slave, a nothing person with no will of her own. He only had to take her in his arms and she was reduced to being a robot, incapable of saying no to him.
Knowing this, she’d made her initial stand against him over the phone. Nicolas had just won a concerto competition in Sydney and the prize would take him to England to study and perform. He’d rung her immediately and insisted she accompany him, though there’d not been an offer of marriage, she’d noted. She’d be his travelling companion as well as his personal assistant—and, most of all, his extremely accommodating love slave.
‘I can’t go with you, Nicolas,’ she’d choked out even as the tears had run down her cheeks. ‘Not now. I have to stay in Rocky Creek and help run the family business. There’s no one else, only me.’ She’d had no brothers or sisters to help, having been an only child. And her mother had had to stay home and nurse her father.
Nicolas had raged at her for ages—raged and argued. But she’d stayed firm that time. Much easier with him so far away. When he’d threatened to return to Rocky Creek to persuade her, she’d claimed he would be wasting his time, adding the desperate lie that she was sick to death of their long-distance relationship anyway. In truth, since he’d gone to Sydney to study, she only saw him on the odd weekend when he came home, and during holidays. He sometimes didn’t even come home for those. More than once he’d gone away to a music camp.
‘I want a normal boyfriend,’ Serina had wailed. ‘One who isn’t obsessed with music. And one who lives in Rocky Creek! Greg Harmon’s always asking me out,’ she’d added quite truthfully.
‘Greg Harmon! He’s old enough to be your father!’
‘No, he’s not.’ Greg did look older than he was. But actually he was only in his late twenties, a local fellow who worked as a teacher in nearby Wauchope High School, where both Serina and Nicolas had studied. Although she had never actually been in any of Greg’s classes—he taught agriculture and woodwork—she’d always known he fancied her.
He’d started asking her out the moment she’d graduated from school.
‘He’s a very nice man,’ Serina had snapped defensively. ‘And very good-looking. Next time he asks me out, I’m going to say yes.’
It had almost been a relief when Nicolas had stormed off to England by himself. But then she’d never heard from him again: no letters or phone calls begging her forgiveness; nothing but a bitter silence.
Serina had taken a long time to get over Nicolas. But, in the end, sheer loneliness had forced her into saying yes to Greg’s persistent requests to take her out. In the back of her mind, however, she’d always believed Nicolas would return one day to claim her. So she didn’t sleep with Greg at first, or accept any of his regular proposals of marriage.
But as time went by and Nicolas didn’t return to Rocky Creek, Serina let Greg put an engagement ring on her finger. And take her to bed, after which she’d cried and cried. Not because it was awful. Greg turned out to be a tender and considerate lover. But because he wasn’t Nicolas.
Still, in time, she managed to push Nicolas right to the back of her mind and began making concrete plans for her wedding to Greg. Although not ecstatically happy, Serina was reasonably content with her life. She was loved by her fiancé, family and friends, and respected in the community. She was also finding great satisfaction in expanding the family’s lumber yard into a more extensive building supply business, local demand increasing as Rocky Creek gradually became a very desirable ‘tree-change’ destination for retirees and tired city dwellers.
If only she hadn’t made that fateful trip to Sydney in search of the right wedding dress…If only she hadn’t seen Nicolas’s interview on television in her hotel room…If only she’d stayed away from his performance that night at the Opera House…
Serina glanced across the breakfast table at her daughter and wondered, not for the first time, if she’d done the right thing, passing Felicity off as Greg’s daughter. It hadn’t been a deliberate act on her part. By the time she’d realised she was pregnant, the wedding was upon her and she hadn’t had the heart to hurt Greg as she knew the truth would have hurt him. And hurt everyone else: her parents, his parents, their friends.
Life in a small country town was not as simple as people sometimes thought.
No, I made the right decision, she accepted philosophically, the only decision.
Greg was a devoted husband and father and I had a good life with him, a nice, peaceful life. I still lead a nice, peaceful life.
But that peace was about to be broken. Big-time.
Fear clutched at her stomach. Fear of what might happen when she saw Nicolas again—this time without the moral protection of a husband in her life. She still hadn’t forgotten how she’d felt when she’d seen him at his mother’s funeral. That had been ten years ago, when she’d been twenty-seven and Nicolas an incredibly dashing thirty. Greg had insisted they both attend, Mrs Dupre having been a well-loved member in their small community. They’d taken Felicity with them. She’d been around two at the time. It was at the wake that Nicolas had cornered her, getting her alone after Greg had carried their daughter outside to play for a while.
Nicolas had been cold to her, as cold as ice.
She hadn’t felt cold, however. Even whilst he’d questioned her about Felicity’s birth date in the most chilling and contemptuous fashion, she’d burned with a desire that she’d found both disturbing and despicable. It still upset her to think of what might have happened if Nicolas had made any kind of pass at her.
Fortunately, he hadn’t.
But who knew what he might do now that she was a widow. Had Felicity told him Greg was dead? It seemed likely that she had.
‘Do you have a copy of the letter you sent Mr Dupre?’ she asked her daughter somewhat stiffly.
Felicity looked pained. ‘Oh, Mum, that’s private!’
‘I want to see it, Felicity. And the email he sent back to you.’
Felicity pouted and stayed right where she was.
Serina rose from her chair, her expression uncompromising. ‘Let’s go, madam.’
Serina found her daughter’s letter very touching, till she got to the part where Felicity offered Nicolas accommodation at their house.
‘He can’t stay here!’ she blurted out before she could get control of herself.
‘Why not?’ Felicity demanded to know with the indigna-tion—and innocence—of youth.
‘Because.’
‘Because why?’ her daughter persisted.
‘Because you don’t ask virtual strangers to stay in your home,’ she answered in desperation.
‘But he’s not a stranger. He lived here in Rocky Creek for years and years. Mrs Johnson said you were very good friends. She said you dated for a while.’
‘Only very casually,’ Serina lied. ‘And, as I said, that was nearly twenty years ago. I have no idea what kind of man Nicolas Dupre might have become in the meantime. For all I know he could be a drunk, or a drug addict!’
Felicity
