Vows & a Vengeful Groom by Bronwyn Jameson

SYDNEY’S SCENE

In the decades-old feud between the world’s richest gem dealers, nothing, apparently, is taboo. For the Hammonds and Blackstones, all’s fair in love and business – and has been since Howard “King of Diamonds” Blackstone allegedly schemed to wrest control of old man Jebediah Hammond’s diamond mines and Oliver Hammond allegedly stole the world’s most recognisable necklace, the Blackstone Rose.

But yesterday’s gossip pales in comparison to today’s forty-carat gem: millionairess and daughter non grata Kimberley Blackstone was on the arm of Blackstone’s leader, Ric Perrini. The same Kimberley Blackstone who’d defected to the rival House of Hammond jewellers in New Zealand ten years ago.

According to an industry insider Kimberley was seen entering the Blackstone estate on the gold coast of Vaucluse – a place she reportedly described as off-limits mere months ago. Rumour has it Sydney’s No. 1 player, Perrini, keeps a room there, too.

“If Perrini has any say,” says one source, “they won’t be separated for long.”

Pride & a Pregnancy Secret Tessa Radley

SYDNEY’S SCENE

The decades-old feud between Australia’s richest gem dealers, the Blackstones and the Hammonds, is about to heat up. The last will and testament of Howard Blackstone, chairman of Blackstone Diamonds, will reportedly be read at the family’s Vaucluse mansion after today’s funeral services. Coming as no surprise, rumours are rampant among the Sydney elite that Howard has blackballed the Hammond side of the family in his new will.

Who else will walk away with nothing? And who will become the new CEO of Blackstone Diamonds?

The main contenders are Ryan Blackstone, son of the late billionaire businessman, and Ric Perrini, the big man’s fair-haired son-in-law.

“Everyone knows there’s no love lost between those two,” says one industry insider.

Those same insiders are split on who will become the new leader.

Of late, the Blackstone scion has been spending all his time at the Pitt Street offices, rededicating himself to the business. Much to the chagrin of Sydney’s single girls, he’s been absent from the social scene and has not been linked with any woman, taking all-work-and-no-play Ryan off the most eligible list. But if he loses the chairmanship, the green-eyed hunk will need lots of consoling. So, ladies of Sydney, take heed…

Vows & a Vengeful Groom

BRONWYN JAMESON

Pride & a Pregnancy Secret

TESSA RADLEY

www.millsandboon.co.uk

VOWS & A VENGEFUL GROOM

by

Bronwyn Jameson

BRONWYN JAMESON

spent much of her childhood with her head buried in a book. As a teenager she discovered romance novels, and it was only a matter of time before she turned her love of reading them into a love of writing them. Bronwyn shares an idyllic piece of the Australian farming heartland with her husband and three sons, a thousand sheep, a dozen horses, assorted wildlife and one kelpie dog. She still chooses to spend her limited downtime with a good book. Bronwyn loves to hear from readers. Write to her at bronwyn@bronwynjameson.com.

Dear Reader,

It is my great pleasure and privilege to introduce a new Desire continuity series, DIAMONDS DOWN UNDER. A series set in Australia and New Zealand was suggested in early 2006, and the idea of developing a six-book continuity with my friends and fellow Down-Under Desireables excited and thrilled – and occasionally overwhelmed – me. Over the ensuing twelve months thousands of e-mails blazed back and forth across the Tasman as we brainstormed and fine-tuned the underlying premise, the locations, the characters, the conflicts and storylines.

We chose diamonds as the heart of our series for their connection to wealth and glamour, to romance and commitment…and for the cold, hard qualities beneath the surface sparkle. Everything is not how it first appears. We started with a rare pink diamond known as the Heart of the Outback, a stone which built one man’s wealth and rent a family in two.

For thirty years the Hammonds and the Blackstones have remained at odds, and creating causes of all that simmering animosity was almost as much fun as researching the glamorous homes, boutiques, jets, cars, clothes and jewellery. I hope you enjoy the roller coaster of passion, drama, secrets and scandal that commences in Vows & a Vengeful Groom.

Cheers from Down Under,

Bronwyn Jameson

You can share the fruits of our research at the series website www.diamonds-downunder.com, which features behind-the-books information, character profiles, missing scenes and chances to win dazzling prizes.

One

Kimberley Blackstone’s long stride—and the Louis Vuitton suitcase she towed in her wake—gathered momentum as she left customs at Auckland’s international airport and headed toward the exit. Despite the handicap of her three-inch heels, she hit the Arrivals hall at a near jog, her focus on grabbing the first taxi in the rank outside, her mind making the transition from laid-back holiday mode to all that awaited her at House of Hammond on her first workday after the Christmas-New Year’s break.

She didn’t notice the waiting horde of media until it was too late. Flashbulbs exploded around her like a New Year’s light show. She skidded to a halt, so abruptly her trailing suitcase rammed into her legs.

Surely, this had to be a case of mistaken identity. Kimberley hadn’t been on the paparazzi hit list for close to a decade, not since she’d estranged herself from her billionaire father and his headline-hungry diamond business.

But, no, it was her name they called. Her face the focus of a swarm of lenses that circled like avid hornets. Her heart started to pound with fear-fuelled adrenaline.

What did they want?

What the hell was going on?

With a rising sense of bewilderment she scanned the crowd for a clue and her gaze fastened on a tall, leonine figure forcing his way to the front. A tall, familiar figure. She stared in stunned recognition and their gazes collided across the sea of heads before the cameras erupted with another barrage of flashes, this time right in her exposed face.

Blinded by the flashbulbs—and by the shock of that momentary eye-meet—Kimberley didn’t realise his intent until he’d forged his way to her side, possibly by the sheer strength of his personality. She felt his arm wrap around her shoulder, pulling her into the protective shelter of his body, allowing her no time to object, no chance to lift her hands to ward him off.

In the space of a hastily drawn breath, she found herself plastered knee-to-nose against six feet of hard-bodied male.

Ric Perrini.

Her lover for ten torrid weeks, her husband for ten tumultuous days.

Her ex for ten tranquil years.

After all this time, he should not have felt so familiar but, oh, dear Lord, he did. She knew the scent of that body and its lean, muscular strength. She knew its heat and its slick power and every response it could draw from hers.

She also recognised the ease with which he’d taken control of the moment and the decisiveness of his deep voice when it rumbled close to her ear. “I have a car waiting. Is this your only luggage?”

Kimberley nodded. A week at a tropical paradise did not require much in the way of clothes. Especially when she was wearing the one office-style dress and the only pair of heels she’d packed. When he released his grip on her shoulder to take charge of her compact suitcase, she longed to dig those heels into the ground, to tell him exactly what he could do with his car, and his presumptuous attitude.

But she wasn’t stupid. She’d seen Perrini in action often enough to know that attitude yielded results. The fierce expression and king-of-the-jungle manner he did so well would keep the snapping newshounds at bay.

Not that she was about to be towed along as meekly as her wheeled luggage.

“I assume you will tell me,” she said tightly, “what this welcome party is all about.”

“Not while the welcome party is within earshot.”

Barking a request for the cameramen to stand aside, Perrini took her hand and pulled her into step with his ground-eating stride. Kimberley let him because he was right, damn his arrogant, Italian-suited hide. Despite the speed with which he whisked her across the terminal forecourt, she could almost feel the hot breath of the pursuing media on her back.

This was neither the time nor the place for explanations. Inside his car, however, she would get answers.

The initial shock had been blown away—by the haste of their retreat, by the heat of her gathering indignation, by the rush of adrenaline fired by Perrini’s presence and the looming verbal battle. Her brain was starting to tick now. This had to be her father’s doing. And if it was a Howard Blackstone publicity ploy, then it had to be about Blackstone Diamonds, the company that ruled his life.

The knowledge made her chest tighten with a familiar ache of disillusionment.

She’d known her father would be flying in from Sydney for today’s opening of the newest in his chain of exclusive, high-end jewellery boutiques. The opulent shopfront sat adjacent to the rival business where Kimberley worked. No coincidence, she thought bitterly, just as it was no coincidence that Ric Perrini was here in Auckland ushering her to his car.

Perrini was Howard Blackstone’s right-hand man, second in command at Blackstone Diamonds and head of the mining division, that position of power a legacy of his short-lived marriage to the boss’s daughter. No doubt her father had sent him to fetch her; the question was why.

On his last visit to Auckland, Howard had attempted yet again to lure her back to Blackstone’s, to the job she’d walked away from the day she walked out on her marriage. That meeting had escalated into an ugly word-slinging bout and ended with Howard vowing to write her from his will if she didn’t return to Blackstone’s immediately.

Two months later Kimberley was still here in Auckland, still working for his sworn enemy at House of Hammond. They hadn’t spoken since; she hadn’t expected any other outcome. When her father said he was wiping his hands of her, she took him at his word.

Yet here she was, being rushed toward a gleaming black limousine by her father’s number-one henchman. She had no clue why he’d changed his mind or what the media presence signified, apart from more Blackstone headlines and the cer ainty that she was being used. Again. Sending Perrini was the final cruel twist.

By the time they arrived at the waiting car, her blood was simmering with a mixture of remembered hurt and raw resentment. The driver stowed her luggage while Perrini stowed her. She slid across the silver-grey leather seat and the door closed behind her, shutting her off from the cameras that seemed to be multiplying by the minute.

Perrini paused on the pavement beside the hired car, his hands held wide in a gesture of appeal as he spoke. Whatever he was saying only incited more questions, more flashbulbs, and Kimberley steamed with the need to know what was going on. She reached for her door handle, and when it didn’t open she caught the driver’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Could you please unlock the doors? I need to get out.”

He looked away. And he didn’t release the central locking device.

Kimberley’s blood heated from slow simmer to fast boil. “I am here under duress. Release the lock or I swear I will—”

Before she could complete her threat, the door opened from outside and Perrini climbed in beside her. She’d been closer inside the airport terminal, when he’d shielded her from the cameras with the breadth of his body, but then she’d been too sluggish with disbelief to react. Now she slid as far away as the backseat allowed, and as she fastened her seat belt the car sped away from the kerb.

Primed for battle, she turned to face her adversary. “You had me locked inside this car out of earshot while you talked to the media? This had better be good, Perrini.”

He looked up from securing his seat belt and their eyes met and held. For the first time there was nothing between them—no distraction, no interruption—and for a beat of time she forgot herself in those unexpectedly blue eyes, in the unbidden rush of memories that rose in a choking wave.

For a second she thought she saw an echo of the same raw emotion deep in his eyes but then she realised it was only tiredness. And tension.

“I wouldn’t be here,” he said, low and gruff, “if this wasn’t important.”

The implication that he would rather be anywhere but here, with her, fisted tightly around Kimberley’s heart. But she lifted her chin and stared him down. “Important to whom? My father?”

He didn’t have to answer. She saw it in the narrowing of his deep-set eyes, as if her comment had irritated him. Good. She’d meant it to.

“Did he think sending you would change my mind?” she continued coolly, despite the angry heat that churned her stomach. “Because he could have saved himself—”

“He didn’t send me, Kim.”

There was something in the delivery of that simple statement that brought all her senses to full alert. Finally she allowed herself to take him all in. He was not lounging with his usual arrogant ease but sitting straight and still. Sunlight spilled through the side window onto his face, highlighting the angles and planes, the straight line of his nose and the deep cleft in his chin.

And the muscle that ticked in his jaw.

She could feel the tension now, strong enough to suck up all the air in the luxury car’s roomy interior. She could see it, too, in the grim line of his mouth and the intensity of his cobalt-blue eyes.

Despite the muggy summer morning Kimberley felt an icy shiver of foreboding. Beneath the warmth of her holiday tan her skin goose-bumped. Something was very, very wrong.

“What is it?” Her fingers clutched at the handbag in her lap, gripping the soft leather straps as if that might somehow anchor her against what was to come. “If my father didn’t send you, then why are you here?”

“Howard left Sydney last night. Your brother received a phone call in the early hours of this morning when the plane didn’t arrive in Auckland.”

“Didn’t arrive?” She shook her head, unable to accept what he wasn’t telling her. “Planes don’t just fail to arrive. What happened?”

“We don’t know. Twenty minutes out of Sydney it disappeared from radar.” His eyes locked on hers, and all she needed to know was etched in their darkened depths, and in the dip of his head and the strained huskiness of his next words. “I’m sorry, Kim.”

No. She shook her head again. This couldn’t be happening. How could her all-powerful, larger-than-life father be dead? On the eve of his greatest moment, the day when he’d vowed to rub the Hammonds’ faces in his accomplishments right here on their home turf.

“He was coming for the opening of the Queen Street store,” she said softly.

“Yes. He was due to leave at seven-thirty but there was a delay. Some contracts to be signed.”

There always were. Every childhood memory of her father concerned business papers, negotiations, dealing in the fabulous wealth of the diamonds that underpinned it all. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him dressed in anything other than a business suit. That was his life.

Diamonds and contracts and making headlines.

“When I saw you at the airport,” she said, “with all the cameras and media hubbub, I thought it was to do with the opening. Some strategy he’d come up with to grab attention for the new shop.” The awful reality of tomorrow’s headlines churned through her, tightening her chest in a painful vise. “They were there because they knew.”

While she’d been enjoying her last walk on the beach, her last breakfast of papaya and mango and rambutan, while she’d laughed with the resort staff and flirted with the twenty-year-old charmer seated next to her on the flight home—

“I didn’t know,” she said on a choked whisper. Despite their bitter estrangement of the past decade, despite everything she held her father accountable for, she’d grown up adoring the man and vying with her brother to win his favour. For thirty-one years he had shaped her decisions, her career, her beliefs. For the last ten of those years she’d done everything she could to distance herself, but he was still her father. “I walked out of the terminal and into those cameras…. How did they know?”

“About your father?” He exhaled, a rough sound that doubled as a curse. “I don’t know. They shouldn’t have had names this quickly. They sure as hell shouldn’t have known you were coming through the airport this morning.”

The sick feeling in Kimberley’s stomach sharpened. She hadn’t worked her way around to that, but now he’d brought it up. Her forehead creased in a frown. “How did you know where to find me?”

“When you didn’t answer your phone, I called your office.”

“Last night?”

“This morning.”

Kimberley digested that information. Obviously he didn’t mean in the predawn hours when her brother Ryan first received the news, otherwise he wouldn’t have called her office. Wouldn’t have found someone—Lionel, the office manager, no doubt—to point him in the direction of the airport. “You didn’t call me as soon as you heard?”

“No.” His voice dropped to the same harsh intensity that darkened his eyes to near black. “This wasn’t something to hear over the phone, Kim.”

“You thought it might be better if I heard from a news crew?” she asked.

“That’s why I flew over here. To stop that happening.”

“Yet it almost did happen.”

“Because Hammond’s office manager wouldn’t give me your flight information over the phone.” Ric ground out that information with barely leashed restraint. He didn’t need her derisive tone reminding him of his impotent frustration on the drive to and from the city, not knowing if he’d make it back in time to meet her flight. Not knowing if the media would discover her whereabouts when that information had been deliberately withheld from him.

It hadn’t been a surprise, just a damn aggravation.

There was no love lost between the employees of House of Hammond and Blackstone Diamonds. The enmity of a thirty-year feud between the heads of the two companies—Howard and his brother-in-law, Oliver Hammond—had spilled over and tainted relationships into the next generation. Kimberley had reignited the simmering feud when she took a position assisting Matt Hammond, the current CEO of House of Hammond.

“You can’t blame Lionel for exercising caution,” Kim said archly, as if she’d read his mind.

There was something in that notion and in her tone that trampled all over Ric’s prickly mood. Ten minutes together and despite the gravity of the news he’d brought, they teetered on the razor’s edge of an argument. He shook his head wearily and let it roll back against the cool upholstery. Why should he be surprised? From the moment they’d met, their relationship had been defined by fiery clashes and passionate making up.

He’d never had a woman more difficult than Kim…nor one who could give him more pleasure.

When the phone call about Howard came in, he’d made the decision to fly to her without a second’s hesitation. As much as he hated what had brought him here, he relished the fact it would bring her home. She belonged at Blackstone’s. Ric sucked in a deep breath, and the scent of summer that clung to her skin curled into his gut and took hold.

Just like she belonged in his bed.

“You must have left very early this morning,” she said.

“I was on my way back to Sydney from the Janderra mine when Ryan called. An emergency trip, last minute, so I took the company jet. When Howard knew I wouldn’t be back, he chartered a replacement for his trip.”

“You were already in the air. That’s why you were the one to come.”

Ric turned his head slowly and found himself looking right into her jade-green eyes. They were her most striking feature, not only because of that dramatic colour offset by the dark frame of her brows, but because of how much they gave away. The trick, he’d learned, was picking the real emotion from the sophisticated front she used to hide her vulnerabilities.

Not that Kim ever admitted to any weakness. She was her father’s daughter in that regard. And right now she was working overtime to keep both him and the shock of the news he’d delivered at arm’s length.

“It didn’t matter where I was,” he said, strong and deliberate. “I would have come, make no mistake.”

“To tell me my father was d—”

“To take you home.”

“To Sydney?” The notion appeared to surprise her, enough that she huffed out an astonished breath. “You’re forgetting, my home is here now.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

After she’d walked out on him, he’d allowed her time to cool down. To think about her hotheaded accusations and to realise they belonged together. Four long dark months of silence passed before he’d come after her…only to find that she hadn’t cooled down one degree or come to any realisation other than the certainty their marriage had been a colossal mistake and that her new home was here, in Auckland, New Zealand.

With Matt Hammond as her boss and her protector.

No, he hadn’t forgotten anything and the power of those memories fired his temper and sparked between them in the close confines of the slowly moving car. She knew he was remembering that last heated clash in her workroom at Hammonds. The knowledge glittered in her eyes and brought out colour along her high cheekbones as she lifted her chin to speak.

“You said you would never come after me again.”

And he hadn’t. Pride and the finality of divorce papers hadn’t allowed him, but this was different. “This isn’t about us,” he said tersely. “This is about your father and your family.”

Kimberley held the narrowed anger of his gaze for another second before looking away. She closed her mouth on the instant comeback that flew to her tongue, the very inconvenient truth that the Hammonds were her family, too.

Her mother, Ursula, who’d died when Kim was a toddler, was Oliver Hammond’s sister. Because of the animosity between the Blackstones and the Hammonds, she’d grown up with a tremendously biased view of her New Zealand uncle and aunt and their adopted sons, Jarrod and Matt. Yet when she’d needed a new job, they’d welcomed her into their business and into their home. Matt had been her friend when she’d badly needed one. His wife, Marise, had never exactly warmed to her, yet Matt had insisted on having her as godmother to their little son, Blake.

For the past ten years these Hammonds had been more her family than anyone on the Blackstone side of the Tasman, but she refrained from saying this out loud. If she’d read the turbulence in Perrini’s eyes correctly, then mentioning Matt’s name would be like red-flagging a bull. He’d never forgiven Matt for offering her an easy escape from Blackstone’s with the plum position at House of Hammond, and the pair had almost come to blows in the Hammond workroom the day Perrini had tried to talk her in to taking him back. Anything she said now would only lead to more hot words and this wasn’t the place.

This isn’t about us. This is about your father.

How right he was…on more levels than the present.

Their relationship had never been about just them. Therein lay the problem. They’d met at Blackstone Diamonds, they’d bonded while working together to sell the retail jewellery business plan to the board and they’d fallen into bed in a wildly spontaneous celebration of their success.

But Perrini had wanted more. He’d married her to get it, and his proud new father-in-law had delivered everything an ambitious young marketing executive could want. Power, prestige, a prominent bay in the executive parking lot…and entrée into one of Sydney’s richest and most socially prominent families.

In the same sweet deal, he’d won the job of launching the retail business, Blackstone Jewellery, the job Kimberley had been promised and which she’d worked her backside off to earn. The killer blow? When she expressed her disappointment, Perrini sided with her father when he told her she didn’t have the necessary skills or experience.

In time she’d come to accept their point, but at twenty-one she’d been wildly, madly in love, and she’d felt only a crippling sense of betrayal over what had led to that point. He’d pursued her; he’d married her; and all to serve his own ambitions.

Today he’d come to take her home to her family in Sydney, but could she trust his motives?

The farther they travelled in silence, climbing familiar streets toward her One Tree Hill town house, the more she realised that his motives didn’t matter. The cold, hard reality of his news was finally beginning to pierce her armour of denial.

This isn’t about us. This is about your father and your family.

Her father’s plane was missing and even without the media’s eagerness for photos of his anguished family, she couldn’t go to work. Nor could she sit around her house going stir-crazy as she waited for news. With Matt away on a business trip she had no one to call on, no arms to hold her steady, no shoulder to cry on.

From the corner of her eye she could see Perrini’s outstretched legs and the memory of his solid support at the airport ambushed her for a moment. A bad, unnecessary moment. She didn’t need the comfort of his arms, not anymore, but she did need to go back to Sydney. She needed to be there when news came in of her father’s fate.

And she needed to see the rest of her family, to make amends for the years of her absence.

Just the thought of seeing her brother Ryan and her Aunt Sonya, who’d been the closest thing to a mother figure in her upbringing, caused a tight ache in her belly and her chest and the back of her throat. She took a tighter grip on the bag in her lap and on her emotions. Tears would come, she knew, but never in front of Perrini.

“This is your place?”

Perrini’s head tilted with what looked like curiosity as he surveyed the neat exterior of her stucco town house from the street where the limo had pulled up. Kimberley nodded abruptly in reply. He’d given the driver this address, so he knew without asking. And now that they’d arrived a new nervous tension gripped her insides with platinum claws.

This was her domain, a haven she’d created for herself away from the craziness of her busy business life. She didn’t want Perrini prowling around, casting his long shadow over her privacy, leaving an impression she knew would stick like superglue to her visual memory.

Yet how could she not invite him in, when he’d flown through the early morning hours on top of a return flight to Blackstone’s outback mine? Being one of her father’s toys, the company jet would be furnished with every amenity and then some, but still…

“Would you like to come in?” she asked quickly, before caution or nerves could change her mind. “I won’t be long. I just need to repack and water my plants and call work to let them know.”

One dark eyebrow arched. “You’ve decided to come?”

“Was there any doubt?”

“With you, Kim…always.”

The wry tone of his comment surprised a short laugh from Kimberley and their eyes met with that sound still arcing between them. A hint of the Perrini smile that could render smart women senseless hovered at the corners of his mouth and the blue of his eyes suddenly seemed richer, deeper, sultrier. Everything inside her stilled…everything except the elevated beat of her heart.

Damn him. It wasn’t even a proper smile. He wasn’t even trying to charm her.

“I’d best get organised,” she said briskly, breaking that moment of connection with a rush of smart-woman willpower.

She reached for her door just as his mobile phone buzzed. Leaving him to his call, she let the driver haul her luggage up the steep rise of steps to the closed-in portico that sheltered the front door. She rummaged in her bag for her keys and phone. Walking and talking would save precious minutes and by the time she’d unlocked and waved the driver inside, she’d also apprised Hammond’s office manager that she was taking a week of personal leave.

Next, Matt. He needed to know, as her friend and her boss, but she’d barely dialled his number before a hand closed around her wrist, capturing her arm and her attention. Perrini. She recognised the span of his hand, the smattering of dark hair, the scar on his middle knuckle. The black-sapphire cuff links Howard had given him as a Christmas gift.

“Is that your boss you’re calling?”

His voice was as tight as his grip and Kimberley blinked her attention away from his hand and on to the terse words he’d spoken. Her jaw tightened with irritation. She was in no mood for another go-round about the nature of her relationship with Matt. “So help me, Perrini, if you still can’t accept that I wouldn’t sleep with my—”

The rest of her reproach froze on her lips when she looked up into his face. Stark, taut, leached of colour. He exhaled a breath and the harsh sound echoed through the enclosed space. “I wish that were all, Kim.”

The phone call.

He had news about the plane, about her father.

Panic beat hard in her veins but she straightened her shoulders in preparation for the blow.

“They’ve found debris,” he said grimly, confirming her worst fear. “Off the Australian coast.”

Debris. Kimberley assimilated the innocuous-sounding word. Not wreckage. Not bodies. “Just…debris?”

“No.” He shook his head. “They also found one person. Alive. A woman.”

A soft sob escaped her lips and she started to tremble somewhere deep inside. Perrini’s arm came around her, lending her strength when she might have fallen.

“Who?” she breathed. “Please God, not Sonya, too.”

“No, not your aunt.” He took the phone from her limp fingers and flipped it shut. “According to Ryan, there’s a chance it may be Marise Hammond. Your boss’s wife.”

Two

M arise Hammond may have been on Howard Blackstone’s charter flight?

It made no sense in Kimberley’s shock-muddled brain. Yes, Marise had been in Australia for the past month tying up estate matters following her mother’s death. Yes, Marise was capricious and self-absorbed, but not to the extent that she would hitch a ride home with her husband’s bitter enemy. She knew how Matt felt about Blackstone Diamonds, and all because of Howard.

Why would she choose to be in his company?

Perrini had no answer and the question had been wiped from Kimberley’s mind, temporarily, by the rest of the details he passed on from that phone call. He stressed that the woman hadn’t been identified, that Marise hadn’t been confirmed as a passenger, that the information was unsubstantiated.

But his contact was a senior officer in the Sydney police force. Surely he wouldn’t tell them a woman had been pulled from the water alive without concrete information. Surely he wouldn’t provide a name without confidence in her identity.

Surely he wouldn’t build up false hope that Howard, too, might have survived the crash.

That notion only struck her while she was packing—if you could call throwing random clothes into a suitcase “packing.” There was no rhyme or reason to the process. She didn’t want to deliberate over what she might need in the coming week beyond clean underwear, although she made a conscious choice to shed the austere black dress she’d been wearing for work in favour of a pretty white sundress.

She didn’t want to contemplate the outcome of this trip.

She didn’t want to think about the need to pack sombre black.

Then she caught sight of herself in the mirror and saw that her face contained little more colour than her dress and possibly less than the creamy South Sea pearls in her ears. But it wouldn’t have mattered what she wore, her face would be a pale, haunted contrast to the dark hair she’d pulled back in a ruthlessly tight ponytail. Her eyes would still look dazed and lost.

In that instant the last of the indignation that had carried her through the past half hour deflated like a pin-pricked balloon. Weak-kneed, she collapsed to the edge of her mattress amid the bright heap of floral-hued clothes she’d tipped from her holiday suitcase.

From the living room she heard Perrini’s deep voice, a low, mellifluous sound that worked its magic on her shattered senses and pulled her back from the abyss. He had to be on the phone—a reminder of the previous phone call he’d taken in the limo—and now that her head was clearer she made the connection.

Marise was alive. Perhaps she wasn’t the only survivor.

That faint hope flickered like a slow flame in the centre of her chest. It was okay. She was going home and it would all be okay.

Perrini appeared at her bedroom door, the phone still in his hand. The way he looked at her made her heart skip a beat. “Was that more news?” she asked, eyes wide and fixed on his face.

“No. It was my pilot. The jet is fuelled and ready to go when you are.”

Kimberley released the breath she hadn’t known she was holding and nodded. “Once I decide what to wear, I’ll be ready.”

Given the circumstances, it was a ridiculous thing to say. She regretted it even more when Perrini surveyed her, and the haphazard contents of her suitcase, with ruthless focus. Then, with his trademark decisiveness, he crossed the room and pulled her up from the bed and onto her feet. Slowly he surveyed her, from her toes all the way up to her eyes.

“You’ll do in what you’re wearing,” he said, and his eyes smoked with a hint of what she might do for. “I always liked you in white.”

Kimberley blinked with astonishment. He was flirting with her? Half an hour after delivering news of her father’s possible demise? Unbelievable.

“I’m not dressing to impress you, Perrini,” she said sharply.

He almost smiled and that tightened the screws on her incredulity.

“Give me five minutes—and some privacy—and I’ll change.”

“No, you won’t.” He took hold of her hand. “I’ve put some colour back in your face and some life in your eyes. Now let’s go before you start thinking too much and lose it again.”

* * *

The trip from Auckland to Sydney passed in a slow-moving daze despite the swift efficiency and supreme comfort of flying in the Blackstone corporate jet. A Gulfstream IV, it was the exact same model of aircraft her father had chartered for his ill-fated flight. She’d asked Perrini about that, after they boarded. After she noted the rich mahogany paneling, the luxurious cream-colored leather seats, the fully stocked galley and ornately appointed bathroom.

Right after he’d pointed out the bed and said, “Feel free to use it. I’m happy to share.”

No doubt he was trying to get the spark back in her eyes by employing the same diversionary tactics as back in her bedroom, but that didn’t dull the electric awareness that shimmered between them. Was he remembering another private flight they’d taken together?

There’d been no bed on that charter flight from San Francisco to Vegas but it hadn’t mattered. They’d improvised. And before she’d come down from that incredible high, Perrini stunned her with a proposal she’d thought as wildly impulsive and wickedly romantic as making love with him a mile up in the sky.

That weekend had been the zenith of ten blissful weeks as Ric Perrini’s lover. She’d become his wife in a wedding chapel only Vegas could love, and afterward they’d spent three decadent days in a Bellagio suite ordering room service and indulging themselves in every way possible. She hadn’t realised a wedding band would make such a difference, but oh, how it had. It was the difference between good champagne and the vintage French they quaffed that weekend. Another level, impossible to describe or define, that filled her senses and her heart until she wondered if they would explode.

On their return to Australia, they had.

Everything inside Kimberley contracted painfully as she recalled the bliss. She didn’t want to remember the freefall plunge that followed their return home…or the shattering pain of hitting rock bottom. So she’d focused on the here and now, and asked Perrini mindless questions about the jet’s inclusions and capabilities, and she’d learned that her father had chartered the same model.

Clinging white-knuckled to the armrests during takeoff with the high-pitched wail of the engines in her ears, feeling the forward thrust suck her back into her seat, she could not shut out the image of her father and Marise experiencing the same sensation fourteen hours earlier. Nor could she eradicate the image of all that power and speed crashing from the sky and hitting the sea with devastating impact.

The flicker of hope in her chest wavered and died, and Kimberley’s emotions spent the three-hour flight seesawing between numbed disbelief and intense dread of what lay ahead. She took up Perrini’s suggestion to lie down because she couldn’t bear the thought of looking out the window at the stretch of sea where the plane had gone down. He’d told her that Australian search-and-rescue had mounted an extensive search, but she didn’t want to see the evidence.

It wasn’t denial, it was self-preservation.

She felt she’d done a decent job of disguising her turmoil. She hadn’t succumbed to tears. She’d even managed to feign the easy breathing of sleep when Perrini came to check on her.

It was one of the hardest things she could remember doing, lying there controlling her breathing while he stood in the open doorway staring down at her. Then he’d pulled the light blanket over her prone body. If he’d spoken, if he’d touched her with more than the velvety brush of his knuckles, she might have given in and asked him to stay. To share the bed, to hold her, to distract her in any way he chose.

That’s how fragile and alone she’d felt at that moment.

But he’d left as quietly as he’d come and she’d curled up tightly and hugged herself, the same as she’d done so many nights as a child when she would sneak down from her bedroom and hide in a quiet corner of the foyer in their Vaucluse home, waiting for her father to come home from a long working day or a week at the mine or at the end of another overseas business trip.

Now, as they neared that home, the thought that he’d never come home again sunk diamond-sharp talons into her heart. It shouldn’t hurt this much, not when she’d come to hate everything about the way he operated, including his screwed-up ethics and his treatment of the Hammonds, who were his wife’s family. Not to mention the manipulation of her marriage to suit his own self-centred ends.

Maybe she needed to focus on that son of a bitch, instead of a childhood ideal of a father who had never existed except in her imagination.

“Okay?” Perrini asked from behind the wheel of his Maserati. The coupe was all sleek, blue style and eye-catching looks on the outside, with an engine that purred deceptively until provoked. Then it roared to life with impressive power and drive.

This car is your perfect match, she’d told him a couple of miles back. Now, the thick ache in her throat made it impossible to answer his question.

At the next red light he reached across and put his hand over hers, where they lay tightly clenched in her lap. The unexpected gesture was so comforting and so strengthening that she immediately found her voice. “I wish you’d stop being so nice,” she snapped. “It makes me nervous.”

He cut her an inscrutable look from behind his sunglasses. “A temporary aberration. Don’t get too used to it.”

“Thanks for the warning,” she said dryly. Then she shook her head when she realised that once again he’d shocked her out of her wretchedness. “Thank you,” she repeated, this time with sincerity.

“For?” The lights changed and he took his hand back, using it to guide the powerful sports car through the gears as they climbed the curves of New South Head Road.

“For breaking the news to me in person. For rescuing me at the airport and bringing me home. For keeping me together along the way. I do appreciate it, Ric. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” They travelled another block before he added, “You called me Ric. I must be making progress.”

She’d called him Perrini from their very first meeting, a ruse to remind him of their business relationship because she hadn’t trusted his smooth moves or her body’s unruly responses to him. They’d had to work together and she’d wanted to keep it professional. She’d fought the good fight for almost two months. And after they’d hooked up she kept on using his surname out of habit—and to tease him when he got all he-man insistent about her calling him Ric.

Now she’d done so to show the sincerity of her thanks. “It was a temporary aberration,” she said coolly. “Don’t get too used to it.”

He laughed, a two-note snort of amusement that pierced Kimberley’s numbed senses. It was dangerous, letting him charm her so easily, so quickly, but this was a temporary situation. A week at most, and she would be returning to Auckland. And right now she needed that charm and the sound of laughter because they’d arrived in Vaucluse and were climbing the street lined with multimillion-dollar homes to the most spectacular of all.

Miramare.

For the first twenty years of her life the three-storey white mansion had been Kimberley’s home. She’d never been struck by its majesty, its size, its opulence, until now as Perrini downshifted gears to negotiate the thick cluster of news teams waiting outside the security gates, and turned into the driveway. And there it was, rising before them like a Venetian palace. A home fit for the man the media dubbed Australia’s King of Diamonds.

A man who’d forbidden her from ever darkening this doorstep again when she defied his will and refused to return to work for Blackstone Diamonds.

A maelstrom of conflicting emotions—resentment, anguish, anticipation, anxiety—stormed through her as Perrini parked beneath the porte cochere. Although her gaze was fixed on the steps leading to the grand entrance, she heard the subtle scrunch of leather and sensed him shifting in his seat to face her. Her heart beat like a tom-tom drum high in her chest.

“Good to be home?” he asked.

Now there was a question! Was this home? Would her family welcome her back into their home?

When she’d quit her job at Blackstone’s and joined House of Hammond, she’d also deserted her family. That’s how it was between the two sides of the family. You chose your team: Blackstone or Hammond. There was no common ground, no fraternity, and it had never been as simple as birth name.

Sonya Hammond was the perfect example. Her mother’s much younger sister moved in with the Blackstones as a teenager. Staying after Ursula’s death completed her estrangement from her brother Oliver Hammond and his family.

But Kimberley was more worried about Ryan’s reception than Sonya’s. Her younger brother had endured his ups and downs with Howard but now he headed the Blackstone Jewellery chain, which placed him very firmly in the Blackstone camp. He didn’t approve her defection—his word, used when he’d called to try his hand at changing her mind—any more than he’d approved of her affair with, and subsequent marriage to, Perrini.

And Perrini’s question still stood unanswered.

Good to be home?

“I’m feeling many things,” she said frankly. “Good is not one of them.”

“Care to elaborate?”

Slowly she turned to face him. “I wouldn’t be here but for one thing.”

Their eyes met, the knowledge a shock of understanding that sharpened his expression into tight lines and shadowed planes. If Howard were here, she wouldn’t be. It was as simple—and as complicated to her psyche—as that.

Before Perrini could respond, something distracted him and the atypical hesitation caused her to turn back toward the house. Sonya stood on the top step, her willowy figure framed by the open front door. Kimberley’s heart beat even harder in her chest.

“She hasn’t changed,” she murmured.

Still tall, slender, beautiful, her aunt Sonya was dressed elegantly in a skirt and heels, her brown hair pulled back in the same conservative style. A warm smile graced her lips as she lifted her hand in welcome.

She looked so heartwrenchingly familiar, so Sonya, that Kimberley struggled to contain the squeal of joy that exploded inside her. Reflexively her hand lifted to the chatelaine necklace she wore around her neck, Sonya’s gift on her twenty-first birthday. Each exquisitely crafted antique charm was a symbol. Love. Fertility. Protection. Strength. Eternity.

After the dissolution of her marriage she’d put it away in its box, unworn but not forgotten. Until recently when she’d started wearing it again. She wiped away the tears that blurred her vision, then allowed Perrini to help her from the low-slung car so she could run up the stairs and into her aunt’s open arms. Then she knew why she wore the necklace.

It was her connection to home, to Sonya, whose embrace reminded her what it should feel like to come home. Tears she’d refused to cry for her father fell unrestrained as she breathed the familiar scent of her aunt’s Chanel No. 5 and felt the comforting pat of her hand on her arm.

I should not have let Perrini and my father keep me away this long. I should not have given them that power.

“I’m sorry,” she choked out fiercely through her tears. “I’m so very sorry.”

Sonya’s hug tightened for a moment as she whispered, “We all are, honey. About everything.”

Long before Kimberley was ready her aunt broke the embrace. Taking a half step back Sonya smiled through her own tears as she took Kimberley’s hands in hers. “It is so good to have you back home again, Kim, and to see you looking so beautiful…despite the circumstances.”

“It is so good to be here, despite everything that has kept me away.”

Rough emotion dimmed the light in Sonya’s warm hazel eyes. “Let’s not talk about that now. Come inside. Your brother is out on the terrace with Garth. I’m sure you can’t wait to see them both again. And Danielle arrived a little while ago, too. She flew down from Port Douglas as soon as she heard.”

Danielle was Sonya’s daughter, and she must have been waiting just inside the door for the perfect moment to make her appearance. She had changed. Between seventeen and twenty-seven Danielle Hammond had grown into a copper-haired beauty with her mother’s willowy build and a tan befitting her Port Douglas, Queensland home.

Golden eyes welling with tears, she hurried over to embrace Kimberley with the same warmth as her mother and her own special brand of exuberance.

“You brought her,” Danielle said fiercely over Kim’s shoulder. “I will never doubt your genius again.”

“I’m only the chauffeur,” Perrini drawled, downplaying his role in the prodigal’s homecoming, “and the sometime porter. Where do you want me to take these?”

Kimberley saw that he toted her matched set of luggage, but before she could answer, Sonya stepped into her customary role as hostess. “Take them up to Kim’s room, please, Ric. You know where it is.”

How? Kimberley wondered, frowning. Afraid of awkward encounters with her father or her brother, she had never brought him home when they’d been lovers. They’d met at his house and they’d kept their relationship quiet at work for as long as they could. Yet out of all the bedrooms and suites spread through the mansion’s upper wings, he knew where to find hers?

He disappeared into the house with Sonya, and Danielle’s voice cut through her distraction. “How are you coping, Kim…or is that a stupid question?”

“I’m fine.”

Danielle’s eyes narrowed in a way that demanded the truth, and Kimberley decided that her cousin hadn’t changed so much after all. Up close she noticed that beneath the big smile and light sprinkling of freckles, Danielle’s complexion was blotchy and her eyes red-rimmed from crying. She had grown up in this house, too, with Howard a larger-than-life presence in her upbringing. She was more a Blackstone than a Hammond, although she’d struck out and started her own jewellery design business as Dani Hammond since moving to the tropical north of Australia.

“I can see that the Port lifestyle agrees with you, but how are you doing beneath the smile and suntan? Is everything working out for you?”

“Don’t change the subject,” her cousin fired back. “You’re the one under inquisition right now.”

“I told you, I’m fine,” Kimberley assured her, but tears were brewing in her eyes as she reached out to hug Danielle again. A couple of seconds was all she needed to restore her composure and in that time she realised that she’d spoken no less than the truth. Being here, with the people she’d grown up with—the people she loved—she was fine. “Has there been any more news?” she asked, straightening and wiping moisture from her eyes. Again.

“No…at least none that your brother is passing on.”

Kimberley stilled. “Do you think Ryan heard something he isn’t sharing?”

“I had that feeling but when I asked he just about bit my head off. I don’t know what’s going on with him, Kim. Oh, I know he’s shattered about his father, and this waiting around for news is so not his style. Mum told me he’s been trying to line up extra search aircraft and vessels, despite all that AusSAR is doing. That was after he went down to water police headquarters to demand full disclosure. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to get a spot on one of the search vessels, as well.”

Kimberley well knew of her brother’s tenacity. “That would have been interesting.”

“No kidding.”

“Do you think they told him anything new?”

Danielle released her breath on a heavy sigh that blew an errant curl from her face. “Honestly, I don’t know. He is just so antsy, I can’t help thinking there is more.”

“More than his father being missing and him stuck here unable to charge to the rescue?”

“I guess you’re right,” Danielle mused aloud, although she didn’t sound convinced. She tucked her arm through Kim’s and tugged her toward the front door. “Let’s go in. Knowing Mum, she will be putting together a late lunch for you and Ric as we speak. I bet you haven’t had anything to eat all day.”

“True, but food is the furthest thing from my mind.”

“Do try and have something if only to please Mum. Fussing over us all day is the only thing that’s keeping her together. Let her do the same for you.”

“I will, but there’s something I need to do first.”

“Ryan?” her cousin guessed astutely.

Kimberley nodded. Yes—Ryan.

Returning from his porter’s errand to the second floor, Ric was halfway down the ornate marble staircase that rose from the grand foyer when Danielle and Kimberley came through the front door arm-in-arm. But he only saw one woman.

Dark hair slicked back in an efficient ponytail. Green eyes so recently awash with tears now clear and sparking with renewed resolve.

She’d rebounded from the tearstorm. Good. Bringing her home had not only been necessary but also essential, for her, for Sonya, for all the family. And now that she was here, she was staying. Whatever it took.

“There you are.” Danielle released her hold on her cousin’s arm as Ric descended the last of the stairs. “I was just taking Kim out to the terrace to find Ryan.”

He knew this would be the difficult part of this reunion, hence the warrior-woman look on her face. “I’ll take her,” he said, smoothly stepping in to claim her hand. “Could you let Sonya know to bring our coffee out there?”

Danielle left them alone, but only after a raised-eyebrow look that took in his proprietary clasp on Kim’s hand and a murmured comment he lip-read as “Nice work.”

By the darkness that suddenly appeared in Kim’s eyes and the jerk of her hand against his, he gathered she didn’t miss that knowing look, either. “There’s no need to take me anywhere,” she said frostily. “I know my way to the terrace.”

“I didn’t imagine you wouldn’t.”

“Then let go of my hand. You’ve already given Danielle the wrong impression.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That being…?”

“Don’t pretend to be dense, Perrini. It’s not becoming.”

“Are you still hung up on what your brother thinks about us together?”

“Since we’re not together anymore, no.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And wasn’t it you who said this wasn’t about us?”

“Throwing my words back at me? That’s not like you, Kim.”

Her emerald eyes shot fire at him and she tugged harder at her hand. Ric didn’t let go. Instead he used the leverage to pull her closer, close enough that the flared skirt of her dress brushed his thighs and her eyes widened with apprehension. In the cool quiet of the atriumlike foyer he imagined he could hear the wild race of her heartbeat…or perhaps it was his own.

He thought about kissing her. When her mouth opened on a silent note of outrage, he ached to bend into that kiss. He imagined he’d get slapped for his efforts, but fear of that didn’t stop him. The flicker of vulnerability in her eyes did.

The fierce determination was just a front for facing her brother. Beneath the veneer she was emotionally exhausted by the day’s revelations and he knew there would be more to come, if not today then tomorrow or the next day. It was only a matter of time before the wreckage was located and the bodies recovered.

No, he couldn’t take advantage of her weakness. Not now. As a compromise he lifted the hand trapped in his toward his lips. He felt her resistance, saw it snap in her eyes even as he turned her arm and delivered a chaste kiss to the inside of her wrist. Briefly it crossed his mind that she might slap him anyway, with words at the very least, but the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps broke the tension and he released her hand as Garth Buick strode into view.

Kim gasped, her surprise this time tainted with delight as she launched herself at the Blackstone company secretary who was Howard’s closest and oldest friend. The fact that they’d remained friends for so long was a testament to Garth’s character and loyalty and remarkably even temperament.

He wrapped his arms around Kim with genuine affection, but the eyes that met Ric’s over her head were shadowed with gravity. “Ryan’s just taken a call from Stavros.”

Their contact at police headquarters. Ric’s heart stilled. “Bad news?”

“Nothing on Howard,” Garth assured them both. “But we finally have confirmation of the passenger list.”

“Was it Marise they found?” Kim asked. “Was she on the plane?”

The older man nodded heavily. “Yes. They’ve just brought her body in to the morgue.”

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.

She wanted him to know exactly what Howard Blackstone was capable of.

“When I refused his job offer,” she said, getting straight to the point, “he sweetened the salary package. More than once. When I told him money wasn’t the issue, he asked what it would take. I said an apology.”

“I gather you didn’t get one?”

“Have you ever heard Howard Blackstone apologise? For anything?”

Something tightened in his expression, but he simply said, “Go on.”

“He rejected any notion that he’d done anything wrong, but then he accused Matt of stealing me from Blackstone’s. He called him a thief like his father, and brought up the whole sorry raft of accusations from Mum’s party.” Shaking her head, she blew out a heated breath. “That was thirty years ago. I can’t believe he still thinks Oliver Hammond stole the Blackstone Rose necklace that night.”

“You don’t think Oliver took the opportunity to reclaim what he believed should have been Hammond property?”

“No,” she replied with absolute conviction. “Oliver wouldn’t have taken that necklace if it was handed to him on a silver platter. He despised Howard for cutting up the Heart of the Outback stone and making it into such an ostentatious piece. He hated that he’d put the Blackstone name to the necklace, when it came from a diamond found by a Hammond. And he despised Howard for making such a blatant show of owning it, with all the magazine spreads and having Mum photographed wearing the necklace at every opportunity.”

“From what I understand, your grandfather gave the diamond to Ursula. It was her prerogative to do with it as she wished. Eventually it would have passed to her estate,” he said with emphasis. “If it hadn’t gone missing, the Blackstone Rose would be yours, Kim.”

She gave a strangled laugh and shook her head. “No, that was never going to happen. Howard was the sole beneficiary of my mother’s estate. And as of last month, I believe I am no longer named in his will.”

“He said he was striking you from his will?” Perrini whistled softly through his teeth. “That must have been some argument.”

“You might say that.”

His lips quirked at her dry comment but his brows were lowered in serious contemplation as he caught her gaze. “Surely you didn’t believe he’d go ahead with it once he cooled down?”

“Maybe not, but what about his other threat? He still doesn’t accept that I walked away from Blackstone’s—” and you “—because of his actions. He blames Matt for actively recruiting me. The last thing he said to me that day was ‘Hammond will pay for this.’”

The portentous statement hung for a beat in the still evening air while Perrini made the connection. His blue eyes narrowed. “You think he was sleeping with Marise out of vengeance?”

“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what he wanted Matt to think.”

She watched him consider that, his expression guarded. “Did Hammond have any reason to think his wife would cheat on him?”

“Matt didn’t discuss his marriage with me.”

“But it’s possible?”

Kimberley ached to say no, their marriage was as solid as the Sydney sandstone beneath our feet. Marise valued her husband and her child too dearly to stray. But she couldn’t say it. She looked away, her silence answer enough.

They stood like that for what seemed a long time, side by side at the balustrade, considering the shocking implications. Whether there’d been a clandestine affair going on or not didn’t matter. If the tabloids ran with it, if Matt believed it, then Howard’s job was done. Whether he was here to enjoy the fruits of his malicious game didn’t matter. He’d won.

The thought chilled Kimberley to the bone. This was her father. The man she’d looked up to with adoration throughout her childhood; the person she’d set her sights on emulating when she’d focussed single-mindedly on a career in the precious gems industry.

Unconsciously she rubbed her arms. “How can I mourn such a man?” she asked bitterly. “How can anyone?”

Perrini didn’t answer, but she sensed a change in his posture, a stiffening, and felt the warning touch of his hand on her arm. She swung around and saw Sonya standing just outside the French doors.

Had she heard that last comment?

Kimberley felt sick. She would never set out to hurt her aunt, who for some inexplicable reason had always stood by Howard with the same steadfastness as she’d defended him earlier. Over the years there’d been much speculation about their relationship, but Kimberley believed Sonya when she said there’d never been anything sexual between them.

Of course not. He’s my brother-in-law, she’d said, sounding offended that Kim had asked.

But she still could have loved the bastard. Kimberley suspected she would mourn him more purely than anyone.

“I know neither of you have eaten all day,” Sonya said now, in her customary mothering role, “so I’m going to start dinner early. You will stay, Ric?”

“Thank you,” he said easily. “I will.”

“Good.” Sonya turned as if to leave, then paused. “Your room is made up, as always, so do consider staying over. We’d love the company tonight.”

Your room? As always?

Kimberley blinked in confusion at the allusion to regular sleepovers. Her gaze shifted from her aunt to the ex-husband who seemed to have slipped right into her family during her absence. No wonder he’d known where to locate her bedroom when he’d taken her luggage upstairs.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he assured Sonya with a smile, but when he turned his gaze on Kimberley the warmth of that smile didn’t reach his eyes. They darkened with a message that felt like a vow.

I’m not going anywhere.

Four

True to his word, Perrini stayed that night and through Friday, as well. He left only once, following a call from his office Friday morning, and even then he waited until after Ryan had arrived before leaving.

“Does he think we womenfolk will fall apart without a big, strong man standing guard?” Kimberley asked Danielle across the remains of their breakfast.

“I would hardly call Ryan’s presence standing guard. He hasn’t stopped pacing since he arrived!”

Kimberley watched Ryan’s impatient stride back and forth from shadows to sunlight at the far end of the terrace, the ever-present phone at his ear and a forbidding frown on his face. “He should go in to work,” she said. “At least then he might feel like he’s doing something useful.”

“He is doing something useful.”

Sonya’s soft words came from beside Kimberley’s chair, and she turned back around to find her aunt had brought fresh coffee. She set it down before continuing, her tone as close to a reprimand as she ever managed.

“Ryan is handling all the calls that are coming in, the same as Ric did during the night and early this morning, and which I know I can’t deal with at the moment. He will ensure we hear any news as soon as it comes in. And if the police need to find us—” her eyes met Kimberley’s briefly, her meaning clear in their tear-shrouded anxiety “—then this is where they will come.”

With quiet dignity, she gathered up some of the breakfast dishes and walked away. Last night they’d learned that Sonya had given all the household staff leave. On Perrini’s recommendation, of course.

So, okay, she understood the need for caution with the estate under siege from the media. Especially as Perrini already suspected someone in the know of leaking her flight arrival details to the Auckland press. She understood, but she reserved the right to feel snippy about his air of authority regarding all things Blackstone.

Ten years ago she’d stood toe-to-toe with Perrini and accused him of marrying her to become a Blackstone. She’d asked if he’d considered changing his name, since it was so obvious that Howard was treating him like a surrogate golden son. And she had felt like a meaningless pawn, her only value the Blackstone name and birthright.

To establish herself and to prove her worth she’d had to leave. And in her time away it seemed that Perrini had performed exactly as accused. He’d not only scaled the corporate ladder at Blackstone Diamonds, he’d become a part of the Blackstone family with a room at his disposal and the kind of easy rapport with Sonya and Danielle that only comes from constant contact.

She could only presume his relationship with her father had progressed to the same degree, and in her mind’s eye she saw the self-satisfied look on Howard’s face when they’d returned from that momentous vacation in San Francisco. When they’d decided, on a whim, to fly to Vegas for a weekend and he’d surprised her with the “impromptu” proposal.

She swallowed tightly, her throat constricted with raw, bitter emotion as she recalled Howard’s words when they’d walked hand-in-hand onto this very terrace and told him their news.

“Welcome to the family,” he’d said, jumping to his feet to shake Perrini’s hand and clap him on the back. “You never fail to disappoint me, Ric.”

Kimberley had felt the snub like a body blow then, and now it seemed as though her ostracism was complete. She was the outsider in her own family, and she’d made little effort to bridge that gap. Gathering up the rest of the breakfast plates, she pushed to her feet. “I’m going to help Sonya with the dishes.”

Over her coffee cup, Danielle arched her brows. “You know how to do dishes? You have changed, cuz. Colour me impressed.”

“Danielle has just suggested that I’ve changed.” Straightening from packing the dishwasher, Kimberley met Sonya’s constrained gaze across the impressive width of the Miramare kitchen. “But it seems you can still rely on me to say what I’m thinking, without thinking. I’m sorry, Sonya. I was feeling tetchy earlier when I made that crack about Ryan, but I wouldn’t have said what I did if I thought you might overhear.”

“The same as last night?”

How can I mourn such a man? How can anyone?

Kimberley blanched as she recalled what Sonya had overheard on the terrace the previous evening, but she refused to be a hypocrite even to spare her beloved aunt’s feelings. “I’m sorry you heard that, although I’m not sorry I said it.”

Sonya shook her head sadly. “He’s not all bad.”

“Why do you always defend him,” Kimberley shot back, “when he’s been such an utter bastard to so many people?”

“He’s been good to me, always. He provided me with a home and paid for my education after my father passed on. And he’s done the same for Danielle. I could not have wished more for my daughter than what’s been provided in your father’s home.”

Kimberley thought about her cousin, with whom she’d chatted long into the night about her designs and the materials she worked with and her fledgling business in Port Douglas. They had so much in common. And how could she dispute Sonya’s claim? “I want to disagree on principle,” she said after a moment, “but Danielle is so warm and lovely and talented and smart. She is a credit to her upbringing. You must be very proud.”

“I am, but it’s not only my doing, Kim. Did she tell you that Howard helped her with the capital to set up her business?”

“Yes, she did.” But Kimberley couldn’t help thinking there must have been something in it for Howard.

“He would have done the same for you,” her aunt said gently, “if you’d stayed.”

“I never wanted my own business.”

“Then he would have advanced you at Blackstone’s, the same as he’s done with Ryan and Ric. He loved you, Kim. Whatever else he may have done, whatever you hold against him, never forget that.”

There was so much heart in Sonya’s delivery, so much conviction, that Kimberley longed to believe her. Who didn’t yearn for their parents’ love? But Howard had too many strikes against him and the acrimony of their last encounter still burned in her stomach. He’d done nothing honourable, nothing to earn back the love he’d crushed like a worthless bug ten years before. And nothing in his attempted reconciliation suggested it meant anything to him beyond vengeance against the Hammonds.

Some of that resentment must have shown in her face because Sonya continued with the same earnest intensity. “I remember when you were born and Ursula told me how overjoyed he was to have a daughter. He chose your name, you know.”

“After the location of his mining leases?” she asked.

“Honey, you know that’s not the reason. When you came kicking and screaming into the world a week early—January twenty-sixth, Australia Day—he wanted a significant name, something fitting to mark our national holiday. He chose Kimberley because it’s his favourite part of Australia, because of the region’s natural beauty, and also because it is home to so many treasures. That’s you, Kim. You were always his treasure. Don’t ever forget that.”

Early Saturday morning, the pilot’s body was pulled from the water and AusSAR started making noises about calling off the search for survivors. Prepared for this eventuality, they had a team on standby to continue the search for the wreckage on the seabed. But Ric hadn’t expected it this soon. Until now he’d managed to harness his impatience and frustration, but all morning he’d been on the phone to every official contact he could find or make, only to be quoted policies and procedures until he ached to shove them back down officialdom’s collective throats.

He tossed the phone onto the armoire and dragged a weary hand over his face. He needed a shave. He needed sleep, too, not the restless minutes of shut-eye that were interrupted too soon by another phone call, another worried executive needing reassurance, another headline about the company’s future to repudiate.

The spread of papers across the table he’d commandeered as a desk in the top-floor living room of the Vaucluse mansion told the tale. It had gotten worse, even more swiftly and viciously than he’d predicted two days earlier, and it wasn’t all about scandal. Today’s business pages speculated over who would lead the billion-dollar business and hinted at the possibility of a power struggle.

The buzzards hadn’t even waited for a body to be found before starting their nasty work, damn them.

He needed a break from those screaming headlines, and when he paced onto the patio, he found the perfect distraction.

Kimberley lounging on the pool deck.

That she wasn’t wearing a bikini was only a minor blip of disappointment because the sleek, black one-piece clung to her killer curves and exposed the tanned length of her legs as she settled on one of the loungers. Even more spectacular than the harbour view, he mused, leaning his hands against the railing and drinking in the sight.

She’d changed some over the years, growing into the sophisticated sexiness she’d only promised at twenty-one. Yet she’d lost none of the strong will. None of the firebrand that had snared his attention from the second they locked eyes across the Miramare dinner table ten years ago.

Watching her now whipped a new frustration through his veins—a resentment of every one of their years apart, of every barb aimed in vengeful anger, of the pride that prevented him from chasing her down and dragging her home where she belonged.

He didn’t allow the feeling to take hold. She was here now, and getting her to stay was a mission he could sink his teeth into, one that wouldn’t leave him floundering like this morning’s exercise in futility. Right on cue his phone buzzed again, but he gave it only a cursory glance as he strode through to the bedroom he’d barely used the past two nights.

He was taking a break. Alone with Kimberley. She’d been avoiding his company, or distancing him with a cool politeness he figured was for Sonya’s benefit. Ric preferred her sharp-tongued frankness, and alone on the pool deck he might just get a healthy dose.

If not, at least he’d get some exercise.

Swimming laps of the serene Miramare pool was a poor substitute for pounding through the Bondi surf. That was Ric’s exercise of preference. Pitting himself against the unpredictability of the ocean’s surge and pull every morning set him up for the volatility he faced at the rockface of business. He relished that challenge, in the water and in the workplace. Pity it had taken him this long, through too many dead-end disappointments, to realise he needed it in his woman, as well.

He turned up the tempo, churning the pool’s surface with the power of a sprinter’s strokes. Another lap, forging through his own wake, still wasn’t the challenge of open water, but it dispelled the last of the morning’s frustration and breathed life into his dulled senses.

He climbed from the water, those senses already honed on the only occupied piece of poolside furniture. She was reclining, but not relaxed. Even from a distance he could see the tension in her posture, in the slender fingers curled around the edges of her lounger.

He knew she’d see his presence as an intrusion. A small grin tugged at his mouth as he recalled the evening she’d arrived, when he’d intruded on her solitude up on the terrace. His grin stretched when he imagined her outrage when he—

Still dripping from the pool, he stopped beside her and shook his head like a wet dog.

Kim didn’t disappoint. With a gasp of shock she bolted upright and whipped off her water-dotted sunglasses. Her eyes fired with green sparks. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Perrini?”

He finished pulling a lounger right alongside hers and stretched out. “Drying off.”

Damn, it felt good to see that blaze in her eyes. And to smile, genuinely, for the first time in days. Being around her always made him feel alive…in all kinds of ways, he added, as she began drying her dark lenses on the nearest soft cloth.

Which happened to be the softest part of her swimsuit.

Ric took full, unapologetic advantage of the show, even after she noticed the downward drift of his gaze and stopped polishing. “Nice suit,” he said, meeting her eyes again. “I’m glad you packed it.”

“I borrowed it from Sonya.” She shoved the glasses back over her eyes, hiding the irritation in her expression although she didn’t bother keeping it from her voice. “She told me you were working.”

“I was.”

“I assumed she meant at your office.”

“I have a makeshift office upstairs,” he said casually, closing his eyes and feigning his own relaxation. “In the living room next to my bedroom.”

“Don’t you have a home to go to?”

“I do. At Bondi.”

She didn’t answer right away, but he sensed a change in her mood and felt her alert gaze on his face for several seconds before she asked, “The same one?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“I thought you might have cashed it in,” she retorted. “Although if property values in the eastern suburbs are still on the rise, then I suppose it’s a smart investment.”

“That’s not why I kept it.”

“Why did you?”

Surprised she would ask such a leading question, he opened his eyes and turned to look at her. She’d pushed her glasses on top of her head, and her candid green gaze and the intimacy of lying side-by-side—as close as if they shared pillow talk—kicked him low and hard.

“Because I like living there.”

Something flitted across her expression and was gone before he could catch it. And when she replaced her sunglasses and rolled onto her back to stare up into the blue summer sky, he knew that moment of connection was gone. Even before she sniped, “If you like your home so much, why do you spend so much time here?”

“Ahh.”

Kimberley turned to glare at him through her designer lenses. “What is ahh supposed to mean?”

“Sonya mentioned you had problems with the ‘standing guard.’”

That comment she’d made at yesterday’s breakfast. She should have known he would hear about it. Not that she wouldn’t have said the same to his face, but she hated the thought of her words being repeated behind her back. “Do you and Sonya discuss me often?”

“Would it be much of a disappointment if I said no?”

Damn him and the dark silkiness of his voice. Damn him for coming down here parading his assets in those Daniel Craig swimmers. Damn her foolishness for watching those powerful assets rise from the water, for wanting to know about his house, for longing to say yes, I loved living there, too, even for such a short time. For that split second of yearning for a place they’d once been, a time they could never wish back. Too much had been said, too much unsaid, too many years had passed.

“No,” she said finally in answer to his question. “Not if it’s the truth.”

An uncomfortable silence stretched, broken only by the murmur of traffic from the streets far below and the mournful hoot of a distant ferry in the harbour. Kimberley closed her eyes but she couldn’t shut him out. She felt his narrowed gaze on her face. Dissecting her expression, divining for emotion.

Damn him.

She shoved her feet to the ground, but he stopped any further retreat with one mildly delivered comment. “Walking away again?”

“That’s a cheap shot,” she snapped over her shoulder.

“A fair observation, I’d say.” With a seriously distracting play of muscles across his abdomen, he pushed upright. “Care to tell me what’s really bugging you?”

Kimberley’s gaze snapped back to his knowing blue eyes. Oh, yes, he’d noticed her distraction. “Do you mean what’s bugging me right now?”

“About me being here.”

He didn’t mean here, now, on the pool deck. She knew that. And she was glad, because admitting she was bugged by his state of undress would seem petty in the least. Revealing at the most. She didn’t mind telling him what bothered her about his continual presence at Miramare, however.

“It’s not just you, it’s the endless waiting.” She lifted her hands and let them drop in a gesture of undistilled frustration. “You and Ryan and Garth—at least you’re kept busy with taking calls and keeping up with what’s going on with the search. I didn’t realise how hard this would be, just sitting around and waiting and feeling…excluded.”

“We’ve kept you updated.”

“Exactly. You’ve had control, you’ve done the updating, which shuts me out no matter how much information you pass on. I can answer a phone. I can speak for the Blackstones. I wouldn’t find it any hardship to say ‘no comment’ or ‘no further news.’”

“And if the person on the phone is Tracy Mattera or Max Carlton or Jamie O’Hare. Would you have no-commented them?”

“How can I say? I don’t recognise the names.”

“Mining production manager, human resources manager, Howard’s driver,” Ric supplied matter-of-factly. All three had called him that morning. He hadn’t plucked the names out of thin air, although the doubt on Kim’s face suggested he had done exactly that. “All real people, all employees of Blackstone’s.”

“Which I am not,” she said tightly. “I get the message.”

Ric watched her turn away and get to her feet, her shoulders as tight as her voice, her backbone rigid. He could let her walk away again. This wasn’t the time or place for this discussion, but she had provided the perfect opening. She wanted a purpose. She needed something to occupy her mind.

Perhaps this was the right time….

“It doesn’t have to be that way, Kim.”

She swung back around, her hands stilled in the process of tying a lime-green sarong around her hips. “Are you suggesting I return to Blackstone’s? When I have a job I love and a home in New Zealand? Why would I even consider doing that?”

“Because you’re a Blackstone.”

“That hasn’t changed.”

“Other things have,” he said with quiet resolve, coming to his feet and meeting her gaze across the width of the loungers. “The board of directors is seven strong. Currently that’s Ryan, Garth, your uncle Vincent, David Lord, Allen Fitzpatrick.”

“You—” she tapped finger against thumb, counting off number six “—and my father.”

Ric inclined his head in confirmation. “Chairman, managing director…and, with Ryan and Vincent, one of three Blackstones required on any sitting board, according to the articles of constitution.”

“And you’re thinking about a replacement?” With her quick brain, she’d caught on immediately. But the dark flash of her eyes and the tone of her voice indicated that she didn’t like the taste of that catch one little bit. “Isn’t that a little premature?”

“The board is due to meet Thursday this week. I imagine we will have news by then, and the directors will look at appointing a replacement. That may sound callously quick, but as directors we have a duty to our shareholders and our staff—at the moment that duty is projecting stability in the face of press that’s suggesting otherwise.”

“The power struggle between you and Ryan?”

Obviously she’d read today’s business pages. Ric’s jaw tightened. “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, Kim. The board will decide Howard’s successor as head of the company, when and if it has to. There won’t be any fight.”

She had a comeback—something acerbic, by the flare of her eyes—but the melodic chime of a ringing phone distracted her. With a quick, “Excuse me, I’m waiting on a call,” she ducked down to retrieve the flip phone from beside her lounger. The distraction in her eyes turned to something like relief when she read the caller ID.

“I have to take this,” she said shortly, already turning away.

Hammond, Ric surmised, cursing the timing. The last person he wanted in on this decision.

Phone at her ear, she’d already started to walk away, but in several long strides Ric caught up and put a hand on her shoulder.

Kimberley whirled around as if she’d been scalded. “One minute,” she said into the phone. Then to Ric, “Excuse me?”

He didn’t allow her rapid turnaround to dislodge his hand. Instead he fastened his hold on her smooth, warm skin until her eyes widened slightly and he knew he had her full attention. Then he said, “When the board meets, your name will come up. Think about it. This is your chance to be on the inside, to shape something positive from this disaster.”

Her deep green eyes snapped. “How?”

“As part of the force that determines how Blackstone’s goes forward into the future.”

* * *

Kimberley had so many questions, so many rejoinders, but Perrini silenced them all with the latent power of that last statement. She watched him stride back toward the house, her heart beating too fast and too hard as the implications raced through her brain.

She could make a difference. She could solder broken links. She could make up for her father’s mistakes.

Then his long, decisive strides carried him inside and out of her sight, and she felt as though she’d walked into the shadows. Reflexively she rolled her shoulder, which still bore the imprint of his touch, and remembered the phone call. Matt. Damn. For the past three days they’d been playing phone tag, and now, finally, they’d managed to connect and she had left him on hold.

Just because Perrini had unsettled her again, first with the heat and the texture of his hand on her bare skin, then with the juicy enticement of righting the Blackstone wrongs toward her uncle and her cousin.

“Matt?” She swung around, phone to her ear. “Are you still there?”

“I’m here.”

She released a soft gust of relief. “Thank you for holding. I was just in the middle of something.”

“I can call back.”

“No, no. It’s okay. He’s gone. I’m done. I’m just so glad I’ve finally found you with feet on the ground…your feet are on the ground?”

“I’m in Sydney,” he said in short, succinct contrast to Kimberley’s delivery. She was pacing, too, unable to stand still. “Landed this morning.”

“Where are you staying? The Carlisle Grande? Why don’t I come in. We could have coffee or even dinner, if you’re free. Is Blake with you?”

“This isn’t a trip I’d bring my son on.”

His cold, clipped tone brought Kimberley’s pacing to a brickwall halt. She palmed her forehead in her hand. How stupid and thoughtless. He’d come to identify Marise’s body, lying cold and lifeless in a city mortuary. How could she have asked about bringing Blake?

“I’m so sorry, Matt.” She didn’t know what else to say, so she said it again. “So very sorry for your loss. Especially this way.”

“Is there an easy way to lose your wife?”

“Good God, no, of course not! I meant the headlines and the tabloid frenzy. I can only imagine that’s as bad for you as for us.”

“No,” he said after a heavy beat of pause. “I don’t think you can imagine.”

He was right, and she felt too choked up with emotion—and with the foot she couldn’t seem to keep out of her mouth—to answer for several taut seconds. In person this would be easier, the same as it had been with coming home and seeing Sonya and Ryan. “Can we meet for coffee?” she asked again.

“I won’t be here any longer than it takes to arrange a funeral.”

The shock of that last word turned to ice in Kimberley’s veins. She rubbed her free hand up and down her arm. How could her skin be so warm when she felt cold to the core? “When you’ve made the arrangements,” she said stiffly, “please let me know when and where. I would like to be there.”

“It will be a private burial. No cameras. No headlines. No Blackstones.”

Kimberley understood his point. She knew pain had honed his voice to that diamond-hard edge but she still felt the rejection like a slap. It brought her head up and put a sting into her response. “I’m sorry I won’t be there, for you, for Blake, for Marise. But with Howard gone, surely it’s time to put this Hammond-Blackstone animosity to rest so we don’t have to choose sides. I hate that—I’m sure Sonya does, as well. I’ve been approached about a possible position on the board of Blackstone Diamonds, and perhaps that is a good place to start mending the broken links.”

“A conflict of interest with your position at Hammonds, wouldn’t you think?”

“No, I don’t think that has to be the case. The business rivalry has only come about through the old feud and personal bitterness, some of which was between Howard and me. With that over now—”

“No.” Matt’s objection was low, but delivered with such chilling finality that it sliced right through Kimberley’s argument. “It’s not over. After what Blackstone has done to my family, it can never be over. Not until everything the bastard took from us is restored to Hammond hands. Since one of those things is the wife I’m burying next week, I don’t give that outcome a chance in hell of succeeding. Do you?”

Five

“That’s all for now. Thank you, Holly.”

Ric closed his office door behind the PR assistant who’d delivered the press clippings from Tuesday morning’s papers. It didn’t matter that there’d been no new developments in the search for the jet’s wreckage or that no further bodies had been found, the headlines kept on coming. This week the focus had shifted from the present to the tragedies in Howard Blackstone’s past, everything from the kidnapping of two-year-old James Hammond Blackstone thirty-one years ago to Ursula Blackstone’s suicide and the disappearance of the Blackstone Rose necklace.

“This isn’t news,” Ryan said as he tossed a national broadsheet onto Ric’s desk with barely concealed fury. “I expected better from them.”

Ric didn’t expect anything from the media except more sensational headlines. They’d stalked Howard Blackstone throughout his life and now they haunted him in death, with the biggest scandal—the possibility of an illicit affair with Marise—still hovering over them like a fat black thundercloud. So far they’d reported nothing beyond her positive identification, running poignant photos of Matt Hammond’s grief-ravaged face as he arrived in Sydney to claim her body, but following tomorrow’s supposedly private burial the storm of speculation would build. As sure as thunder followed lightning.

They had to do more than wait it out. Ric owed that to Howard, to his staff, to the shareholders.

He didn’t return to his desk but chose a central position where he could face the other two men, the seated Garth and the prowling Ryan, to explain why he’d called them to his office at the company’s Sydney headquarters after days of monitoring the search from the Blackstone home. “We’ve waited as long as we can but in the absence of new developments, it’s time to move on. We—”

“Move on?” The words exploded from Ryan’s mouth. “No. We’re not giving up yet, Perrini. Who are you to say we abandon my father?”

Ric met the sharp spear of the younger man’s gaze without flinching. He’d been prepared for the hostility. Ryan wouldn’t like him taking the initiative in calling this meeting any more than he’d like what Ric had to say. “I’m not suggesting we give up anything. Not the search and not this company your father built up from nothing but an exploration lease and his belief that diamonds were there to be found. Howard wouldn’t appreciate us sitting on our hands, waiting for an outcome of a search that could go on for weeks.”

Garth made a sound of agreement. He folded the paper he’d been scanning and placed it neatly on top of the others. “I can hear him now, growling in horror at the share devaluation.” “The price is still sliding today?” Ric asked.

“Down another five since opening. At this rate every second analyst will be tipping us as a prime takeover target by the end of the next week.”

“It’s not the raiders I’m concerned about.”

Ryan turned in front of the window, hands on hips, framed by the city skyscape at his back. “Who are you concerned about?”

“Matt Hammond.”

“Still holding him accountable?”

Ric’s jaw tightened although the blow had been aimed much lower. He didn’t give Ryan the satisfaction of responding. Instead he zeroed in on the reason he’d called them together. The threat of a takeover, not by an anonymous corporate raider or venture capital consortium, but at the hands of a man motivated by vengeance. “Howard holds fifty-one percent of the Blackstone Diamonds stock.” He turned toward Garth, the company secretary, who was also the executor of Howard’s will. “Can you confirm how that will be distributed?”

“Equally between you, Ryan and Kimberley.”

“No chance he wrote Kim out of the will as he threatened?” Ric asked.

Garth shook his head. “He was set on that course when he returned from his November trip to New Zealand, but maybe he thought twice after he cooled down. Maybe I managed to talk him out of it. God knows, I talked long and hard enough. And maybe he took his lawyer along on this trip with a new threat of disinheritance. Whatever the reason, his will remains unchanged. That three-way split of his company stock still holds.” The older man’s eyes narrowed astutely. “I take it you’re concerned about Hammond pursuing Kim’s share, the way he went after William’s ten percent?”

Two months ago Howard’s older twin brothers, William and Vincent, each had owned a stake in Blackstone Diamonds. Then Hammond took advantage of rumours of a falling-out between the brothers. Needing cash in a hurry William had seized the chance to unload his stock at a premium price, and he’d been dirty enough on Howard to relish selling to his adversary.

“He wouldn’t have to be that aggressive in chasing Kim’s stock,” Ric said. “She wouldn’t be looking for instant profit. He would only need to spin a good story, convince her she was doing the right thing, and with those two bundles and whatever else he can pick up on this depressed market, it’s conceivable he could acquire a majority share.”

“We know he’s not a player. He’s only doing this for one reason.” Ryan’s expression was as hard and dark as black diamond. “The son of a bitch would gut the company.”

Garth grunted in agreement. “We need Kim on our side. Any chance she would reconsider returning to Blackstone’s?”

“I’m working on that,” Ric said. His gaze shifted to Ryan. “As long as there are no objections.”

“She’s a Blackstone. She should never have left.” There was a world of condemnation in the words and in the other man’s expression as he faced Ric down. “Makes me wonder what you intend offering to bring her back from Hammonds.”

“A fair question.”

“Do you have an answer?”

“I’ll offer whatever it takes,” Ric said with steely resolve. “Leave it in my hands. I will bring her back.”

“You’re not wearing the new dress?”

Kimberley hesitated on the staircase, her gaze dropping from Sonya’s arched eyebrows to the plain oatmeal linen sheath she’d changed into at the last minute. Okay, so she’d changed several times. Possibly half a dozen. And during that process the dress Sonya talked her into buying had been relegated to the very back of the queue. Not that she didn’t like the soft, inviting fabric or the leopard-spot print—even the sexy touch of lace was growing on her—but it was just too unbusinesslike for a dinner that was all about business.

“This is more suitable,” she said, lifting her head and continuing resolutely down to the foyer.

Sonya had paused, a stem of roses in each hand, in the middle of arranging a massive vase of freshly cut blooms from the Miramare gardens. She raised her elegantly shaped brows even higher. “I thought the purpose of today’s shopping expedition was to choose a dress for tonight.”

“That was our excuse to go shopping,” Kimberley said with a wink. Then, over her shoulder, as she proceeded through to the living room, she said, “I would never have got you to agree to come along otherwise.”

And they’d both needed to get out of the house. Kimberley hadn’t thought she would miss the presence of Perrini and Ryan and Garth, after they’d taken their mobile phones and their constant grim-faced pacing and returned to the city megalith that housed the headquarters of Blackstone Diamonds. Danielle had left, too, to apply the final touches to her col lection for the annual Blackstone Jewellery show. Each year the event launched the latest in-house collections, as well as showcasing an emerging young designer. This year was Dani Hammond’s big break.

This is what you’ve worked so hard for, Sonya had said, encouraging her reluctant daughter to return to her Port Douglas studio. I have Kim here now, so I won’t be alone. You still have work to do, so go, be inspired, be brilliant. Make me proud, make Howard proud…and make those critics who pooh-poohed his choice eat their words!

Without them all, the house echoed its vast emptiness. Kimberley had felt the impact most acutely when she’d woken that morning. Wednesday. Marise’s funeral day. Beautiful, headstrong, self-assured Marise was dead and for the first time Kimberley forced herself to face the reality that her father, too, was gone. This house, which had always been a reflection of the man and his taste for the grand, the opulent and the glamorous, would forever feel empty without him and the ever-present party of business and society acquaintances he brought home.

Sonya felt the emptiness, too. Kimberley had taken one look at her aunt’s haunted eyes and restless hands as she fussed around preparing a breakfast neither of them would eat, and she’d decided they both needed a distraction.

Perrini provided it with a phone call and what had sounded like an off-the-cuff invitation.

“Dinner?” she’d asked. Her heart kicked up a beat and her free hand curled around her pendant charms. “I don’t think that—”

“You need to eat? To get away from that house for a few hours? To discuss details of my proposal about the Blackstone’s board vacancy….”

Oh, yes, he’d been clever. He’d known over the weekend that the waiting and inactivity were making her stir-crazy, and he’d picked the perfect time to lure her with the board position and the prospect of changing old animosities from the inside. Then he’d left her a day too long to think it over. Now she was hungry for more information, to find out exactly what was going on at Blackstone Diamonds…and why she’d been targeted for the Blackstone-only board position.

That’s the only reason she’d accepted his invitation. That’s why she’d gone with the plain business-meeting dress, despite playing along with Sonya’s fancy to choose something fun, flirty, and way different from her usual classic style. The shopping trip to her favourite Double Bay boutique had been a game, a ploy, a distraction to take both their minds off the funeral in progress just a couple of suburbs away.

It had nothing to do with tonight’s “date.”

Now, as she wandered the living room unable to sit or stand or settle, Kimberley wished she’d insisted on meeting Perrini at the restaurant instead of letting him railroad her into the “more convenient” pickup. Being all dressed up and waiting for a man to arrive on her doorstep only played into the nerve-jangling notion of a real date.

She should have asked him to call when he left the office. Then she could have timed this better. Perhaps she still had time to go upstairs and change her earrings. Or to pin her ponytail into a chignon. At least that would fill some—

The chime of the doorbell echoed through the cavernous interior and startled Kimberley’s jumpy heart. He was here. About bloody time.

“I’ll get it,” Sonya called. Seconds later Kimberley heard the murmur of voices fol lowed by the deep rumble of Perrini’s laughter. She’d already taken several strides toward the foyer but the punch of that sound brought her up short. Laughter, so unexpected, so familiar to her female heart.

A hot charge of anticipation rocketed through her veins, tightening low in her stomach and tingling through her skin. She so wasn’t ready for this. She needed a minute or two to compose herself, to restore her cool poise…time she didn’t have as footsteps and the melodious notes of Sonya’s voice heralded their approach.

At the last second, she scurried for the nearest chair and picked up a glossy from the side table. When Sonya said, “Kim, Ric’s here,” she managed to lower the magazine with surprisingly steady hands. Her smile was cordial, calm, controlled. Then she looked up into the deep sapphire of his eyes and her heart lurched like a poleaxed drunk.

“You’re here,” she said nonsensically.

Not the opening line she’d rehearsed—that was supposed to be a cool you’re late, as she swept past him and strode out to the car—but better than thanking him for being here and bringing laughter into the emptiness.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

She put down the magazine. “For the past twenty minutes.”

One of his brows rose marginally. “Nice to know you’ve acquired punctuality.”

The subtle jibe at the past, referencing one of the flaws she’d fixed in the new grown-up version of Kimberley Blackstone, cooled the remaining impact of his arrival from her blood. Ignoring his proffered hand she rose to her feet and, after kissing Sonya on the cheek, swept past Perrini and out to his car. Marcie, the housekeeper, opened the front door and allowed her to proceed unimpeded. If only they had valet parking she could have swept all the way to his car and into the passenger seat.

Instead she was left beside the locked Maserati cooling her three-inch heels. She’d chosen them to help level out the height difference and therefore the power dynamic, although she still needed an extra couple of inches to bring her eye-to-eye with Perrini’s six-one.

Why in heaven’s name had he felt the need to lock his precious car?

Arms folded, she tapped her toe and frowned back toward the still-open front door. Several minutes later he appeared, and paused to speak to Marcie. Okay, she was honest enough to admit that he looked bloody good. Even though he’d likely come straight from the office after a twelve-hour day, his charcoal suit was immaculate, his white shirt crisp, his sapphire tie perfectly knotted.

But it wasn’t only the expensive hand-tailoring, it was the way he wore the clothes. Whether he was striding into a meeting wearing one of his suits or sauntering by the pool in nothing but a brief pair of swimmers, he had a unique combination of cool authority and kick-ass confidence that drew attention to the man rather than the external trappings.

The effects of that long, open inspection were still rippling through Kimberley’s body when he bent and kissed a blushing Marcie on the cheek, and peeled away to jog down the steps. The remnants of a smile softened his mouth and she had to work hard to maintain her irritation.

“Don’t you trust our staff?” she asked, inclining her head toward the locked car.

“Force of habit.” The doors popped with a scarcely audible snick. He opened her door, then waited until she’d slid inside before he leaned down to meet her eyes. His were no longer smiling. “For what it’s worth, I wasn’t expecting to see any staff.”

Kimberley recognised the pointed dig. “I couldn’t see the sense in keeping loyal, long-serving staff laid off for fear they may leak private information, when it is obvious the press is getting whatever details they want from their own sources.”

“Are you referring to Marise’s supposedly private funeral?”

“That’s one instance.” It had been mentioned in more than one of today’s newspapers, which made her mad enough to spit. “They seem remarkably well-informed about everything.”

“It’s their job to be.” Perrini’s expression tightened with his own irritation. “Seat belt.”

“I’m not a child. I know—”

She sucked in a breath as he short-circuited her indignant protest by leaning across to retrieve the belt. In the process his arm brushed the side of her breast and she felt the fleeting contact reverberate low in her belly and pull tight in her nipples.

Damn.

He stilled a moment—or perhaps that was just her, her heart, her senses—before clicking the belt into place. Then the dark heat of his eyes locked on hers and he spoke in a low and rough-edged voice. “I know you’re not a child, Kim, despite indications to the contrary.”

Indications to the contrary? What the hell did he mean by that?

The door thudded shut, leaving her quivering with suppressed wrath for the six seconds he took to round the car and slip into the driver’s seat. Kimberley counted to six again, while he started the engine and she controlled her urge to shriek those questions.

“Indications to the contrary?” She managed to sound cool and composed. And adult.

“This decision to reappoint the household staff without consulting me—did you have a reason other than to thumb your nose at me?”

“Without consulting you? I’m sorry, but I didn’t realise you were now the head of my household.”

As he powered through the security gates and into the street, he cut her a narrow look. “I didn’t realise you considered yourself a part of this household.”

Touché.

Kimberley inhaled long and deep. Provoked by his remark about her childishness, that head-of-my-household comment had just slipped out. “You’re right,” she admitted in a more reasonable tone. “I’m only a visitor, but I did consult with Sonya before calling any staff back on duty. I didn’t think she needed the extra work.”

“Perhaps she does.”

That perceptive comment deflated the last of Kimberley’s resentment. How could she remain piqued when they were on the same wavelength regarding Sonya? “Yes, she does…to an extent, which is why I asked the cook to take an extra week of holiday leave. Sonya enjoys the kitchen and that’s enough for the moment. Plus with Marcie in the house she has both help and company.”

Another sidelong glance. “You aren’t enough help?”

“In the kitchen?” Kimberley laughed dryly and shook her head. “You know what happens when I’m allowed access to a cooktop!”

For a heartbeat their gazes caught and a decade-old memory arced between them. Burning bacon, a shrieking smoke alarm and Kimberley hopping from one foot to the other, yelling for help.

Her husband of six days had picked her up fireman style and bundled her back to the bedroom. In here, he’d said, you can burn and scream all you want.

“Things change in ten years,” he said now.

“Some things. Others stay the same.”

Stationary at a traffic light, Ric leaned his forearm on the wheel and turned to study her profile more closely. She’d tied her hair back, worn minimal makeup and jewellery and one of those blend-into-the-background dresses whose only plus was the fact it ended short of her knees. Rather than diminishing her beauty, the austere look drew all attention to her face. With that amazing, contrary combination of fire and ice, of strength and vulnerability, of have-me mouth and hands-off eyes, Kim Blackstone would never blend into any background.

“What hasn’t changed?” he asked softly.

For a moment he thought she would ignore his question, but then she rolled her head against the seat and the answer was there in her eyes, in that moment, in the crackle of sexual awareness.

This hasn’t changed.

From the moment she’d strutted into his life, fresh from a two-year apprenticeship with a diamond master in Antwerp and bursting with a passionate impatience to overhaul the marketing of Janderra’s rare coloured diamonds, she’d lit his senses with white-hot desire. For seven and a half weeks she’d kept him at bay with her sharp tongue and cutting lines. That hadn’t changed, either. The same distrust, the same defence mechanisms, the same defiance that put her in the beige background dress instead of the stunner Sonya had described her buying today.

The light changed to green and Ric urged the Maserati forward. The engine’s smooth growl reverberated low in his belly. If Kim didn’t feel threatened by this undiminished sexual spark between them, then she wouldn’t feel a need to employ those obvious defences. She was working to keep him at arm’s length, he realised with a delayed jolt of perception. She tried to keep her own desires in check.

First time around he’d allowed her time and space while he enjoyed the challenge, the pursuit, the anticipation. This time the stakes were higher. He wasn’t playing games; he was playing for keeps.

From the corner of his eye he caught the almost imperceptible lift of her chin. Defence mechanism number one. A precursor to speech, used when preparing for verbal battle.

Deep inside Ric smiled in anticipation. Bring it on, babe. I’m ready.

“I may not have learned how to cook,” she said, circling back to her earlier comment about kitchen helpfulness. “But I have changed in other ways.”

“How?”

“I’m more cautious now. I don’t make snap decisions. I weigh my options so I can make an informed choice.”

With the position on the Blackstone’s board, for example. That’s where she wanted to lead the conversation; that’s why she’d taken her time in choosing her words so cleverly. A pity and a waste, since he wasn’t ready to go there. They were within five minutes of their destination and an inevitable disruption. Their long, involved and probably heated discussion was for later, without interruption, so he let her leading comment take this conversation in another direction. “Such as deciding to wear that dress—” his gaze swept over her before returning to the road “—instead of the new one?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The new dress you picked out in Double Bay this afternoon.”

“Sonya,” she said on an accusatory note. “I can’t believe she told you about that!”

“Not nearly enough, as it happens. Why don’t you fill in the gaps.”

“You want to hear about our shopping expedition?”

The incredulous look on her face was priceless. Ric stifled a grin. “I want to hear about the dress and why you decided not to wear it.” He let his eyes drift over her in lazy speculation. “Was it too short? Too low-cut? Too revealing?”

“All of those things,” she replied without missing a beat.

“Then I can’t wait to see you in it,” he murmured.

“I doubt that will happen.”

“Spoilsport.”

The start of a smile lurked around the corners of her mouth but she looked away quickly, peering out the side window in sudden rapt interest. He noticed the exact second her pseudo-interest turned real. Her shoulders stiffened, her head snapped around. “Where are you taking me?”

“My place. Is that a problem?”

“You said dinner. I assumed you meant at a restaurant.”

“I could get a table at Icebergs if you’d prefer,” he said mildly. “Although I can’t promise we’ll have privacy to talk or that our tête-à-tête won’t appear in a society column tomorrow.”

Indecision ghosted across her expression.

“Which wouldn’t be all bad,” he mused. “It’d give them something to talk about other than Howard and Marise.” Flicking on an indicator, he pulled over to the side of the road and reached for his mobile phone. “I can call ahead and secure a table if you don’t mind being noticed dining with me. Or we can eat at my place, as planned, with the privacy to talk business and no risk of interruption.

“Your decision, Kim. What’s it to be?”

Six

Perrini was too damn clever by half! Kimberley quietly simmered while she chose privacy, just as he’d set her up to do. They had business to discuss and if he tried baiting her again as he’d done over the dress and just now over the restaurant, then she might feel inclined to throw something at him. She would prefer if that didn’t appear in any society columns, thank you very much.

Which didn’t mean she felt comfortable returning to the house where they’d spent so many nights and weekends of their affair, plus their short, drama-filled ten days of marriage. During the days they’d worked side by side with cool, professional restraint, and in the evenings they’d driven into this street, this driveway, this garage, and torn into each other with a fevered passion that could not wait a second longer.

“You’re not nervous about coming here?”

Kimberley blinked herself out of the minefield of memories. Carefully she relaxed her fisted fingers and moistened her lips. “Should I be?”

“I don’t see why.”

But there was a dangerous glint of heat in his eyes as they rested briefly on her mouth, and she wondered if he, too, was recalling the times they hadn’t made it upstairs with all their clothes on. When they’d slaked their hunger for each other here in his car, or in the foyer leading off the garage, or in the slick elevator that glided between the three floors of this uniquely designed contemporary town house.

“Do you live here alone?” she asked.

The question had been brewing, unacknowledged and unspoken, ever since the day by the pool when he’d told her he still lived here. Now seemed the time to ask. Before he took her inside.

“At the moment,” he said after a beat of pause, “yes.”

Now, what was that supposed to mean? Had there been a live-in lover, one who’d recently packed her bags and departed? Or did he have someone waiting in the wings, all primed and ready to park her stilettos under his bed?

The thought crept up like a thief and ambushed her with unbidden images. Perrini with a faceless, nameless woman. Her hands sliding inside his shirt. Her mouth opening to his kiss. Her arms pulling him down to the bed.

No. Kimberley shut down the visuals with a vicious shake of her head. And while he opened the passenger door and ushered her from the car to the foyer and into the elevator, she struggled to tamp down the impact of her irrational possessiveness. She had no right to it. She had no claim on him.

Business, she reminded herself. It’s not about us.

But in the confines of the closet-size lift, she became hyper-aware of the whipcord tension in his body and the heat emanating from his skin despite the layers of fine Italian tailoring separating their shoulders, their arms, their hips. Those ten-year-old memories of greedy mouths and impatient hands and swiftly shed clothes worked back into her consciousness, blurring the imagery until the nameless woman’s face became hers.

Her hands, her mouth, her arms drawing him onto the bed and into her body.

“Hungry?”

The velvet murmur of his voice spent a moment meandering through her fantasy before Kimberley snapped her errant mind back into focus. “Yes, I am.” Cool. Somehow she managed to sound very cool. “What are we eating?”

“Seafood. For expedience I ordered ahead. I hope you don’t mind.”

“That would depend on what you ordered.”

“Blue swimmer crab. Roasted scallops. Ocean trout. Catch of the day with aioli and Murray River salt.”

Although her taste buds had started to shimmy in anticipation, Kimberley merely nodded. The real test was in the final course. “And for dessert?”

“Ah, so you still start your order from the bottom of the menu? That hasn’t changed?”

She tilted her head, enough that she could favour him with a silly-question look.

Amusement kicked up the corner of his mouth. “Zabaglione and Roberto’s signature gelato.”

“Which is?”

“Good. Very good.”

Her taste buds broke into a dance just as the elevator doors slid open at the top level. And she realised with a jolt of shock how little notice she’d taken of her surroundings downstairs. Here the changes hit her full in the face.

Ten years ago the house had been newly built and decorated in stark white to play up the clean lines and irregular angles. But with the open plan and abundant windows, light had bounced off every wall with blinding impact. Many times she’d teased him about the need to don sunglasses before entering his house.

Not anymore.

Evening sunlight still beamed through the glass doors that opened onto a large curved balcony, but the effect had been softened with earthy tones of cream and pale salmon and rich moss green. Kimberley paused in the centre of the living room to take in all the changes. In the dining room one feature wall was painted with a mottled sponging of peachy cream. The artwork, the plants, the polished timber floors and terracotta sofas packed with plumped cushions, even the gilded shades on the unusual light fittings, all complemented the warm palette.

She finished her slow 360-degree inspection to find Perrini watching her from behind the kitchen bar. A bottle of wine and two glasses sat before him on the waist-high counter.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Did I get it right?”

There was something in his stillness, in the deliberate casualness of his question, that caused her heart to thump hard against her ribs.

He’d listened. The night she lay on one of the matched pair of snow-white couches with her head in his lap and described how she would decorate this area. He’d remembered.

She completed another turn as if she was still making up her mind, and then she lifted her arms and let them fall with the same fake casualness. “It works for me. Do you like it?”

“Overall, yes.” The hawklike intensity of his expression softened as he switched his attention to opening the wine. “I could have done without the peachy colours but Madeleine insisted.”

Kimberley’s heart stopped for a beat. Of course he hadn’t done it himself. How stupid to imagine him matching colours and cushions with her long-ago Sunday musings.

She wandered over to inspect a large abstract canvas, then on to the glass doors where she stared blindly out at the view. “Madeleine?” she asked.

“The decorator. She had her own interpretations on the brief I gave her.”

Not the live-in lover stewing in her imagination, but a professional. It was nothing personal, nothing to do with Kimberley at all, which was a very good thing. It was bad enough that she still felt an intense sexual pull every time he got too near, she didn’t need the emotional resonance of discovering he’d decorated to her specifications, to please her, to welcome her home. It was much better to acknowledge that he’d taken her overall idea and used it to inspire the overhaul. She couldn’t be disappointed. She would not allow herself that weakness.

When Perrini arrived at her side and handed her a glass of white wine, she thanked him with a smile. “Even if you painted the walls lime-green, it wouldn’t matter. This—” she raised her glass to indicate the view “—would always be the focus.”

He opened the doors and Kimberley wandered out to stand at the wrought-iron railing. Low down to her left Sydney’s most famous beach was littered with people despite the late hour. Some swam, some strolled, others sat on the golden slice of sand and scanned the horizon, as Kimberley did now, for a sailboat or a cruiser or a cargo ship chugging out to sea.

It wasn’t quiet, thanks to the traffic on Campbell Parade and the summer tourists cruising the beach promenade—but Kimberley welcomed the sounds and sensations that regaled her body, even the sensual buzz when Perrini came to stand close by her side. The past week sequestered at Miramare and focussed so completely on the plane crash and its deadly consequences had numbed her to the wider world. She’d needed to get out, somewhere like this, a place that breathed life into her senses.

“I love this aspect,” she said with soft reverence. “Not to mention the view.”

“Is that why you bought your town house in One Tree Hill?” he asked after a moment.

Unable to make the connection, Kimberley shook her head. “What do you mean?”

“Its similarity to this place. The high aspect, the view, the architecture.”

“I don’t think they’re even close to alike. My total floor space would fit on one of your levels with room to spare. And as for the view—” she expelled a breath that was part wry laughter, part disbelief “—how can you compare? You have a version of this postcard panorama from every window. I have to stand on tiptoes in my highest heels to get the tiniest glimpse of Manukau Harbour, and that’s only from my deck.”

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