a face so arrestingly beautiful that one could only stare. She banged the door shut behind her before covering her luminescent green eyes with sunglasses and striding across the grey-blue carpet on the way towards the exit.
‘Bye, Moira,’ she threw at the receptionist on her way past. ‘My commiserations that you have to work for that man. He’s impossible!’
‘Goodbye, Mrs Whitmore,’ the middle-aged receptionist called after her.
Gemma’s head snapped round to stare after the redhead. So! Nathan Whitmore was married.
She shook her head, smiling ruefully at her own stupidity. Of course a man like him would be married.
Gemma almost laughed at the silly thoughts that had been tumbling through her head since she’d parted company with Nathan in Lightning Ridge three days before. It had been crazy of her to imagine he’d been genuinely attracted to her, that he’d been loath to let her go. He’d simply been kind to her, that was all. Nothing more.
I’m as naïve as Ma said, Gemma realised with some dismay.
When she’d told Ma about what happened at the motel, the old woman had been aghast.
‘Good God, girl, and there I was thinkin’ you’d got your head screwed on where men were concerned. But you’re just as silly as the rest. Fancy huggin’ a stranger like that in his motel room. And acceptin’ a drink as well. The danger wasn’t from that ugly old bugger outside, love, but the handsome one inside!’
Gemma didn’t agree with Ma about that. She was sure Nathan Whitmore was a good man. But she had to agree about herself. Clearly, she was as vulnerable to a handsome face as the next girl, and twice as silly as most. Her actions in that motel room had been incredibly naïve and foolish. If Nathan hadn’t been an honourable man, God knew what might have happened, for there was no doubting she’d been blown away by how she’d felt when in his arms. Her only consolation was that the incident had eliminated her worry that a man’s touch would repel her.
The receptionist stood up from behind her desk and went over to knock on the door that Mrs Whitmore had slammed shut. After a brusque command to enter, she went inside, exiting a few seconds later with a polite smile on her face. ‘Mr Whitmore will see you straight away, Miss Smith. Please go right in.’
Gemma stood up, feeling suddenly fat and frumpish in her new pink cotton sundress with its tight bodice constraining her full breasts. Yet that morning, she had thought she looked...inviting. But seeing Nathan’s wife, so sophisticated and slim in a green silk suit, had put a dent in Gemma’s confidence over her appearance. She should have left her hair out, she thought unhappily, not tied it up into a childish pony-tail with an even more childish pink ribbon.
A dampening dismay was beginning to invade when Gemma checked her self-pity with a stern hand. What did it matter what she looked like? The man was married. Decent girls did not try to attract married men. And she was a decent girl. Or so she hoped.
Clutching the straw handbag in which she’d placed her precious legacy that morning, Gemma lifted her chin and strode purposefully into the office. But the moment her gaze rested once more on that handsome blond head and those fascinating grey eyes, she was lost.
Was she imagining things or was he looking at her the way some of the male customers at the café back at the Ridge had started looking at her? As though they’d like to have her on their plate and not a hamburger and chips. Gemma was quietly appalled that for the first time in her life she liked being looked at like that.
His hunger was fleeting, however, if that was what she’d glimpsed, Nathan Whitmore getting to his feet and coming round to shake her hand with a cool and impersonal politeness. ‘Miss Smith,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘How nice to see you again. Would you like to sit down while I get the door?’ And he indicated an upright wooden-backed chair that sat in front of the desk.
Gemma sat down, trying not to look as depressed as she suddenly felt. Couldn’t he at least have called her Gemma?
She watched him walk back round behind his impressive desk, equally impressive in a dark blue suit which fitted his body to perfection and highlighted his golden hair. He’d had it cut since she last saw him, she realised, for when he bent forward slightly on sitting down no wayward lock fell in boyish disarray across his forehead. The sleek, ultra-groomed look gave him a crisp, no-nonsense, almost forbidding air which she still found disturbingly attractive.
Her mind flew to his wife and her dramatic exit. What had he said or done to upset her so much? Why had she called him impossible?
The man who’d been so kind to her out at the Ridge was far from impossible. He’d been sweet. Sweet and warm and caring. Still, it appeared that man had been left behind in the outback of Australia. The pragmatic individual sitting behind his city desk in his plush city office seemed like a different person.
‘So, how can I help you?’ he opened up.
Gemma stared at him. No questions about how she was, or how was her trip to Sydney, or where was she staying, just straight down to brass tacks. Her disappointment was sharp, but she gathered herself to answer coolly.
‘I have an opal I would like valued.’ If he was going to be all business, then so was she. ‘You do valuations here, don’t you?’
‘We do.’
‘I realise they aren’t free. I’m quite prepared to pay whatever the going price is.’
He waived her offer with a dismissive gesture of his hand. ‘That won’t be necessary. Do you have this opal with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I could give you a reasonable estimate immediately, if you like.’ He smiled, and she felt a lurch in her stomach.
‘Thank you. I’d appreciate that.’ Gemma was only too glad to drag her eyes away from that handsome smiling face to dig the opal out from the depths of her handbag. She’d wrapped it in an old checked teatowel. As she stood up to place her treasure on the desk before him, butterflies crowded her stomach. What if it wasn’t worth as much as she hoped? What if she’d been mistaken about its rarity? Maybe it would prove to be flawed in some way. She didn’t have any experience with opals of this size and quality. Nathan leant over and picked the stone up, turning it over in his hands as she had done.
‘My God,’ was the first thing he said, his voice a shocked whisper.
He peered down at the black opal for a long time, turning it this way and that to catch the brilliant and glowing flashes of light. Finally, his gaze snapped up to hers. ‘Where did you get this?’ he demanded to know.
Gemma was startled by the accusation in his question. It flustered her. ‘I...I...my father left it to me.’
‘And where did he get it?’
She blinked. ‘I suppose he found it. In one of his claims.’
‘I doubt that very much,’ he said slowly.
Gemma’s mind was racing. What was he thinking? That Dad stole it?
This solution to her father’s possessing such a treasure had not occurred to Gemma before. The ramifications of it being true struck a severe blow. Ashen-faced, she stared across at the man peering at her with steely eyes.
