In the Australian's Bed: The Passion Price / The Australian's Convenient Bride / The Australian's Marriage Demand. Miranda Lee

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      ‘All right, fess up, Angelina? Who was that gorgeous hunk in the yellow Ferrari?’

      ‘Just a guy I used to know. No one special.’

      ‘Just a guy you used to know,’ Wilomena repeated with rolling eyes. ‘Did you hear that, Kevin?’ she called out to the chef, who was the only other staff member left in the restaurant at this hour. The rest of the evening’s waitresses wouldn’t arrive till five-thirty, which was almost an hour away. ‘He was just a guy she used to know. No one special.’

      Kevin popped his bald head round the doorway that connected the body of the restaurant with the kitchen. In his late thirties, Kevin was English and single and a simply brilliant chef. He’d been on a working holiday around Australia a few years ago, filled in for their chef, who’d been taken ill, and never left. Since his arrival the restaurant’s reputation had gone from good to great.

      ‘Amazing how much he looked like Alex, isn’t it?’ Kevin said with a straight face. ‘If I didn’t know better, I would have said he was Alex’s father.’

      Angelina groaned. It was no use. She had no hope of keeping Jake’s identity a secret, not even for a minute.

      ‘It’s all right,’ Wilomena said gently when she saw the distress on her boss’s face. ‘We won’t say anything. Not if you don’t want us to.’

      ‘I don’t want you to,’ Angelina returned pleadingly. ‘Not yet, anyway. The other girls didn’t notice, did they?’

      ‘No. They’re too new. And too silly. All they can think about on a Saturday is where they’re going tonight, and with whom. So! Does he know about Alex? Is that why he was here?’

      ‘No. He has no idea. He just dropped in for lunch by sheer accident and he…he….Oh, Wilomena, it’s terribly complicated.’

      ‘Why don’t you sit down and tell me all about it?’

      Angelina looked at Wilomena, who at thirty-eight had a few years on her. Divorced, with two teenage girls, she lived in Cessnock and worked long hours at the restaurant six days a week to support herself and her kids. Angelina realised she could do worse than confide in Wilomena, who was both pragmatic and practical. And she needed someone to confide in. The only friends she had now were the people she worked with. Her father had been her best friend. Still, this little problem wasn’t something she’d have been able to talk to him about. He’d been totally blind when it came to the subject of Jake Winters.

      ‘OK,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Let’s have a glass of wine and I’ll tell you all.’

      Wilomena smiled. She was really quite attractive when she smiled. ‘Fantastic. Let’s go into the kitchen so Kevin can hear. Otherwise, I’ll just have to repeat everything after you’ve gone.’

      Angelina laughed. ‘You two are getting as thick as thieves, aren’t you?’

      ‘Yeah,’ Wilomena said with a twinkle in her quick blue eyes. ‘We are.’

      Half an hour later, Angelina made her way slowly along the path that ran from the restaurant and past the cellar door before branching into two paths. One led to the winery, the other followed the driveway that led to the resort proper, a distance of about a hundred metres. She headed for the resort, her shoes crunching on the gravel, her head down in thought as she walked down the gentle incline.

      Kevin had advised her to tell Jake the truth as soon as possible, especially since Alex himself wanted to meet his father. He’d said he would want to know if he had a son and would be seriously annoyed if such news was held back from him.

      ‘And that’s bulldust about this Jake saying he’d be a rotten father,’ Kevin had pronounced. ‘Lots of men talk like that. You wait till he finds out he has a son for real, especially a great kid like Alex. He’ll be falling over himself to be the best father he possibly can.’

      Wilomena hadn’t shared Kevin’s optimism. There again, she had more jaundiced views about the opposite sex and their ability to be good fathers.

      ‘What fantasyland do you live in, Kevin?’ she’d countered tartly. ‘Obviously, you’ve never been a father. From my experience, lots of men these days soon get very bored with the day-to-day responsibilities of fatherhood. Guys like Jake, especially. He admitted to Angelina he was selfish. And damaged, whatever that means. I think Angelina’s right to be careful. I don’t think she should tell him anything for a while. If nothing else, it gives Alex time to grow up some more. It’ll be weeks before this Dorothy lady moves up here. Meanwhile, Arnold’s not going to say anything.’

      They’d argued back and forth, with Angelina a bemused onlooker. In the end, Kevin had thrown up his hands and told Wilomena it was no wonder she was still single, if she was so distrusting and contemptuous of men.

      Angelina had done her best to smooth things over between them but by the time she’d left, there’d been a chilling silence in the kitchen. She was relieved she wasn’t working there tonight. Or on the reception desk. She’d already planned to take the evening off, to do some female things, like have a long bath, shave her legs, put a treatment in her hair and do her nails. It would be good to be alone, to think.

      ‘Angelina, Angelina!’

      Angelina turned to find Wilomena running after her.

      ‘Sorry about the ruckus in there,’ Wilomena said on reaching her. ‘Don’t worry about it. Kevin will be fine later tonight. And yes, before you ask, we are sleeping together.’

      ‘I…I wasn’t going to ask.’

      Wilomena frowned. ‘No, you wouldn’t, would you? You’re not like other girls. It almost killed you to tell us what you told us in there, didn’t it? I mean, you’re not one to gossip, or to confide.’

      ‘No, I…I guess not.’ When you spent the amount of time she had spent alone, you lost the knack of confiding in other people. You tried to solve your problems yourself.

      ‘Look, I just wanted to say that I think you should go out with Jake, but without telling him about Alex. Aside from having a bit of long-overdue fun, you can go see where Jake lives, and how he lives. See what kind of man he is.’

      ‘But how did you…?’

      ‘Yeah, I know, you didn’t tell us he’d asked you out. But I didn’t come down in the last shower, honey, and I watched you two today. Both times. He asked you out all right and you said no, didn’t you?’

      ‘I haven’t actually given him an answer yet.’

      ‘What does he want you to do?’

      ‘Stay at his place when I go to Sydney for the expo next weekend.’

      ‘Wow. He’s a fast mover all right. It took Kevin two years to ask me out, then two months to get me in the sack.’

      ‘It took Jake about two minutes the first time,’ Angelina said drily.

      ‘Ooooh. That good, eh?’

      ‘His kisses were. The sex itself was not great. I froze, and he just went ahead.’

      ‘But you wouldn’t СКАЧАТЬ