eclectic array of paintings, sculptures, books, tapestries and floor rugs in every imaginable colour and from every imaginable historical period had been added to the mix.

He stopped in front of a painting formed entirely of various coloured oil paints dripped onto a canvas in no particular order.

‘Do you like it?’ she said.

‘What is it?’

‘Abstract art. Jackson Pollock’s finest. It’s whatever you want it to be.’

‘Handy,’ he murmured. ‘You
own
this?’

Charlotte nodded. ‘It was my grandmother’s.
Lots of rumours about how she came to own it. My favourite one is that she and Pollock were friends and that she won it from him in a card game. Rumour has it they were initially playing with coins from the Roman Empire. As the stakes got higher, the currency of the realm went twentieth century.’

‘What exactly does a person throw in the pot to match a Jackson Pollock painting?’ he asked.

‘Could have been the Dali,’ she said.

Of course. The Dali. ‘Family wealth, you said. Just how much family wealth is there?’

‘Plenty,’ she said dryly. ‘My great grandfather was in shipping. My grandmother added luxury liners to the mix and then divested herself of the lot when she hit her fifties. Said it had sapped the life out of her. She turned philanthropist, gave a lot of her possessions away, but she still left my mother extremely well provided for. She urged my mother to follow her heart. My mother took her advice, chose my father and archaeology, and by all accounts was ecstatically happy with both. My parents died in a light aircraft crash in Peru when I was five.’

‘Long time ago,’ he murmured.

‘So it was. I usually went everywhere with them but that day they decided to leave me at the hotel with Aurora.’

‘This is the Aurora who died recently? Your godmother? The one you invented a fiancé for?’

Charlotte nodded. ‘Aurora was an archaeologist like my parents. Fortunately for me, they’d also named her as my guardian in their wills. From then on, I went where Aurora went and that was everywhere. You take milk in your coffee?’

‘No, thanks,’ he said. ‘How long have you worked at Sydney Uni?’

‘Five years.’

‘And this associate professorship, it allows for the kind of travel you’re used to?’

‘No, it’s a desk job.’

‘And you’re not fed up with that?’

‘Not yet.’ She set spoons and a bowl of sugar on the counter. A pewter sugar bowl with dragonfly handles. ‘I like the stability. I like the people I work closely with. I even like the routine, and I can usually tolerate the politics. And what with communications these days, field teams can get photos and data to me and I can make comment within minutes if required.’

‘You wouldn’t rather
be
there?’

‘I’ve been there,’ she murmured. ‘I travelled that road for twenty-three years. When Aurora retired, I lost enthusiasm for it. It just wasn’t the same without her and I didn’t want to continue
on alone. I hate being alone.’ Charlotte absent-mindedly brushed dark curls from her face. ‘I can play your free-spirited bohemian friend to perfection, Greyson. I have many role models I can look to for inspiration. Heaven knows, my boss would be ecstatic if I went back out into the field for a while. Problem is, I’m very fond of my settled existence. Of being among familiar faces. I think that in the absence of family I look to the community for a sense of belonging. Of place. I need to feel connected to something, whereas you … you need to be free. It’s why we’d never gel in real life. It’s why, deep down inside, I’m no better suited to you than Sarah is.’

‘Thanks for the warning.’

‘My pleasure,’ she said gravely. ‘Doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy your company. Doesn’t mean that when it comes to a short-term liaison I couldn’t be tempted to take my fill of you. You
are
a spectacularly beautiful specimen and you have some very fine qualities.’

Charlotte murmured something else but Grey’s brain had ceased functioning the moment she’d mentioned the words
short-term liaison
and
tempted.

He tracked Charlotte’s every move as she set the coffee machine to working. Moments later a steaming cup of fragrant coffee-beaned
joy sat on the gleaming granite-topped kitchen counter in front of him. Too hot for drinking, so he added sugar and stirred and Charlotte did the same to hers. The porcelain teaspoons had porcelain ladybirds on them.

‘So, Borneo next,’ she said eventually.

‘Maybe. There’s write-up work to do on the PNG project first. Reports. Papers. Probably some presentation work.’

‘Ah, yes. The Glory,’ she murmured. ‘A scientist’s pleasure.’

There were other types of pleasure.

‘About your thoughts on short-term liaisons,’ he muttered, and suffered her knowing gaze and her delicately raised eyebrow with dogged determination. ‘What are they?’

‘Would you like an in-depth analysis or just the summary?’ she enquired sweetly.

‘Just the summary.’

‘Okay. Assuming that both participants are free from all other romantic entanglements, I’m reasonably in favour of flings as a legitimate means of providing temporary companionship and sexual satisfaction.’

‘That’s a very bohemian outlook for a woman who eschews a carefree life.’

‘If you say so. Of course, even a temporary partner has to fit certain criteria. A different
set of criteria from that expected of a life partner.’

‘Of course,’ murmured Grey. ‘Do you have a list?’

‘Of course.’ She didn’t elaborate, just smiled. Charlotte Greenstone knew how to make a man work for what he wanted.

‘Let me guess,’ he murmured as he set his coffee aside and leaned over the counter towards her, his mouth mere inches from her own. ‘You need to be attracted to him.’

‘Well, naturally.’

‘He needs to satisfy you sexually.’

‘Goes without saying.’ Her gaze had settled on his lips. ‘I’m thinking we’d be good to go in that respect.’

‘Does he need to be wealthier than you?’

‘No, but he does need to feel secure enough in his circumstances for my wealth not to intimidate him. I don’t need to dine at the most expensive restaurant in the city. I don’t need to be lavished with expensive gifts. What I do expect, when a temporary liaison invites me out to dinner or drinks or a show, is that he pays for it. When I do the inviting, payment will naturally fall to me.’

‘Sounds very fair-minded for a woman who insists on having her car door opened for her.’