glad you approve my choice. Been sniffing it, have you?”
She humphed. “You need all the help you can get to make the most of this night.”
“Not artificial help. It won’t impress Christabel one bit. Nothing has...not who I am or what I am or any material advantages she could get from me.”
“Maybe...maybe not. I’m thinking a clever woman doles out a long rope for a man to hang himself with. You are a prize, Jared, and it occurs to me no other woman has ever tied you up this firmly.”
He shook his head. “She doesn’t see me as a prize. That’s not where it’s at.”
She raised derisive eyes. “The executive head of Picard Pearls? A man with his own custom-fitted Learjet? One of the Kings of the Kimberly?”
“It’s all irrelevant to her. I’d know if it wasn’t. I’m not a fool, Vikki.”
“Men in love can be blind.”
“Not that blind.”
There was a loud rap on the back door. “Ah, the prawns and the fish!” Vikki made a shooing gesture as she moved to answer the summons. “Go off with you, Jared. And if you want my opinion, if your Christabel doesn’t know you are a prize, she is a fool.”
Not a fool, Jared thought, leaving the kitchen to go to the suite of rooms he’d made his. Christabel operated on values that had nothing to do with wealth. That had been clear to him from the beginning, and her independent stance had remained consistent ever since. This was a woman who thought for herself, acted for herself and was wary of allowing any outside influence into her life.
He dumped his briefcase in his home office, stripped off in his bedroom and moved automatically towards showering and shaving, his mind occupied with memories....
* * *
The necklace...looking up from the paperwork on his desk and seeing it around his secretary’s throat...
“Where did you get that piece of jewellery?”
“Oh, sorry!” A fluster of guilty embarrassment. “I know I should be wearing pearls...”
“It’s all right. I just want to know. The design is very striking.” Artistic, elegant, cleverly leading the eye to the enamelled pieces it featured.
“Yes. I love it and couldn’t resist buying it.”
“Where from?”
“At the Town Beach markets on Friday night.”
“The markets?” It was not market goods. It was class. High class!
“Yes. Usually there’s only cheap, fairly tacky stuff, but there was this rather small collection of really super costume jewellery on the stall that sells velvet jewellery bags. I would have bought more but this was seventy dollars.”
“Locally made?”
“Well, the person who made it is a newcomer, though she’s been here a while now. Lives in the caravan park. Very exotic-looking. Comes from Brazil, someone said.”
Exotic...he’d imagined some over made up woman in a multicoloured floating garment...yet that design had tugged him into reconnoitring the market stalls at Town Beach the following Friday evening.
His first sight of her...like a magnet pulling him, his heart hammering, pulse racing. She’d been chatting to her co-stall holder. Had she felt him coming? Her head turned sharply. Their eyes met. An instant sexual awareness. Electric. How long had it lasted? Several seconds? Then she stiffened as though suddenly alert to danger, and her lashes swept down, shutting him out.
The abrupt switch off paused Jared in his tracks. It was wrong, unnatural. He sensed a shielding that was determined on blocking him out, and the urge to fight it welled up in him. She didn’t know him, he realised, and he didn’t know her. He tempered his more aggressive instincts, listening to the one warning him that storming defences was not a winning move.
He slowed his approach and made a casual study of the jewellery on the trestle table she stood behind. Each piece, to his eye, was a unique design, displaying a creative artistry he found almost as exciting as the woman. Part of her, he thought, an intrinsic part of heart, soul and mind woven into patterns and fashioned with exquisite taste. He couldn’t resist touching them.
“You made these?”
Her lashes lifted. “Yes.” She stood very still, her eyes alert, reminding him of a cat’s, watching what his next move would be.
He smiled. “Your own designs?”
“Yes.” No smile in response. A waiting tension emanating from her. “Are you interested in buying?”
She wanted him gone, which seemed so perverse it intrigued Jared even more. “You must have had training,” he remarked.
She shrugged. “I am now self-employed. Do you wish to buy?”
“You come from Brazil, I’m told. Perhaps you worked with H. Stern in Rio de Janeiro?”
More tension. A flat-eyed stare. “Why are you inquiring about me? Who are you?”
“Jared King. I head the Picard Pearl Company here in Broome. I’ve been looking for someone. Someone special. You...I think.”
A flare of alarm...recoil in her eyes.
The personal element was backfiring on him. He instantly slid into business. “I want a unique range of jewellery designed, featuring our pearls. I think you might be the right person to do it.”
No hesitation, not the slightest pause or flicker of interest. “I am not the person you want, Mr. King.”
“I think I should be the judge of what I want,” he dryly returned.
“And I the judge of what I want,” came the sharp retort.
“It could be worth your while...”
“No,” she cut in firmly. “I am self-employed. I like it that way. Now, if you’re not interested in purchasing...”
“I’ll take the lot.”
That startled her. But after the initial shocked flash of disbelief came a hard-eyed challenge. “It will not buy you anything but this jewellery, Mr. King.”
“I didn’t imagine it would, Miss...?”
Her mouth visibly thinned, wanting to hold it back from him, but her own intelligence told her it was too easily learnt from others here. “Valdez,” she answered tersely.
He fished out his wallet. “How much?”
She noted down the prices as she wrapped each piece in individual sheets of tissue paper, then added up the total and showed him so he could check it himself.
As he paid her, he also handed her a business card. “I am seriously interested in
