Her Favorite Rival by Sarah Mayberry Page A

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