LITMIR.BIZ

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change the fact that she’d become a single mother at the tender age of sixteen. By the time Alex had been born, she’d long left school, plus lost all her school friends. When she’d come home from the hospital, there had just been herself in the house all day with a crying, colicky baby and her father, who tried to help, but was pretty useless. Some days she’d wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. Instead, often, she’d just sat down and cried along with Alex.

      Meeting Jake Winters that summer sixteen years ago had sure changed her life forever. And the thought of meeting him again scared the living daylights out of her.

      Not because she felt in danger of falling in love with him again. Such an idea was ludicrous. But because of the danger of Alex falling under his father’s possibly bad influence. She hadn’t sacrificed her whole life to raise a secure, stable, happy boy, only to surrender him to someone she didn’t really know, and possibly couldn’t trust. Alex needed good male role models now that his grandfather wasn’t around to direct him, not some rebel-without-a-cause type.

      Angelina tried to imagine what Jake would be like today. Could he possibly have come good, or had he gone down the road to self-destruction? Was he even alive? Maybe she should start looking for him herself, do a preliminary reconnoitre. She didn’t have to hire anybody, not to begin with. She could ring all the J Winters in the Sydney phone book first.

      Yes, that was what she would do. She’d get on to that tomorrow. She would try in the evening. Most people were home on a Sunday evening.

      Another thought suddenly popped into her mind.

       What if he was married, with a wife and a family?

      Angelina knew the answer to that as surely and instinctively as Alex had known that his father was not in jail.

      No way!

      The Jake who’d chatted her up that summer had been a hater of all things traditional and conservative. Marriage would never be for him. Or family life. Or even falling in love. She’d grown up sufficiently now to see that Jake hadn’t cared about her one bit back then. All their intimate conversations whilst grape-picking together had been nothing but a way for him to get into her pants.

      Which he had. But only the once. And even that must have been an anticlimax, for want of a better word.

      Looking back, it was ironic that she hadn’t enjoyed the actual event that had ruined her life at the time. She might have borne the memory better if she’d been carried away on the wings of ecstasy to the very end.

      Jake’s lovemaking had promised well to begin with. He’d been more than a good kisser, actually. He was a great kisser. His hands had been just as effective, with a built-in road map to all her pleasure zones. Her breasts. Her nipples. And of course the white-hot area between her legs. Soon she’d been all for him going all the way, despite some last-minute panic over getting pregnant. But the sharp pain she experienced when he penetrated her had swiftly brought her back to earth. All she’d felt during the next ten seconds or so was a crushing wave of disappointment.

      Even if her father hadn’t watched over her after Jake like a hawk, Angelina had steadfastly refused to become one of those single mums whose son woke up to a different man in his mummy’s bed every other week. She’d made her bed, as her father had often told her, and she’d bravely resolved to lie in it. Alone.

      To be honest, however, her opportunities for having even a brief fling hadn’t exactly been thick on the ground to begin with. As the stay-home mother of a young child, she’d rarely been in the company of eligible men. Her weekly shopping trip to the nearby town of Cessnock had been her only regular outing. In fact, Angelina hadn’t been asked out by a single member of the opposite sex till three years ago.

      Two things had happened around that time to greatly change her life circumstances. Alex had gone off to boarding school and she’d enrolled in a computer course at the local technical college. She’d known she had to do something to fill the great hole in her life created by her precious son going off to school.

      Once she had some computer skills under her belt, Angelina had felt confident enough to try working on the reception desk at the resort. To her surprise, she’d taken to the service industry like a duck to water. Soon, she’d been also escorting groups of guests on tours of the property, serving in the cellar and helping out at the restaurant at lunchtime on the weekends, its busiest time. She just loved talking to people, and they seemed to like talking to her.

      Before this, she’d only done behind-the-scenes jobs around the resort such as cooking and cleaning, hardly esteem-building activities. Not that she’d had much self-esteem by then. Her stay-at-home years when Alex had been a baby and a toddler had gradually eroded her confidence and turned her from an outgoing girl into a reserved, almost shy woman.

      Now, suddenly, she had blossomed again, thoroughly enjoying the social interaction and yes, the admiration—however meaningless and fleeting—of the opposite sex.

      She’d begun taking care with her appearance again, exercising off some of the extra pounds which had crept on over the years and paying more attention to her hair, her clothes and her make-up.

      Of course, her father had noticed her transformation, plus the attention of the male tourists and guests. And yes, of course, he’d commented and criticised. But this time she’d put him firmly in his place, telling him she was a grown woman and he was to keep out of her personal and private life.

      Not that there’d been one. Despite her father suspecting otherwise, she hadn’t taken up any of the none too subtle offers she’d received from the many men who now asked her out. She didn’t even want to go out with them, let alone go to bed with them. Maybe it was crazy to use her teenage experience with Jake as a basis for comparison, but none of these men had made her feel even a fraction of what she’d felt when she first met Jake.

      Of course, Angelina understood that the intensity of her feelings for Jake had largely been because of her age. He’d represented everything that a young, virginal girl found wildly exciting.

      Angelina had no doubt that if Jake himself walked back into her life at this moment, she would not feel anything like she had back then. She no longer found long-haired, tattooed males even remotely attractive, for starters. The sight of him might make her heart race, but only with fear, fear of the bad influence he might have on her highly impressionable and very vulnerable son.

      Thinking of this reminded her that, sooner or later, she would come face to face with Alex’s father again, possibly sooner rather than later, if she started those phone calls tomorrow evening.

      The thought bothered her a great deal.

      ‘Damn you, Jake,’ she muttered as she stood up and marched across her bedroom towards her en suite bathroom. ‘Sixteen years, and you’re still causing me trouble!’

      CHAPTER THREE

      THE yellow Ferrari caught Angelina’s eye the moment it turned from the main road into the Ambrosia Estate. She stopped what she was doing—opening a bottle of wine at one of the outdoor tables—and watched the brightly coloured sports car crunch to a halt in the nearby car park, her lips pursing into a silent whistle when a dark-haired hunk in designer jeans, pale blue polo shirt and wraparound sunglasses climbed out from behind the wheel.

      What a gorgeous-looking guy!

      Angelina’s gaze shifted over to the passenger side. She could see another person sitting in the car but couldn’t make out any details. The sun was shining on the windscreen. But Angelina was willing to bet on it being a pretty blonde. Men like that invariably had pretty blondes on their arms.

      The hunk hitched his jeans up onto his hips as hunks often did. Not because his clothes really needed straightening, she’d come to realise during her recent people-watching years. It was a subconscious body-language thing, a ploy to draw female attention to that part of his body.

      And it worked. Angelina certainly looked, as did the two middle-aged ladies she was serving. Both widows, their names were Judith and Vivien. They were on holiday together

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