Chasing Summer: Date with Destiny / Marooned with the Maverick / A Summer Wedding at Willowmere

‘I see,’ she said tautly. ‘Have you got an address for this unit? McMahon’s Point is just north of the Harbour Bridge, on the Luna Park side, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. Yours is penthouse two, in a multi-storeyed circular block called Harbourside Towers, right on the water at the end of Harbour Road. You can’t miss it. I—er—presume you’ll be moving in right away? After all, you can’t really be liking living with your mother.’

Salome picked up the keys and slipped them into her handbag. ‘You’re quite wrong, Charles,’ she said coolly. ‘I won’t be moving in, and I quite like living with my mother.’ But only since Molly seemed finally to have got over the urge to ask every man she dated to move in with her, Salome thought wearily.

She stood up, automatically smoothing down the emerald-green wool sheath over her slender thighs, then, with her free hand, flicking the long mass of tight coppery curls back from her face and shoulders.

A dry-mouthed shock took hold of her when she became aware of how openly lustful Charles’s gaze had grown as it followed each of these movements. Her eyes locked on to his with a sickening jolt inside, but she glared back at him quite boldly, till he was forced to drop his eyes.

Creep! she thought savagely.

‘Please don’t bother to show me out,’ she said, making no attempt to hide her sarcasm. And with that she turned on her black high heels and strode from the office.

It wasn’t till she was alone in the elevator that she realised she was shaking with fury.

* * *

Salome walked slowly through the penthouse, her emotions no more settled than when she had left Charles’s office. Her troubled gaze travelled around the enormous living-room she was standing in, taking in the no-expense-spared décor: the classically neutral colour scheme, the ultra-modern imported furniture, the huge, semicircular plate-glass windows that she’d discovered slid back electronically to allow access to the equally huge balcony.

She wandered out to lean on the high cylindrical railing, and frowned at the view, which stretched across to Darling Harbour on her right, Milson’s Point on her left, and the Bridge straight ahead. The blue waters were cold-looking but beautiful beneath the clear winter sky. A crisp breeze ruffled Salome’s hair, making her realise how cool and refreshing this balcony would be in the summer.

How much was this place worth? she wondered. A million dollars? More?

She sighed. Molly was going to go off her brain when she told her she was going to give it all away too. Just as well Ralph had seen fit to give his young bride’s not-so-suitable mother a house and income of her own when they got married, or she’d never hear the end of it. As it was, Molly often brought up the matter of money and how stupid Salome had been to give it all away, then have to go and work in a dress shop to earn her own living.

Which reminded her. She had still not told Molly that it looked as if she was going to be laid off soon. Sales at the boutique were slumping, along with the economy, the manager not minding at all that Salome had asked for the afternoon off. She’d been looking around for a better job but had found she wasn’t qualified for anything that paid well. To go back to waitressing was too depressing a thought to consider, but she might have to do just that while going to tech and getting herself some marketable skills. Perhaps a typing and word-processing course. That seemed very much in demand.

Meanwhile she would have to face her mother’s exasperation.

Perhaps she wouldn’t tell Molly about this unit at all, Salome mused. Perhaps she would only mention the car. She couldn’t get out of telling her about that, since she had already decided to drive the Ferrari back to her mother’s place at Killara that afternoon, then take it to one of the luxury-car dealers the next morning. There were a lot along the Pacific Highway up towards Hornsby.

But she really wanted to talk to someone about Ralph, wanted a sounding-board for the agony of frustration that she felt building up again inside her. A string of whys had been whirling in her head for too long a time, and now she had another to add to the list. Why had he given her this unit?

But her main questions dealt with the past. Why had Ralph cut her out of his life so abruptly and cruelly? And why, in the light of what had happened, had he married her in the first place? For, to have done what he ultimately had, he couldn’t possibly have loved her, as he’d claimed to.

Salome groaned at the crazed complexity of it all. If sex had been involved it might have made some sense! She was used to men claiming they were in love with a woman till they were firmly ensconced in her bed, only to desert her several months later when their lust had begun to pall. She’d watched them do it to Molly for years!

But her relationship with Ralph had not been a physical one, so sexual boredom—or another woman—could not be blamed for Ralph’s divorcing her.

Suddenly, Salome’s chest contracted viciously, seized by a defiant surge of anger. This was the overriding emotion she was experiencing lately. Anger. A bitter, frustrated anger.

‘Why?’ she screamed out across the water. ‘Why?’

It felt oddly good to give voice to her pain, even if only to empty air. In fourteen long months, Salome had been denied the outlet of actually screaming at Ralph, for he refused to see her, refused to let her get past the blanket of security he had wrapped himself in.

He had moved to his rural property out at Dural, on the outskirts of Sydney, his enormous mansion in Potts Point having been sold within weeks of their separation taking effect. Salome had driven out to Dural several times in vain attempts to gain entrance to see Ralph. But to no avail.

Her letters were returned unopened.

As for phone calls...Valerie always answered the telephone, and there was no denting Ralph’s secretary’s relentlessly negative stance. Not that the woman was rude. She was just totally immovable. Ralph had given orders that his ex-wife was not to be put through to him, and that was that!

Every which way Salome turned, her path was blocked. Finally she had been forced to give up, and had been trying to make a new life for herself. But it hadn’t been easy. Not easy at all.

Today she had put on a brave front for Charles, but inside she was still a shattered woman, a woman who had married for love, not money, a woman who had never been the cheap, mercenary, gold-digging little tart others had always believed her to be.

Though you have to admit, Salome, she conceded to herself with a certain irony, you can’t really blame people for thinking that was the case. You were thirty years younger than Ralph and—my God—the nineteen-year-old Salome Twynan would have made Eliza Doolittle look classy!

Salome ran an agitated hand through her wind-blown hair. If she impressed people now as a well-groomed, sophisticated and articulate lady then it was Ralph Diamond who was responsible for that. Ralph, who had shown her how to walk and talk and dress and act; Ralph, who had educated her in matters of manners and music and, yes, even men, to a degree.

As the wife of a successful businessman she’d been required to do a lot of entertaining, mostly in male company. Ralph had shown her how to be the perfect hostess to his male guests, which included knowing exactly what role to play to charm their particular personalities. Sometimes she was an intent listener, at others a witty conversationalist. Above all, she was always required to look as beautiful as possible.

This miracle had not been achieved overnight. It had taken time, but Ralph had eventually remade the rough Mrs Diamond into a sparkling jewel, coated with a polish, the veneer of which not even his abandonment had destroyed.

Oh, Ralph! Salome groaned. Why? Was I ever anything more to you than just another possession, to be toyed with for a while, then discarded when the game tired you? Have you found some other naïve, innocent young thing to make over to your requirements? Was that the object of it all? Do you get your kicks out of playing God with other people’s lives?

Tears welled up into her eyes. She turned and walked slowly back inside, unconcerned when the tears began to overflow and run down her cheeks. What did it matter? A good cry was what she needed. She sank down on to one of the plush leather sofas, her head dropping into her hands.

A loud, rapid knocking on the door gave her an awful fright.

Her head jerked up, her fingers moving in a frantic attempt to dry her cheeks. She blinked rapidly with some success, and began moving towards the door, automatically tidying her messy hair with her hands. Who on earth could it be? Her stomach twisted with a rush of nerves at having to ward off someone awkward. Like Charles.

But then she thought of the building’s security system, and relaxed. She had had to give the uniformed guard in the foyer a list of the people she would allow to come up without checking first with her. And she had only given her mother’s name.

Yet her mother didn’t even know about this place yet. Salome frowned. She had come here straight from Charles’s office. Slipping the safety-chain into place, she slowly opened the door. ‘Who is it? Who’s there?’ she asked sharply, worried when the small gap didn’t reveal any part of a human being.

A man moved into the space, a man whose cleft chin rested at her eye level. She looked up and saw the blackest of black eyes peering at her from beneath equally black brows and hair. Then realised they all belonged to a person she actually knew. ‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed, startled.

The object of her shock said nothing for a moment, a fierce frown gathering his straight brows together as he stared at her through the narrow slit.

Finally he spoke. ‘Mrs Diamond?’ There was puzzlement—and a definite hint of antagonism—in the way he voiced those two words.

Now that her initial surprise was over Salome instinctively stiffened. Her visitor was not one of her most favourite people. Not even remotely.

Michael Angellini was reportedly one of Sydney’s most eligible bachelors, the wealthy owner of an exclusive Italian restaurant in King’s Cross that Ralph had taken Salome to many times during the years of their marriage. In his early thirties, and handsome as the devil, he was no doubt all smooth charm to most of his women customers, yet right from their initial meeting, or soon after she’d been introduced as Mrs Diamond, the restaurateur began treating her with a cold, almost exaggerated formality that had made her seethe inside. She had learnt to feel nothing but contempt for those people who classified her on sight in that predatory female category including women who married older men for money.

Yet, oddly enough, Salome found a perverse pleasure in their frequent visits to Angellini’s, taking pride in not showing her antagonism to this narrow-minded, prejudiced man. Quite deliberately, she would give him a sweet smile and then be extra-attentive and flirtatious with Ralph, revelling in the feeling that she was throwing the Italian’s unwarranted derision right back in his face.

He, however, found it very hard to hide his feelings, her presence always putting a tight, sour look on his face. Though this didn’t mar his undeniable male beauty. The man’s Latin ancestry had produced the sort of dark, brooding looks that women drooled over: strong, sculptured features; piercing black eyes; lustrously wavy black hair; a cruelly sensual mouth; and an elegant, arrogant grace that turned a dinner-suit into a lethal weapon.

Not that Salome drooled. The underlying antagonism she felt for him made her totally immune to his powerful sex appeal. There could have been a time when his brand of overt virility might have turned her head—she’d been as silly as the next young girl at sixteen and seventeen. But by the time she’d met Ralph, a few weeks short of her nineteenth birthday, she’d been cured of the irrationality of her adolescent hormones once and for all. Ralph’s dignified maturity and lack of sexual aggression had been like a breath of fresh air to her.

True, she’d been initially worried by his age, but he had been a very determined man and had courted her with an old-fashioned respect and decency that she’d found both captivating and highly flattering. Heavens, here was this multi-millionaire, handsome, intelligent, powerful, who could have any woman he wanted. And he had wanted her!

Of course she hadn’t known his secret back then... Still, even if she had known all along, Salome believed she still would have fallen in love with him. He had made her feel so very, very special, right from the start. Michael Angellini, however, never made her feel special, she thought, swinging angry eyes up to him. He never evoked anything in her except a simmering fury.

As was the case right now.

‘Yes, it’s me.’ Her tone was curt, her words clipped. ‘What is it you want?’ she demanded. ‘How did you get up here anyway? Oh, no! Don’t tell me you live in the other penthouse?’ The building was so large that the top floor had been divided into two huge luxury penthouses.