Vows & a Vengeful Groom / Pride & a Pregnancy Secret: Vows & a Vengeful Groom

Three

“Her body?” Kim’s voice rose on a note of shock. Confusion clouded her expression as she looked from Garth to Ric. “You said she was alive. A survivor. You said they—”

“She passed away on the rescue boat,” Garth said gently, “shortly after they took her on board. I’m sorry, Kim. I know you were close.”

“No, not really.”

A deep sadness imbued her comment and Ric wondered if she was thinking about Marise or her husband Matt, the Hammond Kim was close to. Or perhaps the couple’s son. His jaw tightened. Dammit, he’d hoped there’d been a mistake. That they’d learn the woman wasn’t Marise Hammond, the mother of a small boy, too young and innocent to be the victim of such a tragic loss.

“Are they certain it was Marise Hammond?” he asked.

“Certain enough that Stavros told us before the formal identification process. Unofficially, of course,” Garth added.

“When you called me in New Zealand, you mentioned a foul-up with the passenger list.”

“Initially there was a Blackstone employee listed,” Garth said. “Jessica Cotter. She manages the Martin Place store and was supposed to be going to Auckland for the opening.”

The name wasn’t familiar to Ric, but he hadn’t worked in the jewellery side of the business for almost eight years. “She couldn’t be the one they found in the sea?”

“Wrong build, wrong hair colour, wrong clothing. It seems Ms. Cotter had a change of mind and got off the plane at the last minute. Hence the initial confusion over the passenger list.”

“So it was Marise Hammond.” Sonya’s voice cut into the conversation, and Ric swung around to find her standing in the archway leading toward the kitchen. Although her eyes looked shell-shocked, she stood tall and poised and even managed a passable attempt at a smile. “Why don’t you go through to the living room? Danielle and Ryan are there and I think we should all be together to talk about this. I’ve made tea and coffee but if anyone would prefer something stronger, please let me know.”

Ryan Blackstone looked like he needed something stronger.

Ric eyed the younger man narrowly, taken aback by the gaunt grey cast to his normally tanned features. It was never a surprise to see Ryan wound tighter than a newly forged spring, especially in Ric’s presence, but in all his years at Blackstone’s Ric had never seen him unravel once.

Today, as his stark green gaze met his sister’s across the wide expanse of the mansion’s living room, he looked perilously close to that point.

“Coffee, Ric?”

Sonya distracted him with the proffered cup—black, strong, welcome—for only a second, and he turned back to see Kim bound so tightly in her brother’s arms that he thought she might snap. It was a brief, silent embrace with none of the exuberant warmth of her reunion with Sonya or Danielle or Garth, but what it lacked in length and words it more than made up for in intensity.

Feeling like an intruder on this deeply private moment, he looked away and saw that Danielle had done the same. The significance of this particular reunion hit him suddenly and with all the force of a runaway ore truck.

It had nothing to do with their chequered history or Ryan’s disapproval of Kim’s defection. Nothing to do with any prior competition for their father’s approval and affection. Nothing to do with her taking the Hammond side in the long-running family conflict.

Kim and Ryan were all that remained of their family unit. First their elder brother, James, abducted and never seen again. Then their mother’s suicide. Now they faced the probable loss of their seemingly indestructible father.

No wonder they clung to each other so tenaciously.

The room where the family gathered opened onto the terrace and front gardens, and rose up through the second storey to a thirty-foot ceiling. Light and air spilled into the vast space via the opened banks of French doors and the stacked windows above, yet the atmosphere strummed with the dark tension of a mausoleum, until it was broken by the faint rattle of cup against saucer.

From the corner of his eye Ric saw Garth quietly take Sonya’s coffee and set it down on a side table. Her quiet “Thank you” broke the silence.

“I’m very sorry to hear about Marise,” she continued with a calm composure that belied her distress.

Danielle, sitting beside her, took hold of her hand. “We can’t be certain it was her…can we?”

“It was,” Ryan said with surprising force. “The passenger list is confirmed. An all-male crew. Howard. His lawyer. Marise Hammond. She was the only female on the plane.”

“Well, what was she doing on the plane?” Danielle fired back, undeterred. “I didn’t think she would even know Howard, let alone be on speaking terms with him.”

Ric put his untouched coffee down. The same question had been circling his head all day, and he didn’t like any of the answers he’d come up with. But he could respond to the second part. “She worked at Blackstone’s as Marise Davenport before she married Matt Hammond. And unless the tabloids are doctoring pictures now, she was still on speaking terms with Howard in December.”

“What are you talking about?”

Danielle asked the question, but Kim studied him with equal bewilderment. Living so far from Sydney, neither woman would have seen the scurrilous piece run by a high-profile society columnist a couple of weeks back. A piece that could easily have been dismissed if not for the accompanying photo.

“Scene published a picture of them dining together,” Sonya explained, “and hinted that they might be involved…personally.”

Danielle’s eyes widened with astonishment on her mother’s careful choice of description. “Howard and Marise were having an affair? You have got to be kidding!”

“Of course it’s not true,” Sonya said with some heat. “That magazine is renowned for printing outrageous scuttlebutt and getting away with it by using broad hints rather than actual claims. Marise is married—she has a child. Whatever Howard’s involvement with this woman, it was not an affair!”

Sonya’s passionate declaration hovered for a long moment unanswered and uncontested, but when Ric caught Garth’s eye he knew they were on the same wavelength. Howard’s wealth and power and charismatic good looks had always attracted pretty go-getters—reportedly before, during and after his only marriage—and he’d never been averse to casting aside his current mistress in favour of a dazzling new model.

And Marise Davenport Hammond had always been a dazzler. From her time working at Blackstone’s, Ric recalled her as a go-getter, as well. She’d put the moves on him and Ryan, too, before striking gold when she met the heir to the Hammond jewellery business at a diamond trade show. But now that she had Hammond’s wealth at her disposal, why would she need to turn her eye elsewhere?

“Did your father say anything to you about meeting with Marise?” Ric directed his question at Ryan.

A distracted frown creased Ryan’s forehead as he flipped shut the cell phone he’d been checking, but when he looked up his gaze focused razor-sharp on Ric’s. “Not a word.”

“Garth?”

“I asked him about the photo when it surfaced,” the older man replied, “and he told me to mind my own business. In so many words.”

Ric could imagine. Howard never minced words and the ones he chose were always colourful. “So you don’t think they were discussing business that night?”

Garth shook his head. “I doubt it.”

“No way in hell,” Ryan added with force.

“Perhaps she was trying to broker harmony,” Danielle suggested. “On behalf of Matt and the Hammonds.”

Ric’s gaze flicked to Kim, who’d sat through the exchange in uncustomary silence. One hand twisted at the charm pendant she wore around her neck and her dark brows were drawn together in a frown. He didn’t have to say a word to garner her attention. Slowly her gaze lifted to his. Strikingly green. Pensive. Troubled.

“Marise wasn’t involved with business at House of Hammond,” she said. “And, no, she wasn’t a peacemaker.”

“So why was she meeting with Howard and flying on his plane?” Danielle exhaled on a note of frustration. “I guess we might never know.”

“Does it matter?” Ryan pocketed his phone, his scowl forbidding. “The gutter press will jump all over this and you can bet they’ll rehash that photo and every other sordid detail they can dig up.”

Sonya made a soft sound of distress. She knew—hell, they all knew—that the Hammond-Blackstone family tree could provide enough juicy fodder to satisfy the greedy press for weeks. They wouldn’t even have to get their hands dirty digging, since most of it had been emblazoned across the front page of every major scandal sheet at one time or another.

“How many cameras were outside the gates when you came in?” Garth asked him.

“Too many.”

“Can’t they leave us alone, at least for this one day?” Sonya asked.

“No,” Ric said wearily, “that’s not how they work. We’ll all have to be prepared for the intrusion and speculation and the rehashing of old history. This is going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets any better.”

Kimberley couldn’t stomach any more. With an excuse of needing to stretch her legs after her two long flights, she stalked outside to the terrace. Minutes later Ryan came to the open doors and said he had some business to attend to, and unless any news came through in the meantime he would see her in the morning.

She’d noticed his distraction in the living room. Whoever’s call or message he’d been checking his phone for every five minutes had not come through. No doubt he would chase that down with his usual ruthless determination.

Restless and wired, she strode over to the arced balustrade that presented Miramare’s multimillion-dollar view of Sydney Harbour to perfect advantage. Reflexively, her hands fisted over the sun-warmed wall and she had to force herself to relax her steely grip. She’d escaped the unrelenting tension of the living room and the endless eddying conversation about Marise and Howard.

She didn’t want to think about them, to picture them in cahoots, their well-groomed heads together, conspiring Lord knows what.

She didn’t want to think about them at all. She just wanted to close her eyes and let the late afternoon sun seep into her body, to relax her whirling mind and melt the icy ache from her belly. If only she could conjure herself onto one of the yachts far below, flying across the sea-blue water with the wind at their backs.

Of course all that was impossible. When she closed her eyes, she did see Marise and Howard together and she heard Perrini’s blunt summation. This is going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets any better. That comment had hustled her from the room before she exploded with a sharp rejoinder.

Worse? How could it get any worse?

A plane had crashed. People had died horribly, innocent people going about their everyday working lives. The pilot and copilot, a cabin attendant, a lawyer travelling with Howard—all real people whose families would be stunned and grieving and asking their own questions about fairness and fate. Perhaps some left loved ones with unanswered questions, but did it matter? Ryan was right about Marise. It didn’t matter what she’d been doing that night in the restaurant or why she was on Howard’s charter flight. What mattered was how Matt would suffer a brutal hammering from the press as they speculated over every aspect of his family history and his business and his marriage, at a time when he should be mourning the loss of his wife in peace.

What mattered was another child not understanding why his mummy hadn’t come home. He would forget her face and her cuddles and her laughter, but later he would grow inquisitive and seek answers. Sadly they would be clouded by every scandalous supposition printed and gossiped about and adopted as truth.

Kimberley knew all about that and the thought of her godson going through the same distress chiselled open a chasm of pain in her heart. She’d been the same age as Blake when her mother hadn’t returned from a break at their Byron Bay holiday home. Many years later she’d read all the conjecture over Ursula Blackstone’s apparent suicide, her inability to cope with two young children while stricken with grief and remorse over the abduction of her firstborn son. How her depression had deepened over the rift between her brother Oliver and her husband following a loud and belligerent confrontation at her thirtieth birthday party.

At least Blake had a father who loved him unconditionally, who would protect him and explain the truth about his mother. Matt was a good man, a fair man, and a wonderful father. His only mistake was marrying the lethally beautiful Marise.

Familiar footfalls on the sandstone terrace broke into her reverie. Damn. After ten years she shouldn’t remember such minute and significant detail, but her consciousness refused to forget the cadence of his stride. Or the intense scrutiny of his gaze on her face as he settled by her side.

“You can’t enjoy the view with your eyes closed,” he said after several seconds.

“I’ve seen the view a thousand times.” Kimberley kept her eyes firmly closed. “I was enjoying the solitude.”

“Pity.”

Perrini fell silent, but she felt the brush of his sleeve against hers as he leaned forward. She pictured his hands planted wide on the balustrade, his azure gaze narrowed as he surveyed the amazing view. It always blew visitors away, this picture-perfect vista that stretched down the harbour to the famous bridge and beyond.

“I thought you might have been thinking,” he said after a moment.

“About?”

“Marise and Howard. You didn’t offer an opinion inside.” He paused, a deliberate hesitation before delivering the million-dollar question. “Do you think they were having an affair?”

Reluctantly she opened her eyes and felt the impact of his perceptive gaze—narrowed and as blue as the harbour—ripple through her senses.

Double damn. She couldn’t escape this. She couldn’t walk away.

“Anything is possible,” she said, choosing her words with care.

Perrini’s expression tightened. “Stop pussyfooting around, Kim. You knew Marise better than any of us. What was she doing in Australia these past weeks?”

“She came over for her mother’s funeral. As far as I know she stayed to tie up some matters with the estate.”

“Over Christmas and New Year’s?”

“Her mother passed away in December—I doubt she had much choice. I believe her father isn’t well and her sister was away on a modelling assignment.”

“And if there was money involved in her mother’s estate,” he mused, “Marise struck me as a woman who’d be all over it.”

Kimberley exhaled through her nose. She would not respond. Speaking ill of Marise now seemed uncharitable and purposeless. She’d survived a plane crash, spent terrifying hours in the water, only to pass away among strangers. No one deserved that, not even a woman who’d deserted her husband and child for weeks on end with scant excuse for her absences.

Not even a woman who might have done so as cover for an affair.

“I don’t know Marise as well as you seem to think, so I don’t know what she might or might not have done,” she said. “But I do know what my father is capable of.”

“You don’t think your stance on Howard is slightly jaundiced?”

A humourless laugh escaped Kimberley’s lips as she met his gaze. “You know it is. And you know why.”

“Ten years is a long time, Kim.”

Staring into his shadowed face, she wondered about that. So much hadn’t changed, including the way he sparked her temper and her body’s dormant hormones with equal ease. Just by standing a little too close. Just by looking into her eyes a little too long. Just by pressing his lips to her wrist and stirring insistent memories of other kisses, against other skin, far more intimate.

“Did he tell you about the last time I saw him?” she asked, regathering her concentration. “When he came to New Zealand to try and snare me back to Blackstone’s?”

“I’d like to hear your side.”

Oh, he was smooth. He wouldn’t give away how much Howard had shared about that horrendous meeting. He’d been the same inside, she realised belatedly. Assuming control of the discussion, asking the leading questions, drawing opinion from everyone else but never offering his own.

She could call him on that—later—but for now she wanted to share her side.