Chasing Summer: Date with Destiny / Marooned with the Maverick / A Summer Wedding at Willowmere

She darted a quick sidewards glance at his grimly set mouth, and wondered if that was why he hadn’t married. Perhaps he loved some woman who didn’t love him back? A measure of guilt crept in as she realised she might have done him an injustice. Not that she felt he deserved an apology. He’d always given more than he got. Besides, they had once again got off the point of why she had come along here.

‘So,’ she said bitterly, ‘Ralph isn’t suffering from a hideously disfiguring disease after all.’

Her host shot her a startled glance.

Salome shrugged. ‘It was another of my way-out theories for why Ralph threw me out.’

‘I see,’ Mike nodded. ‘Well, I’m afraid to say Mr Diamond looks as fit as ever, though I can’t say I like his new hair colour. I prefer a man to go grey gracefully.’

‘He’s dyed his hair?’ The idea astounded Salome. Admittedly Ralph had always been vain about his thick brown hair, but the grey at his temples had never seemed to bother him unduly. No doubt he wanted to look younger to impress this new lover, she thought bitterly, then wondered with added misery how many others there had been.

‘Yes, he’s gone blond.’

‘Good God!’ She stood up, still shaking her head in confused desolation. ‘Well...there’s really nothing more to be said, is there?’

Her companion jumped to his feet. ‘Don’t go yet,’ he said, his tone surprisingly urgent. Salome blinked her amazement up at him. ‘Have dinner with me tonight.’

She gaped at him, unable to hide her complete and utter shock. ‘You have to be joking?’

He kept a perfectly straight face. ‘Not at all.’

‘But—but why?’ she stammered.

‘Why not?’ he persisted.

She gave a dry laugh. ‘I think you know damn well why not.’

His eyes didn’t flicker. ‘You’re going out with another man?’

She dragged a deep breath and counted to ten. ‘No,’ she said with barely held patience. This was too ridiculous for words.

‘Ralph won’t be dining alone tonight,’ he inserted quietly. ‘Why should you?’

She gave him a sharp look. ‘That’s playing dirty.’

A slow smile creased his mouth. ‘There are times,’ he drawled cryptically, ‘when one has to resort to whatever weapons are at hand.’

Salome didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

‘Come on, Salome. Say yes. It won’t kill you. We’ll call a truce for one night.’

‘Oh, so you do accept that we haven’t exactly been friends?’ she pointed out drily. ‘Nor are we likely to be while you hold the opinion of me that you do.’

‘You could always try to convince me differently,’ he suggested with a rueful smile.

‘Huh!’ She flicked a stray curl back over her shoulder. ‘I’d have more luck convincing the Greenpeace movement to take up whaling.’

He laughed, and this time genuinely amused lights glittered in his eyes. Salome suddenly realised that their bantering was not malicious any longer. She was, in fact, quite enjoying the flow of dry wit between them. It surprised her.

‘Come on, Salome. Stop frowning and say yes. I’ve only asked you out to dinner, not to marry me!’

There was a caustic flavour in this last statement that caused Salome to flare. ‘Thank goodness for small mercies!’

He glared at her for a few seconds, his whole body tensing noticeably. But then he visibly relaxed, a ghost of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. ‘Tut-tut, you do have a temper, don’t you?’ He reached out and put a firm grasp on her elbow, and began leading her inexorably towards the door. ‘Next thing you know you’ll be changing your mind about going out to dinner with me.’

She ground to a halt, exasperation written all over her face. ‘Might I remind you I haven’t said yes yet?’

‘Haven’t you? I could have sworn you had.’

Though obviously put on, his air of bewildered confusion had a certain charm, and Salome found herself smiling. ‘Do you ever take no for an answer?’

A slow smile came to his mouth. ‘Not often.’

‘Perhaps I should refresh your memory on what it’s like to be turned down,’ she challenged.

His smile turned faintly sardonic. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’

‘I’m surprised. I would have said a man such as you would have an impeccable track-record with the ladies.’

He shrugged. ‘You can’t win them all, I suppose.’

Salome thought she caught an edge of pain in those words, and she remembered her previous impression that Mike could well be suffering from a broken heart. Unexpectedly, it touched her. She didn’t like to think of anyone having to suffer what she’d been suffering.

This line of thought also made her realise he might be thinking the same about her, and that this invitation to dinner could very well be a true gesture of kindness. Yet here she was, being difficult and stroppy about it. She resolved to give in graciously and be done with it.

‘Very well,’ she said with a resigned smile. ‘I’ll come. Just this once.’

He seemed pleased. ‘Great. What time will I come along and pick you up?’

It suddenly dawned on her that he thought she’d moved into the penthouse, so she launched into the explanation that she didn’t intend living in the penthouse but would probably sell it, and that she lived with her mother in a neat, three-bedroom brick cottage in the suburb of Killara.

Now he didn’t seem so pleased, a dark frown drawing his black brows together. Salome deduced somewhat caustically that his Christian charity in asking her out clearly didn’t extend to a twenty-minute drive both ways through busy, city-bound traffic.

‘If it’s too much trouble...’ she began.

‘No, no—no trouble.’ But the frown had not entirely disappeared. ‘Just give me the address and a time to be there. By the way, do you have any preference where we eat?’

‘Not Angellini’s,’ she said instinctively.

‘Certainly not.’ His tone was even sharper than hers, and she actually winced. It was peculiar enough going out with a man who had once despised her, and maybe still did! She certainly didn’t want to return to the scene of the crime, so to speak.

A thought struck her, though, that hadn’t occurred to her before. ‘Don’t you have to act as host at your restaurant tonight?’ she asked. He’d always been there, if her memory served her correctly.

‘Not on a Thursday.’

‘Oh...’ Her eyes dropped, her heart regretful all of a sudden that she had agreed to go out with him. He was a link with her past, with Ralph, a past she now wanted to forget. Her ex-husband must be some sort of monster, to deceive her as he had done. She actually cringed as she thought of how she had allowed him to dictate every facet of her life. God, she’d been the original puppet on a string, the perfect piece of clay to mould as he willed. And all the while he’d been making a fool of her, having lovers behind her back while she fulfilled the role he’d chosen for her—that of a decorative hostess with no more say in their life than one of the original paintings he hung on his wall.

Salome shook her head as she vowed never to surrender herself to a man’s will like that again. If she ever remarried it would be to a man who would be her partner, not her master—an equal in every way.

Her eyes lifted to see a ruthless black gaze peering down at her, the gaze of a man whom she suspected would be no more husband material for a woman than Ralph, obviously, had been. For a moment she felt oddly disconcerted, but quickly dismissed the unwarranted reaction. This swinging bachelor’s personal life was no concern of hers. ‘Well, Mike?’ she said. ‘Have you got a pencil and paper, or an excellent memory?’

CHAPTER THREE

SALOME’S mother came into her bedroom as the former was putting the final touches on her make-up, and gave the large suitcase sitting beside the door a disgruntled look. ‘Just because I asked Wayne to move in,’ she flung at her daughter in a petulant tone, ‘doesn’t mean you have to move out. I thought you were happy enough living here with me.’

Salome counted to ten, afraid that she wouldn’t be able to keep the angry frustration out of her voice if she answered straight away. When she’d come home and found her mother had asked her latest boyfriend to share not only her bed but the whole house, Salome had seen red. It wasn’t that Wayne was a bad sort. He was probably the best type of man Molly had ever been out with.

But Salome couldn’t bear to stay around and witness her mother make the same old mistakes with yet another man. So she had drastically revised her plans, telling her mother some white lies about the unit and car, saying she had decided to keep them both and live in the unit.

Actually, this was not entirely untruthful. Given her new situation, Salome could see that to leave herself destitute was insane. It was all very well to be high-principled, but she could see, finally, that she had gone too far in giving away all of Ralph’s settlement. Her marriage to him, after all, had cost her four years’ wages. So she’d decided to take the equivalent sum from the money the sale of the unit brought, and buy herself a modest unit somewhere. The same applied to the Ferrari. When she’d met Ralph she had owned an old run-about, which he’d disposed of, so she believed she was justified in using some of the money from its sale to purchase a modest vehicle.

All these plans, however, she kept to herself. It was far easier to let her mother think she was keeping the lot. Less argument. Less hassle.

Molly had been astonished though delighted with what she called her daughter’s finally coming to her senses about keeping something from that ‘old coot!’ Not so delighted, however, about her moving out, for they had become very close over the last year, all their old differences seemingly having been resolved.

Till now.

‘Please, Molly,’ she said calmly. ‘Let’s not argue about it. I’m not exactly moving interstate. I’m only a twenty-minute drive down the highway, and I’ll visit often.’

‘Oh, I get the picture. Wayne’s just an excuse. It’s this Mike Angellini you’re going to dinner with, the one whose unit is next to the one Ralph gave you. You’ve set your sights on him, haven’t you?’

That was so ridiculous that Salome almost laughed.

‘Not at all,’ was her rueful reply as she picked up the bronze lip-gloss. ‘I told you. Mike’s an old acquaintance. I’ve known him for years. You don’t honestly think that after what I’ve been through with Ralph I’d leap into another involvement this quickly, do you?’

‘Who knows what you’d do?’ her mother said archly. ‘Any girl who could marry a man thirty years older than herself could do anything!’

Salome counted to ten again. ‘Not all women like younger men,’ she said with creditable control.

‘Younger men are more fun,’ Molly stated pompously. Then grinned.

Salome shook her head in fond exasperation and began putting more pins in her up-swept hairstyle. Her mother’s behaviour with men frustrated the life out of her, but it was impossible to dislike the woman. Or not feel sympathy for the events that had shaped her life. An abandoned child, and the product of various state institutions, Molly was a teenage runaway, pregnant by the time she was fifteen, Salome’s father an Irish sailor who’d been in Sydney for a week on shore leave and had never returned.

Molly had always claimed to have loved him. But then, Molly claimed to love all her boyfriends, even creepy Graham, who’d been twenty-three to her thirty-three, and spent more time chasing the eighteen-year-old daughter than the mother.

Salome glanced in the mirror at Molly, who was still very attractive at thirty-eight and not as rough in speech and manner as she used to be, and wished with all her heart that this time she’d found the right man, the one who would marry her.

‘How old is this old friend of yours?’ Molly asked, dropping down on the end of the single bed. ‘Not as old as Ralph, I hope?’

‘Early thirties.’ Salome stood back from the dressing-table mirror, and made a final survey of her appearance. The forest-green woollen suit, with its softly pleated skirt and fitted single-breasted jacket, suited her tall, shapely figure to perfection. And the ivory silk blouse with the tie at her neck looked suitably demure.

There would be no cleavage tonight, Salome had decided. No way did she want to spend the evening having Mike Angellini either glaring reproachfully at her breasts, or assuming from her mode of dress that he might be on to a good thing.

That was one of the reasons, too, why she had put her hair up, being aware that some men found long, loose hair sexually provocative. Maybe she was being overly careful, but she had a feeling that the evening could be spoiled if she gave Mike the wrong impression. As she’d found out to her chagrin that morning in Charles’s office, a man’s desire had little to do with admiration of a woman’s real personality. All a female had to have was a pretty face and a nice figure to interest a male on that level.

‘Is he handsome?’ Molly kept on.

‘Very.’

‘Not married, is he?’ Her mother’s voice carried suspicion.

‘No,’ Salome laughed. ‘For pity’s sake, quit the third degree, will you? You’ll make me nervous soon. Look, I can’t even get my earrings in now!’

Actually, underneath her composed façde, Salome was beginning to feel a bit nervous. Odd, really. Over the years as Ralph’s wife she had dined with princes and sheikhs, gone to the races with royalty, sailed with tycoons, and partied with movie stars. Why, then, should she be worried about a simple dinner for two?

Perhaps it wasn’t the dinner itself she was nervous about, but what Mike would think when he arrived and she told him she had decided to move into the penthouse after all. In fact, was moving in tonight! She could hardly explain the real reason without embarrassment. Nor could she, in front of Molly, reveal that it was only a temporary arrangement, till the unit was sold.

Hopefully he wouldn’t take her abrupt change of mind as meaning she was interested in him, as Molly had suggested. She had a suspicion that he wouldn’t need much encouragement to try to change their platonic date into a less platonic one.

Another disturbing thought popped into her mind. Perhaps he didn’t need any encouragement. Perhaps a man as handsome and eligible as Mike expected his dates to end the evening in bed with him. She hadn’t thought of that.

Salome had no idea what men expected on a date these days. She’d had to put up with a lot of groping as a teenager, and even then boys had expected a girl to come across pretty quickly. She’d had many a wrestle in the back of a car during her dating years, but only once had she given in—the summer she’d turned seventeen. And of course she had thought she was in love. The man in question had been older than her usual dates. At twenty-four, he’d not been prepared to take no for an answer.

But sex had not been the earth-shaking experience Salome had been expecting. Physically she’d felt nothing after the initial stab of pain. It had been a non-event. Things hadn’t improved either, on subsequent occasions, and her boyfriend had quickly dumped her, saying she was abnormal. Salome had been very upset at the time, the only consolation to her lack of pleasure in sex being that she didn’t have to fear she might turn out to be as promiscuous as her mother.

Nevertheless, when Ralph had come along and proposed his platonic marriage, Salome had initially been perturbed. Underneath, she hadn’t given up hope of finding the right man one day, with whom she would be a normal woman, finding satisfaction and enjoyment in making love. But Ralph had been persistent with his flattering attentions and declarations of love and caring, and in the end she just hadn’t been able to say no. After all, he’d covered her main objection by promising that if she ever wanted a child she could have one by artificial insemination or adoption.

And, as it turned out, Salome had never really felt that the lack of sex in her marriage had been any great sacrifice. Admittedly, she did have bouts when she was restless and couldn’t sleep, but she didn’t believe that had anything to do with physical frustration. She’d always been a bad sleeper. She wouldn’t even have associated her insomnia with such a cause if Ralph hadn’t suggested it once.

She would never forget the occasion. It had been the first night Ralph had taken her to Angellini’s. She had come home still flushed and fuming with fury at Michael’s high-handed attitude. Ralph had floored her by saying that her anger was sexual, that the Italian’s high-voltage sex appeal had stirred her blood, that she was angry simply because she wanted him. She recalled laughing at the time. The idea was ludicrous!

Perhaps not so ludicrous now, though, she thought, her mind slipping back to that moment earlier in the day when Mike had touched her...

With suddenly trembling fingers, she had difficulty securing the gold and pearl studs in her ears, her mind still elsewhere as she automatically applied perfume to the pulse-points at her wrists and throat—a musky oriental perfume that she always wore.

‘You look lovely, dear,’ her mother complimented.

Salome snapped out of her disturbing reverie to realise she had been staring in the mirror without focusing. She did so now, studying her reflection and wondering what it was about her that men found so attractive. She didn’t think she was that beautiful. Her face was triangular, her chin slightly squared off at the point, her nose straight with flared nostrils that suggested an unpredictable temper. Nothing irresistible there, she thought ruefully. Her hand came up to trace her high forehead and cheekbones, then dropped to run dismissively over her far too generous mouth.

She couldn’t see why men so liked her hair either, that wild mass of burnished curls which resisted taming no matter what any hairdresser did. Even now, piled securely on top of her head, dozens of tiny curls and tendrils were already escaping.

She scowled and saw that annoyance darkened her almond-shaped green eyes to the colour of slate. Set deep and wide, they were perhaps her best feature, though, without mascara, the long pale lashes were inclined to be insipid. She almost cringed to think how she’d used to make them up, with thick black eye-liner and buckets of mascara. At the moment, however, enhanced by smoky green eye-shadow, grey eyeliner and mascara, her eyes looked exotic and mysterious.

‘The eyes of a temptress’, Ralph used to say, then smile at her.

Those eyes clouded over and she no longer saw her reflection. A wretchedness was clutching at her heart, a bitter taste coming to her mouth. What kind of cruel game had Ralph been playing with her?

‘Mr Angellini doesn’t stand a chance.’

‘What?’ She turned around, her face blank, her mind still distracted.

A coughing sound in the open doorway had both women looking around. Wayne was standing there, dressed casually in a navy tracksuit, a lazy grin on his large pleasant face. Salome had only met him a couple of times before, but, while she thought her mother was making the same old mistake in letting the man move in with her, she had to admit he was Molly’s best bet yet. Around forty, and in the building trade, he had an air of solid decency about him that her mother’s other boyfriends had lacked.

‘There’s a chap at the door looking for you, Salome,’ he drawled. ‘And a Jag at the kerb. Better shake a leg or he might do a flit. He doesn’t look like the sort of bloke who’d have to hang around waiting for birds too often. Don’t you be long either, Doll,’ he directed at Molly, and, without a second glance at Salome, ambled off back down the hall towards the living-room.

His physically ignoring Salome made him go up in her estimation a thousand-fold. You never knew, she thought ruefully. Maybe Molly had cracked it at last.

She smiled at her mother, who was lifting her eyebrows up and down in mock fun. ‘A Jaguar, no less,’ she teased. ‘Glad to see my daughter hasn’t dropped her standards.’

‘Now, Molly, I’ve already told you, I—’

‘Yes, yes, I know; he’s just a friend. I won’t keep on about it. But you will look after yourself, won’t you, in that empty old penthouse?’

Her gentle tone choked Salome up. ‘Of course,’ she managed to get out.

‘And forget silly old Ralph,’ came the firm advice.

‘I’ll try, Molly. I’ll try.’

Mike had apparently been content to wait for her on the front doorstep, but when he saw her coming down the hall, carrying the heavy suitcase, he stepped inside into the light of the foyer to help.

Molly literally caught her breath and ground to a halt, staring at Mike as though he were Tom Cruise in the flesh. Salome could understand her mother’s reaction, even if she didn’t approve. Her own heart had jolted when she’d seen him.

There was no doubt that black did something for Mike Angellini that no other colour did. Not that he was in his dinner-suit. The black woollen suit he was wearing was far less formal—in fact so incredibly modern that Salome was rather taken aback. She had always imagined him to be a very conventional dresser.

But apparently she was wrong. For there was nothing conventional in the loose, front-pleated trousers and the equally loose, cardigan-style jacket. Certainly nothing conventional in his decision to matching both of these with a chest-hugging white polo-necked sweater, either. He looked rakish and dangerous and devastatingly sexy.

Salome’s green eyes remained outwardly calm as they flicked over the tall, smiling figure moving towards her, but her heart was missing the odd beat, and forming in her mind was the awful suspicion that any immunity she’d once had to this man’s attractiveness might be on the wane.

‘You’ve decided to move into the penthouse?’ he asked her as he took the suitcase out of her hands.

Salome looked up into eyes that betrayed definite satisfaction at this thought, and an ominous apprehension joined her suspicion. ‘Yes, yes, I—I am,’ she stammered most uncharacteristically.

‘Great.’

He glanced over her shoulder and gave Molly the full benefit of a dazzling smile. ‘If you tell me this lovely lady is your mother,’ he drawled, ‘then I won’t believe it. She’s much too young.’

Salome found herself flashing him a caustic look before she could stop herself, but Molly blushed prettily. ‘I had Salome when I was very young,’ she said sweetly.

‘You must have.’

Salome stiffened, a tightness coming to her chest. She was hating this exchange, hating it so much that she was shocked at herself. Surely she couldn’t be jealous—could she?

‘People often mistake Salome for my sister, not my daughter,’ Molly was saying coyly.

‘I can imagine,’ was the suave reply.

Angry green eyes snapped to Mike, but he was busy smiling at her mother. Her glare landed on his stunningly handsome face, his sensual mouth, his dancing black eyes, and quite suddenly her fingers itched to slap him.

A gasp of shock brought both her mother and Mike staring at her.

‘Something wrong, dear?’ Molly asked, blue eyes concerned.

‘No, no, I—er—I just realised I forgot my credit cards. I can’t live without them.’ And she fled back down the hall, racing into the privacy of her room.

The reflection of herself standing just inside the door, clutching her handbag to her chest as if it were a life-line, stared back at her from the dressing-table mirror. She looked most peculiar, she thought, her normally pale complexion flushed, her green eyes brilliant and wide, her lips slightly parted.

Salome walked numbly over, and stared into the mirror. Whatever had happened to her out there? Slowly, she put the handbag down on the dressing-table, a deep frown coming to her brow. Was it jealousy? Anger? Or simply a burst of exasperation over the possibility that, if Mike kept up the false flattery, her mother would be imagining herself in love with him next?