Desk Jockey Jam (10 page)

All eyes went to hands,
the tablecloth and laps.  Beside him Bree tensed.

“Ease up, Ant,” said Mal.

Not a chance.  Yeah, it
stung, but the hurt wasn’t any different than it would’ve been had anyone on
the team beat him, but Mal was implying Bree’s win was a lesser thing because
she was a chick and so Ant’s loss was somehow more shameful.

“Bree creamed me.  Fair
and square.  Can’t say I’m happy about it, but it’s got nothing to do with the
fact she wears a skirt.”

Mal laughed nervously.  “I
wasn’t saying—”

Ant cut him off, “Yeah,
you were.”  He stood to make his point all the more effective “You think it’s a
fluke Bree won.  Like its office politics she’s the senior analyst.  I know
that’s what you’re thinking, because that’s what I thought.  It’s wrong. 
Bree’s the best of us and she’s just proven it again.”

Christine clapped her
hands, bouncing in her seat.  Doug tried to smooth things over by loudly asking
if people wanted dessert.  Ant turned to Bree and shoved his hand out.  She
swivelled in her chair and took it, looking up at him with a frown. 
“Congratulations, Bree.”  He kept her hand and looked across at Doug, said
“Thanks for dinner,” then returned his eyes to Bree, but addressed the table. 
“Enjoy your sugar fix.  I’m taking my sore loser self off to wallow.” 

Laughter broke out, most
of it nervously filling the awkwardness until Doug started a discussion on gelato
flavours and sugar consumption was the new focus.

Bree blinked at him,
looking confused, but all of his confusion had vanished.  Bree was brilliant. 
She worked harder than any of them and she’d outsmarted him.  She deserved to
win and he felt okay, about coming second to her.  He smiled at her and stepped
away, but she held his hand a moment longer than necessary and he turned back
to look at her.

She said, “I’m coming with
you.”

9:        Epiphany

Ant kept hold of her hand
the whole way through the crowded bar and out onto George Street.  Bree
could’ve pulled out of his grip, but she’d started this by leaving her hand in
his when he’d gone to walk away and now instead of being towed behind him like
a useless weight she felt like she was sailing smoothing through the rough sea
of rowdy drinkers.  Ant was acting like the world’s best blocker and pivot
combined.  He kept glancing back to see if she was okay and instead of
resenting his interference, she accepted it for the genuinely chivalrous
gesture it was.  If only he knew how little trouble crowds gave her when there
was a flat track and she was wearing skates not lime green stilettos.

Once they hit the sudden
bright of street lights and the blare of passing traffic Bree let go his hand. 
This was the real world and there was no longer a reason to touch.

Ant stopped and turn back.
 He looked annoyed.  “Why’d you come with me?”

She looked down at his
shoes.  She liked this pair.  Italian leather, they had interesting double
stitching.  “Did you mean what you said?” 

She’d made a statement by
leaving with him and he’d probably only done it for show, making her an idiot
for abandoning a dinner set up to honour her win.  She looked up to see him
frown.  He pulled his tie down and out from his collar, unknotted it, shoved it
in his pocket and undid a couple of shirt buttons.  He took his suit coat off
and flung it over his shoulder.  He was stripping his corporate self away while
half of Sydney on the prowl for the next drink manoeuvred around them.  “Surprised
the hell out of me, but yeah.  I mean it.  And I need a drink.  You coming?”

Wow.

She should go home.  All
around her was the noise and activity of a Friday night in the city: doof-doof
music from an illegally parked car, groups of people shouting and laughing,
couples clogging up the footpath by holding hands, or stopping to argue,
someone talking loudly on a mobile.  She should go home because she had a bout
tomorrow and that would be sensible, like not combining work and alcohol, like
not combining a big, terrifyingly attractive, grumpy man with her ridiculous
need to believe he meant what he said. 

When had it started to
matter what Ant Gambese thought so long as he stayed out of her business?  Somewhere
in between, him saying, “God, this lift is an all stations”, “Here I got you a
coffee anyway”, or “There were dolphins out there this morning”, she’d started
to think about him differently.

He held a hand out.  She
could take it again, or she could be smart, sensible, her usual guarded self
around Ant. 

“It’s just a drink,” he
said, but ‘just a drink’ didn’t hold hands.  And she didn’t need to hold hands
with Ant, with anyone but the Trick’s team member who was giving her a whip.

Seconds before he dropped his
hand and turned aside, she took it. 
What the hell
.  It was Friday
night.  She’d beaten him in the comp.  He’d gone all caveman and defended her
honour.  He was gorgeous.  It was just a drink.  It was just a hand so they didn’t
get separated in the crowd.  Practical.

His eyes went down to
their hands, then bounced back to her face.  A smile leapt over his strong jaw
and danced in his dark eyes behind their thicket of black lashes.  She smiled
back.  She felt squirmy good. 

Sensible was so overrated. 

Ant took them up the
street a short way, not saying a word.  He kept her close to his side and well
away from big groups and staggering drunks.  If she’d had skates on she’d have
found it patronising.  In her good for the office, too silly for the street
shoes, she was grateful.  She was also unaccountably excited.  It was only a
drink with a colleague.  A colleague who’d just validated her skills and
seniority in front everyone who mattered in her work world.  A colleague whose
hand around hers ignited feelings she’d forgotten she enjoyed. 

He found them lounge seats
inside Crowbar.  Funky furniture and acid jazz, cocktails and wait staff wearing
1970s jumpsuits with flared legs and platform shoes, which should’ve looked
awful and looked amazing instead. 

Bree waited till they’d
ordered drinks and faced each other across a low table.  “What just happened,
Ant?”

He kicked back in a single
bright orange lounge chair, spreading his arms over its sides, an expansive
gesture.  Then he smiled again and everything about that smile said ‘trust me,
I’m not a bad guy’.

“Epiphany.”

She smiled back at him.  “You
mean like a religious experience?” 

“More like a life skills
one.  I get it now.”

She laughed.  “You’re a
strange man, Ant Gambese.”

“You called me superior.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

He sat forward, forearms
on thighs.  “No kidding.  According to my sister I’m just your average bloke.”

“So that was your average
scene you made back there?”

There was a low table
between them.  It wasn’t much of a barrier.  “I didn’t get this equal
opportunity, positive discrimination thing.  I thought it was bullshit, HR bloody
twaddle, but then I would, right.  I’m not the one who needs it.”

Bree pressed back into the
lounge she sat on.  Ant’s words weighted like an anchor, dragging her mood down. 
He’d only been grandstanding.  He didn’t get it at all.  She turned her head to
look back towards the bar.  She was an idiot for letting his sunshine and salt
on stormy seas aura get to her, for going all girly. 

“God, just when I thought
there was hope for you.”

His hand shot out across
the table and his fingers grazed her knee.  “Shit.  I said that badly.”  She
refocussed on him.  He scrunched up his face.  “I find this confusing.”  He
slumped back in the seat.  “On one hand I know you’re the pinball wizard, the
best in the team, so you deserved the promotion, and it makes sense you’re the
one to beat in competition.  So you win on merit.  And that’s how it should be,
right?  Best man for the job.”

“But when the man wears a
skirt?”

He grinned.  “Hey, let’s
not even go there.  That’s a whole other puddle of clear as mud.”  He sat
forward again.  “And I know you didn’t mean that literally.  The thing is,
there’s just you and Chris and all of us blokes, so I get that there needs to
be a rule giving chicks a chance to be allowed into the game in the first
place.  After that you’re on your own.”

She sat forward too.  That’s
how she felt about it.  That’s why she’d made the choices she’d made and built
herself a less ordinary life.  “Maybe there is hope for you.”

He shifted suddenly,
leaving his chair to sit beside her on the lounge.  His knee bumped hers and he
put his hand briefly on her the bare skin where her hem ended, smoothing it. 
“Sorry.”  Then he settled.  “I have two sisters.  I hate the idea some dickhead
bloke like me or Mal might try to keep them down and not understand that’s what
they were doing.”

Bree searched Ant’s face
for any sign of this being a joke, or his move with her knee being some kind of
come-on.  He wore the same expression he’d wear discussing forward iron ore
contracts.  “I don’t know what to say.”

He leaned into her space. 
“How about I’m sorry?”

She shifted back a
little.  “What?”  He’d lost the ‘I’m seriously interested in iron ore prices’
expression and looked more like he’d discovered a rare vein of gold and was drafting
the press release about the untold millions he’d made.

“I lost a bet on you
tonight.”

“You bet on me?” 

“Yeah.  I bet you’d come
off second best to me.”

“Arrogant, egotistical,
big-headed—”

He cut her off with a wave
of his hand.  “Yeah, yeah.  I’m all that.  I’m also a sore loser, a slow
learner, and an overbearing bastard.  And poorer.”

“How much?  What was it
worth to you?”  She didn’t like the idea she was some chess piece to him, but
she hoped it had hurt his hip pocket.

“Ah, it’s not the cash;
it’s the mortal blow to my ego.”

She scoffed, “That I’d
like to see.”

“You will.  That’s the
point.”

“Do I even care about
this?”  She folded her arm.  “I’m not happy about being the person you bet
would lose.”

He laughed and she felt
his low rumble of amusement in her chest and saw it shine in his eyes, and
egotistical started to look annoyingly charming on him.

“You care because it makes
me a loser,” he hung his head in mock dismay, “and I rarely ever lose, though
the last time,” he shook his head at a memory and looked up, “the last time
cost me big too.  But this time, because I have shitheads for best mates, I
have to have my nose rubbed in it.  I have to ask you to a dinner I have to pay
for with said shithead mates and their girls, and formally apologise for
doubting you could womp my arse.”

“Oh!”  She was still
annoyed with him, but that was funny.  “Was that you asking me to dinner?”

“Yeah.”  He rubbed a hand
over his face.  “I guess it was.”

She pulled a bright floral
cushion that’d been between them onto her lap and hugged it.  “So very elegant. 
I’m flattered.  I’ll be sure to cancel everything to be available.”

His laughter was a shout
that made heads turn their way.  “Your earlier descriptions of me were more
accurate.  I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting anything to do with me, or the
night out.  You can’t be that desperate for a free feed.”

She studied him across beyond
the cabbage roses on the cushion.  They really were having their longest
conversation without the rancour of their earlier dislike for each other.  “Why
is winning so important to you?”

He picked up his designer
beer.  “That’s like asking why fish swim.”

She shook her head.  “No,
it’s not.  Everyone wanted to win.  You wanted it hardest and we all knew it.”

He groaned.  “So you can
add bad poker player after big-headed.”

“Are you a bad poker
player?” 

“Shocking.  I get too
emotionally involved.  Can’t help myself.  I’m no good with secrets either.  Don’t
tell me anything you want kept quiet.”

She batted him with the
cushion.  “You’re an analyst.  You deal in market sensitive information every
day.  How’s that going to work?”

He sipped the beer.  “That’s
different.  I’m not the job.  I can separate myself from work.”

Bree broke eye contact,
what was that telling her?  Mostly that she could trust him to take a corporate
secret to the grave, that he’d never be jailed for insider trading, but if he
found out about Kitty Caruso it’d be front page news. 
Good to know
. 
“Answer the question.  Why did you want to win so badly?”

He hid behind another long
pull on the beer.  She took her jacket off while she waited on him.  He forgot
beer existed.  His eyes went straight to her bare arms.  She might bruise easy
but they faded quickly.  There wasn’t a mark on her skin.  Though there would
be after tomorrow’s bout.