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“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
Marise 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.”
