CHAPTER ONE
WOW! Definitely a million-dollar property! Real class, Serena Fleming decided appreciatively, driving the van past perfectly manicured lawns to the architect designed house owned by one of her sister’s clients, Angelina Gifford. Michelle’s Pet Grooming Salon drew quite a few wealthy people who used the mobile service provided, but Serena was more impressed with this place than any other she had visited in the course of picking up pampered dogs and cats.
Michelle had told her the land in this area had only been released for development four years ago. The Giffords had certainly bought a prime piece of real estate—three acres sited on top of a hill overlooking Terrigal Beach and a vast stretch of ocean. There were no formal gardens, just a few artistically placed palm trees—big fat pineapple-shaped palms with a mass of fronds growing out of the top. Must have cost a fortune to transport and plant them, all fully grown, but then quite clearly the whole place had to have cost a fortune.
The fabulous view was cut off as the van drew level with the house which seemed to have walled courtyards on this western side. All the windows would face north and east, Serena thought. Still, even the wall arrangement was interesting, painted in dark blue with a rich cream trim, suggesting sea and sand.
She brought the van to a halt adjacent to the front door, cut the engine and hopped out, curious to meet the man who had designed all this. Nic Moretti was his name, a highly successful architect, also the brother of Angelina Gifford, whose husband had whisked her off for a trip overseas. The talented Nic had been left in charge of the house and Angelina’s adored dog, Cleo, who was due for a clip and shampoo this morning.
No doubt it was convenient for him to stay here. According to the local newspaper, his design had just won the contract to build a people’s park with various pavilions on crown land overlooking Brisbane Water. Easy for him to supervise the work from such a close vantage point, a mere half hour drive to the location of the proposed park.
Serena rang the doorbell and waited. And waited. She glanced at her watch. It was now ten minutes past the nine o’clock appointment. She rang the doorbell again, with considerably more vigour.
In her other life as a hair stylist in a very fashionable Sydney salon, it was always rich people who disregarded time, expecting to be fitted in whenever they arrived. Here she was on the Central Coast, a good hour and a half north of Sydney, but it was obviously no different, she thought on a disgruntled sigh. The wealthy expected others to wait on them. In fact, they expected the whole world to revolve around them.
Like her ex-fiancé…
Serena was scowling over the memory of what Lyall Duncan had expected of her when the door she faced was abruptly flung open.
‘Yes?’ a big brute of a man snapped.
Serena’s jaw dropped. His thick black hair was rumpled. His unshaven jaw bristled with aggression. His muscular and very male physique was barely clothed by a pair of exotic—or was it erotic?—silk boxer shorts. And if she wasn’t mistaken—no, don’t look there! She wrenched her gaze up from the distracting bulge near his groin, took a deep breath and glared straight back at glowering dark eyes framed by ridiculously long thick eyelashes that were totally wasted on a man.
Italian heritage, of course. What else could it be with names like Nic and Angelina Moretti?
‘I’m Serena from Michelle’s Pet Grooming Salon,’ she announced.
He frowned at her, the dark eyes sharper now as he scrutinised her face; blue eyes, pert nose, full-lipped mouth, slight cleft in her chin, wisps of blond hair escaping from the fat plait that gathered in the rest of it. His gaze dropped to the midriff top that outlined her somewhat perky breasts and the denim shorts that left her long shapely legs on full display, making Serena suddenly self-conscious of being almost as naked as he was, though definitely more decently dressed.
‘Do I know you?’ he barked.
He’d probably been a Doberman pinscher in another life, Serena was thinking, just before the shock of recognition kicked her heart.
‘No!’ she answered with panicky speed, not wanting him to make the link that had suddenly shot through her mind.
It had been a month ago. A whole rotten month of working fiercely at putting the still very raw experience in the irretrievable past; breaking off her engagement to Lyall, leaving her job, leaving Sydney, taking wound-licking refuge with her sister. To be suddenly faced with the architect of those decisions…
She could feel her forehead going clammy, the blood draining from her face as her mind screamed at the unfairness of it all. Her hands clenched, fighting the urge to lash out at him. A persistent thread of common sense argued it wasn’t Nic Moretti’s fault. He’d simply been the instrument who’d drawn out the true picture of her future if she went ahead with her fairy-tale marriage—Cinderella winning the Prince!
He was the man Lyall had been talking to that night, the man who’d expressed surprise at the high-flying property dealer, Lyall Duncan, for choosing to marry down, taking a lowly hairdresser as his wife. And Serena had overheard Lyall’s reply—the reply that had ripped the rose-coloured spectacles off her face and shattered all her illusions. This man had heard it, too, and the humiliation of it forced her into a defensive pretence.
‘Since I don’t know you…’ she half lied in desperate defence.
‘Nic Moretti,’ he rumbled at her.
‘…I don’t see how you can know me,’ she concluded emphatically.
He’d seen her at Lyall’s party but they hadn’t been introduced, and she’d been all glammed up for the occasion, not in her au naturel state as she was this morning. Surely he wouldn’t make the connection. The environment was completely different. Yet despite her denial of any previous encounter with him, he was still frowning, trying to place her.
‘I’m here to collect Cleo,’ she stated briskly, hating this nasty coincidence and wanting to get away as fast as possible.
‘Cleo,’ he repeated in a disconnected fashion.
‘The dog,’ she grated out.
The expression on his rugged handsome face underwent a quick and violent change, the brooding search for her identity clicking straight into totally fed up frustration. ‘You mean the monster,’ he flashed at her derisively.
The blood that had drained from her face, surged to her head again, making Serena see red. It was impossible to resist giving this snobby man a dose of the condescension he ladled out himself.
‘I would hardly characterise a sweet little Australian silky terrier as a monster,’ she said loftily.