Vows & a Vengeful Groom / Pride & a Pregnancy Secret

“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?”