Her Secret, His Child

Amazing what a mother could endure when faced with the possibility of her child’s unhappiness. So Serina found a smile from somewhere and a voice that sounded close to normal.

‘There’s nothing wrong with being enthusiastic, Felicity,’ she said. ‘But it might be wise not to be too familiar with Mr Dupre. Otherwise people might say there’s favouritism if you come first in the talent quest tomorrow night.’

Too late Serina wished she hadn’t brought up that subject.

‘I’ve already thought of that,’ Felicity returned. ‘So I’ve decided not to enter.’

‘I think that’s a wise decision,’ Serina said, hiding her relief behind a genuinely warm smile.

‘But I was looking forward to hearing you play,’ Nicolas protested.

‘Oh, you’ll still hear me play,’ Felicity informed him quite happily. ‘I’m giving a special performance at the end of the talent quest. I don’t want to tell you too much except that it’s a tribute to a certain concert pianist who sadly can’t play anymore.’

Serina smothered a groan of despair. Not only was Felicity going to play for him, but she was also sure to choose one of Nicolas’s favourites, maybe even the Chopin Polonaise both of them had heard him play on the Internet. If today was proving difficult, tomorrow loomed as a nightmare!

‘Come on, Nicolas,’ Felicity said. ‘It’s time for you to meet everyone else.’

‘Felicity!’ Serina protested. ‘You shouldn’t be using Mr Dupre’s first name.’

‘It’s perfectly all right, Serina,’ Nicolas remarked.

‘No, it’s not,’ Serina protested. ‘It is my job to teach my daughter respect for her elders.’

‘In that case she can call Mrs Johnson, Mrs Johnson,’ Nicolas shot back, his face irritated. ‘I’m not yet forty and don’t consider myself an elder just yet. So if you don’t mind, I’d prefer to be called Nicolas. Lead on, Felicity, my dear,’ he concluded, and actually took his daughter’s hand.

Felicity beamed with smug satisfaction whilst Serina felt like strangling her. And Nicolas. Perhaps it was a survival mechanism, but suddenly her mood changed from one of distress to a simmering fury. Whereas before she hadn’t been looking forward to having lunch with him, now she was. It would give her the opportunity to say all the things she’d bottled up about him over the years. Her brief tirade of a minute ago was just the tip of the iceberg. There were lots of questions she’d always wanted answered. Specifically why, if he’d loved her so much, he hadn’t come back for her from England all those years ago? Why at least he hadn’t written!

But the critical question was why hadn’t he pursued her after their last extremely passionate encounter. Any man as in love as he’d expressed himself to be that night should have ignored her letter and come after her anyway.

No wonder she’d married Greg!

Clenching her teeth, she trudged up the path after Felicity—and her daughter’s unsuspecting father—and into the school hall, where she pasted a plastic smile on her face and watched with growing resentment whilst Nicolas charmed the socks off everyone there.

There were lots of people in the hall that morning. All the teachers, all of the mothers who didn’t work, a few husbands who’d taken time off to help put all the plastic chairs in rows and quite a number of children. Serina might have marvelled at Nicolas’s social skills if she hadn’t already witnessed him in action back at the office. He hadn’t always been Mister Warmth and Charm. But there was no doubt he’d learned how to deal with people over the years. He was smooth, very smooth.

He’d been smooth during that television interview a couple of years back, she recalled. But that wasn’t the same as seeing him in action in the flesh. In no time he had everyone eating out of his hands. Felicity, especially.

‘Isn’t he awesome, Mum?’ she gushed at one stage when Nicolas was off to one side, chatting with the principal. ‘And so good-looking. Do you think he has a girlfriend back in New York?’

‘I would imagine so,’ Serina said, surprised that this thought hadn’t entered her mind earlier. Surprised, too, at the hurt it brought.

‘Probably that Japanese violinist,’ Felicity went on, blissfully unaware of her mother’s agitation. ‘She’s very pretty. I’ll ask him.’

‘Don’t you dare!’Serina snapped. ‘That would be very rude.’

‘Oh. Do you think so? Well you could ask him, Mum. Later, when you’re at lunch together.’

Serina rolled her eyes. ‘Who told you I was going to lunch with him?’

‘Nicolas did. Just now.’

‘I see,’she said with an exasperated sigh. ‘I suppose I might be able to find out. But why on earth do you want to know?’

Felicity’s expression turned a little sly. ‘Well, I was thinking that if he didn’t have a girlfriend, then you and he might… you know… get together again. I mean… you were once boyfriend and girlfriend.’

‘For pity’s sake, Felicity, how many times do I have to tell you that we only dated a few times!’

‘That’s not what Mrs Johnson said. She told me you were as thick as thieves in the old days. And Nana said you cried for weeks after he went to London to study.’

‘You know, Felicity, you shouldn’t listen to small-town gossip. Nicolas and I were just good friends, like I told you. We were not romantically involved. As for my crying when he went overseas, Mum’s mistaken about that entirely. It was around that time that your grandpa had his stroke and I was very upset. My crying had nothing to do with Nicolas leaving Rocky Creek. You’ve got it all wrong, missy. So please don’t try to do what those two silly girls in my office are doing and matchmake me up with every eligible man who happens to cross my path. I loved your father very much and I don’t wish to date, or get married again, especially not to Nicolas Dupre. Do I make myself clear?’

Felicity had the good grace to hang her head at this dressing down. Unfortunately, this allowed Serina a direct view over the top of her daughter’s drooped head right into Nicolas’s piercing blue eyes.

‘I’m all finished here,’ he said, his facial expression bland.

Hopefully, he hadn’t heard that last, rather savage remark. But Serina suspected that he had.

‘Mr Tarleton said I was to be here tomorrow at one-thirty,’ Nicolas went on crisply. ‘Is that early enough, Felicity?’

‘Heaps early enough. The talent quest doesn’t start till two. You’ll stay for the party afterwards, won’t you?’

‘Of course. Now I’m off to take your mother to lunch. We’re going to spend the afternoon in Port Macquarie, catching up on old times.’

Serina flashed him a sour glance before smiling at her daughter. ‘I’ll be home no later than four, sweetie,’ she said. ‘Will you be finished setting up the hall by then?’

‘Oh, yes. Easily. We’re almost done now. But Kirsty wants to rehearse her acts for tomorrow. I’m going to practise as well. One of the pieces I’ve chosen to play is really hard.’

‘You’re making me very curious over what you’re going to play,’ Nicolas said.

Felicity looked smug. ‘Sorry. Can’t tell. And you’re not to tell him, either, Mum.’

‘How can I when I don’t know myself?’ Serina replied somewhat starchily.

‘That’s good,’ Felicity said with a brilliant smile. ‘’Bye now. See you when you get home.’ And she ran off to join her friends.

‘I suspect you do know what she’s going to play,’ Nicolas said as he clamped a firm hand around her right elbow and started steering her towards the side door. ‘And you’re not happy about it for some reason. The same way you’re not happy about my returning to Rocky Creek.’

‘I see no reason why I should be happy?’ she retorted once they were outside and out of earshot of other people.

‘Maybe not,’he bit out. ‘But there’s no reason why it should overly bother you, either. There’s no husband to object to our reunion. Or any new boyfriend, from what I just overheard.’

Serina wrenched out of his hold and ground to a halt. ‘Our reunion?’ She glared up into his eyes. ‘We are not having any kind of reunion here. If I had my way we wouldn’t even be having lunch together. But you manipulated things so that I couldn’t say no without being rude. As for catching up on old times… don’t go thinking that’s ever going to happen, Nicolas Dupre. I wouldn’t let you touch me again if you were the last man on earth!’

Serina knew the second that last statement fell out of her mouth that she’d gone too far. Way too far.

A cruel smile began at the corners of his eyes. His coldly glittering blue eyes.

‘I’ll remind you what you just said later today. But for now, I would suggest that you shut that beautiful mouth of yours. Because whilst you might not want to date me ever again, or God forbid, marry me, I’m pretty sure you do want to go to bed with me. In fact, I’m absolutely certain of it.’

Serina’s mouth gasped open. She was on the verge of hotly denying his arrogant statement—despite it being appallingly true—when she spotted a couple of the mothers standing at one of the school hall windows, staring over at them. The time to do battle was not right now, she quickly appreciated, and snapped her gaping mouth shut.

‘Glad to see you’ve finally found some common sense,’ he ground out. ‘And some honesty. Let’s go.’And taking forceful possession of her elbow once more, he propelled her along the path that led them past the old school and back to the parked SUV…

CHAPTER EIGHT

NICOLAS knew—as one always knew deep down—that he’d just crossed a line; that line that you didn’t step over if you were a gentleman.

But then he’d never been a gentleman. And he never would be one, despite having smoothed away most of his rough edges over the years. He spoke like a gentlemen these days and dressed like one. His town house in London was the home of a gentleman. His NewYork apartment, however, reeked of new money, the kind made by men who hadn’t been born rich, but who’d made it in the world by talent and tenacity. Men who were winners, men who knew what they wanted and went after it.

What he’d just said to Serina had been provocative in the extreme, provocative and presumptuous.And risky. By speaking up so boldly, he’d ruined any chance of a romantic seduction.

But in that moment before she’d been able to hide the truth, when her body and mind had still been reeling from the shock of his words, he’d glimpsed her ongoing sexual vulnerability to him. What he’d just said had been right. She did want to go to bed with him.

Serina didn’t say a single word during the short time it took to steer her back to the car. But her body language reeked of rebellion. Nicolas’s own body was consumed by something else… .

Serina snatched her arm away from his hold before climbing up into the SUV and banging the door shut behind her. She refused to look at him as he got in behind the wheel, refused to speak. Instead, she stuffed her handbag at her feet and crossed her arms, glaring balefully out of the passenger window.

‘You’d better put your seat belt on,’ Nicolas advised as he did so himself then started up the engine.

She did so huffily, still not looking his way, Rocky Creek well behind them before her simmering fury found a path to her tongue.

‘I was right all along,’ she blustered, her head finally turning in his direction. ‘You didn’t come back out of kindness, or generosity. You came back for revenge!’

Her accusation produced a startling result, Nicolas’s eyes leaving the road at an inopportune time, since they were on a sharp corner at the time. The left-side wheels slid off the narrow strip of tar, spitting gravel out behind them. The back of the vehicle began to slide, Nicolas swearing as he struggled for control.

The adrenalin of fear and panic had Serina gripping her seat belt whilst visions of their careering off the road and into a steep gully—or the bone-crunching trunk of a gum tree—flashed before her mind.

‘And I was right,’ Nicolas snarled when he finally had them safely back on the road. ‘You’re going to be the death of me one day. I think I’ll find a place to stop before we continue this rather amazing conversation.’

Serina didn’t object. She was still shaking inside when he pulled over into a lay-by and turned off the engine.

‘Now,’ he said firmly as he undid his seat belt and turned towards her. ‘What’s all this nonsense about revenge?’

Serina stared into his beautiful blue eyes and saw nothing dark or deceptive. Only confusion. Which confused her.

‘Revenge for what?’ he demanded to know.

‘For… for what I did that night,’ she spluttered.

‘Ah,’ he said, and nodded. ‘You’re still feeling guilty about that, are you?’

‘Of course! What I did that night… it was very wrong.’

‘Are we talking about what you did to me? Or what you did to your husband?’

Serina stiffened. ‘Greg wasn’t my husband at that stage.’

‘That’s semantics, Serina, and you know it. You were unfaithful to your soon-to-be husband that night. And you deceived me.’

A guilty frustration swamped her, making her head whirl and her heart twist. ‘I didn’t mean to do either,’ she blurted out. ‘I… I just couldn’t help myself.’ Tears of dismay and despair filled her eyes. ‘It all happened by accident.’

Nicolas’s expression was sceptical. ‘You just happened to be at my concert. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘No. Yes. I mean… I came to Sydney for a couple of days shopping for my wedding and I saw you being interviewed on television. One of those morning programs. I heard you were playing at the Opera House that night and I thought… what would be the harm? I just want to see him one more time,’ she choked out, as though she were talking to someone else. Confessing, perhaps, to a priest. ‘But then I watched you perform and I… I knew I had to do more than just see you… .’ The tears spilled over then and trickled down her cheeks. ‘I couldn’t help it, Nicolas. I’m not a bad person. And I’m sorry, truly sorry.’

He reached over and gently wiped the tears from her face. ‘I won’t say that what you did didn’t hurt me. It did. Terribly. But I can see that I hurt you, too, by staying away in the first place. I should have come back for you earlier.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ she said with a tormented groan.

‘Male pride, mostly. You said you didn’t want me.’

A small laugh escaped her lips. ‘And you believed me?’

Nicolas smiled a rather sad smile. ‘Yes, Serina, I believed you. But that’s water under the bridge now, isn’t it? We can’t go back and undo anything in the past. All we can control is the here and now. So let me redress something I told you a little while ago, about why I’m here. Yes, it was because of your daughter’s letter. But not for the reason I let you think. I haven’t come all this way to help Felicity raise money for your local bushfire brigade. I could have easily sent a cheque to do that. I came because your daughter told me that her father—your husband, Greg—is now dead. I came because of you, Serina. Let’s not have any misunderstandings about that.’

Serina tried to work some saliva into her suddenly dry mouth. It was what she both craved and feared.

‘But it’s too late,’ she told him.

‘Too late for what?’

‘For us… ’

‘It’s never too late, Serina. Not whilst we’re still alive.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘Are you saying that you don’t want me anymore?’

She could not help the sensual shudder that rippled down her spine.

‘You have to give me another chance, Serina,’he proclaimed.

‘I won’t leave Rocky Creek,’ she insisted wildly. ‘I won’t, I tell you.’

‘I’m not asking you to,’ he said. ‘Just come back to Port Macquarie for the afternoon.’

She stared at him, her eyes wide.

‘I can’t!’ she protested huskily.

His smile was sexy. ‘Of course you can. We’re already going there for lunch.’

‘You’re not talking about lunch, though, are you?’

‘No. No, Serina, I’m not.’

The image his words evoked took her breath away. ‘You’re wicked. You were always wicked!’

‘Oh, come now, Serina, don’t go all holier-than-thou on me. I never did a single thing you didn’t want me to. Or beg me to.’

‘I never begged!’

‘Then perhaps it’s high time you did. Shall I make you beg this afternoon, my love?’

Serina knew she had to fight the insidious desires that were already invading her. For if she gave in to what he wanted…

She shuddered to think of the consequences, both to her life and her future happiness. Not to mention the happiness of her child.

‘How can you possibly put words like love and beg in the same sentence?’ she argued fiercely. ‘You have no idea what love is, Nicolas Dupre. You never really loved me. I meant no more to you than your piano. I was just an instrument to be mastered. You practised making love to me the way you used to practise your scales. Till your technique was perfect. But you never cared for me enough to make me any kind of priority. Your career always came first. When our relationship became difficult, you chose your career over me and moved on.You did the same thing when fate intervened and cut short your concert career.You moved on. Very successfully, too.Yet if you’d truly loved playing the piano, that accident would have come close to destroying you. But it didn’t, did it? You rose again, like the Phoenix, and made an even greater success of your life. Which is commendable in a way. But it shows a certain ruthlessness of character, which I know I can’t live with. Or love.’

Her stomach contracted a little at this last lie. Because, of course, she did love Nicolas. Always had and always would. But the other things she’d just said weren’t lies. He was not the kind of man a woman could rely on to make her happy. Serina hadn’t reached the age of thirty-six without becoming a reasonable judge of character.

Nicolas was selfish and self-centred. He might not have come back for revenge, but he had come back to win. She was the one who’d got away. That was why he’d been so angry with her at his mother’s funeral. Because she’d rejected him, not once but twice. A man like Nicolas didn’t take rejection lightly, a fact made obvious by the expression on his face.

‘So you won’t give me another chance,’ he said grimly.

‘I don’t see any point, Nicolas. Your life is in New York, or London, or wherever your latest show is being staged. My life is here, in Rocky Creek, with my daughter and my family. We have nothing in common anymore, not even the piano.’

‘We have this in common, Serina,’ he growled, and in the twinkling of any eye, he captured her startled face in his hands and swooped with his mouth.

No! She might have screamed aloud if she’d been able to scream. But actual screaming was impossible with his lips clamped to hers and his tongue already pushing past her teeth. All she could manage was a low groan, which sounded more like the sound of surrender than any kind of protest.

It was a brutal kiss, punishing and powerful, demanding and devouring, irrefutable and irresistible.

Serina knew, soon after Nicolas started kissing her, that she didn’t have a hope in Hades of resisting him. Her body had always had a mind of its own when it came to Nicolas. From the first moment he’d touched her, she’d been his. Whenever they’d made love, he’d evoked feelings in her—both physically and emotionally—that had both consumed and enthralled her. Being with him had quickly become an obsession and an addiction, which only the tyranny of distance had put a halt to. Whenever he’d come home, she’d been there, waiting for him.

So when his head finally lifted, she didn’t bother to voice any further protest. She just looked up into his eyes and said breathily, ‘All right, Nicolas. You win. I’ll go to bed with you one more time. But that will be the end of it,’ she added before he could look too triumphant. ‘The end of us. There will be no more.’

‘Are you quite sure of that, Serina?’ he murmured, his hands turning soft and seductive around her face.

‘Quite sure,’ she lied in steely tones…

CHAPTER NINE

NICOLAS was taken aback by Serina’s tough stance. This wasn’t the girl he remembered. She would have just melted into his arms and agreed with whatever he wanted.

But then he remembered the Serina who’d come to him that night at the Opera House. She’d melted all right. For a while. But she’d solidified quickly enough after she’d had what she wanted.

‘So it’s just sex you want from me again, Serina,’ he growled, his fingertips tightening on the soft skin of her flushed cheeks.

Something flickered through her large brown eyes. A momentary shame, perhaps. But she didn’t look away. Her gaze stayed steady, and strong.

‘That’s all you’re good for, Nicolas,’ came her stunningly hurtful words.

He did his best not to show any visible distress, finding a slow smile from somewhere. ‘If you think insults can save you, Serina, then think again. I haven’t come all this way to go home without seeing the way you look when you come. And I will make you beg for it this time, sweetheart.’

Her eyes glittered wildly in return. ‘You’ll be the one doing the begging, lover,’ she spat back at him.

His fingers slid down to caress her throat. ‘Is that a challenge?’

‘It’s a promise.’

His eyes narrowed whilst hot blood rushed along his veins. ‘I suggest you ring that daughter of yours and let her know that you won’t be home by four,’ he snarled.

‘And I suggest you stop making suggestions and just drive!’

As Nicolas glowered down into her flushed but feisty face, it came to him that the adult Serina was exciting him much more than the teenage girl ever had. Or even the wildly frustrated creature who’d come to him that night thirteen years ago.

She was a woman now, he saw, more experienced and confident. More… interesting.

He smiled again.

‘Excellent idea,’ he pronounced, and turned his attention to doing exactly what she’d suggested. Thirty seconds later, he was whizzing along the Oxley Highway, pushing the speed limit to the max as he sped towards their destination.

Serina leant back in the passenger seat and turned her head away to stare blankly through the passenger window.

She’d done it now. Not only had she agreed to have sex with him again, but she’d also challenged him and provoked him.

Nicolas was not the sort of person one challenged, or provoked. As a teenager he’d been one angry young man, with tunnel vision and a quick temper. He’d hated being teased. Hated anyone who told him he couldn’t do something. As an adult male, she had no doubt that, down deep, he wouldn’t have changed all that much.

But it was too late now. It had been too late the second he leant over and kissed her. There was nothing to do but to go through with what she’d agreed to. Which, of course, she secretly wanted. She wanted it so much she was already trembling inside.

Suddenly, and with typical female thinking, Serina was glad that she’d taken trouble with her appearance today. Glad she’d shaved her legs last night and painted her nails, and worn a pretty set of lingerie under her new dress.

Not that she’d be wearing any of it for long. Nicolas had never been fond of making love under or around clothes. Her accusation earlier that Nicolas was wicked was probably right. But if he was wicked then so was she. She felt wicked now—and terribly turned on.

The next fifteen minutes went agonisingly slowly, despite Nicolas not keeping to the speed limit. Once he reached the outer parts of Port Macquarie, however, the traffic forced him down to sixty, his frustrated mutterings echoing her own feelings.

‘I’m not stopping anywhere for lunch,’ he growled once he turned the corner that led into the main street of Port. ‘I don’t want to waste any of the miserably short period of time I have with you.’

Serina said nothing. What was there to say that wasn’t shameful?

I don’t mind, Nicolas. All I want to eat is you.