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‘Oh, yes, yes, I would. But can you tell me quickly? I’m still in Port Macquarie, and I told Felicity I’d be home by four.’
‘What are you doing in Port?’
Serina swallowed. ‘Having lunch with you know who.’
‘Who? Oh, you mean Nicolas Dupre. Really? I’m surprised. I got the impression you weren’t too pleased with Felicity for securing his services as judge for the talent quest.’
‘I wasn’t. And I didn’t want to have lunch with him, believe me,’ she said. ‘But he asked me in front of those silly girls in my office and they made it impossible for me to refuse.’
‘You’re right. They are silly, those two. But nice girls all the same. So what’s he like these days? Still handsome, I would expect.’
‘Mum, could this conversation wait till later? I’m running out of time and I can’t talk whilst I drive.’ It seemed wise to let her mother think she had her own wheels.
‘It will have to be much later. I haven’t left Newcastle yet.’
‘So how is Mrs Johnson?’
‘Healthy as a horse. The doc gave her some mild blood pressure pills and told her to lay off the sherry.’
‘Which she won’t.’
‘I doubt it. Anyway, dear, off you go and I’ll ring you when I get home.’
‘Please do.’ And she hung up.
‘Who were you talking to in here?’ Nicolas said as he flung open the door.
‘My mother,’ she replied brusquely, and dropped the phone back into her bag. ‘She rang to let me know how Mrs Johnson is.’
‘And?’
‘She’ll live till she’s a hundred. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get back to Rocky Creek.’
‘You’re the one who’s been taking your time. Let’s go.’
The drive back to Rocky Creek was excruciating. Neither of them spoke, not a single word.
Serina stared through the passenger window and tried not think about what she’d just done. If her mother ever found out she’d jumped into bed with Nicolas within hours of his returning, she would not believe her. Of course, her mother never knew about the highly sexual nature of their teenage affair. She probably thought her dear darling daughter had gone to her wedding night a virgin.
Serina would have liked to confide in her mother. To confess everything. But she couldn’t. Her mother would not understand. She would be totally shocked, and bitterly ashamed.
I’ll have to do what I’ve always done, Serina thought wearily. Keep my mouth shut and all my dark dirty secrets to myself.
Just after they’d gone through Wauchope, Nicolas’s own brooding silence began to seriously bother her. If he considered their relationship dusted and dried, as he’d claimed, then why was he so angry with her?
And he was. She could feel his anger hitting her in waves.
They were just coming down the hill towards the bridge that crossed Rocky Creek when she decided to speak up.
‘There’s no need for this, Nicolas,’ she said with more calm than she was feeling. ‘It’s childish.’
‘What’s childish?’
‘Giving me the cold-shoulder treatment. Look, I’m sorry if things haven’t worked out the way you might have imagined. I’m sorry I’m not the girl you remember. Like I said, things change. So do people.’
His sidewards glance showed a reluctant flash of admiration. ‘You’ve certainly grown up a lot.’
‘Marriage and motherhood has a tendency to do that.’
‘Are you saying I haven’t grown up?’
‘Not at all. But parenthood has a way of forcing a person into early maturity, and into being less selfish.’
‘Ah, so you’re saying that I’m selfish.’
‘Don’t put words into my mouth, Nicolas. You would know better than me if you’re selfish or not.’
Nicolas nodded. ‘I suspect that I am. My mother always said I was.’
They both fell silent again as he drove into town. Despite knowing she would see Nicolas again the next day, Serina didn’t want this day to end badly.
‘Can’t we part friends, Nicolas?’ she asked, her voice cracking a little.
He did not reply at first. But then he nodded. ‘If that’s what you want.’
Oh, yes, of course it wasn’t what she wanted. But what she wanted—what she’d always wanted—just couldn’t be. She’d made her bed all those years ago. And now she had to lie in it, till the end of her days.
‘It’s what I want,’ she said.
He pulled into the car park of Brown’s Landscaping and Building Supplies, but didn’t bother to park, just drove straight up to the front door. The face he turned towards her was totally unreadable.
‘Friends, then,’ he said, and bent to give her a peck on the cheek. ‘See you tomorrow.’
Her eyes met his for a long moment. She almost said it.
I love you.
I’ve always loved you.
But only almost.
When tears pricked at her eyes, she did the only thing she could do. She smiled, then got out of the car and waved him off.
She didn’t go into the office. She could not bear to make conversation right at that moment, couldn’t bear any more pretending. She went straight to her own car and drove straight home.
Felicity wasn’t there yet, thank heavens. Her daughter wasn’t renowned for punctuality. Just as well, because by then serious tears were threatening. Serina just managed to get herself inside before the floodgates opened.
‘Oh, Nicolas,’ she cried as she sank down to the floor, her back against the front door, her head dropping into her hands. ‘Why did you have to come back?’
An equally distraught Nicolas was thinking exactly the same thing as he drove back to Port Macquarie. If he hadn’t promised Felicity to judge that stupid bloody talent quest tomorrow he would have taken the first available flight back to Sydney. He didn’t want to see Serina again. He didn’t want to have to pretend to everyone that they were just ‘good friends’. His life had been much easier when she was just a memory, one which had occasionally tormented him but which he’d been able to put aside, most of the time.
Impossible to put aside a flesh-and-blood woman in the same room as him, one who only a short time earlier had been kneeling, naked, before him.
Nicolas shuddered.
He had to stop thinking about that. Had to stop thinking that he’d never meant anything more to her than just a piece of meat.
But she’d said as much, hadn’t she?
Sex is all you’re good for, Nicolas.
They were her very own words.
She’d also said he was childish. And selfish.
As Nicolas drove back to Port Macquarie, he mulled over everything she’d said and done that day. By the time he let himself back into his apartment he’d come to the conclusion that Serina was right. He was childish and selfish. And extremely egotistical to think she might still love him. Which of course was what had brought him here in the first place. That vain hope.
Very vain.
It saddened him to face the truth, but it had to be faced. He’d lost his chance with Serina twenty years ago. That episode at the Opera House had meant no more to her than a one-night stand. As had this afternoon.
Opening one of the wine bottles, Nicolas poured himself a long glass and sat down to drink. Think of tomorrow as a job, he lectured himself. A series of auditions for a show. He’d always liked auditions. Liked the anticipation of discovering someone with real talent. Who knew? Maybe someone in Rocky Creek primary school has real talent…
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#ulink_89193a91-e529-5398-961e-c86188e1b258)
NICOLAS sat down at the judge’s table and kept his eyes glued to the stage. That way he wouldn’t be tempted to look over at Serina, whom he knew was sitting in the first row of seats, a little to his left. He’d managed to avoid her in the main, although even a short hello and a few miserable glimpses had burned her appearance into his poor besotted brain.
She was wearing white, pure virginal white. Unfortunately, she looked anything but, her dress being halter-necked with a deep V neckline, a tightly belted waist and a gathered shirt that emphasised her hourglass figure and gave rise to the kind of erotic thoughts she always evoked in him.
Felicity walking onto the stage was a good distraction. He hadn’t forgotten that she was going to play at some stage this afternoon and he was really looking forward to it, though he rather suspected Mrs Johnson’s effusive praise earlier over Felicity’s abilities as a pianist might be exaggerated.
‘Reminds me of you, Nicolas,’ the old lady had said.
Unlikely, given Felicity was a girl and only twelve. Although she looked older standing there in a pale blue dress and shoes that had heels. Her long dark hair swung around her slender shoulders the way Serina’s did when she walked. She was, however, taller than her mother. There again, her father had been tall.
‘Act number one,’ Felicity announced into the microphone, ‘will be Jonathon Clarke. Jonathon is in fourth grade and he’s going to juggle. Jonathon?’ She waved towards the wings and a skinny, nervous-looking boy with short brown hair and glasses emerged. Some taped music started, but Jonathon didn’t. Whoever was behind the scenes stopped the tape, then started again.
Nicolas had a feeling that he wasn’t seeing the winner.
Rocky Creek Primary School didn’t have a great deal of talent, Nicolas accepted by the time he’d sat through eight very mediocre acts. But what the kids lacked in talent they made up for in enthusiasm. There was a real buzz in the hall, which was full to the brim with parents, locals and some concert-goers not so local.
None of them seemed disappointed with the acts so far, applauding wildly at the end of each. Nicolas, who appreciated he’d been spoiled by years of seeing top performers all over the world, put aside his super-critic hat and kept his comments on the kind and constructive side. The audience seemed appreciative of his ability to find praise for even the worst performance.
So far he’d endured the hapless Jonathon, who’d dropped more clubs than he caught; a gymnastic-style dance troop of fifth-grade girls whose movements often got out of sync; a poetry reading of ‘The Man From Snow River’, complete with stick horses thundering across the stage in the background; two separate country and western singers with absolutely no originality; a twelve-year-old magician whose magic was straight out of a do-it-yourself manual; an Elvis impersonator, who’d been hilarious, because he was so atrocious. And last but not least, a ten-year-old boy named Cory, playing the spoons.
Actually, he wasn’t half-bad. If no one better came along, Nicolas was going to give Cory first prize.
Only two to go, according to the program. A twelve-year-old hip-hop dancer named Kirsty. And an eleven-year-old girl—her name was Isabella—singing ‘Danny Boy’.
He should have known ‘Danny Boy’ would get in there somewhere.
Kirsty was somewhat of a pleasant surprise. She was darned good. But Isabella was clearly the star act of the night, the audience falling silent the moment she opened her mouth, her voice as pure and as clear as a bell.
Everyone clapped wildly when she finished, Nicolas included. He didn’t have to think too hard over who would win, or who would be runner-up. He’d make that second prize a dead heat between Kirsty, the hip-hop dancer, and Cory, the spoon boy. It would be simple to add a bit of money to the prize pool himself, if need be.
But before any of this could happen, however, there was one event left: Felicity’s special performance.
Nicolas found his heartbeat quickening when she walked back out onto the stage.
Surely he couldn’t be nervous for her.
But he was, nervous as hell.
Nicolas had never been nervous himself before a performance. He used to be excited. He could not wait to get out there, to show what he could do, to blow his audience away with his brilliance.
But then he’d always been super confident when it came to playing the piano. Girls—especially young girls like Felicity—rarely possessed that kind of confidence.
Yet as he watched her cross to the centre of the stage, there was no hesitation in her stride. She stopped there for a moment, faced the audience and bowed, at the same time throwing him a smile that wasn’t just confident. It was super confident.
‘Wait till you hear this,’ Felicity’s principal whispered from where he was sitting beside Nicolas at the judge’s table. ‘Felicity would have won hands down if she’d entered, you know.’
It was a telling remark, coming so soon after Isabella’s almost faultless rendition of ‘Danny Boy’.
Nicolas watched, his mouth drying as Felicity moved over to the piano that had not been used as yet that night, Isabella having sung unaccompanied and the dancers using recorded music.
Another smile came his way after she sat down on the stool and lifted her hands to the keys.
‘I have chosen to play this medley of pieces in honour of our very special guest here tonight,’ she said to the audience. ‘I cannot hope to play them as well as he once did. But I will do my best and hope he forgives my mistakes.’
What mistakes? Nicolas was to think numbly thirty seconds later as Felicity’s fingers flew over the keys. He’d never heard Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ performed any better by one so young. In no time the fast, flashy piece was over, Felicity switching with effortless ease and surprising sensitivity into the haunting adagio from Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’. Lastly, just as everyone in the audience was almost in tears, she launched into Chopin’s very showy polonaise ‘Heroic’, a piece requiring great technical brilliance and showmanship.
Chopin was a favourite choice of composer amongst concert pianists, especially his polonaises. This particular one had been a staple of Nicolas’s list. He watched, totally amazed, as Felicity attacked the wild sweep of notes with the same kind of panache and passion that he’d possessed, which the critics had loved. She never looked up at any sheets of music because there were none there. She was playing from memory as he’d always done.
Nicolas could not believe it. Only twelve and already she could play like this. Why, she could take the world by storm in a few years!
Felicity finished the polonaise with a flourish, bending over the keys in a long, dramatic pause before slowly lifting her hands. She tossed her hair back from her shoulders as she stood up, taking her time to turn and bow to the audience, all the while with a ‘Yes, I know I’m good’expression on her face.
It was then that she broke into a grin and winked at him.
The cheeky minx, Nicolas thought as he jumped to his feet, clapping and shouting ‘Bravo!’ as European audiences sometimes did. Everyone else in the hall started doing likewise and Felicity finally began to look a little embarrassed. It was left to the principal of the school to hurry up onto the stage and bring some order back into proceedings.
‘Wasn’t that just wonderful, folks?’ he said, and gave a by then embarrassed-looking Felicity a shoulder squeeze. ‘Not only is our school captain a great little pianist, but she’s also a great little organiser. We have her to thank for the presence here tonight of our esteemed guest and judge, Mr Nicolas Dupre. For anyone who doesn’t know, Mr Dupre was Australia’s most famous concert pianist till a tragic accident cut short his career a decade ago. But you can’t keep a Rocky Creek lad down for long. He then went on to become an equally famous theatrical entrepreneur. Some of you might have seen the segment about him on TV a few years ago. Anyway, we are most grateful that he found the time to be with us here tonight. He came a long way. Now… we come to the most important part of the evening. Will Mr Dupre please come up onto the stage and announce the winners?’
Nicolas rose, and made his way forward to some ear-splitting applause.
Serina wasn’t clapping, however, her hands twisting in her lap as she watched Nicolas mount the short flight of steps then walk across the stage to where Felicity and Fred Tarleton were standing.
He looked magnificent, dressed in a charcoal-grey suit which must have cost a small fortune. Not only did it fit his body to perfection, but there also wasn’t a single wrinkle where the sleeves met his broad shoulders. His shirt was blue, about the same colour as his eyes. His tie was dark blue and grey striped. Only his collar-length blond hair spoiled his image as a millionaire businessman. That, and the inherent sensuality in his face.
