A Kiss To Remember

‘I am giving you these most reluctantly, Debbie, and only because you seem determined to do this. They are not my way of condoning your decision, or giving you permission, but I can’t in all conscience see you without protection. Some young men aren’t too caring about young women who give themselves to them without love,’ she finished pointedly.

At last, Debbie had the good grace to blush. ‘I didn’t realise you were so old-fashioned,’ she muttered. ‘Rebecca said you were real cool.’

‘You think it’s cool to be promiscuous?’ Angie asked sharply.

‘No. But I think it’s stupid to be ignorant about sex,’ she flung back.

Angie stiffened.

Debbie stood up and went to leave, then stopped, glancing anxiously over her shoulder at Angie. ‘You…you won’t tell my parents, will you?’

‘No. You’re over the legal age of consent.’

The girl suddenly smiled at her. ‘Thanks, Miss. And I promise to think about everything you said. See you next Monday!’ And she fairly skipped out of the door.

Angie stayed sitting at her desk for a few minutes, gnawing away at her bottom lip and wondering if Debbie was right. Maybe she was impossibly old-fashioned. And impossibly romantic. And impossibly cautious.

Was it silly of her to wait for Mr Right to come along before she made love? Naive of her to want to see stars when a man kissed her before she let him go further? Stupid of her to hope that it wouldn’t end up a matter of making a conscious choice to go to bed with a man—to believe she would be so madly, blindly and irrevocably in love that it would just happen quite naturally!

‘Yes, yes, yes!’ her flatmate answered to all three questions, when Angie posed them to her as they drove home together that afternoon.

Angie remained unconvinced. Vanessa was thirty years old and a terrible cynic about men and love. A maths and science teacher at the same girls’ school where Angie was the school counsellor, she was a striking-looking though brittle brunette, who frightened most men off with her superior intelligence and incisive wit. Which was a shame because, basically, Vanessa liked men a lot.

They’d been colleagues at the same private girls’ school for nearly a year, but had only been flatting together for a couple of months, Angie’s previous flatmate having left to go overseas. This was the first time Angie had really opened up to the older woman about her personal life. And, to give Vanessa credit, she accepted the news of her inexperience without too much shock, though she was typically cutting in her advice.

‘For pity’s sake, go out and get yourself laid before it’s too late. How can you possibly counsel all those randy little teenagers who come to you for advice if you don’t have any first-hand knowledge of the subject? Good Lord, Angie, if you wait for Mr Right these days, you might go to your grave a virgin! Frankly, I can’t understand how a girl who looks like you do made it through her teenage years without scores of horny boys jumping on your bones every five minutes!’

‘I didn’t say they didn’t try…’

‘And there wasn’t one you fancied back?’ Vanessa’s tone was sheer scepticism.

An image swept into Angie’s mind. Of brilliant blue eyes and flashing white teeth, of windswept fair hair and golden-bronze skin, of a face like a Greek God and a body to match.

‘There was one,’ she admitted.

‘Only one?’ Vanessa squawked.

Angie smiled ruefully to herself. ‘Believe me, after Lance, no other male has ever measured up.’

Which had always been the problem, hadn’t it? Angie realised with sudden insight. Once you’d tasted ambrosia it was hard to settle for plain bread. She’d always told herself that her shrinking from casual sex had been because of that AIDS chap, who’d come to her high school and lectured them upon the dangers of such activities.

But it hadn’t been that at all, Angie finally conceded. It was because subconsciously she’d compared every boy and then every man she met to Lance Sterling. And they’d all come up wanting.

‘He sounds awfully intriguing,’ Vanessa said.

‘Intriguing,’ Angie repeated thoughtfully. ‘Yes, one could say that about him. Among other things.’

‘Do tell. I’m dying of curiosity already.’

Angie frowned, aware that thoughts of Lance had been teasing her mind a lot this past week. Mostly because tonight was her brother’s thirtieth birthday party, which she would be obliged to attend.

Anything to do with Bud always reminded her of Lance.

Not that her brother had anything much to do with Lance these days. Their once close friendship had waned after Lance married four years ago and moved to Melbourne to live. It had now come down to exchanging Christmas cards once a year.

Not that they’d ever had much in common, except for doing the same business degree at the same university in Sydney. Angie had never been able to work out exactly what Lance had seen in Bud—and vice versa. They had come from two entirely different worlds. They’d had two entirely different personalities.

Perhaps it had been the old case of an attraction of opposites. Or perhaps it had just amused Lance to have a simple country boy as a friend, whom he could impress with his sophistication and wealth. As it had amused him to impress his friend’s simple country sister that fateful summer nine years ago…

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_6f2c42f3-c268-5256-96f3-43f844d95765)

ANGIE sat on the top step of the front veranda, waiting impatiently for her brother to arrive with his exciting-sounding friend. Bud had said in his last letter that they’d be leaving Sydney straight after breakfast. But it was a five-hour drive north up to Wilga, then another twenty minutes out to the farm. Since it was only ten to twelve, they probably wouldn’t be here for at least another hour.

Still, Angie couldn’t seem to settle to anything else. So she stayed where she was, anxiously watching the valley road and hoping against hope that they’d started out earlier than intended.

For the millionth time that morning she wondered what this Lance looked like.

Bud had said in his letters that his friend was very good-looking. But Bud’s idea of good-looking and Angie’s idea of good-looking were often poles apart. Their views on things differed as vastly as did their own looks.

Bud took after their mother, who was small and dark, with black wavy hair, chocolate-brown eyes and an inclination to put on weight easily. Angie, however, was a female version of their father—tall and athletically slim, with auburn hair and widely spaced green eyes.

Their natures were different as well. Bud was easily bored, and craved excitement and companionship all the time. Angie was far more placid and private. She was quite happy with her own company, liking nothing better than to go riding by herself, or to curl up all alone on her bed to write poetry or read a book. She liked to think rather than talk. Bud could talk underwater, like their mother.

A cloud of dust in the distance had Angie jumping to her feet, her hand hooding her eyes from the sunlight as she peered down the hill. A car was coming along the valley road, going as fast as her heart was suddenly beating.

It was Bud and his friend. She was sure of it.

Somewhere at the back of her mind Angie knew she was acting totally out of character, getting excited over a member of the opposite sex. Especially one she hadn’t met yet.

She was not boy-mad, as were most other girls in her class. Her classmates actually thought her shy.

She let them think it.

Angie knew that she wasn’t really shy. Just reserved. She liked her personal space and hated being harassed in any way. Unwanted male attention sometimes embarrassed and always annoyed her. Frankly, she found most boys at school exceedingly adolescent, noisy and irritating. She’d actually been relieved by her father’s edict a couple of years back that she could not have a boyfriend till she was sixteen. It was the perfect excuse for her to turn down the invitations she received from her overeager admirers.

And there were many. For Angie was a very attractive girl. In the past few months some people had started using the word ‘beautiful’.

Yet she never made any attempt to enhance her looks or look older, as some girls might have. She never used make-up, always wore her long straight hair up in a simple ponytail, and was happiest wearing jeans or shorts, plus one of her father’s shirts.

Today was no different. Angie had too much common sense to try to attract someone like Bud’s friend from Sydney. He was twenty-two, after all—one year older than Bud—and wouldn’t look twice at a fifteen-year-old girl. On top of that he was very, very rich—the only son and heir of one of Sydney’s wealthiest families.

Perhaps it was this last factor that Angie found so fascinating. She’d never met any really rich people before, and the things Bud had told her about Lance’s home and lifestyle sounded very glamorous. Totally different from the simple country life the Browns led.

Angie had been amazed to hear that after finishing high school Lance had travelled the world for a whole year before starting uni. He and Bud had not become friends till this last year, and no doubt now that their degrees were finished their paths would soon diverge. Next year Bud would have to go out into the real world and find himself a job, whereas Lance would be automatically given a cushy executive position in one of the family’s companies.

Sterling Industries had many fingers in many pies—from food and cleaning products to furniture, from plastics to various mining interests. Apparently, Lance had offered to find Bud a job, but Bud had refused, and Angie was proud of him for that. Not that she was worried about her brother going out on his own in search of a career. Bud had enough drive and energy to succeed in whatever he put his mind to.

The wire door creaked behind her, and Angie turned to see her mother coming out, wiping floury hands on the apron which was doing its best to circumnavigate her rotund middle. Though not yet forty, Nora Brown had long surrendered to her genes, plus her love of food.