Before her foot was even out the door, the single word stopped her. “Frazer!”

She closed her eyes for a minute. When she turned back around, she had schooled her face into something cool, calm, and collected. “Yeah?”

Why did Cora look so small on that couch? Was she nervous?

“Want to get a drink again sometime?”

A note of pleading made Frazer pause on her no. “O…okay. Sure.”

“Great—soon, yeah?” The small smile Cora offered was definitely off. “I could use someone to talk to.”

Already backing out, Frazer said, “Sure. Soon.”

She leant back against the door she closed behind her. Clearly, Cora needed friends. If she was asking Frazer, that much was clear. Thinking back, there wasn’t really a time Frazer could remember seeing Cora with friends. Just Alec.

Always with Alec.

The two weeks he’d avoided doing anything about their project were lucky, really.

It meant Frazer could easily avoid hanging out with Cora.

The image of that red bra against Cora’s russet-coloured skin invaded Frazer’s mind again, and her eyes snapped open. There was no way in hell that Frazer was going to be the leering lesbian, the one who drooled over friends. So she thought Cora was hot? Big deal. She could be friends.

But so much for just avoiding her.

First though, she needed a bit of time to get that attraction out of her head. Her fingers hovered over her phone’s screen to invite Andy and Rob to drinks. But then, her jaw clenched, she dropped her phone back into her pocket.

She’d go swimming instead.

* * *

Thankfully, the restaurant was loud and bustling. Candles littered the tables, casting a soft glow, the clinking of cutlery on china their background music.

Before they’d left the house, Cora had suggested somewhere new to Alec, an Italian place on the other side of the city in Fremantle. It was an area she’d used to love, full of charm and old buildings, cottages next door to the ocean, peppermint trees lining the streets. On a Friday like today, the markets were open, full of things she didn’t need and hadn’t known she’d wanted until she cast eyes on them. The sniff Alec had given in answer had been sufficient to demonstrate his thoughts of the idea, and instead they were at the place ten minutes from their house, as usual. If he didn’t have to, Alec didn’t like to go south of the river that divided the city.

“I have a conference next week.”

“Mm?” Cora sipped her wine. When she put the glass down, the ring it made on the white tablecloth bothered her. “Where?”

“Brisbane. I should be gone a week.” He was barely looking at her as he cut into his steak, so rare that it looked ready to walk off his plate with an indignant ‘moo’.

“Which dates?” How depressing. She really had no idea what to say to him beyond benign questions.

“Around the fifth.”

She fished for something concrete that could actually start a discussion. “What’s the conference on?”