LITMIR.BIZ

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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,

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