A Night with the Society Playboy

He called upon his well-tuned affluence radar to decide which unsuspecting guest would be signing on the dotted line as a client by the end of the night.

The groom’s divorced, but friendly, parents sat in the front row weeping all over one another. If they didn’t end up renewing their vows by the end of the month he’d eat his shoes. But they were already Damien’s clients so they didn’t count.

His own parents, the estimable Gilchrists, a couple who had taken the ‘till death’ part of their own wedding vows so seriously he wouldn’t be surprised if they one day throttled one another, had naturally wangled the next best seat in the house: row two, on the aisle. They were no doubt the filthy-richest pair in the room, but they had never forgotten the year he’d lost all his pocket money running a secret Spring Racing betting ring while in middle school and thus wouldn’t part with a cent of their precious dough. Talk about the ungettable get.

Damien’s Aunt Gladys gave him a little finger wave from the fifth row. Caleb winked back and she all but fainted on the spot. He knew without a doubt she would have given him a perfume-scented cheque within five minutes of him courting her. But where was the thrill in that?

Masses of other faces he’d never seen and never particularly wanted to again soon passed him by in a Technicolor blur.

Until his brain slowly caught up with his eyes and he realised halfway down on the left side he’d passed over a swathe of long brunette waves, the immobilising combo of soft blue eyes fringed by impossibly long dark lashes, and the kind of soft, sweet, wide, pink mouth any sane man would kill for. Would die for.

Ava…

Her name launched itself smack bang in the centre of his unsuspecting consciousness from somewhere deep inside like a guided missile gone astray.

His eyes retraced their journey over the colourful crowd, sweeping across row after row, even though he knew it couldn’t have been her.

Well, logically it could. She was Damien’s sister. But the groom had never once mentioned his sister was coming home from Boston for the wedding and for the first time in nearly a decade. If he had it was not the kind of crumb of information that would slip Caleb’s mind.

But he saw nothing but a sea of unfamiliar faces, none of which made his stomach clench as hers did. Or more precisely as hers had. Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away…

The last time he’d laid eyes on her he’d been a twenty- two-year-old business school graduate who’d been perfectly happy to bank on his family name to get where he was going. While she’d been a nineteen-year-old humanities wunderkind prepared to go to the far end of the earth to find a place where nobody knew her family name.

They’d been friends since high school, combatants just as long, and lovers for just one night, the day before she’d left to take up a scholarship at Harvard, the first of several top- class schools she’d flitted between since, and never looked back.

Never written a postcard, nor a letter, nor an email. No carrier pigeons had been employed by her, nor telephones rung on his behalf.

He frowned and curled his toes into his new black leather shoes until they hurt. He’d searched every pew and couldn’t find the brunette waves, the smoky blue eyes, or the wide pink mouth. He must have imagined her after all. Great hulking fool he had always been when Ava Halliburton had been the subject of discussion…

‘Caleb?’

Caleb looked at the groom blankly as a ripple of laughter washed over the crowd.

‘You’re on, buddy,’ Damien said.

‘On what exactly?’

‘The ring?’ Damien said, loaded smile playing about his mouth telling Caleb it wasn’t the first time he’d been called.

‘Right,’ Caleb said. ‘Apologies. I was a million miles away.’

And a million years ago.

‘Not the kind of thing I want to hear right now.’ Damien’s smile didn’t slip a millimetre but Caleb had known the guy long enough to know his patience was thinning.

Caleb slid a finger into a tiny side pocket of his waistcoat and pulled out a skinny white gold band encrusted with diamonds. He summarily dropped it into Damien’s upturned palm lest it rub some of its unwelcome romance upon him.

From there the wedding zoomed to a brisk conclusion.

The kiss was the best part. Damien grabbed Chelsea around the waist, dipped her halfway to the floor and planted one on her that had the two-hundred-strong crowd whooping it up in the aisles.

That’s my boy, Caleb thought, glad his friend wasn’t becoming a complete sap now that he was locked down.

Caleb followed the couple down the aisle, arm in arm with Chelsea’s sister, who he could see out of the corner of his eye was grinning at him. He feigned boredom as he stared blankly towards the bright light of a video camera at the end of the aisle.

‘I was afraid you might be about to faint on us there for a moment,’ Kensey said.

He let his mouth kick into half-smile. ‘Me? Faint? Simply not in me, honey.’

‘So you’re a fan of big white weddings, then?’

‘Nowhere I’d rather be on a Saturday night.’

‘Really? Must have been the way the light was hitting your cheeks that made you look like someone had walked over your grave.’

‘Must have been,’ Caleb said.

Though he couldn’t help but look to the left in search of a pair of pretty sky-blue eyes and long dark hair.

Damn fool.

After a good long hour of photographs taken around the iconic Brighton beach huts, Caleb finally stepped out of his limo in front of the Halliburtons’ house at the upper end of Stonnington Drive.

He stretched his arms overhead, let out an accompanying groan, and once the other groomsmen, Chelsea’s brother-in-law and one of Damien’s cousins, had moved on through into the house, he let his gaze swing straight to the second-floor window, third from the right.

Ava’s bedroom window.

Between two beats of his heart he went from thirty-two year- old man of enviable experience to twenty again, riddled with wild hormones and unable to help watching the sway of cream curtains flapping gently at the window, wondering if Ava was up there sleeping, studying, getting dressed, getting undressed…

Today the window was closed. No lights were on. His mind eased.

His hormones were another matter.

He jogged around the side of the massive house, hoping the exercise might relieve some of the tension he’d carried with him from the church.

The Halliburtons’ manicured back lawn had been overtaken by two massive white brightly lit marquees. They draped languidly across the yard like decadent Bedouin tents. A ten-metre gap between them left a makeshift cork dance floor open beneath the stars. Fat pale purple bows were wrapped around the two-hundred-odd antique bronze chairs and the round tables were heavy with white roses, crystal glasses and gleaming silver cutlery.

He reminded himself not to stand directly below any of the dozen chandeliers. He was no engineer but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how the outrageous things wouldn’t bring the whole deal crashing down upon their heads.

He took a deep breath, tucked his hands into his tuxedo trouser pockets and sauntered inside, familiarising himself with all exits, making instant friends with a passing waiter so he’d get first look in at the hors d’oeuvres, before making a beeline for the nearest bar.

He ordered something heavy and straight up. The burning liquid had barely touched his lips when an all too familiar female voice from behind him said, ‘Caleb Gilchrist, as I live and breathe.’

His glass clinked against his teeth as he swallowed more than was entirely sensible on an empty stomach.

‘Well, if it isn’t little Ava Halliburton. In the flesh,’ he said as he turned, a nonchalant smile already planted steadfastly upon his face.

And, oh, what a choice of flesh.