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‘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 (#ulink_74e724a0-d003-5cb2-bf36-39ca76936cc5)
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.
‘You won’t have to starve,’ he went on. ‘There’s wine in the apartment, and fruit and chocolates. I presume you still like chocolates?’
She still didn’t speak, or look his way.
‘There’s no need to sulk,’ he snapped. ‘You want this as much as I do.’
Her head jerked round, but any smart crack she might have made disappeared once she saw the raw passion in his face. This was the Nicolas she remembered, the Nicolas she’d fallen madly in love with. All of a sudden it seemed stupid to spoil their last time together. If she was going to do this—and it seemed she was—she would do so willingly. But on her terms, not his.
‘I won’t deny it,’ she stated matter-if-factly. ‘If I did, you’d find out soon enough I was lying. But let’s get one thing straight, Nicolas. This afternoon is our swan song. There will be no encore performance. Once that talent quest is over tomorrow night I want you to leave Rocky Creek and never come back.’
‘And what if I don’t want to do that?’ he retorted. ‘I’ll have you know I’ve rented this apartment up here for a week.’And he nodded towards a tall, grey-blue cement-rendered building just ahead on their right that Serina hadn’t actually seen before, though she knew of it. Blue Horizon Apartments had opened recently with a big colour spread in the local newspaper.
‘I’m sure they’ll give you a refund,’ she replied as he pulled in to a driveway just to the left of the building.
Once the SUV was stopped in front of the car park security gate, Nicolas glared over at her. ‘What gives you the right to make demands like that?’
‘I don’t have any right,’ she admitted. ‘But if you do what I ask, I’ll do whatever you want for the next four hours. If not, then you can turn around and take me home.’
Nicolas could have called her bluff, the way he had a short time ago. But really, there was no point. All his questions had been answered now. Serina didn’t love him anymore. Maybe she’d never loved him. That night thirteen years ago hadn’t been about love, it’d been all about lust. As was this afternoon.
She still wanted him. Quite badly, if he was any judge. Which explained why she was so anxious to get rid of him, because she was afraid of what she might do.
Nicolas suspected he could seduce her into going away with him, if he tried hard enough. But he wasn’t that ruthless, despite what she thought of him. He could see that her life here meant the world to her, as did her daughter. To take her away from Rocky Creek would be cruel and truly wicked, which he was not.
Which left him with the harsh reality that this afternoon would be the last time he’d be with her.
Four miserable short hours.
It just wasn’t enough.
‘Make it six hours,’ he counteroffered. ‘Call Felicity on her mobile and tell her to go to a friend’s place till then.’
‘I can’t do that. People will talk.’
‘Serina, they’re going to talk anyway. But if I leave town for good the day after tomorrow, they’ll soon forget.’
‘If you leave town?’
‘That’s conditional on your staying with me for six hours. And what was it you offered? Doing whatever I want.’
‘That’s blackmail!’ she protested.
Nicolas laughed. ‘No, my darling heart. That’s negotiation. So what’s it to be?’
‘I… I’ll ring Felicity later. But not right now. Closer to four.’
