LITMIR.BIZ

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      Two

      M arise 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 she’d been wearing for work in favour of a pretty white sundress.

      She didn’t want to contemplate the outcome of this trip.

      She didn’t want to think about the need to pack sombre black.

      Then she caught sight of herself in the mirror and saw that her face contained little more colour than her dress and possibly less than the creamy South Sea pearls in her ears. But it wouldn’t have mattered what she wore, her face would be a pale, haunted contrast to the dark hair she’d pulled back in a ruthlessly tight ponytail. Her eyes would still look dazed and lost.

      In that instant the last of the indignation that had carried her through the past half hour deflated like a pin-pricked balloon. Weak-kneed, she collapsed to the edge of her mattress amid the bright heap of floral-hued clothes she’d tipped from her holiday suitcase.

      From the living room she heard Perrini’s deep voice, a low, mellifluous sound that worked its magic on her shattered senses and pulled her back from the abyss. He had to be on the phone—a reminder of the previous phone call he’d taken in the limo—and now that her head was clearer she made the connection.

      Marise was alive. Perhaps she wasn’t the only survivor.

      That faint hope flickered like a slow flame in the centre of her chest. It was okay. She was going home and it would all be okay.

      Perrini appeared at her bedroom door, the phone still in his hand. The way he looked at her made her heart skip a beat. “Was that more news?” she asked, eyes wide and fixed on his face.

      “No. It was my pilot. The jet is fuelled and ready to go when you are.”

      Kimberley released the breath she hadn’t known she was holding and nodded. “Once I decide what to wear, I’ll be ready.”

      Given the circumstances, it was a ridiculous thing to say. She regretted it even more when Perrini surveyed her, and the haphazard contents of her suitcase, with ruthless focus. Then, with his trademark decisiveness, he crossed the room and pulled her up from the bed and onto her feet. Slowly he surveyed her, from her toes all the way up to her eyes.

      “You’ll do in what you’re wearing,” he said, and his eyes smoked with a hint of what she might do for. “I always liked you in white.”

      Kimberley blinked with astonishment. He was flirting with her? Half an hour after delivering news of her father’s possible demise? Unbelievable.

      “I’m not dressing to impress you, Perrini,” she said sharply.

      He almost smiled and that tightened the screws on her incredulity.

      “Give me five minutes—and some privacy—and I’ll change.”

      “No, you won’t.” He took hold of her hand. “I’ve put some colour back in your face and some life in your eyes. Now let’s go before you start thinking too much and lose it again.”

      * * *

      The trip from Auckland to Sydney passed in a slow-moving daze despite the swift efficiency and supreme comfort of flying in the Blackstone corporate jet. A Gulfstream IV, it was the exact same model of aircraft her father had chartered for his ill-fated flight. She’d asked Perrini about that, after they boarded. After she noted the rich mahogany paneling, the luxurious cream-colored leather seats, the fully stocked galley and ornately appointed bathroom.

      Right after he’d pointed out the bed and said, “Feel free to use it. I’m happy to share.”

      No doubt he was trying to get the spark back in her eyes by employing the same diversionary tactics as back in her bedroom, but that didn’t dull the electric awareness that shimmered between them. Was he remembering another private flight they’d taken together?

      There’d been no bed on that charter flight from San Francisco to Vegas but it hadn’t mattered. They’d improvised. And before she’d come down from that incredible high, Perrini stunned her with a proposal she’d thought as wildly impulsive and wickedly romantic as making love with him a mile up in the sky.

      That weekend had been the zenith of ten blissful weeks as Ric Perrini’s lover. She’d become his wife in a wedding chapel only Vegas could love, and afterward they’d spent three decadent days in a Bellagio suite ordering room service and indulging themselves in every way possible. She hadn’t realised a wedding band would make such a difference, but oh, how it had. It was the difference between good champagne and the vintage French they quaffed that weekend. Another level, impossible to describe or define, that filled her senses and her heart until she wondered if they would explode.

      On their return to Australia, they had.

      Everything inside Kimberley contracted painfully as she recalled the bliss. She didn’t want to remember the freefall plunge that followed their return home…or the shattering pain of hitting rock bottom. So she’d focused on the here and now, and asked Perrini mindless questions about the jet’s inclusions and capabilities, and she’d learned that her father had chartered the same model.

      Clinging white-knuckled to the armrests during takeoff with the high-pitched wail of the engines in her ears, feeling the forward thrust suck her back into her seat, she could not shut out the image of her father and Marise experiencing the same sensation fourteen hours earlier. Nor could she eradicate the image of all that power and speed crashing from the sky and hitting the sea with devastating impact.

      The flicker of hope in her chest wavered and died, and Kimberley’s emotions spent the three-hour flight seesawing between numbed disbelief and intense dread of what lay ahead. She took up Perrini’s suggestion to lie down because she couldn’t bear the thought of looking out the window at the stretch of sea where the plane had gone down. He’d told her that Australian search-and-rescue had mounted an extensive search, but she didn’t want to see the evidence.

      It wasn’t denial, it was self-preservation.

      She felt she’d done a decent job of disguising her turmoil. She hadn’t succumbed to tears. She’d even managed to feign the easy breathing of sleep when Perrini came to check on her.

      It was one of the hardest things she could remember doing, lying there controlling her breathing while he stood in the open doorway staring down at her. Then he’d pulled the light blanket over her prone body. If he’d spoken, if he’d touched her with more than the velvety brush of his knuckles, she might have given in and asked him to stay. To share the bed, to hold her, to distract her in any way he chose.

      That’s

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