Suddenly, with her hair down, her face made up and her amazingly grown-up figure very much on display, she looked much older and extremely sexy. Nicolas took one look at her and was struck by a desire he’d never felt before. He could not take his eyes off her all night. Dancing with her became both a delight and a torment.
He was in quite a frazzled state by the time they left the ball and he drove Serina home shortly after midnight. Her parents had made a condition of her going with him that he wouldn’t take her on to any of the after-grad parties, which were well known for being drunken booze-ups and sex-fests. Nicolas didn’t mind, since he didn’t drink and wasn’t into sex. Not as yet, anyway.
Suddenly, however, he wanted Serina even more than he wanted to dazzle the world with his piano playing. But he knew it was out of the question. For one thing, his date was obviously a virgin, like himself.
But just as they were approaching Rocky Creek, Serina’s hand slid over and came to rest on his thigh. His eyes flew to hers and what he saw there echoed his own quite desperate need.
‘Don’t take me home yet,’ she whispered huskily.
Nicolas needed no more encouragement, swiftly turning his mother’s car off the main road onto a narrow bush track, which he knew would bring him to a very private spot down by the creek.
And it was there that it all began. Just kisses at first, then touching and more touching. Clothes came off and before he knew it he was trying to get inside her. Her gasp of pain didn’t stop him, either. By then he was beyond thought, beyond control. Only afterwards did he panic, because he hadn’t used a condom.
‘Your father’s going to kill me if you get pregnant,’ he’d groaned.
‘I can’t,’ came her surprisingly calm reply. ‘Not tonight, anyway. I’ve just finished my period. According to a book I read that means I’m safe.’
Nicolas breathed a huge sigh of relief.
‘I’ll go in to Port and buy some condoms tomorrow,’ he replied, and she just stared up at him, her eyes large and dark.
‘It’ll be better next time,’ he heard himself promise.
‘I liked it this time,’ she stunned him by saying. ‘It was lovely. Do it to me again, Nicolas.’
And he did. More slowly the second time, watching with wonder as she came. By the time he took her home around two, Nicolas was totally obsessed with her.
Somehow, they managed to keep their teenage love affair a secret during that entire summer holiday, Nicolas sneaking out of his bedroom every night and running all the way to meet Serina down behind her house. Fortunately, her parents lived on a small farm that had lots of outbuildings where they could make love. Nicolas made Serina promise not to tell anyone about their relationship, especially not any of her girlfriends. He knew that Serina’s rather old-fashioned parents would do everything to separate them if they found out what was going on. Publicly, they pretended to their small community that they were just friends, brought together by the fact that they were both pupils of the same music teacher.
It wasn’t till later that they began to date openly. By then Nicolas had gone to Sydney to study and the star-crossed lovers didn’t see each other all that much. When they did, however, they made the most of their time together. They would tell their respective parents that they were practising the piano together, or going to the movies, or to the beach.
But an unwanted pregnancy and a teenage marriage were not in Nicolas’s plans for his immediate future, not if he was going to become the world’s greatest concert pianist.
However, he’d always known that Serina was the only girl for him, that one day they would marry, and he would be the father of her children. It had seemed inconceivable to him back then that she would ever be with another man, let alone bear a child.
Yet she’d had another man’s child—and that child had just written to him.
Why, for pity’s sake?
Nicolas ripped open the pink envelope and out came a white sheet of paper on which was a computer-generated letter.
Dear Mr Dupre
Hi. My name is Felicity Harmon. I live in Rocky Creek and I am twelve years old. I am captain of our primary school and am helping the teachers organise an end-of-year concert to be held on Saturday afternoon, the twentieth of December this year, to raise funds for our local bushfire brigade.
We are going to have a talent quest instead of a normal concert and need someone to act as judge for the night. It would be nice to have someone famous so that lots of people will come. You are the most famous person to have ever lived in Rocky Creek, and I thought I would write and ask you to come and be our judge. My piano teacher, Mrs Johnson, said you probably wouldn’t come because you live in New York now and you don’t have family here anymore. But she also said you were once good friends with my mum and you just might come, if I asked nicely. You probably don’t know this but my dad was killed not that long ago. He went to help down in the terrible bushfires in Victoria last summer and a burnt-out tree fell on him. He told me the day before he died that our local bushfire brigade needed better firefighting equipment to keep our town safe from bushfires. A new truck would be good. But new trucks cost a lot of money.