Nicole: Star Crossed Lovers (A Wish for Love Series Book 2) Read online

  N I C O L E

  Star Crossed Lovers

  Mia Shales

  Mia Shales is a Pen Name of Author Michele Shalev

  Copyright© Michele Shalev, 2015

  All rights reserved

  Sundown Publishing – A Wish for Love Series

  [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Do not duplicate, copy, photograph, record, store in a database, transmit or merge via any electronic, optic, mechanical or other means – any part to the material from this book. Any type of commercial use of the material included in this book is absolutely forbidden without the author's explicit written permission.

  Another great book by Mia Shales

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  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter One

  On a fair and tranquil afternoon in the month of June fleecy clouds, downy and soft as feathers, drifted placidly across the powder-blue sky. The sun wended its way to the sea, painting the horizon in colors of crimson and violet. Nicole lay down her brushes. Enough for today, she decided. Through the big window that opened on to the white sand she watched a seagull emerge from the waves, a fish flapping in his mouth. How symbolic, she thought. That was just how she felt sometimes. Like a creature bereft of free will, at the mercy of forces far greater and stronger than she. But, Nicole reminded herself, she was lucky. Despite the hard times she had managed to build a good life. She had a beautiful house and this lovely bungalow, but most important she had her painting, her art, which kept her mind sane and her soul whole. She went to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. She was happy, Nicole told herself, very happy!

  "Hello. Anybody home?" The thirty year old woman who entered had strong features and a certain chic that could definitely hold a person's interest.

  "Come in, Ann," Nicole warmly hugged her friend whom she had met a few years back through mutual acquaintances. "How was Japan?" Studying for her masters in East Asia Philosophy, Ann travelled extensively in the region.

  "A jewel. Exciting, amazing, different. Here, I've brought you something." She gave Nicole a small package. "It's handmade and rare. When I saw it I knew I absolutely must get it for you, because it's you – rare and delicate and breathtakingly gorgeous."

  "You always exaggerate," laughed Nicole as she unwrapped the thin paper. As she touched the antique painted fan with a portrait of a lady she said, "Ann, It's splendid. It's…"

  "Sweetheart don't cry. It's my pleasure."

  "I just love it," said Nicole finally. "Now tell me all about your trip. I'm dying to hear everything."

  "I will, but not now. I just popped in to say I'm back and to ask if you'd like to come over for dinner on Friday."

  "I'd like that very much."

  "Come at eight." Ann looked around with delight. "I just love this place." The two rooms were large and airy. One was Nicole's studio and the second, where the two women now stood, was the living room, kitchen and bedroom combined. Scattered about the Mexican rug and around the low table were easy chairs and soft cushions. On the walls were shelves stacked with books, magazines, flowers, seashells and a raggle-taggle assortment of odds and ends Nicole had collected over the years.

  "Let's sit down," Nicole suggested and handed Ann a cup of tea.

  "Just for a second. I have a delicious piece of gossip."

  "What is it?" Nicole had missed Ann's company, her gaiety and high spirits, and felt a rush of anticipation.

  "But maybe you've already heard it."

  "Heard what?"

  "About the movie crew from Hollywood."

  "I've heard nothing."

  "They started filming a few months ago in New Zealand and came over here yesterday for a few weeks to finish the production."

  "That's it?"

  "That's it."

  "Humm… a bit disappointing. What's so thrilling about it? Who's in the cast?"

  "I don't know but listen to this," Ann said triumphantly. "The director-producer of the movie is Daniel Miller. Maybe you're not impressed but I think it's awesome! The sexiest man alive! Here," she cried, "here in our little foresaken town! Well, okay, Cairns isn't a little town anymore," Anne joked.

  Nicole heard Ann's voice receding further and further away. A strange hand squeezed her heart and prevented her from breathing normally. She tried to calm her rising panic. Daniel Miller. She repeated his name silently. Daniel Miller.

  Ann's voice trailed off as she noticed her friends' distress. She looked at her with concern. "Are you alright?"

  "Me? Yes, I'm quite alright," Nicole answered confusedly, playing for time while trying to regain her wits. "I guess I'm tireder than I thought. Yesterday I worked until four in the morning and barely slept." She felt relieved she'd managed to give a reasonable excuse. She couln't yet tell Ann the real reason for her panic.

  "Anyway," concluded Ann, "I was impressed. But now I'd better be going."

  Nicole nodded. With great effort she saw her to the door. She had to be alone, to grasp what she'd just heard, to think. God, would she never be able to think of him without every inch of her body reacting so violently? Her emerald green eyes, slightly slanting and shaded by long black lashes darkened, reflecting her agitation and confusion.

  He's back.

  A flicker of hope. Perhaps he had returned for her, perhaps he hadn't forgotten her; perhaps he still loved her.

  Disillusion and reality quickly set in. He had no interest in her, he had betrayed her, he had deserted her. How could she have forgotten the humiliation, the tears and the terrifying pain of abandonment, forgotten the agonizing torment of discovering that the only man she ever loved and trusted had used and then discarded her?

  Stop it! She covered her ears as though that gesture could prevent those haunting memories which threatened to draw her irresistibly down to the depths of pain into which she had sunk eight years ago. Nicole looked at the sea. Would she dare open her Pandora's box?

  With a will of their own, her feet led her to the locked closet in the corner of the studio. She must, she absolutely must see him again for just a minute, one sweet precious minute.

  Oh my God, what am I doing?

  Her heart beat wildly. She stood on her toes, rummaging for the key on the upper ledge. After a short struggle she managed to open the rusty lock. With unsteady hands she exposed the painting she had refused to look at for years and lifted it onto the easel standing in the middle of the room, breaking her vow never again to think of the man who had raised her to the heights of love and ecstasy and then to the depths of misery and pain.

  She could barely control her emotions as she scrutinized it. Every brush stroke revealed the love and passion with which she had painted him eight years ago.

  The painting showed a beach in the early evening hours. A small boat was sitting partly on the sand and partly in the water. Leaning against it was a young man, his back glowing in the last rays of sunlight, attentively examining a large shell. The figure as well as the surrounding scenery was slightly blurred but it was impossible not to feel the electrifying s
trength radiating from the man. Nicole felt as if any moment he would straighten up and observe her with his sparkling, blue gaze. Shaken, a premonition of impending doom enveloped her. Longing, passion and love, feelings she had repressed for so long, flooded her, threatening to engulf her body and soul. However much pleasure these feelings gave her she knew they led only to danger and desolation.

  She draped a cloth over the painting, covering it.

  Again she focused on the seagulls and their shrill cries as they dove into the water searching for fish. She wanted to scream but she knew that as always in the past, it was only total self-control that could help her overcome despair.

  She turned and her glance fell on the fan. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, she ordered. You are a lucky woman! She felt stronger, as though Ann's attention and affection streamed from the fan, empowering her. She mustn't think of him. After all, there's a good chance they won't meet. And even if they do, heaven forbid, she'll simply ignore him. She'll act as though she doesn’t remember him, as though he doesn't exist. Nicole began to feel better and her mood lightened.

  She locked the bungalow, climbed on her Vespa and made her way back to the house perched in the hills three miles out of town. When she reached the gate, crossed the round patio at the entrance and climbed the three steps leading up to the door, she remembered she had forgotten to return the picture to the closet. I'll do it tomorrow she thought dispiritedly.

  As she walked into the bedroom she glanced at the portrait in the silver frame near her bed. Her resemblance to the woman in the picture was striking. She longed for her dreamy mother, especially the mother of her early childhood. She never suited this cruel world Nicole thought sadly, she never understood that she could change things, that she could take charge of her own life. All she ever wished for was a loving husband, a sweet daughter and a life of enough ease to devote herself to painting her subdued, transparent watercolors. A loving husband - how far from that was her husband thought Nicole bitterly. The bastard! Systematically, methodically, he had brought her mother to her deathbed. A frightened, neurotic and frustrated woman. A broken woman, a shadow of her radiant former self.

  God knows, he had tried to break her too. Tried with all his power. But he had failed. She was made of stronger stuff. She'd had to bend to his will here and there but she had never let him break her. Never!

  It was Daniel Miller who had done that.

  Drowsy, she curled up in bed, ready to sink into the blessed forgetfulness of sleep, but the last image that crossed her mind was the figure of a man. The man she had been trying, with so little success, to forget.

  The week sped by, and when after four days Nicole did not meet Daniel Miller, nor any of his company she gradually began to feel calmer. From the neighbors' gossip she knew the movie crew had moved into a posh hotel on the far side of the marina. Obviously they were busy filming on one of the distant beaches and Nicole saw none of them on her infrequent forays into town.

  Friday, in the afternoon hours, Nicole inspected the unfinished canvas facing her on its easel. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the covered painting she had not so much as glanced at. For some reason she couldn't bring herself to lock it up in the cupboard although she had so solemnly sworn to do so. I'll do it tomorrow, she promised herself. After she showered and dried her hair she slipped into an ankle length, smoky gray skirt. Looking in the mirror she wrinkled her nose. To balance the dark-hued skirt she wore a thin burgundy top. There was something dramatic, almost theatrical, in the close-fitting blouse. She put on sandals and brushed her hair until it fell on her back in a golden cascade. A slight breeze ruffled the pleasant evening and she decided to walk to town through the beach rather than drive. Cairns, in the Australian northeast, was one of the country's most entrancing sites, where the rich and famous vacationed. It was in Cairns that they met to enjoy the year-round balmy weather, the clear water and the colourful reefs and corals which surrounded the islands scattered in the sea. Walking past crowded restaurants, the beautiful blond turned more than one head. Nicole ignored the stares and strode purposefully on to Ann's two-story house in one of the charming streets of the city.

  "Come in." Ann pulled Nicole into the living room where the bottle of white wine she had just opened stood next to two wineglasses.

  "My dad's in town," she told Nicole when they sat down to eat. "Last night we went out for dinner."

  Nicole knew that Ann's father had arrived as a penniless orphan in Melbourne. At fifteen he worked in the fish market and at twenty-two he opened a small fish-packing plant. Now he was one of the leading industrialists in Australia. Ann was the apple of his eye and after her parents' divorce a few years earlier they drew even closer.

  Ann served salad, roast potatoes and steak and poured the wine. "So I'm with dad at the restaurant," she continued their conversation with an expression Nicole knew well - that of a lioness stalking her prey - "and who is just in front of me, at the next table?"

  "Who?" Nicole forced herself to cooperate.

  "Daniel Miller. In the flesh, as big as life!"

  "Really? Wow…" mumbled Nicole, knowing she was obliged to express at least some interest in her friend's words. "Did you talk to him?"

  Ann forked another mouthful of meat. "Nope. Unfortunately. He was with a bunch of people and as I haven't seen father for a long time," she added with a light-hearted smile, "it didn't seem the right time to ditch my old man for a total stranger."

  "You did right. He's probably not worth your attention anyway," said Nicole.

  "Oh, yes he is," Ann assured her. "He was with two other men who didn't look at all bad either." She drank some wine, "and that weird woman, that botoxed actress, what's her name… Diane something…"

  "You mean Diane Stewart?" suggested Nicole.

  "That's her. Uhhh," Ann shuddered. "Grotesque."

  Nicole laughed. She felt on surer ground now. "I would hardly call her that. She won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for her role in 'Cloudless Day' and was on the cover of Vogue last month. She can't be weird or grotesque."

  Ann snorted in contempt. "Anyway, I happened to overhear them…"

  "You mean," corrected Nicole, still keeping an utterly serious tone, "you happened to spy on them."

  The two laughed again.

  "I should have walked over and asked him for a selfie together." Ann poured more wine and they clinked glasses.

  Ann enjoyed seeing her laugh. She admired the grace and appreciated the elegance which was so much a part of Nicole's every gesture and movement. The contrasts in her were surprising and complex, thought Ann. Nicole was always warm and friendly, winning hearts with her generosity, but Ann knew her well enough to recognize the sadness that could cloud the brilliance of those green eyes. Aloof and distant, Nicole would withdraw into an inner world she shared with no one and at those times she looked solitary and fragile. Ann knew Nicole adored her mother and detested her father. Once Ann read aloud an emotional text message her father sent her. When she finished reading she looked up, amazed to find Nicole staring stonily. "I hate my father," she declared in a cold voice. "He constantly humiliated my mother and eventually destroyed her. He tried to do the same to me."

  Nicole refused to open up and share more than what she had already said. But something made Ann believe that beyond the suffering her father inflicted on his family there had been another man in her past. A man who caused Nicole to raise defensive walls, walls that guarded her from men's advances. So Ann waited patiently for the day Nicole chose to pour out her heart.

  The two friends continued chatting idly. Ann recounted tales of the exotic locales and the interesting people she'd met, while Nicole enjoyed seeing the world through Ann's eyes.

  Chapter Two

  The evening passed quickly and at midnight Nicole took leave of Ann and made her way home. She felt buoyant and without a care. The wine has made me giddy, she thought, or perhaps it was the full moon. She was happy she'd decided to leave the Vespa at th
e bungalow and walk along the shore. She took off her sandals and tucked up her skirt. Humming softly, she kicked the cold waves lapping at her ankles, throwing up sprays of salted foam. She loved the sea. At times tranquil, smooth, and clear; at other times gray, tempestuous, and violent. Nicole perceived the sea as a reflection of human nature and enjoyed attributing human characteristics to it. She saw the bungalow a short distance away. She felt surprisingly wide awake. A cup of steaming, aromatic coffee would be the perfect way to end the evening. Stillness surrounded her.

  The man hidden in the shadow of the bungalow stood still, reluctant to reveal himself too soon. The appearance of the woman just a few feet away was so extraordinary it was almost unreal and he felt the familiar stabbing pain return, sharp and poignant as if new. So many nights he had lain racked with longing for the girl in front of him. Eight years of separation had not dimmed her image and he was aware of the charge that thrilled his senses. He closed his eyes and inclined his head. Rays of the full moon observing the scene from above gleamed on his black hair. Nicole tensed, sensing danger nearby. Her eyes, penetrating the darkness, caught the blue spark and she froze in her tracks. Daniel felt her panic and stepped towards her, his superb, supple body moving to meet her startled gaze.

  Time had blurred but not erased Nicole's memory of the handsome figure and his animal magnetism. A dark blue shirt, unbuttoned, covered the wide, muscular shoulders and exposed his chest. Soft hair led downwards in a straight, thin line to disappear below the waist of the worn jeans. His hips were narrow and hinted at the long muscles of his legs. He was more magnificent than she remembered and her throat caught. She had a barely controllable urge to touch the face she had once loved, but she stood motionless. She looked silently at him, as though trying to roll back the years separating the man who stood before her from the man she had once known. His mouth was no less sensual than before but now it was drawn in a hard line. The day they met, she remembered, he had revealed two rows of white teeth in a smile that had captivated her. But the most startling feature in his face were his marine blue eyes. Nicole remembered their look, as clear and powerful as the depths of the sea. Now, his eyes were the metallic gray of the ocean in a storm, and Nicole stepped back.