go through to the living room? Danielle and Ryan are there and I think we should all be together to talk about this. I’ve made tea and coffee but if anyone would prefer something stronger, please let me know.”
Ryan Blackstone looked like he needed something stronger.
Ric eyed the younger man narrowly, taken aback by the gaunt grey cast to his normally tanned features. It was never a surprise to see Ryan wound tighter than a newly forged spring, especially in Ric’s presence, but in all his years at Blackstone’s Ric had never seen him unravel once.
Today, as his stark green gaze met his sister’s across the wide expanse of the mansion’s living room, he looked perilously close to that point.
“Coffee, Ric?”
Sonya distracted him with the proffered cup—black, strong, welcome—for only a second, and he turned back to see Kim bound so tightly in her brother’s arms that he thought she might snap. It was a brief, silent embrace with none of the exuberant warmth of her reunion with Sonya or Danielle or Garth, but what it lacked in length and words it more than made up for in intensity.
Feeling like an intruder on this deeply private moment, he looked away and saw that Danielle had done the same. The significance of this particular reunion hit him suddenly and with all the force of a runaway ore truck.
It had nothing to do with their chequered history or Ryan’s disapproval of Kim’s defection. Nothing to do with any prior competition for their father’s approval and affection. Nothing to do with her taking the Hammond side in the long-running family conflict.
Kim and Ryan were all that remained of their family unit. First their elder brother, James, abducted and never seen again. Then their mother’s suicide. Now they faced the probable loss of their seemingly indestructible father.
No wonder they clung to each other so tenaciously.
The room where the family gathered opened onto the terrace and front gardens, and rose up through the second storey to a thirty-foot ceiling. Light and air spilled into the vast space via the opened banks of French doors and the stacked windows above, yet the atmosphere strummed with the dark tension of a mausoleum, until it was broken by the faint rattle of cup against saucer.
From the corner of his eye Ric saw Garth quietly take Sonya’s coffee and set it down on a side table. Her quiet “Thank you” broke the silence.
“I’m very sorry to hear about Marise,” she continued with a calm composure that belied her distress.
Danielle, sitting beside her, took hold of her hand. “We can’t be certain it was her…can we?”
“It was,” Ryan said with surprising force. “The passenger list is confirmed. An all-male crew. Howard. His lawyer. Marise Hammond. She was the only female on the plane.”
“Well, what was she doing on the plane?” Danielle fired back, undeterred. “I didn’t think she would even know Howard, let alone be on speaking terms with him.”
Ric put his untouched coffee down. The same question had been circling his head all day, and he didn’t like any of the answers he’d come up with. But he could respond to the second part. “She worked at Blackstone’s as Marise Davenport before she married Matt Hammond. And unless the tabloids are doctoring pictures now, she was still on speaking terms with Howard in December.”
“What are you talking about?”
Danielle asked the question, but Kim studied him with equal bewilderment. Living so far from Sydney, neither woman would have seen the scurrilous piece run by a high-profile society columnist a couple of weeks back. A piece that could easily have been dismissed if not for the accompanying photo.
“Scene published a picture of them dining together,” Sonya explained, “and hinted that they might be involved…personally.”
Danielle’s eyes widened with astonishment on her mother’s careful choice of description. “Howard and Marise were having an affair? You have got to be kidding!”
“Of course it’s not true,” Sonya said with some heat. “That magazine is renowned for printing outrageous scuttlebutt and getting away with it by using broad hints rather than actual claims. Marise is married—she has a child. Whatever Howard’s involvement with this woman, it was not an affair!”
Sonya’s passionate declaration hovered for a long moment unanswered and uncontested, but when Ric caught Garth’s eye he knew they were on the same wavelength. Howard’s wealth and power and charismatic good looks had always attracted pretty go-getters—reportedly before, during and after his only marriage—and he’d never been averse to casting aside his current mistress in favour of a dazzling new model.
And Marise Davenport Hammond had always been a dazzler. From her time working at Blackstone’s, Ric recalled her as a go-getter, as well. She’d put the moves on him and Ryan, too, before striking gold when she met the heir to the Hammond jewellery business at a diamond trade show. But now that she had Hammond’s wealth at her disposal, why would she need to turn her eye elsewhere?
“Did your father say anything to you about meeting with Marise?” Ric directed his question at Ryan.
A distracted frown creased Ryan’s forehead as he flipped shut the cell phone he’d been checking, but when he looked up his gaze focused razor-sharp on Ric’s. “Not a word.”
“Garth?”
“I asked him about the photo when it surfaced,” the older man replied, “and he told me to mind my own business. In so many words.”
Ric could imagine. Howard never minced words and the ones he chose were always colourful. “So you don’t think they were discussing business that night?”
Garth shook his head. “I doubt it.”
“No way in hell,” Ryan added with force.
“Perhaps she was trying to broker harmony,” Danielle suggested. “On behalf of Matt and the Hammonds.”
Ric’s gaze flicked to Kim, who’d sat through the exchange in uncustomary silence. One hand twisted at the charm pendant she wore around her neck and her dark brows were drawn together in a frown. He didn’t have to say a word to garner her attention. Slowly her gaze lifted to his. Strikingly green. Pensive. Troubled.
“Marise wasn’t involved with business at House of Hammond,” she said. “And, no, she wasn’t a peacemaker.”
“So why was she meeting with Howard and flying on his plane?” Danielle exhaled on a note of frustration. “I guess we might never know.”
“Does it matter?” Ryan pocketed his phone, his scowl forbidding. “The gutter press will jump all over this and you can bet they’ll rehash that photo and every other sordid detail they can dig up.”
Sonya made a soft sound of distress. She knew—hell, they all knew—that the Hammond-Blackstone family tree could provide enough juicy fodder to satisfy the greedy press for weeks. They wouldn’t even have to get their hands dirty digging, since most of it had been emblazoned across the front page of every major scandal sheet at one time or another.
“How many cameras were outside the gates when you came in?” Garth asked him.
