A Date With Destiny. Miranda Lee

become very close over the last year, all their old differences seemingly having been resolved.

      Till now.

      ‘Please, Molly,’ she said calmly. ‘Let’s not argue about it. I’m not exactly moving interstate. I’m only a twenty-minute drive down the highway, and I’ll visit often.’

      ‘Oh, I get the picture. Wayne’s just an excuse. It’s this Mike Angellini you’re going to dinner with, the one whose unit is next to the one Ralph gave you. You’ve set your sights on him, haven’t you?’

      That was so ridiculous that Salome almost laughed.

      ‘Not at all,’ was her rueful reply as she picked up the bronze lip-gloss. ‘I told you. Mike’s an old acquaintance. I’ve known him for years. You don’t honestly think that after what I’ve been through with Ralph I’d leap into another involvement this quickly, do you?’

      ‘Who knows what you’d do?’ her mother said archly. ‘Any girl who could marry a man thirty years older than herself could do anything!’

      Salome counted to ten again. ‘Not all women like younger men,’ she said with creditable control.

      ‘Younger men are more fun,’ Molly stated pompously. Then grinned.

      Salome shook her head in fond exasperation and began putting more pins in her up-swept hairstyle. Her mother’s behaviour with men frustrated the life out of her, but it was impossible to dislike the woman. Or not feel sympathy for the events that had shaped her life. An abandoned child, and the product of various state institutions, Molly was a teenage runaway, pregnant by the time she was fifteen, Salome’s father an Irish sailor who’d been in Sydney for a week on shore leave and had never returned.

      Molly had always claimed to have loved him. But then, Molly claimed to love all her boyfriends, even creepy Graham, who’d been twenty-three to her thirty-three, and spent more time chasing the eighteen-year-old daughter than the mother.

      Salome glanced in the mirror at Molly, who was still very attractive at thirty-eight and not as rough in speech and manner as she used to be, and wished with all her heart that this time she’d found the right man, the one who would marry her.

      ‘How old is this old friend of yours?’ Molly asked, dropping down on the end of the single bed. ‘Not as old as Ralph, I hope?’

      ‘Early thirties.’ Salome stood back from the dressing-table mirror, and made a final survey of her appearance. The forest-green woollen suit, with its softly pleated skirt and fitted single-breasted jacket, suited her tall, shapely figure to perfection. And the ivory silk blouse with the tie at her neck looked suitably demure.

      There would be no cleavage tonight, Salome had decided. No way did she want to spend the evening having Mike Angellini either glaring reproachfully at her breasts, or assuming from her mode of dress that he might be on to a good thing.

      That was one of the reasons, too, why she had put her hair up, being aware that some men found long, loose hair sexually provocative. Maybe she was being overly careful, but she had a feeling that the evening could be spoiled if she gave Mike the wrong impression. As she’d found out to her chagrin that morning in Charles’s office, a man’s desire had little to do with admiration of a woman’s real personality. All a female had to have was a pretty face and a nice figure to interest a male on that level.

      ‘Is he handsome?’ Molly kept on.

      ‘Very.’

      ‘Not married, is he?’ Her mother’s voice carried suspicion.

      ‘No,’ Salome laughed. ‘For pity’s sake, quit the third degree, will you? You’ll make me nervous soon. Look, I can’t even get my earrings in now!’

      Actually, underneath her composed façde, Salome was beginning to feel a bit nervous. Odd, really. Over the years as Ralph’s wife she had dined with princes and sheikhs, gone to the races with royalty, sailed with tycoons, and partied with movie stars. Why, then, should she be worried about a simple dinner for two?

      Perhaps it wasn’t the dinner itself she was nervous about, but what Mike would think when he arrived and she told him she had decided to move into the penthouse after all. In fact, was moving in tonight! She could hardly explain the real reason without embarrassment. Nor could she, in front of Molly, reveal that it was only a temporary arrangement, till the unit was sold.

      Hopefully he wouldn’t take her abrupt change of mind as meaning she was interested in him, as Molly had suggested. She had a suspicion that he wouldn’t need much encouragement to try to change their platonic date into a less platonic one.

      Another disturbing thought popped into her mind. Perhaps he didn’t need any encouragement. Perhaps a man as handsome and eligible as Mike expected his dates to end the evening in bed with him. She hadn’t thought of that.

      Salome had no idea what men expected on a date these days. She’d had to put up with a lot of groping as a teenager, and even then boys had expected a girl to come across pretty quickly. She’d had many a wrestle in the back of a car during her dating years, but only once had she given in—the summer she’d turned seventeen. And of course she had thought she was in love. The man in question had been older than her usual dates. At twenty-four, he’d not been prepared to take no for an answer.

      But sex had not been the earth-shaking experience Salome had been expecting. Physically she’d felt nothing after the initial stab of pain. It had been a non-event. Things hadn’t improved either, on subsequent occasions, and her boyfriend had quickly dumped her, saying she was abnormal. Salome had been very upset at the time, the only consolation to her lack of pleasure in sex being that she didn’t have to fear she might turn out to be as promiscuous as her mother.