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 mine? Being one of her father’s toys, the company jet would be furnished with every amenity and then some, but still …
“Would you like to come in?” she asked quickly, before caution or nerves could change her mind. “I won’t be long. I just need to repack and water my plants and call work to let them know.”
One dark eyebrow arched. “You’ve decided to come?”
“Was there any doubt?”
“With you, Kim … always.”
The wry tone of his comment surprised a short laugh from Kimberley and their eyes met with that sound still arcing between them. A hint of the Perrini smile that could render smart women senseless hovered at the corners of his mouth and the blue of his eyes suddenly seemed richer, deeper, sultrier. Everything inside her stilled … everything except the elevated beat of her heart.
Damn him. It wasn’t even a proper smile. He wasn’t even trying to charm her.
“I’d best get organised,” she said briskly, breaking that moment of connection with a rush of smart-woman willpower.
She reached for her door just as his mobile phone buzzed. Leaving him to his call, she let the driver haul her luggage up the steep rise of steps to the closed-in portico that sheltered the front door. She rummaged in her bag for her keys and phone. Walking and talking would save precious minutes and by the time she’d unlocked and waved the driver inside, 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
Marise 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
