Her Secret, His Child. Miranda Lee

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СКАЧАТЬ could be giving concerts all over the world.’

      Felicity looked very taken aback. ‘But I would hate that,’ she said very forthrightly. ‘I love playing the piano, Nicolas, but I don’t want to do it for a living. Good heavens, no! I’m going to become a vet.’

      ‘A vet,’ he echoed blankly.

      ‘Golly, yes. Who’d want to be a concert pianist?’ she went on with the tactlessness of youth. ‘I can’t think of anything more boring. Playing the piano is fun, but not all the time. Oh, sorry, Nicolas,’ she added, suddenly realising what she’d just said. ‘I forgot for a moment. Still, I’ll bet you enjoy yourself a lot more doing what you’re doing now than thumping away on the keys for hours and hours every day. Which is what I’d have to do if I wanted to become a concert pianist. I know because Mrs Johnson said so. “If you want to make a career of the piano, Felicity,”’ she pronounced in a perfect imitation of Mrs Johnson’s somewhat haughty voice, ‘“you have to practise, practise, practise.” Well I practised like mad for weeks for tonight’s performance and I can tell you I’ve had more than enough of that piano for a while. I’m not going to touch a key over the Christmas holidays. Now, I really do have to go help the others with the food and stuff, or they’d think I’m slacking. Thank you again, Nicolas,’ she said as she gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Don’t go without saying goodbye.’

      ‘A vet,’ Nicolas muttered drily as he watched Felicity hurry away to join her friends. What a horrible waste of talent!

      ‘She’s animal mad, is our Felicity,’ Bert piped up. ‘Not domestic animals so much. Wildlife. She and Kirsty—who’s her very best friend, the one who did the hip-hop dance—they’re always hunting around in the bush looking for injured animals and birds. Kirsty’s folks have an acreage just out of town.’

      ‘I see,’ Nicolas said politely. Though he didn’t at all. All he could see was that she was wasting a musical talent that was beyond exceptional.

      ‘To tell the truth, Mr Dupre,’ Bert went on, ‘Mother and I are glad Felicity wants to be a vet. That way, even if she goes away to study for a while after leaving school, she’ll eventually come back to live in this area. She’s all we have now that our son has gone. Greg was an only child, you see. We always hoped that he and Serina would have more kiddies, but that wasn’t to be.’

      ‘His having had the mumps as a young lad had something to do with that,’ Franny added. ‘He had some tests done when Serina didn’t fall for a baby again and they said he had a low sperm count. So we’re lucky to have one grandchild. We’d be totally lost without Felicity, wouldn’t we, Bert? She brings us such joy. Do you remember the day she was born? She was amazing from the word go. Didn’t look like a newborn. Why, she could have passed for three months old. And she was so beautiful. Nothing like Greg when he was born. He looked like a wizened-up monkey for weeks. Of course she’s taken after Serina with her looks and her musical talent. Not so much in nature though. Felicity’s a real little goer, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, but extremely stubborn. It’s thankful she has a good heart to temper her ambitions. But I know Serina has trouble with her sometimes. We help as much as we can. And Serina’s mother does, too, of course. The girl really needs a father figure. Greg was wonderful with her, not too indulgent. He recognised she needed direction. Felicity adored him. Oh dear,’ Franny said suddenly, her eyes suddenly filling with tears. ‘Sorry. I thought I was over doing this.’

      Somehow, Nicolas managed to murmur something sympathetic. But his mind was whirling with the things Felicity’s grandmother had just told him.

      If she was Felicity’s grandmother, Nicolas began thinking with a sick, hollow feeling forming in the pit of his stomach… Surely Serina wouldn’t have done that? Surely not? But the evidence he’d just heard suggested differently.

      His eyes started to scan the room, searching for her.

      ‘Come on, Mother,’ Bert said gently as he took his weeping wife’s arm. ‘Let’s go get you a nice cup of tea. Lovely talking to you, Mr Dupre. And thanks once again for donating that terrific sum of money. You’ve made Felicity one extremely happy girl tonight.’

      Serina knew, the moment her eyes met Nicolas’s across the crowded hall, that what she’d feared would happen ever since she heard Nicolas was returning to Rocky Creek had just happened.

      Never had she seen Nicolas look at her like that. There wasn’t just anger in his eyes, or disbelief… There was sheer unadulterated horror.

      ‘God help me,’ she muttered under her breath as he came striding towards her, where she was thankfully standing by herself behind the drinks table.

      ‘We need to talk, Serina,’ he growled. ‘Now!’

      ‘What about?’ she asked with feigned innocence whilst her heart was thudding wildly behind her ribs and nausea swirled in her stomach.

      His eyes narrowed on her, his expression uncompromising in the extreme. ‘I think you know what about.’

      ‘Not unless you tell me.’

      ‘You really want me to say it here? To shout out to all and sundry that Felicity is not your husband’s daughter, but mine,’ he hissed. ‘Because I will if you don’t make some excuse and come with me right here and now.’

      Serina thought she was going to faint as she saw her whole world crashing around her. Not just her world, but her daughter’s as well. And lots of other people’s.

      But he can’t know, came the saving thought as she gripped the edge of the table, steadying her body as well as her mind. He just suspects. You can bluff this out, girl. You have to bluff it out.

      ‘I can’t imagine what Franny and Bert said to you to make you think such an outrageous thing,’ she said with superb calm. ‘But you’re dead wrong. Felicity is Greg’s daughter. Not yours.’ Which she was, in every way but biologically.

      ‘I don’t believe you, Serina,’ he challenged. ‘Now are we going to argue about this here, or are you going to come with me?’

      ‘Come where?’ Not his apartment. No way was she going to go there again!

      ‘Somewhere private,’ he spluttered.

      Felicity’s bouncing up to her mother right at that moment with Kirsty by her side was both a blessing and a curse.

      ‘Kirsty wants me to go to her place for a sleepover,’ she said. ‘Can I, Mum? Can I, please?’

      ‘Felicity, I… ’

      ‘Oh, please, Mrs Harmon,’ Kirsty begged. ‘Mum says it’s okay. Then we could spend tomorrow together.’

      Serina knew there would be no dissuading them, not once they ganged up on her. On top of that, it provided her with the perfect solution over where to take Nicolas. She would feel much safer facing him in her own home; safer, and stronger.

      ‘All right, then,’ she said, relenting. ‘What about clothes?’

      ‘She can borrow some of mine, Mrs Harmon,’ Kirsty said. ‘We’re exactly the same size.’

      ‘Fine. Just don’t go doing anything silly.’

      ‘Like what?’

      ‘Like СКАЧАТЬ