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One

Kimberley Blackstone’s long stride—and the Louis Vuitton suitcase she towed in her wake—gathered momentum as she left customs at Auckland’s international airport and headed toward the exit. Despite the handicap of her three-inch heels, she hit the Arrivals hall at a near jog, her focus on grabbing the first taxi in the rank outside, her mind making the transition from laid-back holiday mode to all that awaited her at House of Hammond on her first workday after the Christmas-New Year’s break.

She didn’t notice the waiting horde of media until it was too late. Flashbulbs exploded around her like a New Year’s light show. She skidded to a halt, so abruptly her trailing suitcase rammed into her legs.

Surely, this had to be a case of mistaken identity. Kimberley hadn’t been on the paparazzi hit list for close to a decade, not since she’d estranged herself from her billionaire father and his headline-hungry diamond business.

But, no, it was her name they called. Her face the focus of a swarm of lenses that circled like avid hornets. Her heart started to pound with fear-fuelled adrenaline.

What did they want?

What the hell was going on?

With a rising sense of bewilderment she scanned the crowd for a clue and her gaze fastened on a tall, leonine figure forcing his way to the front. A tall, familiar figure. She stared in stunned recognition and their gazes collided across the sea of heads before the cameras erupted with another barrage of flashes, this time right in her exposed face.

Blinded by the flashbulbs—and by the shock of that momentary eye-meet—Kimberley didn’t realise his intent until he’d forged his way to her side, possibly by the sheer strength of his personality. She felt his arm wrap around her shoulder, pulling her into the protective shelter of his body, allowing her no time to object, no chance to lift her hands to ward him off.

In the space of a hastily drawn breath, she found herself plastered knee-to-nose against six feet of hard-bodied male.

Ric Perrini.

Her lover for ten torrid weeks, her husband for ten tumultuous days.

Her ex for ten tranquil years.

After all this time, he should not have felt so familiar but, oh, dear Lord, he did. She knew the scent of that body and its lean, muscular strength. She knew its heat and its slick power and every response it could draw from hers.

She also recognised the ease with which he’d taken control of the moment and the decisiveness of his deep voice when it rumbled close to her ear. “I have a car waiting. Is this your only luggage?”

Kimberley nodded. A week at a tropical paradise did not require much in the way of clothes. Especially when she was wearing the one office-style dress and the only pair of heels she’d packed. When he released his grip on her shoulder to take charge of her compact suitcase, she longed to dig those heels into the ground, to tell him exactly what he could do with his car, and his presumptuous attitude.

But she wasn’t stupid. She’d seen Perrini in action often enough to know that attitude yielded results. The fierce expression and king-of-the-jungle manner he did so well would keep the snapping newshounds at bay.

Not that she was about to be towed along as meekly as her wheeled luggage.

“I assume you will tell me,” she said tightly, “what this welcome party is all about.”

“Not while the welcome party is within earshot.”

Barking a request for the cameramen to stand aside, Perrini took her hand and pulled her into step with his ground-eating stride. Kimberley let him because he was right, damn his arrogant, Italian-suited hide. Despite the speed with which he whisked her across the terminal forecourt, she could almost feel the hot breath of the pursuing media on her back.

This was neither the time nor the place for explanations. Inside his car, however, she would get answers.

The initial shock had been blown away—by the haste of their retreat, by the heat of her gathering indignation, by the rush of adrenaline fired by Perrini’s presence and the looming verbal battle. Her brain was starting to tick now. This had to be her father’s doing. And if it was a Howard Blackstone publicity ploy, then it had to be about Blackstone Diamonds, the company that ruled his life.

The knowledge made her chest tighten with a familiar ache of disillusionment.

She’d known her father would be flying in from Sydney for today’s opening of the newest in his chain of exclusive, high-end jewellery boutiques. The opulent shopfront sat adjacent to the rival business where Kimberley worked. No coincidence, she thought bitterly, just as it was no coincidence that Ric Perrini was here in Auckland ushering her to his car.

Perrini was Howard Blackstone’s right-hand man, second in command at Blackstone Diamonds and head of the mining division, that position of power a legacy of his short-lived marriage to the boss’s daughter. No doubt her father had sent him to fetch her; the question was why.

On his last visit to Auckland, Howard had attempted yet again to lure her back to Blackstone’s, to the job she’d walked away from the day she walked out on her marriage. That meeting had escalated into an ugly word-slinging bout and ended with Howard vowing to write her from his will if she didn’t return to Blackstone’s immediately.

Two months later Kimberley was still here in Auckland, still working for his sworn enemy at House of Hammond. They hadn’t spoken since; she hadn’t expected any other outcome. When her father said he was wiping his hands of her, she took him at his word.

Yet here she was, being rushed toward a gleaming black limousine by her father’s number-one henchman. She had no clue why he’d changed his mind or what the media presence signified, apart from more Blackstone headlines and the cer ainty that she was being used. Again. Sending Perrini was the final cruel twist.

By the time they arrived at the waiting car, her blood was simmering with a mixture of remembered hurt and raw resentment. The driver stowed her luggage while Perrini stowed her. She slid across the silver-grey leather seat and the door closed behind her, shutting her off from the cameras that seemed to be multiplying by the minute.

Perrini paused on the pavement beside the hired car, his hands held wide in a gesture of appeal as he spoke. Whatever he was saying only incited more questions, more flashbulbs, and Kimberley steamed with the need to know what was going on. She reached for her door handle, and when it didn’t open she caught the driver’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Could you please unlock the doors? I need to get out.”

He looked away. And he didn’t release the central locking device.

Kimberley’s blood heated from slow simmer to fast boil. “I am here under duress. Release the lock or I swear I will—”

Before she could complete her threat, the door opened from outside and Perrini climbed in beside her. She’d been closer inside the airport terminal, when he’d shielded her from the cameras with the breadth of his body, but then she’d been too sluggish with disbelief to react. Now she slid as far away as the backseat allowed, and as she fastened her seat belt the car sped away from the kerb.

Primed for battle, she turned to face her adversary. “You had me locked inside this car out of earshot while you talked to the media? This had better be good, Perrini.”

He looked up from securing his seat belt and their eyes met and held. For the first time there was nothing between them—no distraction, no interruption—and for a beat of time she forgot herself in those unexpectedly blue eyes, in the unbidden rush of memories that rose in a choking wave.

For a second she thought she saw an echo of the same raw emotion deep in his eyes but then she realised it was only tiredness. And tension.

“I wouldn’t be here,” he said, low and gruff, “if this wasn’t important.”

The implication that he would rather be anywhere but here, with her, fisted tightly around Kimberley’s heart. But she lifted her chin and stared him down. “Important to whom? My father?”

He didn’t have to answer. She saw it in the narrowing of his deep-set eyes, as if her comment had irritated him. Good. She’d meant it to.

“Did he think sending you would change my mind?” she continued coolly, despite the angry heat that churned her stomach. “Because he could have saved himself—”

“He didn’t send me, Kim.”

There was something in the delivery of that simple statement that brought all her senses to full alert. Finally she allowed herself to take him all in. He was not lounging with his usual arrogant ease but sitting straight and still. Sunlight spilled through the side window onto his face, highlighting the angles and planes, the straight line of his nose and the deep cleft in his chin.

And the muscle that ticked in his jaw.

She could feel the tension now, strong enough to suck up all the air in the luxury car’s roomy interior. She could see it, too, in the grim line of his mouth and the intensity of his cobalt-blue eyes.

Despite the muggy summer morning Kimberley felt an icy shiver of foreboding. Beneath the warmth of her holiday tan her skin goose-bumped. Something was very, very wrong.

“What is it?” Her fingers clutched at the handbag in her lap, gripping the soft leather straps as if that might somehow anchor her against what was to come. “If my father didn’t send you, then why are you here?”

“Howard left Sydney last night. Your brother received a phone call in the early hours of this morning when the plane didn’t arrive in Auckland.”

“Didn’t arrive?” She shook her head, unable to accept what he wasn’t telling her. “Planes don’t just fail to arrive. What happened?”

“We don’t know. Twenty minutes out of Sydney it disappeared from radar.” His eyes locked on hers, and all she needed to know was etched in their darkened depths, and in the dip of his head and the strained huskiness of his next words. “I’m sorry, Kim.”

No. She shook her head again. This couldn’t be happening. How could her all-powerful, larger-than-life father be dead? On the eve of his greatest moment, the day when he’d vowed to rub the Hammonds’ faces in his accomplishments right here on their home turf.

“He was coming for the opening of the Queen Street store,” she said softly.

“Yes. He was due to leave at seven-thirty but there was a delay. Some contracts to be signed.”

There always were. Every childhood memory of her father concerned business papers, negotiations, dealing in the fabulous wealth of the diamonds that underpinned it all. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him dressed in anything other than a business suit. That was his life.

Diamonds and contracts and making headlines.

“When I saw you at the airport,” she said, “with all the cameras and media hubbub, I thought it was to do with the opening. Some strategy he’d come up with to grab attention for the new shop.” The awful reality of tomorrow’s headlines churned through her, tightening her chest in a painful vise. “They were there because they knew.”

While she’d been enjoying her last walk on the beach, her last breakfast of papaya and mango and rambutan, while she’d laughed with the resort staff and flirted with the twenty-year-old charmer seated next to her on the flight home—

“I didn’t know,” she said on a choked whisper. Despite their bitter estrangement of the past decade, despite everything she held her father accountable for, she’d grown up adoring the man and vying with her brother to win his favour. For thirty-one years he had shaped her decisions, her career, her beliefs. For the last ten of those years she’d done everything she could to distance herself, but he was still her father. “I walked out of the terminal and into those cameras…. How did they know?”

“About your father?” He exhaled, a rough sound that doubled as a curse. “I don’t know. They shouldn’t have had names this quickly. They sure as hell shouldn’t have known you were coming through the airport this morning.”

The sick feeling in Kimberley’s stomach sharpened. She hadn’t worked her way around to that, but now he’d brought it up. Her forehead creased in a frown. “How did you know where to find me?”

“When you didn’t answer your phone, I called your office.”

“Last night?”

“This morning.”

Kimberley digested that information. Obviously he didn’t mean in the predawn hours when her brother Ryan first received the news, otherwise he wouldn’t have called her office. Wouldn’t have found someone—Lionel, the office manager, no doubt—to point him in the direction of the airport. “You didn’t call me as soon as you heard?”

“No.” His voice dropped to the same harsh intensity that darkened his eyes to near black. “This wasn’t something to hear over the phone, Kim.”

“You thought it might be better if I heard from a news crew?” she asked.

“That’s why I flew over here. To stop that happening.”

“Yet it almost did happen.”

“Because Hammond’s office manager wouldn’t give me your flight information over the phone.” Ric ground out that information with barely leashed restraint. He didn’t need her derisive tone reminding him of his impotent frustration on the drive to and from the city, not knowing if he’d make it back in time to meet her flight. Not knowing if the media would discover her whereabouts when that information had been deliberately withheld from him.

It hadn’t been a surprise, just a damn aggravation.

There was no love lost between the employees of House of Hammond and Blackstone Diamonds. The enmity of a thirty-year feud between the heads of the two companies—Howard and his brother-in-law, Oliver Hammond—had spilled over and tainted relationships into the next generation. Kimberley had reignited the simmering feud when she took a position assisting Matt Hammond, the current CEO of House of Hammond.

“You can’t blame Lionel for exercising caution,” Kim said archly, as if she’d read his mind.

There was something in that notion and in her tone that trampled all over Ric’s prickly mood. Ten minutes together and despite the gravity of the news he’d brought, they teetered on the razor’s edge of an argument. He shook his head wearily and let it roll back against the cool upholstery. Why should he be surprised? From the moment they’d met, their relationship had been defined by fiery clashes and passionate making up.

He’d never had a woman more difficult than Kim…nor one who could give him more pleasure.

When the phone call about Howard came in, he’d made the decision to fly to her without a second’s hesitation. As much as he hated what had brought him here, he relished the fact it would bring her home. She belonged at Blackstone’s. Ric sucked in a deep breath, and the scent of summer that clung to her skin curled into his gut and took hold.

Just like she belonged in his bed.

“You must have left very early this morning,” she said.

“I was on my way back to Sydney from the Janderra mine when Ryan called. An emergency trip, last minute, so I took the company jet. When Howard knew I wouldn’t be back, he chartered a replacement for his trip.”

“You were already in the air. That’s why you were the one to come.”

Ric turned his head slowly and found himself looking right into her jade-green eyes. They were her most striking feature, not only because of that dramatic colour offset by the dark frame of her brows, but because of how much they gave away. The trick, he’d learned, was picking the real emotion from the sophisticated front she used to hide her vulnerabilities.

Not that Kim ever admitted to any weakness. She was her father’s daughter in that regard. And right now she was working overtime to keep both him and the shock of the news he’d delivered at arm’s length.

“It didn’t matter where I was,” he said, strong and deliberate. “I would have come, make no mistake.”

“To tell me my father was d—”

“To take you home.”

“To Sydney?” The notion appeared to surprise her, enough that she huffed out an astonished breath. “You’re forgetting, my home is here now.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

After she’d walked out on him, he’d allowed her time to cool down. To think about her hotheaded accusations and to realise they belonged together. Four long dark months of silence passed before he’d come after her…only to find that she hadn’t cooled down one degree or come to any realisation other than the certainty their marriage had been a colossal mistake and that her new home was here, in Auckland, New Zealand.

With Matt Hammond as her boss and her protector.

No, he hadn’t forgotten anything and the power of those memories fired his temper and sparked between them in the close confines of the slowly moving car. She knew he was remembering that last heated clash in her workroom at Hammonds. The knowledge glittered in her eyes and brought out colour along her high cheekbones as she lifted her chin to speak.

“You said you would never come after me again.”

And he hadn’t. Pride and the finality of divorce papers hadn’t allowed him, but this was different. “This isn’t about us,” he said tersely. “This is about your father and your family.”

Kimberley held the narrowed anger of his gaze for another second before looking away. She closed her mouth on the instant comeback that flew to her tongue, the very inconvenient truth that the Hammonds were her family, too.

Her mother, Ursula, who’d died when Kim was a toddler, was Oliver Hammond’s sister. Because of the animosity between the Blackstones and the Hammonds, she’d grown up with a tremendously biased view of her New Zealand uncle and aunt and their adopted sons, Jarrod and Matt. Yet when she’d needed a new job, they’d welcomed her into their business and into their home. Matt had been her friend when she’d badly needed one. His wife, Marise, had never exactly warmed to her, yet Matt had insisted on having her as godmother to their little son, Blake.

For the past ten years these Hammonds had been more her family than anyone on the Blackstone side of the Tasman, but she refrained from saying this out loud. If she’d read the turbulence in Perrini’s eyes correctly, then mentioning Matt’s name would be like red-flagging a bull. He’d never forgiven Matt for offering her an easy escape from Blackstone’s with the plum position at House of Hammond, and the pair had almost come to blows in the Hammond workroom the day Perrini had tried to talk her in to taking him back. Anything she said now would only lead to more hot words and this wasn’t the place.

This isn’t about us. This is about your father.

How right he was…on more levels than the present.

Their relationship had never been about just them. Therein lay the problem. They’d met at Blackstone Diamonds, they’d bonded while working together to sell the retail jewellery business plan to the board and they’d fallen into bed in a wildly spontaneous celebration of their success.

But Perrini had wanted more. He’d married her to get it, and his proud new father-in-law had delivered everything an ambitious young marketing executive could want. Power, prestige, a prominent bay in the executive parking lot…and entrée into one of Sydney’s richest and most socially prominent families.

In the same sweet deal, he’d won the job of launching the retail business, Blackstone Jewellery, the job Kimberley had been promised and which she’d worked her backside off to earn. The killer blow? When she expressed her disappointment, Perrini sided with her father when he told her she didn’t have the necessary skills or experience.

In time she’d come to accept their point, but at twenty-one she’d been wildly, madly in love, and she’d felt only a crippling sense of betrayal over what had led to that point. He’d pursued her; he’d married her; and all to serve his own ambitions.

Today he’d come to take her home to her family in Sydney, but 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.”