Everything went according to plan. The flight from London set down at Mascot only a few minutes late and the connecting flight to Port Macquarie left right on time. Nicolas stepped out onto the tarmac at Port Macquarie airport right on nine. Fifteen minutes later, he and his luggage were speeding towards the centre of town.
‘Port’s grown since I was last here,’ he remarked as he glanced around. ‘But it has been nearly twenty years.’
‘Crikey, mate,’ the taxi driver replied. ‘You’ll be lucky to recognise anything.’
Not true, however. The town centre hadn’t changed all that much, Nicolas thought as they drove down the main street. The rectangular layout was basically the same, the streets straight and wide, with parking at the curb sides and in the middle. The old picture theatre was still there on the corner and the pub across the road. But the evidence of a tourism explosion was everywhere, with all the high-rise apartment buildings and the upsurge in restaurants and cafés.
And of course, the tourists themselves were there in full force. Summer had arrived in Australia and with it the hot weather that sent people flocking to seaside towns. Nicolas was already feeling a little sticky. He’d be glad to have a shower and change into something cooler than the suit, shirt and tie he was currently wearing.
The taxi turned right at the end of the main street and headed up the hill to where Nicolas’s choice of accommodation was located, a relatively new boutique apartment block that was several storeys high and made the most of its position overlooking Town Beach. Nicolas had found it on one of the many travel Web sites available and booked one of the apartments from his home in London a couple of nights back.
Although book-in time was officially not till 2:00 pm, Nicolas was soon given his keys. The apartment he’d chosen had not been occupied the previous night. Not surprising, given the hefty price tag and the fact that last night was a Thursday. Added to this was the fact that he’d taken it for a full week.
Nicolas was suitably impressed when he let himself in and walked around, inspecting what his two grand had bought him. There was a spacious living room that combined the sitting and dining areas and opened out onto an equally large, sea-facing balcony, with a barbeque, outdoor furniture and a hot tub. The bedroom was five-star, the bed king-sized, as was the plasma television screen built into the wall opposite the foot of the bed. The en suite bathroom was total luxury with gold taps, crystal light fittings and a spa bath fit for two. The kitchen was superbly appointed with black granite countertops and stainless steel appliances.
Nicolas noted the complimentary bottles of wine in the fridge. Not just champagne, but Chardonnay and Chablis. There were also a couple of bottles of fine Hunter Valley reds resting in the stainless steel wine rack. A bowl of fresh fruit sat on the coffee table and a box of chocolates, too.
Serina had a sweet tooth, he recalled.
Serina…
How would she react to him this time? he wondered as he unzipped the first of his two cases and began to unpack.
She’d been extremely tense when he’d confronted her after his mother’s funeral. Fearful, he suspected, that he might say something to her husband. No doubt she’d never confessed to Greg that she’d slept with him not long before their wedding.
His own mood had been vicious. Grief combined with jealousy had not made him ready to be kind, or forgiving. He’d questioned Serina mercilessly about her daughter’s parentage, even though his eyes had already told him that the pretty little dark-haired, dark-eyed child wasn’t his.
And all the time they were talking together, he’d been fiercely erect. Wanting her. Loving her. Hating her.
She’d looked even more beautiful than he remembered. Black became her. There again, just about any colour suited Serina, with her dark hair and eyes, and lovely olive skin. Having a child had enhanced rather than spoilt her figure. Her curves were the curves of a woman in her prime. She’d looked luscious, and as sexy as ever.
It had killed him to watch her leave the wake with another man, to see the proprietorial way Greg had taken her arm and led her away.
Nicolas hadn’t slept a wink that night. He’d tossed and turned, picturing Serina in her marital bed, in her husband’s arms, under her husband’s body.
The next morning, a grim-faced Nicolas had given instructions to his mother’s solicitor to dispose of the house and all its contents, and forward the proceeds to his bank in London. By noon he’d left Rocky Creek, vowing never to return.
Yet here he was, doing just that.
Of course, he’d never imagined that the extremely healthy-looking Greg Harmon would die so young. Or that Serina’s daughter would write to him and practically beg him to come back to Rocky Creek.
Nicolas wondered what Serina felt about Felicity doing that? Would she have been annoyed? Angry? It had been rather bold of the girl to write to him like that. He suspected it had been done without her mother’s permission.
The fact there’d been no email from Serina herself had been telling, he thought. The principal of Rocky Creek Primary school had emailed him, checking that his offer was for real, but nothing, however, from Felicity’s mother.
Perhaps her silence meant indifference. But he doubted it.
Serina could never be indifferent to him, just as he could never be indifferent to her.
As Nicolas carried his toilet bag into the bathroom, he made another vow. He wasn’t going to leave Australia this time till he knew for certain how Serina felt about him and how he felt about her. He was not going to live the rest of his life pining for what might have been, or what might be in the future.
He’d booked this apartment for a full week. Long enough, he imagined, to have all his questions answered…
SERINA found it impossible to concentrate at work that Friday morning. All she could think about was the fact that Nicolas was on his way here right at this moment; that soon, he would reach Port Macquarie and call, not Felicity or Fred Tarleton, Felicity’s school’s principal, but her own sorry self.
Felicity, the precocious child, had informed her of these new arrangements late last night, explaining that she’d given Nicolas her mobile number to contact when he arrived at Port Macquarie, as everyone at the school would be tied up all day, getting the school hall ready for the concert the following evening. Everything had to be perfect for their famous visiting judge.
There had been no use protesting. Felicity was as stubborn as a mule. And Nicolas, it seemed, was uncontactable at that hour, having already boarded his plane in London for the flight to Sydney. It hadn’t occurred to Serina till she’d arrived at work this morning that he probably had one of those fan-dangled new phones that received emails, even on planes. Serina had never been overly keen on technology and whilst she used a computer at work and carried a basic mobile phone with her, she didn’t have a PC of her own at home and wasn’t at all enamoured with the Internet.
Felicity, however, like most modern children, was a real computer buff and could make her way around the worldwide web with ridiculous ease. Over the past fortnight she’d regaled Serina with scads of information about Nicolas that she’d found on the Internet, from his earliest concert playing days right up to the successes he’d