Her Secret, His Child: A Night, A Secret...A Child / One-Night Love-Child / The French Aristocrat's Baby

Clenching her teeth, she trudged up the path after Felicity—and her daughter’s unsuspecting father—and into the school hall, where she pasted a plastic smile on her face and watched with growing resentment whilst Nicolas charmed the socks off everyone there.

There were lots of people in the hall that morning. All the teachers, all of the mothers who didn’t work, a few husbands who’d taken time off to help put all the plastic chairs in rows and quite a number of children. Serina might have marvelled at Nicolas’s social skills if she hadn’t already witnessed him in action back at the office. He hadn’t always been Mister Warmth and Charm. But there was no doubt he’d learned how to deal with people over the years. He was smooth, very smooth.

He’d been smooth during that television interview a couple of years back, she recalled. But that wasn’t the same as seeing him in action in the flesh. In no time he had everyone eating out of his hands. Felicity, especially.

‘Isn’t he awesome, Mum?’ she gushed at one stage when Nicolas was off to one side, chatting with the principal. ‘And so good-looking. Do you think he has a girlfriend back in New York?’

‘I would imagine so,’ Serina said, surprised that this thought hadn’t entered her mind earlier. Surprised, too, at the hurt it brought.

‘Probably that Japanese violinist,’ Felicity went on, blissfully unaware of her mother’s agitation. ‘She’s very pretty. I’ll ask him.’

‘Don’t you dare!’Serina snapped. ‘That would be very rude.’

‘Oh. Do you think so? Well you could ask him, Mum. Later, when you’re at lunch together.’

Serina rolled her eyes. ‘Who told you I was going to lunch with him?’

‘Nicolas did. Just now.’

‘I see,’she said with an exasperated sigh. ‘I suppose I might be able to find out. But why on earth do you want to know?’

Felicity’s expression turned a little sly. ‘Well, I was thinking that if he didn’t have a girlfriend, then you and he might… you know… get together again. I mean… you were once boyfriend and girlfriend.’

‘For pity’s sake, Felicity, how many times do I have to tell you that we only dated a few times!’

‘That’s not what Mrs Johnson said. She told me you were as thick as thieves in the old days. And Nana said you cried for weeks after he went to London to study.’

‘You know, Felicity, you shouldn’t listen to small-town gossip. Nicolas and I were just good friends, like I told you. We were not romantically involved. As for my crying when he went overseas, Mum’s mistaken about that entirely. It was around that time that your grandpa had his stroke and I was very upset. My crying had nothing to do with Nicolas leaving Rocky Creek. You’ve got it all wrong, missy. So please don’t try to do what those two silly girls in my office are doing and matchmake me up with every eligible man who happens to cross my path. I loved your father very much and I don’t wish to date, or get married again, especially not to Nicolas Dupre. Do I make myself clear?’

Felicity had the good grace to hang her head at this dressing down. Unfortunately, this allowed Serina a direct view over the top of her daughter’s drooped head right into Nicolas’s piercing blue eyes.

‘I’m all finished here,’ he said, his facial expression bland.

Hopefully, he hadn’t heard that last, rather savage remark. But Serina suspected that he had.

‘Mr Tarleton said I was to be here tomorrow at one-thirty,’ Nicolas went on crisply. ‘Is that early enough, Felicity?’

‘Heaps early enough. The talent quest doesn’t start till two. You’ll stay for the party afterwards, won’t you?’

‘Of course. Now I’m off to take your mother to lunch. We’re going to spend the afternoon in Port Macquarie, catching up on old times.’

Serina flashed him a sour glance before smiling at her daughter. ‘I’ll be home no later than four, sweetie,’ she said. ‘Will you be finished setting up the hall by then?’

‘Oh, yes. Easily. We’re almost done now. But Kirsty wants to rehearse her acts for tomorrow. I’m going to practise as well. One of the pieces I’ve chosen to play is really hard.’

‘You’re making me very curious over what you’re going to play,’ Nicolas said.

Felicity looked smug. ‘Sorry. Can’t tell. And you’re not to tell him, either, Mum.’

‘How can I when I don’t know myself?’ Serina replied somewhat starchily.

‘That’s good,’ Felicity said with a brilliant smile. ‘’Bye now. See you when you get home.’ And she ran off to join her friends.

‘I suspect you do know what she’s going to play,’ Nicolas said as he clamped a firm hand around her right elbow and started steering her towards the side door. ‘And you’re not happy about it for some reason. The same way you’re not happy about my returning to Rocky Creek.’

‘I see no reason why I should be happy?’ she retorted once they were outside and out of earshot of other people.

‘Maybe not,’he bit out. ‘But there’s no reason why it should overly bother you, either. There’s no husband to object to our reunion. Or any new boyfriend, from what I just overheard.’

Serina wrenched out of his hold and ground to a halt. ‘Our reunion?’ She glared up into his eyes. ‘We are not having any kind of reunion here. If I had my way we wouldn’t even be having lunch together. But you manipulated things so that I couldn’t say no without being rude. As for catching up on old times… don’t go thinking that’s ever going to happen, Nicolas Dupre. I wouldn’t let you touch me again if you were the last man on earth!’

Serina knew the second that last statement fell out of her mouth that she’d gone too far. Way too far.

A cruel smile began at the corners of his eyes. His coldly glittering blue eyes.

‘I’ll remind you what you just said later today. But for now, I would suggest that you shut that beautiful mouth of yours. Because whilst you might not want to date me ever again, or God forbid, marry me, I’m pretty sure you do want to go to bed with me. In fact, I’m absolutely certain of it.’

Serina’s mouth gasped open. She was on the verge of hotly denying his arrogant statement—despite it being appallingly true—when she spotted a couple of the mothers standing at one of the school hall windows, staring over at them. The time to do battle was not right now, she quickly appreciated, and snapped her gaping mouth shut.

‘Glad to see you’ve finally found some common sense,’ he ground out. ‘And some honesty. Let’s go.’And taking forceful possession of her elbow once more, he propelled her along the path that led them past the old school and back to the parked SUV…

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_86471544-7fc6-5e52-b093-e72f03a488a4)

NICOLAS knew—as one always knew deep down—that he’d just crossed a line; that line that you didn’t step over if you were a gentleman.

But then he’d never been a gentleman. And he never would be one, despite having smoothed away most of his rough edges over the years. He spoke like a gentlemen these days and dressed like one. His town house in London was the home of a gentleman. His NewYork apartment, however, reeked of new money, the kind made by men who hadn’t been born rich, but who’d made it in the world by talent and tenacity. Men who were winners, men who knew what they wanted and went after it.

What he’d just said to Serina had been provocative in the extreme, provocative and presumptuous.And risky. By speaking up so boldly, he’d ruined any chance of a romantic seduction.

But in that moment before she’d been able to hide the truth, when her body and mind had still been reeling from the shock of his words, he’d glimpsed her ongoing sexual vulnerability to him. What he’d just said had been right. She did want to go to bed with him.

Serina didn’t say a single word during the short time it took to steer her back to the car. But her body language reeked of rebellion. Nicolas’s own body was consumed by something else… .

Serina snatched her arm away from his hold before climbing up into the SUV and banging the door shut behind her. She refused to look at him as he got in behind the wheel, refused to speak. Instead, she stuffed her handbag at her feet and crossed her arms, glaring balefully out of the passenger window.

‘You’d better put your seat belt on,’ Nicolas advised as he did so himself then started up the engine.

She did so huffily, still not looking his way, Rocky Creek well behind them before her simmering fury found a path to her tongue.

‘I was right all along,’ she blustered, her head finally turning in his direction. ‘You didn’t come back out of kindness, or generosity. You came back for revenge!’

Her accusation produced a startling result, Nicolas’s eyes leaving the road at an inopportune time, since they were on a sharp corner at the time. The left-side wheels slid off the narrow strip of tar, spitting gravel out behind them. The back of the vehicle began to slide, Nicolas swearing as he struggled for control.

The adrenalin of fear and panic had Serina gripping her seat belt whilst visions of their careering off the road and into a steep gully—or the bone-crunching trunk of a gum tree—flashed before her mind.

‘And I was right,’ Nicolas snarled when he finally had them safely back on the road. ‘You’re going to be the death of me one day. I think I’ll find a place to stop before we continue this rather amazing conversation.’

Serina didn’t object. She was still shaking inside when he pulled over into a lay-by and turned off the engine.