The Dating Game. Avril Tremayne

around the city, right?’

      ‘The city and then all over the country,’ Craig said, and the conversation was off and running.

      So they had something in common, David thought. Good. Great.

      Although working in the same field could end up being a bit yawn-worthy. Maybe Craig wasn’t the best choice after all. David started looking around the room for alternatives, but was brought up short by the sound of Sarah laughing.

      He tuned into the conversation, discovered Sarah was taking humorous issue with Craig’s bozo-ish interpretation of one of the paintings on display, and found himself gritting his teeth. Craig was an ignoramus; she shouldn’t be indulging him.

      Oh God, he really was acting like Sarah’s father. He needed to start behaving like a normal, mature-but-not-ancient wingman. Who would not be thinking about knocking a guy’s arm accidentally-on-purpose to get it away from a girl’s bare elbow. Who’d be thinking about getting himself laid, now his mission had been accomplished.

      Anthea. He would find smart, sexy Anthea, who was as determinedly no-strings as David was, and had given him all the signals earlier in the night. Anthea, who had a calculator rather than a thesaurus for a brain, and whose vocabulary he knew from past experience he could scramble, until the only word she could find was his name, screamed out at the point of climax.

      Climax, orgasm, ejaculation. Arrrrrghhh.

      ‘I knew you two would have a lot in common,’ David said, and only when Sarah darted a surprised look at him did he realize he’d bowled that out right in the middle of one of Craig’s sentences. ‘I’ll leave you to your PR discussion.’

      He saw Anthea across the room and headed for her, and the promise of sex. Even though the sure knowledge of exactly how it would go with Anthea filled him with … with ennui!

      Enn-bloody-ui.

      ***

      Sarah was very conscious of David across the room, flirting with the buxom bottle-blonde she’d met earlier. Anthea, her name was, and she was waving her sizeable boobs in David’s face so enthusiastically, Sarah suspected he wasn’t going to get his eyes off them long enough to monitor Sarah’s progress with Craig.

      A shame, because she’d landed a date with Craig to hear him sing on Saturday night and she wouldn’t have minded letting David know how quickly she’d managed it. After behaving like a lovelorn desperado in the storeroom, her pride could have used the boost. Which, of course, was counterintuitive! If she wasn’t a lovelorn desperado, she wouldn’t have had to ask David to help her in the first place, would she? And really, it wasn’t as though getting dates had ever been a problem. It was what came afterwards she had trouble with. So—reality check—she didn’t have anything to brag to David about yet.

      She thought ahead to how the date with Craig might unfold. Cool city venue. Starting with champagne, served in those old-fashioned coupe glasses—the ones Naughty Noel had told her were based on the shape of Marie Antoinette’s breasts. (And hooray that someone’s small boobs had been celebrated once upon a time!) Craig making his way to the stage. A quick wave to her from there, making it clear to everyone she was ‘with the band’. Craig moving to the microphone. Then that first sound of his voice—deep … sexy … jazzy. Enthralling everyone.

      Maybe they’d go for a walk in the moonlight after the gig. Stop for supper. He’d want to drive her home, but she’d demur. She lived over the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Mosman, it was too far, a cab would be fine, but maybe next time …?

      Or maybe he’d invite her to his place for coffee or a nightcap. Maybe a kiss goodnight would turn into something more. Maybe they’d end up in bed! Just because she’d never gone that far on a first date before didn’t mean she couldn’t. It wasn’t as though holding out until date four or five had ever got her anywhere other than Dumpsville.

      In fact, the more she thought about it, the smarter it seemed to find out sooner rather than later if there was sufficient sexual compatibility to sustain a relationship—or, conversely, if a guy was the type to lose interest in you the minute he got you between the sheets. In both scenarios, you could cut your losses and move on all the faster, instead of wasting six days the way she had with Liam.

      Maybe she’d get David’s perspective on that next week. Which of course wouldn’t help her on Saturday night with Craig. Unless she could somehow check with David tonight …? She turned in David’s direction, only to see him heading towards the exit.

      How could he be leaving?

      ‘Sarah?’

      Sarah jumped, hastily refocusing her attention where it was supposed to be. ‘Sorry, Craig, I was hoping to have a quick word with David.’ She gestured to the exit. ‘But I see he’s heading out.’

      Craig glanced over to where David had been stopped on the threshold by Anthea and chuckled. ‘Yeah, looks like he has another engagement.’

      Sarah forced out an answering chuckle, but as David finally left the building with Anthea, and Craig grabbed her a fresh champagne from a passing waiter, she decided that without David present to give her the benefit of his tutelage there was no point in sticking around.

      For the sake of appearances, she waited until she’d drunk half her champagne before making her excuses, by which time she’d skilfully drawn in three other people to ensure Craig wouldn’t feel abandoned.

      She felt vaguely dissatisfied as she hailed a taxi, which didn’t make sense, given everything had gone according to plan. Nevertheless, the dissatisfaction persisted all the way home.

      Ordinarily, Sarah would have stopped in at her mother’s for a Frangelico, divulged her latest plan, and asked for an opinion on whether she’d done the right thing—but yesterday, her mother had left for her Mediterranean cruise with Massimo (who seemed set to become her fifth husband), so Sarah was going to be on her own for the next few months.

      Not that a four-time divorcee was really a trustworthy love guru. Nor was her mother likely to be objective. Sarah could go on a chainsaw massacre through the city streets and her mother would find a way to make it praiseworthy. Talk about permissive parenting! Adam was always warning Sarah that their mother was her enabler, but Sarah had no complaints.

      Well, maybe one complaint, given it had been her mother who’d suggested Adam take on the job with Lane. Not that anyone could have predicted how that would unfold! Adam had been sent to talk Lane out of her insane plan to hire a tutor to teach her to seduce the super-experienced David Bennett; instead Adam had signed up for the job and had been teaching Lane things Sarah didn’t want to know about for the past seven weeks. The mind positively rebelled! Everything had since gone so haywire, nobody knew what was going on! Even Lane and Adam seemed to be playing a clueless game of who liked whom.

      Sarah had been petrified Lane would fall in love with her commitment-phobic brother, but according to Lane’s super-intuitive housemate Erica, Adam was the one doing the falling—which made Lane’s very deliberate introduction of David Bennett tonight cause for grave concern. Was David Bennett in Lane’s past or her future or nowhere? David said past, but who knew what Lane wanted?

      How was a sister supposed to help her brother under such circumstances? Not, it seemed certain, by getting in the middle of it and posing for his enemy, however innocent the intention. Maybe that was why Sarah really wanted her mother just then—to give her the tick of approval she knew deep down she didn’t deserve.

      Or maybe she was more like her mother than she thought. So desperate to find ‘the one’ she’d try anything—even though in her mother’s case ‘the one’ never seemed to end up being ‘the one’ and people like Bertie, husband number four who was just the best, got thrown on the scrap heap for nothing.

      Well, at least Sarah could be certain David’s advice would be less ‘enabling’ and thus more effective than any she’d get from Elvira Quinn-Smyth-Jacobs-Grahame! Which still didn’t assuage her conscience