Michelle giving up law.
Serena, becoming a hairdresser.
Nic shook his head. A wicked waste of ability. Yet what choice had they had, given their need to remain together. And who could blame them for that after the tragic loss of their parents?
The guy at the piano raised his voice to deliver the last line of the song—A new day has begun.
It must have impinged on Serena’s consciousness because her gaze swung back to him, a sad mockery in her eyes. ‘At least there was money this time. To begin a new day,’ she said.
He nodded, realising she was referring to a compensation settlement for David’s death.
‘Michelle couldn’t bear to stay in Sydney,’ she went on. ‘I think buying the place at Holgate, working with animals again, was a retreat to what we’d known as kids. To Michelle it was, and is, a safe place.’
‘It looks as though she’s done well with it,’ Nic commented, sincerely impressed by her sister’s achievement in establishing an independent business to support herself and her daughter.
‘It’s been good for her.’
‘What about you, Serena?’
She shook her head, a wry little smile tilting her mouth. ‘It wasn’t good for me. Not then. To me, nothing felt safe. I had this urge to live as much as I could, go after the high life, have the best of everything, forget any planning for a future that might be taken away from me in a split second.’
‘I can see how you’d feel that.’ He smiled encouragingly. ‘So you talked your way into a high-flying job.’ This was where practising psychology had come in, Nic reasoned, anticipating her move into some public relations arena.
She laughed, but it wasn’t a laugh of happy achievement. It held a hint of derision, and her eyes were suddenly diamond hard, biting into him. ‘Do you need that from me, Nic?’ she demanded. ‘Something respectably impressive?’
He was instantly aware that the whole atmosphere between them had changed. There was no longer any reaching out for understanding. This was hard-core challenge.
She sat back in her chair, establishing distance, and the air between them bristled with electric needles. The back of his neck felt pricked by them. Even the beating of his heart was suspended, anticipating attack. His mind screamed that the utmost caution was required here, and sweeping in behind this instinctive awareness was the conviction that he didn’t care what she’d done. He wanted this woman. Losing her at this point was unacceptable.
He gestured an appeal. ‘I’m sorry if I assumed something wrong. Please…I’d really like to know what you did next.’
Scarlet patches burned from her cheeks like twin battle flags. ‘I went to what is probably the most fashionable hairdressing salon in Sydney. Have you heard of Ty Anders?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘The name means nothing to me.’
She shrugged off his ignorance. ‘Ty is much in demand by socialites, models and movie stars because he can create individual images. My upmarket London experience particularly impressed him. He took me on, though he insisted I be called Rene, not Serena, which he considered downmarket. So I became Rene Fleming.’
She seemed to fling the name at him, as though it should strike some familiar chord, but it didn’t. ‘I’m not in this kind of fashion loop, Serena,’ he offered apologetically, excusing himself by adding, ‘I’m a man. When my hair gets too long, I go to a barber.’
‘We had many wealthy male clients, believe me,’ she said ironically, then paused, perhaps reflecting on his reply. ‘The point is…I learnt how the wealthy lived and I spent every cent I earned on going to the in places, mixing with the in people, wearing designer clothes which I found could be snapped up relatively cheaply from secondhand boutiques where Ty’s clients off-loaded stuff they’d only worn once or twice. I was a fun, fashionable person who knew all the hot gossip and all the right moves. Ty had taught me how to flatter, how to cajole, how to press the buttons that opened doors. You could say I was…a brilliant apprentice.’
Her words were laced with bitter cynicism. Being an adept social climber had not brought her joy. ‘So what went wrong for you?’ Nic asked quietly.
‘Oh, I breezed along with all this for years, telling myself I was having a wow of a time, playing the game you beautiful people play, right up until it culminated in a proposal of marriage from a millionaire,’ she tossed out flippantly. ‘I even thought I was in love with him. I might actually have gone ahead and married him.’
Her alienation from this whole scene was reflected in her eyes…a bleak disillusionment that rejected every aspect of the high life.
‘Something must have happened to change your mind,’ he probed.
She stared at him, her expression flat, unreadable. Finally, she said, ‘You happened, Nic.’
‘Me?’ It didn’t make sense to him. She’d left Sydney behind before they’d ever met.
‘I overheard you talking to my erstwhile fiancéat a party.’
He shook his head, still not connecting anything together.
Her eyes mocked his forgetfulness. ‘I was left with the very strong impression that you didn’t think a hairdresser was good enough to be Lyall Duncan’s wife. And his reply to you told me I’d been living in a fool’s paradise.’
Shock rolled through him, wave after wave of it as recollections hit him; what he’d said to Lyall, what Lyall had said to him, the initial niggle that he’d seen Serena somewhere before, her none too subtle scorn aimed at both him and Justine, the possibly vengeful desire to score off him, her rejection of that first sexual impact, her resistance to any follow-up, the questioning about his association with Lyall…
A waiter arrived at the table with the plates of oysters they’d ordered. Nic was still speechless, totally rocked by the revelations that now coloured his relationship with Serena. She flashed the man a ‘Thank you,’ and they were left alone again.
With an air of careless disregard for his reaction to her disclosures, she picked up her fork, then flicked Nic a wildly reckless look. ‘Bon appetit!’
His stomach cramped.
She jabbed the fork into an oyster.
Payback time, he thought.
And felt sick.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SERENA shoved each oyster into her mouth and gulped it down, glad she hadn’t ordered something that would need chewing. Even so, it was amazing that her churning stomach didn’t reject them. Her whole body was a mass of twanging nerves. She couldn’t bear to look at Nic. The shock on his face only added to her torment.