‘I have no idea why you won’t let me buy you a new car,’ he grumped as his mother backed out of the garage. ‘Or a new house,’ he added, scowling up into the sky as a jumbo jet roared overhead, the noise deafening.
‘I like living in Monterey,’ his mother returned, exasperation in her voice. ‘I’ve lived here all my married life. Your father and I were very happy living in this house. I raised you and your two brothers in this house. Most of my friends live round here. Not only that, your father’s buried not two miles down the road, and I—’
‘All right, all right. I get the point,’ Luke broke in frustratedly. ‘I just wanted to do something for you, Mum, that’s all.’ He adored his mother. And admired her enormously.
She hadn’t gone to pieces when a heart attack had left her a widow five years ago after nearly forty years of happy marriage—hadn’t asked any of her sons to let her live with them. She’d picked herself up and gone on with her life, filling the lonely hours with lots of volunteer work and generally being a fantastic person.
But she could be a bit of a pain once she got her teeth into something.
‘You can do something for me, Luke,’ she piped up suddenly, and Luke shot her a wary glance.
‘What?’
‘Come back to Australia to live. I’m sure once you get home you’ll find a nice girl who’ll be more than happy to marry you and have all the children you want.’
Luke felt a deep, dark emotion well up inside him, but he dampened it down, hiding his feelings as best he could. Impossible to tell her that he had found a girl, here in Sydney, the last time he’d been home.
Unfortunately she hadn’t been at all nice. Neither had she been the type to settle down and have children.
But, for all that, Luke had not been able to forget her afterwards. Not for a minute. She obsessed him every waking moment, haunted his dreams and was slowly destroying his peace of mind.
His mother talked of his seeming unhappy. How could he be happy when he didn’t know who he was any more, or where he was going with his life? He’d been lost since he’d woken that morning eighteen months ago to find her gone. He’d searched and searched, but could find no trace. It was almost as though she’d never existed.
But she had existed. He only had to close his eyes and the memories would sweep in. Her face. Her passion. The all-consuming heat of her beautiful body.
God, if only she would let him go! If only he could stop remembering!
‘Luke?’ his mother prompted. ‘Don’t go giving me the silent treatment. I can’t stand it when one of my boys goes all quiet and brooding on me.’
Luke pulled himself together, finding a cool mask from somewhere to turn towards his far too intuitive mother.
‘I would have thought Andy and Mark had more than adequately fulfilled your grandmothering needs, Mum,’ he pointed out drily. ‘They have five very nice children between them—three boys and two girls—plus two perfect daughters-in-law for wives. You really don’t need me to add to the St Clair brood, or the St Clair wives. Two out of three ain’t bad, you know. Don’t become one of those meddling matchmaking mums, or I might be forced to stay in LA in future.’
Her hurt look made him feel instantly guilty, and he sighed his regret. ‘Just kidding, Mum. You know you’re my best girl. I could never stay away from you for too long.’
‘Flatterer,’ she said, but he could see that she was pleased.
His mother mollified, Luke sat back silently and tried to distract his wretched mind by focusing on the familiar but still beautiful surroundings. He stared out at the blue waters of Botany Bay on their right, then up at the clear blue sky. Nowhere in the world had he ever found skies such as in Australia. Their clearness and brightness was unique, but it made for harsh light—not the easiest background for good photography.
It took special skills and equipment to photograph Australian scenery really well—unless one captured the shots at dawn or dusk—skills which he had never honed, but which could present an interesting challenge, Luke decided unexpectedly.
His passion had always been photographing people, right from his boyhood days. He’d perfected portraiture, especially in black and white, and had made a small fortune out of it.
There’d been a time when he’d got a kick out of surprising people with his flattering photographs of them. Models and actresses with a portfolio by Luke St Clair had a definite edge in the cut-throat world of auditions in the US. He was sought-after and paid handsomely for his work. He could command huge fees.
But, quite frankly, it had all become somewhat of a bore.
Besides, he no longer needed to do things for money. An inspired investment in a small independent movie which had taken the world by storm a couple of years back had ensured he never had to work again if he didn’t want to. So perhaps it was time to spread his photographic wings, so to speak. To find a new direction to satisfy his creative eye.
Maybe his mother was right, he began to muse. Maybe it was time to come home—if not to marry then to find a new life-path. He could not go on as he had this past year. It was slowly destroying him.
‘I’ll let you out here,’ his mother suggested, pulling over to the kerb. ‘The dentist is just in that small arcade over there. There’s a narrow staircase which leads up to a corridor, and his surgery is the second door on the left upstairs. I’ll meet you in that coffee-shop on the corner. Whichever one of us gets there first can wait for the other.’
Butterflies gathered in the pit of his stomach as he mounted the stairs and pushed open the glass door. A very attractive brunette looked up from behind the reception desk, saw the cut of the man standing there and smiled a smile as old as time itself.
‘Yes, can I help you?’ she asked hopefully.
Luke did his best to ignore the silent invitation in her pretty blue eyes, despite his own gaze automatically shifting to her left hand. He was almost relieved to see a diamond engagement ring twinkling there, for in all truth he’d become horribly addicted to picking up pretty women during the last year or so, taking them out, then home to bed, then never contacting them again.
He wasn’t proud of his behaviour, but he understood it. He was punishing them for her.
He excused himself by saying that he only picked up the really eager ones—the ones who made it perfectly obvious what they wanted from him. Like she had. He always hoped to gain some darkly twisted satisfaction from being the one who did the seducing and the dumping. Instead he always felt like a rat in the morning, hating himself more and more with each episode.
The women involved didn’t know it, but they were better off without him. He’d become a right bastard—sexually speaking—since that night, his only concession to his conscience being that he steered clear of married and engaged women. He took some small comfort from that, soothing his escalating qualms with the thought that he hadn’t descended to being a complete scoundrel yet.
‘My name’s St Clair,’ he announced, deliberately leaving off the Luke. ‘I have an appointment for ten-thirty.’
‘Oh, yes, Mr St Clair. I’m afraid Dr Evans is running a little late. Maybe fifteen minutes or so. Would you like some tea or coffee while you wait?’
Tea or coffee on his churning stomach? A whisky, perhaps, but he didn’t think she’d offer him that. ‘No thanks,’ came his brusque reply. ‘I’ll just wait.’
‘There are plenty of magazines,’ she told him as he walked over to settle himself into one of the black leather two-seaters which lined the starkly white walls.
Luke did his best to relax, resting his right ankle on his left knee and spreading his arms along the back of the seat. But he soon found his fingers tapping impatiently on the leather. In the end he picked up one of the