Her Favourite Rival. Sarah Mayberry

ever mentioned Whitman’s freakishly overinflated digits to you before, so I’m not sure what you’ll be posting...oh, wait...

      He laughed out loud again and pulled the laptop a little closer to the edge of the coffee table.

      Your secrets are safe with me, he typed.

      Seriously, though...Those sausage fingers. Megan and I thought we were the only ones who’d noticed.

      Dude, you’d have to be hard of seeing not to notice those puppies.

      I haven’t been called “dude” since the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were big in primary school.

      My pleasure.

      There was a short pause before the next message appeared.

      Hey. I just realized Can’t Stop the Music is on. And they say insomnia is bad.

      ????

      You haven’t seen it? Dude, you are missing out. Let me sketch a few details for you: Steve Guttenberg, roller skates, New York City. And if that doesn’t clinch the deal for you, it was a movie vehicle for the Village People.

      Sold.

      He grabbed the remote, flicked the TV on and changed the channel. Cheesy music blasted into the room, while the screen filled with a cityscape, complete with a man in white jeans roller-skating down the street, Walkman clutched in one hand.

      Wow, he typed.

      I know. I’ll leave you to enjoy in peace. My gift to you, fellow workaholic.

      He stared at the computer screen, only now registering how much he’d been enjoying their exchange. How engaged he’d been, imagining Audrey sitting up in bed tapping away at her laptop, wearing nothing but one of those tight little tank tops and a pair of lacy panties....

      Yeah.

      Maybe it was just as well she’d signed off, before he let lack of sleep and the intimacy of the early hour lead him into dangerous territory.

      Audrey might be sexy and funny and smart, but she was still his coworker. He had no business thinking about her panties. Especially while he and Audrey were coauthoring the competitor analysis together.

      He shut his laptop, in case he was tempted to renew contact, and settled back on the couch to watch what promised to be a spectacularly bad movie.

      He liked the idea that somewhere in Melbourne, Audrey was doing the same thing.

      In a tight little tank top.

      And black—no, red—panties.

      He was only human, after all.

      * * *

      “SO. HOW’S IT GOING?” Megan took a slurp from her milkshake and wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

      “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that when you say ‘it’ you’re referring to my working relationship with Zach,” Audrey said drily.

      It was Thursday, one day before they flew out to Queensland for the conference, and her last day of working hand-in-glove with Zach.

      “Quit stalling. Have you had wild monkey sex yet? Have you seen him without his shirt?”

      Audrey rolled her eyes. “You’re obsessed with sex, you know that?”

      Although it was very telling that the thought of Zach sans shirt made her heart rate go a little crazy.

      “Hello? Trying to get pregnant over here. Sex is my life. Not wild monkey sex, though, sadly. We have slightly dutiful procreational sex. Still fun, but not very spontaneous. I think it’s all the mucous checking.”

      “What on earth—” Audrey caught herself and held up a hand. “Actually, you know what? I don’t want to know.”

      “I’ll spare you. I’d hate for there to be no surprises for you if you ever decide to have children.”

      “Thank you. You’re very generous.”

      “So, I’m thinking eight inches, solid girth...?”

      “Jesus, Megan.” This time Audrey glanced over her shoulder, even though she was pretty sure no one else from work was currently patronizing the food court at the local shopping mall.

      “What?” Megan asked, a devilish glint in her eye.

      “I don’t want to think about Zach’s...girth, okay? We’re working together.”

      Not that she hadn’t given some consideration to the more intimate aspects of his body over the past week, most notably when she’d been drifting back to sleep at four o’clock Sunday morning, picturing Zach doing the same thing on the other side of town. She was only human, and he was the sexiest man she’d ever spent so much time with.

      Hands down.

      All he had to do was walk into the room these days and she could feel her body warming. She didn’t even want to imagine what he could do if he put his mind to it.

      Okay, she did. But she wasn’t going to, because she loved her job, and she wanted to get ahead, and sleeping with Zach was the best way she could think of to destroy both those things.

      She would dearly love to discuss all of the above with Megan, however, because that was what they did best. It would be so good to get her friend’s perspective. But Megan would make a big deal out it, along with encouraging all sorts of reckless fantasies and behavior, and Audrey so did not need that kind of encouragement right now.

      It was bad enough dealing with her own inappropriate thoughts and feelings.

      Megan sighed heavily. “I knew it. You’re wasting this golden opportunity by squabbling with him, aren’t you?”

      “No.”

      Not since the night he’d forced her to see him as he really was. Nope, since then they’d been getting on just fine. Chatting in the staff room. Popping into each other’s offices to pass on new pieces of information they’d dug up. Emailing each other in the dead of night and having inappropriate, unprofessional conversations.

      “Why are you smiling like that?”

      Audrey adopted a more serious expression. “Is that better?”

      “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if you and Zach were doing the dirty?” Megan asked beseechingly.

      Audrey suspected her friend was only half kidding.

      “You’ll be the first to know. Outside of Zach, of course.”

      “Cross your heart and hope to die?”

      “Stick a needle in my eye,” Audrey promised.

      It wasn’t as though it was ever going to be an issue, after all. She might be sexually frustrated, but she wasn’t an idiot.

      “Okay, fine.” Megan pointed to the half a sandwich still left on Audrey’s plate. “Are you going to eat that?”

      “It’s all yours.”

      “Thank you. That sub barely touched the sides. I think I’m having a growth spurt.”

      Audrey managed to change the subject then, but Megan’s words popped into her mind as she hit the mall afterward to shop for a present for her sister.

      The truth was, she was finding it incredibly difficult to believe that she had ever not liked Zach. He was funny. He was cheeky. He said amazingly clever things that made her brain hurt trying to keep up. And he was also one hundred percent male.

      Hot, firm, hard male.

      Yesterday, they’d shared a pizza and worked into the night as they pasted their separate sections of the analysis into one