Dawn Quinlan sat beside him on the sofa, curiosity in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Paul, but Serena has gone back to Sydney.’
He thought some details followed but the blood roaring in his ears drowned out everything else. Serena was gone. It was his fault; he’d pushed her away with insensitive comments about family and belonging, and she’d slipped out of his door, and out of his life.
All he wanted was to hold her; to tell her they had a chance now he knew she wasn’t related to him. But the moment she’d mentioned Jack, the raw loss of his passing overwhelmed Paul and he’d snapped at her in the worst possible way. He could atone by helping her find her father. It was on top of his list, right up there with helping Hayden save the farm.
Except that, in trying to help, he’d made things worse. Hayden had rejected his offer of help, and Serena had left town.
With a herculean effort, he met Dawn’s concerned gaze. ‘Did she say if—when—she’s coming back?’
‘Not a word, but I know she intends to meet up with Max Zinsky. I wouldn’t be surprised if—ah, but I shouldn’t talk out of turn.’
Bile rose in his throat. He’d left it too late. Let his mouth get away from him and she’d turned to Zinsky. Breathing through his mouth, he wondered how much to reveal to Dawn. What would she think of his suspicions about Serena’s father? How would she take his poking his nose into her family business?
The irony didn’t escape him.
‘I wanted to let her know I’ve spoken to my uncle and my father about—’ He cleared his throat and tried again. ‘What I mean is, now I’m certain we’re not related, I wanted to take her on a date, you know, to like … start again. Fresh, without that hanging over our heads.’
Dawn appeared genuinely perplexed. ‘Wherever did you get the idea you and Serena were related?’
Heat rushed through him, from the tips of his ears to the soles of his feet. That whole mess had begun at dinner when she’d mentioned the Byron Bay music festival. When his father and uncle rhapsodised about the gorgeous redhead they’d met there.
In putting two and two together he’d made five, but he was convinced her reason for choosing Mindalby for a holiday revolved around her father.
‘When Serena mentioned the music festival, Dad and Uncle Josh both remembered you, what you looked like, right down to your name. And I know when her birthday is.’ The more he tried to explain, the more he tied himself in knots.
Oh, God, he’d got it all wrong, hadn’t he.
Dawn’s eyes opened wide. ‘And you assumed one of them fathered my daughter. Well, at least that explains Serena’s recent behaviour.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply—well, maybe I did, but to be fair, Dad denied it when I asked him outright.’
‘I’d like to have been a fly on the wall during that conversation.’ A hint of coolness dropped into her voice and she sat ramrod-straight.
He’d be lucky if she didn’t show him the door straightaway.
‘My apologies, Dawn. I should have known better, but Dad had this gap in his memory about the night they met you. Uncle Josh has since supplied the missing pieces.’
Dawn sighed and clasped her hands loosely in her lap. ‘Maybe I should be cross, but I’m not. Even in the late eighties and early nineties a free attitude to love happened at the festival, and I was quite prepared to give it a go, but once I met the man who is Serena’s father, I didn’t want anyone else.’
‘So you do know who her father is?’
‘Yes, and no. We were young and excited, and we thought it was liberating to use pseudonyms. I had no idea what Starman’s real name was, but he was the sweetest, kindest, shyest man.’
‘Serena must take after you. She’s not shy and she’s positive about everything.’
Dawn raised an eyebrow, but a smile tugged up the corner of her mouth. ‘Like a breath of spring with the promise of summer heat?’
‘Yeah.’ That was Serena to a T. But would he get the chance to taste her heat, her passion?
The idea came to him in a flash. He’d drive to Sydney, tell her what he’d found out from Josh, and pray like crazy she’d give him—them—a chance. That’s all he wanted.
But he couldn’t leave. Not yet, not before Carey Cotton was released from the mill yard, and a down payment made on the seeds for next season. He owed a duty to his family and to Hayden. But this time, he wouldn’t take his responsibility as a member of the Carey clan too far.
This time, he’d hand over control to where it belonged—to Hayden.
Maybe the same applied to Serena. If he hadn’t poked his nose into her life, if he’d stepped back and not tried to help when she hadn’t told him what she was doing, they might even now be driving up to the lookout.
Forget foot-in-mouth trouble; he needed to stop trying to control everything when life was so unpredictable.
There was one more thing he wanted to do though.
One thing he needed to do to make up for his intrusion into Serena’s life. The only thing that might make things right again.
‘You said you don’t know … Starman’s real name. Maybe I can help you find him. Is there anything else you remember about Serena’s father?’
Dawn’s gaze narrowed, intensifying like a laser beam, stripping away the last of his protective shell. ‘Why is finding my daughter’s father important to you?’
‘It’s important to Serena. That makes it important to me.’
‘I couldn’t ask for more for her.’ A faraway look softened Dawn’s eyes before she turned to watch the flames flickering in the open fireplace.
‘A few of the group I fell in with were on their way home to Mindalby from a conference in Brisbane. They left mid-morning.
‘Starman arrived after lunch on the second day. He’d missed the others in Brisbane, so when he found he’d missed them again, he said it was fate and decided to stay for a couple of days before he caught a bus. It might have been his smile, or his voice when he sang with me, or his sense of humour—any number of things about him.’
Dawn’s voice slipped into a soft lilt as she shared her story and Serena’s past, and Paul fell under her spell. ‘I fell in love with him, and I fell into his bed. He was tall, slim, fair-skinned, but with calluses that showed he worked with his hands. He wore his hair in a Mohawk. I remember—’ Dawn covered her mouth, and her gaze darted around the room. ‘Oh—I remember he said that Mohawk, and the fact he’d come in on a flight from Bali, were the reasons he was pulled off the line for a thorough search in customs. I guess that’s why his friends thought they’d missed him at the airport.’
‘Was he Australian, or had he passed through Bali on his way to Australia?’ If he was a different nationality, that would narrow Paul’s search immensely. He ran through the migrants in town: there was the big Danish bloke who lived the other side of Wooroorogan National Park. He discounted the Vietnamese family who ran the restaurant and those who were relative newcomers to the district.
Dawn went still. She pressed her lips together and shook her head slowly.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘This has gone on long enough. I—think I may know who he is now, but I have to talk to him first. I—will you see yourself out? Oh, and don’t worry about Serena. I’m fairly certain she’ll be back.’
‘If she didn’t say how can you—’
‘Know? I’m her mother. She’ll be back.’