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.”