It Happened in Sydney: In the Australian Billionaire's Arms / Three Times A Bridesmaid... / Expecting Miracle Twins

Sonya acknowledged them with a calm nod, although her stomach muscles were tensing. She finished off wrapping a large bunch of stunning yellow heliconias. She had added some ginger foliage that had very interesting yellow strips for effect. She passed them across to her valued customer with a smile. “There you are, Mrs Thomas. You might use a few dark philodendron leaves if you have them at home,” she suggested. “See how it goes.”

Maureen Thomas nodded, very happy with the unusual selection. “These are splendid, thank you so much.”

“My pleasure.”

Mrs Thomas glanced in pleasant fashion at the two very uppity looking women as she walked to the door. She might have been invisible. It amused her.

Marilyn Rowlands swooped to the counter, a mother protecting her young. “Look here, young lady,” she said without preamble, “it’s wrong what you’re doing. You’re only creating serious problems for yourself.”

“Do I know you?” Sonya’s brows arched.

Breathe deeply. Keep calm.

Marilyn’s face clouded. “You know me. I’m Paula’s mother.” She might have been as easily recognisable as the Queen of England.

“Paula can’t speak for herself, then?” Sonya asked politely.

“No cheek, young lady,” Marilyn Rowlands said, thinking this girl was a whole lot more than she had been led to expect. She was amazingly beautiful, with an ultra-refined look. “I take insolence from no one,” she warned, placing a heavily be-ringed hand on the counter.

A blue cloisonne bowl full of exquisite gardenias jumped. Sonya settled it.

What was it the Buddhists intoned to calm them?

Om … om … om.

“Do I have a need for concern here, Mrs Rowlands?” she asked. “There is a security guard who patrols these shops.”

Marilyn’s coiffed head shot back in outrage. “Are you threatening me?”

“I have a perfect right to refuse service to difficult people who come into my shop, Mrs Rowlands.”

Paula belatedly entered the fray. “No one speaks to my mother like that. My father could have you out of here in no time.”

“I doubt that,” Sonya said. “You leave my husband out of this,” Marilyn Rowlands ordered, not averse to a slanging match.

Sonya was. “Mrs Rowlands, I’m asking you quietly to leave.”

Marilyn Rowlands stood her ground. “First I need you to promise me you’ll stop your little games.”

“What games exactly?’

“You know very well. You’re an opportunist.”

“So what’s in it for me?” Sonya asked.

Paula threw up her hands in triumph. “I knew it! Didn’t I tell you, Mummy?” she cried as though her low opinion of Sonya had been vindicated.

Marilyn opened her Chanel handbag, and then pulled out a cheque book. “Don’t attempt to double cross me, young lady. How much?”

“What’s the best you can offer?” Sonya asked.

“Why, you’re no better than a con woman,” Marilyn Rowlands said with an overlay of contempt.

“Five hundred thousand dollars!” Sonya named a ridiculous figure. Who cared?

Marilyn frowned ferociously. “That’s a bit steep.”

“David, or Marcus?” Sonya asked, covering up her sick feeling.

“Both. Holt adores Paula.”

“So I can’t have Marcus?”

Marilyn Rowlands frowned as if a massive migraine was coming on. “How long have you been on the make? I repeat, you can have neither. They’re way out of your league.”

“And I know for certain Holt is going to marry me,” Paula threw in for good measure.

Her mother focused on Sonya with eyes as cold and round as marbles. “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, my last offer. It would be a fortune to someone like you. Quit the flower shop. Get yourself an education. Move on. Take the money. Shut up shop. Head for sunny Queensland. Lots of lotus eaters up there. We want you gone.” She looked in her bag, found her Mont Blanc pen. “A lot of people want you gone. Especially the Wainwright clan.”

“Listen to me a moment, Mrs Rowlands.” Sonya spoke very quietly, but with a note in her voice that stopped Marilyn Rowlands in her tracks. “I’ve been leading you on. I’m not interested in you or your money. I find this whole episode extremely distasteful. What I want you to do now is walk quietly out of my shop. And never return.”

“Excuse me!” Marilyn Rowlands gave vent to a growl she could well have learned from her Chihuahua.

“You have my word I won’t mention this visit or the offensive things you’ve said.”

Paula broke in again. Seething with jealousy. “Why don’t you go back to where you came from? Some dingy European dump, I expect.”

“Perhaps I should call the security man.”

Marilyn Rowlands put up her hand. “That’s enough, Paula,” she said sternly. “Wherever this young woman came from, it was no dump.” She looked back to Sonya. “Turn my proposal over in your head, Ms Erickson. You’re no fool. You could see the sense of it some time soon. Holt’s parents are due home soon. I’m a pussy cat compared to Holt’s mother. As for his father! You poor girl, it would be a horrendous thing to cross him. I highly recommend you don’t do it. Holt is everything in the world to them. You have no chance in the world of gaining admittance to that family, believe me.”

Sonya gave Marilyn Rowlands a straight look. “The question is do I want to gain admittance, Mrs Rowlands.

I haven’t as yet decided the answer.”

At the weekend Marcus suggested she come out on his boat. Local weather was holding gloriously calm and fine. “It hasn’t been out for ages,” he told her. “You must come.”

The “boat” turned out to be a svelte and racy 128 yacht designed years before by a famous ex-patriot who went on to become a world legend. Marcus, looking a good ten years younger in his tailored jeans and blue sports shirt beneath a gold buttoned navy blazer, showed her around the Lucille Anne with careless pride. “I used to be a good sailor in my day. Let it go. I’m sorry about that now. David is a brilliant sailor. He should take you out some time. You don’t get seasick?’

“I’m sure one couldn’t get seasick on this magnificent yacht.” She smiled.

The Lucille Anne had three decks of cabins and saloons. The main saloon, marvellously comfortable, was panelled in walnut with touches of macassar ebony. Apart from the plush master suite there were four guest staterooms. On the teak laid aft deck reached by a gleaming stainless steel stairway with a balustrade, there was casual furniture and a swimming platform Sonya wasn’t about to use any time soon.

“Lucy and I used to take it to the Mediterranean when young David was on holidays,” Marcus told her with a smile of remembrance. “We looked on him as our own child. He was a remarkable boy. A remarkable young man.”

“You love him?”

“Oh, yes!” Marcus confirmed quietly. “David is every inch the man we all wanted him to be.”