Scandals and Secrets

'Poor darling,' he crooned. 'I can just imagine what it was like, married to that bastard. You did the right thing, leaving him before it was too late.'

'Maybe it is too late,' she muttered miserably.

Gemma knew in her heart that she would never love another man. Nathan had vowed to make her his and she was, with every fiber of her being. Maybe that was why she felt so lost and so lonely. Because the very essence of her life had been taken from her.

Suddenly, and for the umpteenth time, she started to cry. Damian let her till the last sobs hiccupped their way to nothing. It was then that he made his suggestion, a suggestion she was too emotionally drained to turn down. She was only too glad to have somewhere to go, and someone to take her there.

Celeste had to take a taxi home from work, for what else could she do? Damian had not returned to work after an apparently dramatic exit from his office, so he wasn't there to give her a lift home. She no longer had a chauffeur to take her everywhere in the Rolls and did not feel inclined to hire another. Yet she did not drive herself. She did actually have a licence, but when circumstances had prevented her driving for a number of years she had somehow never found the nerve to get behind the wheel again. Odd, really, when she had found the nerve to do plenty of other things.

With a sigh, she settled into the back seat of the taxi and prepared herself mentally for a hair-raising trip home. That was the one thing she deplored about taxis. The drivers! Thank the lord she didn't live far from the city.

The heavy traffic went some way to stopping the trip from reducing her to a nervous wreck, but she was still glad when the cab turned down her street.

Campbell Court - as the family home was called had a very exclusive address in Point Piper, right at the end of a cool leafy street that ran along the shores of Sydney Harbor.

The huge granite manor-style house stood grandly on a rise at the front of the large block amid superb grounds, rolling lawns sloping down behind the house, first to a terrace where the pool house sat, then down to the waterline and a private jetty.

Moored not far out from this jetty was the yacht which Celeste had personally inherited on her father's death. It was called the Celeste, and Stewart Campbell had brought it for a song in the sixties, but it was now conservatively worth six million dollars and needed a crew of ten to man it. Celeste rarely, if ever, took it out, choosing to use it as an exclusive setting for business luncheons and dinner parties. It was a good getaway spot as well, especially when her mother was in residence at Campbell Court and was having one of her infernal musical soirees, full of pretentious people.

Much as she loved her mother-who really was a softie despite being a social snob-Celeste was always glad when her remaining parent went away on holiday. Perhaps it was the fact that her mother knew all her dark secrets that sometimes made Celeste ill at ease in her presence.

Not that Adele would ever betray her. She had never breathed an indiscreet word in all these years. But sometimes Celeste would catch her mother looking at her in a certain way, a sad understanding in her eyes. Invariably this was when Celeste was being outrageous, or ruthlessly tough, and Celeste would suddenly want to scream at her, It's not my fault. Can't you see? I have to be this way. It's how I survive!

Celeste's train of thought was broken when she spied a navy blue Mercedes in the driveway of her home, parked in front of the security gates. She didn't recognize the car. Who could it belong to? There was someone sitting behind the wheel, but it was getting dark at six-thirty and she couldn't even make out if it was a man or a woman.

'Pull in behind that car, would you?' she directed the taxi driver. He did so and as she paid him Celeste was stunned to see Nathan Whitmore alighting from the Mercedes.

'What on earth is he doing here?' she muttered under her breath, frowning as she herself climbed out of the taxi and swung the door shut. The taxi immediately accelerated away, leaving Celeste to walk over to where Nathan had remained standing beside his car.

Those cold grey eyes of his swept over her as she approached and Celeste found herself bristling.

There was something about Byron's adopted son that had always irritated her. He was too everything. Too handsome. Too smooth. Too controlled.