Blaze by Di Morrissey

building a year ago for a large profit and now leased office space. Instinct, as well as Ian and the accountant’s advice, told her not to commit herself to buying another building.
    When the Baron had phoned and asked if she’d thought about his offer, Nina countered with, ‘Indeed. In fact, I have a proposition to put to you!’
    Baron Oscar Von Triton had done his homework on Nina Jansous – she was as smart and shrewd as she was charming and beautiful. But what attracted him most was Nina’s flair and style. She did everything in a manner that set her apart. It was more than taste and class, it was a gift you were born with for seeing things differently, inventive thinking, a creative yet pragmatic mind. Given scope and backing, she could conquer the world.
    With Ian at her side, Nina laid out what she saw as a way forward, considering she would not sell Blaze outright. She suggested a partnership with the Baron in taking Blaze to the biggest marketplace, the US. She would run the magazine and they would co-own it, splitting costs and profit. Each brought to the table their own assets. Triton had the infrastructure and a solid power base. Nina would make Blaze into the flagship magazine of the Triton empire, marketing it worldwide, until they were ready for the world’s major cities of style – Paris, Rome, London – to each have its own edition.
    She would edit the magazine as well as be the figurehead who created it. She would close the Australian Blaze , and pay out her staff generously, doing all she could to help find new positions for them. It was time for her little dragonfly to dance on the world stage. And one day, she knew, the new Blaze would come home to launch its own Australian edition.
    Alone in the New York office, Nina glanced again at the pile of correspondence on her table. Handwritten notes, email printouts, the cards – from well-wishers outside the company and, the most special, from her Blaze staff around the world. This was her family. Soon she would have the joys, the pain, the problems, the laughter and tears of rearing a new child, a new magazine with new staff in Australia. It would link her to the wonderful years of her own childhood, to the country that had sheltered her mother and given them both security and happiness in those critical and difficult postwar years. She owed Australia. Her mother may have been born and raised in Eastern Europe, but it was Australia that had given mother and child their belonging and a future.
    Ali had decided to ‘sleep on’ Nina’s offer, though sleep was elusive. She tossed and kicked the tangled sheets, a few tears of anger and disappointment slipping onto the pillow. She knew Nina was right, that she should stay in the Triton stable, but she’d wanted the New York editorship so badly. New York was the peak of publishing. Australia, in comparison, was a backwater. Once she’d established herself in New York, Ali figured she’d left Australia behind. No matter how Nina dressed up the offer, to Ali’s mind it was an agonising choice – the editor’s chair in the small pond of Australia, a title with no real power in Blaze USA , or find another job in American publishing.
    Forcing herself to be practical, Ali knew that being editor of a major publication, even in Australia, was the right way to go. Nina’s words came back to her about writing her ticket to the world. Being part of a major corporation, being appointed editor with the responsibility of starting up a new magazine while not yet thirty years old, was a challenge and a compliment. If she made it work, who knew what opportunities might present themselves? These factors made up the plus side.
    But in Ali’s heart there lurked an unspoken fear. No one, not even Nina, could imagine what she would have to confront by returning to Australia. She’d believed the past was behind her; the nightmares stifled, her secret