‘Oh, Nicolas!’ she exclaimed before she could stop herself.
‘What?’ His head jerked round, his blue eyes alarmed. ‘Your… your hand.’
‘Ah,’ he said knowingly, and lifted his left hand from the wheel, turning it this way and that as though it was a long time since he’d looked at it himself.
There was no thumb, not even a small stump, the digit having been amputated at the second knuckle. But that wasn’t all. The back of his hand was heavily scarred, the skin puckered up in places. His right hand had a few scars as well, she noted, but nothing like his left.
‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ he said drily, and placed it back down on the wheel, his remaining knuckles showing white when his fingers curved tightly around the rim. ‘Unfortunately, there are no compositions suitable for thumbless concert pianists. And to think I used to be able to span ten keys. But not to worry. It probably worked out for the best. The life of a concert pianist is very limited and limiting. I’ve done well enough out of my change of career.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Serina said, quickly pulling herself together and resolving not to go all mushy over him just because of his hand. ‘I saw you being interviewed on television a couple of years ago,’she went on matter-of-factly. ‘You looked very successful in your New York apartment and very prosperous.’
He gave a small laugh. ‘That’s the pot calling the kettle black. Just look at what you’ve done. Turned your dad’s rather ramshackle lumber yard into a thriving business. I can see where your daughter gets her entrepreneurial skills from.’
Serina didn’t know what to say to that. It took all her willpower not to look guilty.
The sound of her mobile phone ringing saved her from further embarrassment. Serina fished it out of her handbag and flipped it open.
‘Yes?’ she answered.
‘Has he rung yet?’ her daughter demanded to know in impatient tones. Too late, Serina remembered that Felicity had asked her to ring her as soon as she’d heard from Nicolas. Felicity had begged for her own personal mobile phone for her tenth birthday. And, being somewhat spoiled by Greg, she had got what she wanted.
‘Yes, Felicity,’ Serina said with a sigh. ‘He’s rung and he’s here in Rocky Creek and we’re on our way to the school right now. Okay? See you shortly.’ And she hung up.
Nicolas smiled over at her as he fired the engine. ‘That daughter of yours is quite a handful, isn’t she?’
‘How did you guess?’she replied frustratedly, and he laughed.
‘So,’ he said as he drove out of the car park and turned left. ‘Is the school in the same place?’
‘Yes.’
‘What? No more surprises?’
‘Maybe a few.’
‘Perhaps you should elaborate whilst I drive. Save me from having egg all over my face. Though I suspect that’s what you had in mind when you didn’t warn me over the phone how much Rocky Creek had gone ahead.’
‘Huh! I didn’t see any egg over your face back at the office. You had those girls eating out of your hand and you know it.’
He shot her a smile that curled both her toes and her heart. ‘I have learned the art of charming the ladies over the years.’
Serina was grateful that he’d reminded her in time what kind of life he’d been leading since leaving Rocky Creek. Not pining for her, that was for sure. Not even before their final but brief encounter thirteen years ago.
According to the many tabloid articles Felicity had uncovered about him on the Internet, he’d wined and dined some of the most beautiful women in show business. No doubt he’d slept with most of them as well. The Nicolas she knew would not have been living the life of a monk. Not likely!
‘I am relieved,’ she said in chilly tones. ‘Just make sure you don’t use up all that much-learned charm before tomorrow. I would hate you to turn into one of those judges who think they have to be cruel to be kind.’
Although Nicolas was slightly taken aback by her sarcasm, he was also heartened, as he had been by her obvious annoyance back at her office. She was trying very hard to be cool but her frosty politeness didn’t fool him for a minute. He could feel the sexual tension that she was desperately trying to hide. If he hadn’t had at that moment turned in to the street where the school was, he would have pulled over to the side of the road and kissed her senseless.
‘Now, as you can see,’ she went on as he drove along the tree-lined road, ‘the old school is still there. But when our enrolment trebled a few years back, the government finally built us a new school next to it that incorporates an office, several classrooms and a great big school hall, which has a decent stage and room for five hundred seats. That’s where we’re holding the talent quest.’
‘With air-conditioning?’ he inquired.
‘Of course,’ she said haughtily. ‘Gus paid for that.’
‘Gus?’ Nicolas echoed. ‘Surely you don’t mean old wino Gus.’ Old Gus had been a harmless drunk who’d slept in the sports shed and whom the kids had looked after with food, blankets and clothes.
‘Yep. Turned out he was a secret millionaire. When he died back in 2005, he left all his money to the Rocky Creek Parents’ and Citizens’Association. We don’t touch the capital, which is wisely invested. But, with the interest so far, we’ve air-conditioned the school, kitted out a great computer room, cleared some of the bush behind and built a soccer field and two netball courts. Now we’re saving up to put in a swimming pool.’
‘We? Does that mean you’re on the committee of the P and C?’
‘Of course I am,’ she told him. ‘I’m the treasurer.’
Nicolas tried not to be dismayed by her involvement with the community, but failed. The more she told him, the more he realised that nothing was going to get Serina away from Rocky Creek. She was entrenched here.
But then you knew that, didn’t you, Nick, my boy?
It was why she’d rejected you, not once, but twice. Because she preferred life here to the life you craved. Because she loved her family—and Rocky Creek—more than you.
Maybe if she’d been a childless widow, he might have stood a chance. But she wasn’t. She was a mother. Mother love, Nicolas knew from experience, was much stronger than anything he could ever evoke in her.
But alongside his dismay lay the same kind of determination with which Nicolas had always faced life and life’s challenges. He might not have any future with Serina. But no way was he going to leave Australia without holding her in his arms once more, without experiencing one more time their unique brand of chemistry—and it was unique. Nicolas had never felt anything like it. They’d once shared a stunning degree of physical intimacy and sexual pleasure that could never be forgotten. He hadn’t forgotten it and he was damned sure Serina hadn’t. She was just pretending that she had.
But he would remind her during their lunch together.
First, however, he had to get this visit to the school over and done with.
Nicolas pulled the SUV into the curb outside the school’s front gate, and stared up at the ancient sign, which said it had been established in 1870. The old school was made of wood, a rectangular building with a highpitched roof and a north-facing verandah that had pegs on the wall where the children could hang their hats and school bags. There’d only been four classrooms when he’d gone to school there, with composite classes the order of the day.
Admittedly,