The speed with which she bolted out of the SUV once he’d stopped suggested she hadn’t enjoyed being alone with him in a confined space.
‘You might as well leave your bag behind,’ he suggested as he climbed out from behind the wheel and slammed the door. ‘We’re going to lunch together shortly, remember?’
Her body language showed extreme irritation with him. She clutched the bag even more tightly in her right hand and threw him what could only be described as a wintry look. ‘I don’t recall agreeing to do any such thing.’
The possibility of her not even going to lunch with him did not sit well with Nicolas. ‘It will look odd, if you don’t. Emma and Allie won’t be pleased. Neither will Felicity. What are you afraid of, Serina? That I’ll throw you across the restaurant table and have my wicked way with you right in front of everyone?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she snapped. ‘I’m well aware that the days of my being your sexual cup of tea are long gone. This way,’ she said coldly, and marched off through the front gate and along a path that led past the old school and across to an L-shaped cream brick building sitting where the playground had once been.
An increasingly frustrated Nicolas stalked after her, grudgingly noting that the surrounds of the new Rocky Creek primary school were a credit to the P & C. Covered walkways ran everywhere, protecting the children from rain as well as the hot summer sun. The gardens and lawns were both immaculate and alive, obviously having an excellent watering system.
‘Very nice landscaping,’ he remarked.
‘Gus’s money also pays for a gardener,’ she said.
‘Good old Gus.’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic!’
‘I wasn’t,’ Nicolas denied, although he recognised his mood had shifted to a darker place, that place where he was propelled when things didn’t go his way, or when he looked like he was failing at something.
Serina stopped walking and whirled to face him, her dark eyes stormy. ‘Look, I know what you think of Rocky Creek. It’s written all over your supercilious face. No matter how much the town’s progressed, you still think of it as a backwater with nothing here to interest you. Which is absolutely true. We don’t have an opera house or theatres galore, or mansions full of the rich and famous who hold dinner parties every day of the week. We don’t have expensive art galleries, museums or designer boutiques. We certainly don’t have super highways where you can drive at two hundred kilometres an hour in your two-hundred-thousand-dollar sports cars. What we do have, however, is people who care about each other. People who are loving and loyal, people who look after each other when times are tough and who are prepared to make sacrifices. Who don’t always think of their own selfish selves!’
Nicolas stood there, stunned by the savagery of Serina’s tirade.
She seemed a little stunned herself. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last, if a little grudgingly. ‘I guess that was rude of me. The thing is, Nicolas, I just don’t understand why you agreed to come all this way for a silly little talent quest. Other than your brief visit when your mum died, you haven’t darkened the doorstep of Rocky Creek for over twenty years!’
He looked deep into her eyes and ached to tell her the truth.
I came because I still want you, Serina. Because I wanted to make love to you again. I came because I just couldn’t stay away, not once I knew you weren’t married anymore.
But it wasn’t the right time, or the right place. It might never be the right time, or the right place, he realised grimly. Not if she felt this viciously about him.
‘I came,’ he said instead, quite truthfully as well, ‘because of your daughter’s very touching letter.’
And, right on cue, Felicity came flying down the path towards them.
Nicolas knew she was Felicity because it was like seeing Serina at that age, so great was the resemblance.
‘You’re here!’ Felicity squealed as only a twelve-year-old girl can squeal. She didn’t stop there, either, literally throwing herself against him so hard that he lurched backwards a step.
‘Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!’ she blurted, hugging him tightly around the waist before abruptly disengaging herself and throwing him a sheepish look from under her long lashes. ‘Sorry. I get a bit carried away sometimes. Don’t I, Mum…?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
SERINA would have loved to turn tail and run at that point. It had already been getting to be too much for her, seeing Nicolas again. That had been why she’d let fly at him just now, because she’d needed some outlet for the tension building inside her.