‘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…
