Free Blaze by Di Morrissey

love Sydney. But I was thinking you might enjoy sharing your holiday in Europe?’ He gave her an affectionate look with the question.
    Nina removed her arm and ran her fingers through her hair, adjusting her sunglasses. ‘Oscar, we’ve been through this, so many times . . .’ She couldn’t explain to him how she really felt. That this time in Europe wasn’t just a . . . vacation.
    â€˜The situation is different now.’ The Baron was referring to the recent death of his wife, who had long been confined to a private hospital with a lingering illness.
    â€˜No it’s not,’ she said with gentle insistence. ‘We’ve never been lovers. Just because we won’t have such a close working relationship doesn’t change anything. I value and treasure our friendship. I worry that would change. I am so fond of you. And I know you are of me. Please, let’s leave things as they are.’ Then, seeing his crushed expression, she added, ‘For the moment.’
    Nina stood in her now empty office at Blaze. She looked out at the New York landscape that had been familiar for so many years. The view across the park to the buildings on the East Side, the rumble of the traffic below on Fifth Avenue, the gleam of the Hudson where boats churned its sludgy surface. Her office looked so bare, just a few cartons left from the packers. A painting she’d chosen – an Aboriginal painting from the Yolngu of north-east Arnhem Land – and a favourite camphorwood chair, also from Australia, were all that remained. They would be moved to her apartment to vacate what would now be Irene da Costa’s office, with her deputy moving into the former editor’s office.
    This building had accommodated Nina’s growth from a nervous young publisher to what the press had called ‘the dynamic doyenne of US magazine media’. In an interview with a columnist of the New York Gazette , s he had spoken positively and bravely of the new challenge facing her. But was it what she really wanted? Or was it just a frightened grasp for something to fill the yawning gap in her life? No husband, no children. And, with her mother dying recently, no family. What counted more in life as one entered these golden years . . . the joy of family or career success? And what of the clamour of those faraway memories? They were becoming more insistent.
    Memories of her late husband, Doctor Paul Jansous, touched her at this moment. His death more than a quarter of a century ago had turned her life upside down. Yet it was thanks to him she had been able to push through her grief by being utterly focused on her work and plunging into a big challenge.
    Her quiet husband, dedicated to his medical work, had totally shocked her when his will revealed a huge amount of money that she hadn’t known existed. Shrewd investments and the sale to a pharmaceutical company of the interest in his fertility treatment had bolstered his already immense family wealth. And so Nina had found herself in a bewildering situation. She was beautiful, in her thirties and richly single, and suddenly at the top of the list of the most eligible women in Australia.
    Against the advice of her bank manager – he’d wanted her to keep her fortune invested and be given the right to manage it – she’d decided to plunge the money into her own magazine. She’d moved carefully and thoroughly, seeking sound advice from business people she trusted with solid track records of their own. While it was a gamble – ‘an indulgence’ in a number of people’s eyes – she’d never wavered in her belief that she knew what she was doing. The timing was right, she’d picked the ideal people to help her and she’d simply refused to entertain the thought she would not be successful. The aspects that had attracted and interested her drew her to the conclusion that she should run her own