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