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
M arise 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
